Afleveringen
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In March 2022, on the cusp of his retirement after 46 years as a clothier, I sat down with Herb Melton of the Tom James Company. Herb has served as my clothier or tailor for more than 30 years ā since my father couldnāt find me an off-the-rack suit that would fit my 5ā 9ā and 105-pounds body to wear for college admissions interviews. Since then, Herb ā and his Tom James colleagues in Washington, DC and Denver ā have made me terrific-looking and comfortable clothes to fit my still-odd-body-shape.
A few points to ponder:
* R. M. Williams, the Australian rancher and leather goods maker, had a dictum that āwhen men or women move, they carry with them what they are.ā Meaning, we reveal ourselves in everything we do. The conversation with Herb reminded me of that adage.
* We spoke of the decline of Brooks Brothers, among other brands in the menswear space. It suggested to me that however powerful and unassailable certain companies appear today ā Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, Tesla, and the like ā the wheel of history always spins. Human efforts are short; time is long. We canāt tell the future, but I wouldnāt bet on them remaining the top companies in, say, 100 years.
* Herb worked with my Dad, and still works with my Uncle, my brother and me. He talks about working with three generations within a family. It seems like a rarer type of relationship in these transactional days, but I wouldnāt trade our bond with him for the world. It may have started with business and, to some extent, it remains a business bond. But it has mostly become friends assisting friends, with generosity and a sense of fun.
Herb is full of wisdom and wit. Enjoy!
One thing that has always interested me: in the 30 years weāve worked together, you have always called yourself a clothier. What does that mean?
Itās really an old, old term. Even before I got into the business, it pretty much had fallen into disuse. A clothier is somebody who provides quality clothing, specifically to men. A clothier is the equivalent of your stock broker, your attorney, your accountant, or your real estate agent. They all provide advice and service in a particular area where men need expertise, but generally donāt have either the inclination to have it or the time to have it.
When you say itās an old term. Your company makes custom clothing and you deliver a particular service. Would you say that in the old days the salespeople at, say, Brooks Brothers or places like that would also view themselves as clothiers?
As a rule, I would say yes. The even older term which you still hear occasionally, although I think for me is a little pretentious, is haberdashery. Clothier just seems to fit. In my case, I donāt sew other than being able to sew a button back on for somebody. I really donāt sew, so Iām not a tailor. But I do take the measurements and style the clothing for my clients so that they look the way they want and need to look. Clothier just seems to be most appropriate.
At some point, you made the comment that folks coming up behind you -- younger folks getting into the clothing business -- donāt view themselves as clothiers. Now, do you still agree with that and if you do, what do they view themselves as? How do they view their jobs and their roles?
Well, it seems to me that today most ā now there would be exceptions to this ā yes they would want to consider themselves clothiers. But generally, younger people coming into the business seem to be more interested in fashion than style. And, as you know, Iāve always made the distinction that style is whatās right for you and fashion is what some guy in New York wants you to wear. And fashion is driving the clothing business more and more and more and more. There are exceptions to this in Louisville, I would call The Fashion Post the lone exception to this these days, but the stores are driven by fashion. Even Brooks Brothers has gone a long way to succumbing to the fashionista look rather than doing what made it great.
In your view what made Brooks Brothers great?
Classic styles and quality pieces that one could invest in and keep with proper care almost literally as long as they wanted to. Investment clothing versus turnover clothing.
Would you say that more and more purveyors of clothing today are more and more about that sort of turnover clothing? Thatās true in broader society, right? I mean we have these iPhones, computers, TVs and they arenāt meant to last for ten years. They are built to last for two years and then we throw them out and get a new one, right?
Disposability dominates our culture and from my perspective is ruining our culture.
Letās take this in a slightly different direction. Right now you and I are wearing blazers, which is somewhat uncommon, right? The world has gone casual. Part of thatās Covid and part of thatās staying home and so on. But a lot of it is a larger trend of the world going more casual. Tell me about your business ā how has it evolved? How is it doing in an increasingly casual world?
Thatās a good question. Early on ā during the dot-com phenomenon of the late 90s and early 2000s -- when the casual things first started to appear on the scene, that kind of caught us off guard. Immediately at that point suit sales dropped and sport coat sales zoomed. They went way, way, way up. It put us in the position where we were forced to and were able to get into providing a lot of knit shirts and more casual pants. Eventually, we got into jeans. If you had asked me when I started if Tom James would ever sell jeans, I would have said no. But we sell a lot of jeans. In fact, we have a separate company that partners with us based in Mississippi which sells custom blue jeans that are amazing.
The trend today ā especially with younger folks ā people donāt wear a suit everyday. So they donāt buy three suits. But they may spend the equivalent of three suits for one suit that they will wear when they need one. They will invest more in a nicer cloth and a nicer make of the suit than they might have done previously when they bought three suits at a time because thatās what they had to wear to work.
And so if you have to buy only one suit, whatās your recommendation for that one suit?
It will never be anything other than a navy or charcoal plain. Now that doesnāt necessarily mean a complete solid, because something like a tick weave or a nail head or even a birds-eye can function in that role and have a little bit more interest. But with a plain charcoal or plain navy suit. I call them āMarrying and Burying suits;ā if you accessorize them properly, you can wear them at almost any occasion ā from a semi-formal evening like cocktail reception or political reception to just a change of pace day when you wear them with a tattersall shirt or a check shirt and a fun tie or even a solid knit tie or something like that.
Are knits a new thing? I read about knits all the time now and I donāt remember that growing up.
Youāre not old enough to remember. When I was in high school we wore square-bottomed knits rooster ties. And I just happened to be on the J. Press website today. And they had some of the most beautiful striped knit ties I have ever seen. So you know, Iām like wow those are cool. But this is about the third time around for knit ties.
The first time around was like the 50ās, 60ās?
The first was in the 50s and early 60s. Younger friends of mine used to say youāre channeling your 80s today. I donāt remember it at the time. Because at the time, I probably would not have worn a knit tie.
Yeah, I donāt remember knits in the 80s. But I was a little kid.
Now I have every color I can get my hands on because I live in sports coats more and more, and knit ties are great with them. And theyāre great for wearing with patterned shirts and you can be dressed up because you have an event or meeting that requires dressing up. But if youāve got a knit tie and a cool shirt on you can just unbutton the collar and loosen the tie a little bit and go in someplace that you need to go thatās much more casual without looking totally out of place.
Who are people today and you think, āthat guy nails it. That guyās got his own sense of style he knows who he isā? And he just looks great in whatever setting heās in. Can you think of anybody?
This is this is very limited sample and Iām going to alienate several of your readers, but I think Tucker Carlson dresses great. Heās very dressed up preppy.
I saw him at the airport once. Heās a tall guy. And so I recognized him, but he was not wearing his tie so strange to see him without a tie.
You know, I think for his role and Iām reasonably certain he doesnāt choose his clothing, but I think Joe Biden always looks great. I donāt think much of him, but I think he looks great. By the way, he always has a perfectly tied tie with a nice dimple in it.
Yes, he does. I noticed that too.
Thatās one of those little things that for lack of a better way to put it, separates the men from the boys and the well-dressed from the not so well-dressed
I have never been able to get the dimple right.
We can have a practice session.
What are some trends in menās style today you do actually like, that you applaud?
I like the continuation of wearing a jacket. One of the things that I enjoy doing more and more myself as I transition in my career, is wearing a jacket with jeans. I have jokingly said for a long time that if youāre traveling you either have to wear a jacket or bring a man-bag. And I am not a man-bag kind of person. I never get on an airplane without a blazer ā it may be the oldest blue blazer in my closet, but I never get on an airplane without a jacket.
That is so rare. I remember the first time I flew on a plane. I wore khakis, a blue shirt and my tiny little blue blazer. Now, itās probably been 12 years since Iāve worn a blazer on a flight.
Habits are hard to break and itās not one I want to break. For lack of a better way to say it, wearing a blazer on a plane is a way of life for me. It depends whether Iāll actually put a tie on and if I do, itāll probably be a knit. But I always wear a blazer when I fly.
Hereās your chance to pull the arrows out of the quiver. What are the things in menās style today that you donāt like?
Just the general sloppiness. Anytime I go out to dinner, itās impossible to go to a restaurant anymore ā like the English Grill ā and see people dressed properly. Itās most illustrated in two things. One, itās very frustrating to go to the ballet or the orchestra and see people show up in blue jeans ā and Iām talking about the 8 oāclock show. Likewise, I mention this going into a restaurant and Iām not talking about a 5-star, white-tablecloth situation. Iām talking about just a semi-casual, nice place. And invariably, the lady in the couple has taken the time to dress up in an appropriate way. It may be dressy casual but nevertheless, she looks nice. Regrettably, more often than not these days, the man with her looks like she picked him up on the corner on the way. Or she was backing out of the driveway and he turned off the lawnmower and hopped in the car with her. I have been in places where it has taken all my willpower not to go ask her where she picked him up because he does not look like he belongs with her. I think itās totally disrespectful both to her and to the people in the kitchen cooking the food. When I go to a musical or theatrical performance, the people putting on the performance have worked hard to give me their best. I feel like the least I can do is give them my best in return. That doesnāt necessarily mean black tie ā although sometimes thatās kinda fun too ā but to look like you belong there.
These two writers I read ā Michael Williams in Los Angeles and David Coggins in New York ā have this sense about style. Their view is that style is about making an effort. I think what you said echoes some of the things they have written about. A lot of men today, especially men, are not trying. Not trying to put forth the effort.
My partner, Dougal Munro, operates the U.S. division of our company, Holland & Sherry. Dougal says this: the way I dress for an occasion is a reflection of the esteem and the affection in which I hold the event and the people in attendance.
Yeah, thatās well said.
That has become my iconic statement on that. Put another way: when I dress up, I dress up for others. I donāt mean that Iām trying to impress them. I dress up so that they see that they matter to me. Itās just like table manners are virtually non-existent these days. The things in our society that expressed interest in and respect for others are being whittled away little by little. To me, dressing properly and helping others do so is one of the ways I can fight back.
Let me move to a different set of questions so. Iām a pretty oddball body type. Very narrow legs, thin arms, narrow hips, no butt, very narrow shoulders, average height. For somebody like that, what are some styles you can offer that person to look his best?
Iām going to say this and then work my way back into that. Okay? I think that one of the most important things any gentleman can do ā and this is equally true for women but thatās not my area of expertise ā is find someone who understands your sense of style and is willing to take the time to understand your life where you go, who you see, what you do, and knows enough about colors and patterns and styles to take you where you are and help you look the way you want to look and need to look for whatever you do. So, my answer is: find an expert and then let that expert try to get clothing on you that isnāt so tight that it makes you look like a scrawny waif, but also doesnāt like youāre wearing your big brotherās clothes.
It seems like that same advice would be true for the opposite of me too. He should find an expert who understands him, his life, his life situation, where he goes and what he does ā and help him dress accordingly.
Simple little things matter. My caveat is you can always say I donāt care what is going to look best on me ā I like it this way or that way. For instance, you and I are about the same height. I really like cuffs on trousers. Most guys these days donāt wear cuffs. A cuff, in the sense, can be a small hitch that can make you look slightly shorter, but I just like the way a cuff finishes a pair of trousers.
You know, on you, a two-button coat looks much better than a three-button coat because it allows you a little longer opening. We make three-button coats for you but we rolled it through the middle button so it has the appearance of a two-button coat. Itās a classic traditional style. But by placing the button at the ideal point, we help to make you look as tall as possible, to make your shoulders look as wide as possible, and to make your waist look as slender as possible. Those kinds of things.
Another example is the height of the shirt collar. Depending on the height of a neck and how large a neck someone has, the proper shirt collar both in height and in spread makes a difference. Again, this is one of those places where fashion seems to have run amuck over against what really looks good on people ā because everybody wants to wear big wide spread collars.
My family used to laugh at me. During presidential debates I would literally be sitting there during the debate, saying āThat guy looks like a clown. Somebody who doesnāt know what theyāre doing put a shirt collar on him thatās three times too big for him.ā In fact, I remember one time when Mitt Romney was running for president, I actually sent an email to his campaign. āYou people are screwing up. Those collars are too big for him, you know he looks like a fast-moving fat cat.ā And the next time I saw him in a debate they had changed his collar and it was just right. Now whether that had anything to do with it or not, I have no idea. I make no claim, but it was really funny that it happened that way.
Thatās amazing. Thatās so good.
Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, wore these big huge collars and he had a small neck and he just looked stupid.
What is an accessory a man should have thatās heirloom quality and that he could pass on to his son or son-in-law? He uses it during his life, but that isnāt the point Really, the point is it carries on in the family beyond that. Maybe thatās an outdated idea.
No, I donāt think itās an outdated idea. Iām not a watch guy, but in many cases that would be something that would be a legitimate item to fall in that category. Iād be more inclined to say a nice pen. If I didnāt destroy my briefcases so much and be so attached to them I would say a nice briefcase. But my 35-year-old Atlas is about destroyed and itās just hanging on to finish my career with me.
Iāve had some amazing briefcases that my father gave me. I had one from Levinger that I loved, and I was crushed when a piece of it got stuck on a rental car shuttle at LAX and tore. It ruined the briefcase. I had one from Coach that I loved. And now Iāve got one from Colonel Littleton that I love. But 10 years with a briefcase puts a lot of wear and tear on it. I agree, a briefcase is a tough item to hand down to the next generation.
Iām going to put a twist on it and go back to clothing. One of my now-deceased clients was from Paducah. Both sons are clients of mine and now the three grandsons are clients of mine so itās a third-generation legacy kind of thing. One of the grandsons called me up and he said his dad had outgrown his tuxedo and heās giving it to me. Well, my original client, the grandfather, was in the Army Air Corp and was stationed in England in the 50s. He had a dinner coat made on Saville Row. Absolutely one of the most beautiful pieces of clothing Iāve ever seen in my life. He had passed it on to his son who happened to be the same size. So we did some small alterations and he wore it. And then when he quit having any interest in dressing up for black tie events gave it to his son. So now the third generation is wearing this absolutely gorgeous dinner coat. To replace it on Saville Row today would cost $7,000 or $8,000.
My favorite thing at this point in my life is when I get a legacy client, especially third generation. Pretty much all my third generations, and a lot of my second-generation clients, are in Paducah. The grandfather was a friend of my dadās. I knew him as a little kid. The kids were more my contemporaries and now their kids are also my clients.
I think thatās great. Thatās wonderful.
Same thing for me. Both of my sons are relatively close to my size and so we can interchange clothing back and forth. When Johnās getting rid of stuff, heāll send it over to the house, mostly casual stuff. And Iāll go yeah, I could use those khakis. And then Aaronās whole closet, except for a couple of things Iāve made for him, is recycled clothing of mine thatās 18 or 20 years old.
I have stolen this idea from a podcast I listen to called Conversations with Tyler, hosted by Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University. Its called āUnderrated or Overrated.ā Iām going to say something and youāre going to tell me whether it's overrated or underrated. OK?
OK.
Allen Edmonds shoes?
Regrettably, currently becoming overrated. The company has changed hands numerous times since we started selling them. Iāve just watched the quality slip and perhaps as importantly the shoe designs just go off the rails. Itās very hard for me now to find shoes that I would really like to buy on the Allen Edmonds website. Alden is a shoe company that hasnāt changed what they do. Alden is itās probably rated correctly ā itās just far too unknown. Alden is a great shoe company, as is a certain company called Crockett & Jones.
Ralph Laurenās impact on American style. Overrated or underrated?
I donāt know how to answer that way, but he has had such an amazing impact on the prep world mostly. You know the Purple Label sort of gets into the fashion world, but for a guy that started out as a tie salesman, he has really, really had what I think is generally speaking a positive impact on dress culture in America.
So would you say underrated or overrated? It seems like he is so pervasive. He does the Olympics, he does sports teams. Heās so out there in the culture.
Thatās why I was having ā Iām struggling to answer. Iāll say underrated, but thatās just because I think his impact is so extensive, that it may not be fully appreciated.
How about online clothes shopping?
Definitely overrated. If you go back to what I said earlier, the single most important choice you can make about your appearance is putting yourself in the hands of someone with whom you can have a good relationship where he knows you or she knows you well and therefore you can work together to build what you want.
Overrated or underrated, fountain pens?
Definitely underrated. Well, Iām 72. I grew up in grade school writing with a fountain pen and I still think thereās nothing in the world thatās as enjoyable an experience. Well, I mean in the realm of communication, thereās nothing like sitting down with a nice piece of paper ā maybe to write a thank you note or something like that ā and a good pen and just writing the note. I never got good grades in penmanship. I had to spend summers sitting at the kitchen table practicing my writing because it was so bad. But I love writing with a pen.
Alright, overrated or underrated, LSU football coach Bryan Kelly?
In his own mind, heās the most underrated. In my mind, he may be the most overrated. And I think within the next two years, weāll know that.
Overrated or underrated, baseball hats when youāre not at the ballpark?
Well now, I have to ask you a qualifying question. Bill forward or backward?
I usually wear mine with the bill forward, but not always.
If youāre not catching the baseball game you donāt need your cap on backward.
What about a cap on at all?
Well, I love wearing baseball caps. I need to cover my head from the sun and sometimes Iām just too casual to wear my lovely straw hat. But I hate flat brims with a passion and the old caps that you could curl and shape are getting virtually impossible to find. Especially the ones that I would like to wear.
So wait, letās go back to Allen Edmonds and Alden. Whatās another great shoe brand, American or otherwise, besides Alden and Crockett & Jones? And Iām talking menās shoes here. Something I havenāt heard of.
The iconic is John Lobb. The shoes, if Iām not mistaken, are made in Northampton. Interestingly enough, the British shoe-making industry, at least at one time, was centered in Northampton, because they raised cows and there were lots of oak forests. You have the oak bark to use in the tanning and you have the leather right there. Most American shoes, Alden may be an exception, but I donāt think so. But most shoes these days are chromium-tanned. Itās a much faster process, but it doesnāt build the durability and quality into the shoe.
Again, itās sort of like we were talking about: have something for 2 years and throw it away.
My shoe repairman went out of business. One of the reasons he closed down after being in business for 25 or 30 years is that the shoes are no longer made to keep and repair. Theyāre made to wear and dispose of. So the number of shoes he was getting just wasnāt worth keeping the doors open you know. But for instance, the Crockett & Jones shoes, I didnāt change the sole on any of them until they were between 15 and 20 years old ā because the oak-tanned leather, especially in the soles, is durable.
This talk about shoes reminds me of another example of the decline in menās care about their appearance. It seems no one shines their shoes anymore, especially, younger guys. Some of that may be tied to the quality factor we just addressed. It also may be due to their never being taught how by their fathers.It is a daily occurrence, when Iām out seeing clients, to see a man, often with a suit on, and shoes, that in all likelihood, have never been shined. It totally destroys any attempt to look professional they made in putting on the suit. It seems particularly bad when the shoes are the lighter shades of tan and brown that are so in vogue today.
What about Churchās shoes?
I heard they were sold. Surprise, surprise ā quality has declined. Thatās what I have heard, at least. I havenāt dealt much with Churchās for a while.
Alright, Herb, a couple of last questions. So, Iām curious: youāre entering this phase of semi-retirement, and working only three days a week. How long have you been a clothier?
Forty-six years.
What have you learned about the world or human nature because youāre a clothier, that I or others who are not in that role havenāt learned?
Iām going to put a slightly different twist on it. Because of what I sell, my relationship is different. In some respects, itās a more personal or more intimate relationship than the fellow who sells them their car or whatever. And Iāve been in a lot of guysās closets; Iāve been in a lot of peopleās homes. Iāve always been an observer and try to watch and try to learn. The lesson that I feel like has been most important to me is this. Because I sell expensive clothes, I deal with people who have some money ā maybe some have new money but a lot of generational money folks. I always watch and see over time what happens. I watch and try to get a view of how they raise their children. Then I try to watch and see what happens with those children. And whether the values that made me respect the parents so much get properly passed on, or sadly, sometimes the values that I observed serving them, arenāt necessarily passed on. Kids donāt necessarily turn out well. Iāve seen all the different things. I see families where the second and third generations are great people. I have intense respect for that and have tried to learn from them what I could. The other thing is just watching people and just seeing how they care about how they look. I loved seeing people who care about others ā who are givers and not takers ā and obviously in this business and in the various circles in which I move Iāve seen it all.
Last question. So, 46 years and now going into semi-retirement ā what are you looking forward to most?
I would be not telling you the truth if I didnāt say hanging out with Ian, my grandson. Yesterday was the first day I really didnāt work. Barb texted me and asked if I wanted to go to the zoo today and I said heck yeah. We met at the zoo at about noon and stayed until about 2:00 pm. And I had a blast. But I have a lot of things that I would like to read and many cases re-read. There are a lot of books I read in college that I dipped too hard into the cliff notes and need to go back and actually read the book cover to cover carefully.
Whatās one that comes to mind?
I donāt know if this is because of the whole Russian-Ukraine thing or because I actually heard a gentleman talk about it at a classical school conference, but The Brothers Karamazov. Itās going to take me a while. Also The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. He writes it from the perspective of being a young 13th-century monk. Itās a weird book but itās fascinating. I had always wanted to read it. When I got Covid I pulled it off my sonās shelf because I was sleeping in his room to stay away from Barb. I pulled it off the shelf and started reading it. It took me two months to finish it, given the amount of time I had. You know the old joke is education is wasted on youth. Well, I was blessed to have the education that I had, particularly, in retrospect, to be in the Program of Liberal Studies, which is a humanities major at Notre Dame. And it gave me the desire to be a lifelong learner. I want to go back and start digging back into books but I also have a lot of things I would like to get down on paper too. We helped start our school 26 years ago and have been an emeritus director for three years now. I donāt want them to have to reinvent the wheel and I want to give it all the time and effort and money I put into that I want what moved us to start it in the first place. I want that to be known and hopefully at least attempted to be lived out. I want to have fun.
Thatās awesome. You should. Forty-six years. You should.
It will be a little easier to go to Notre Dame football games.
Wait wait. Is semi-retirement going to make it easier to go to Notre Dame football games? Or is the fact that Brian Kellyās not the coach going to make it easier?
That never stopped me, but I didnāt enjoy it as much as I hoped I would enjoy it. However, I am planning to meet Aaron at Auburn the first weekend in October when LSU comes to Auburn so we can cheer against him. I know thatās a lot of trouble to go to, but Iām really looking forward to it.
Alright Herb, thank you so much.
It was awesome. Great.
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Last spring, my friend Bryan McGrath mentioned a new book he felt eager to read ā Feather Trails: A Journey of Discovery Among Endangered Birds, by Sophie Osborn. Earlier, Bryan wrote about the Merlin Bird ID app from Cornell University, which had transformed my walks in nature. Suddenly, rather than merely hearing a bird singing nearby, I could quickly and easily identify it ā and usually numerous other birds picked up by the app that I, too, could enjoy if I listened with a touch more attention.
So when Bryan mentioned Sophieās book, and her companion Substack, Words for Birds, I felt drawn to check them out. I subscribed to her Substack and ordered the book. They were two of the best decisions I made in 2024.
Sophie beautifully weaves together her story with lovely nature writing with the science of bird decline and the potential, along with the immense work required, for population renewal. To say I loved Feather Trails massively undersells it. Of the 50 books I read last year, it was one of my top 3 reads. Iām not alone: the Birding Book Club of the American Birding Association named it one of the Best Books of 2024.
At my request, Bryan kindly introduced Sophie and me late last year. We enjoyed a couple expansive and splendid conversations. Finally, I asked Sophie if I could interview her for āWalks of Life,ā and she generously agreed.
A few points stood out during our talk, and my subsequent reflections.
* We think of human individuals, but less so about animals. Rather, we have a concept of ātigersā or āsharksā or even larger groups like ābirds. Sophieās book and our talk brought home how different and distinct individual animals are. The individual California Condors she worked with exhibited very distinct and unique personalities. On my walks now, I find myself wondering about the singular characteristics of a squirrel I see, for example. I likely will never know, but because of Sophie, I know that squirrel is, in some ways, a true original.
* Sophie also noted the profound instinct to play among the birds she worked with. For some reason, I see that instinct in my dogs, Olivia and Otis, every day. But I had never considered that other, less domesticated, animals might possess a similar yearning for playfulness. The world seemed a brighter place for Sophie highlighting that revelation in her work.
* At one point in our talk, Sophie indicated that occasionally she mis-identifies birds she hears or sees. Not often, but it does happen. It reminded me that we make mistakes even in our areas of profound expertise. It was a refreshing, and human, admission ā and a useful reminder for me to have patience with myself when, I, too, make mistakes in my (supposed) areas of āmastery.ā
Enjoy! And, again, thank you, Sophie!
Sophie, thank you so much for joining me. This is awesome.
It's a thrill to be here. Thanks, Russell.
I loved your book, Feather Trails. It was one of my top books of the year. Top two or three books of the entire year. I loved it, and I just can't wait to talk about it.
I'm thrilled that you liked it. I think that's amazing. I really am excited about that.
The book and your newsletter have inspired me to care more about birds and bird watch a little bit and certainly as I go for my walks in nature, pay more attention to birds and the sounds and the sights I see as I go about those walks.
That's fantastic. That was one of my major hopes in writing this book ā to see if I could interest more people in the world of birds by writing about my adventures with birds and my dealings with them. So that's exactly what I had hoped would happen.
Let's kick off my questions. I'd love to just hear you talk about your career with birds and what your favorite role with birds has been.
I've been lucky to have a lot of years in the field with birds, researching them, conserving them and reintroducing endangered birds to the wild. Reintroducing birds to the wild has been the real highlight. Whenever I was out there helping these really rare endangered birds get back out in the wild and make it, I always felt like I was doing something of value and something important.
Every day I was out there, it felt meaningful and important. And I really loved that. It felt like I was doing a critical thing to help the planet to help our bird life. And to help all those who care about birds by getting these birds back there in the wild. And I also loved it because when you are working with endangered species, there's often very few individuals left, so I came to know the individuals that I was working with really well. When you get to know individual birds, a lot of them have really unique and different personalities. It was so much fun to get to know them. I, of course, became very attached to them. I try to convey some of the stories of my experiences with these different individuals in Feather Trails.
So why do you think we humans are attracted to birds? Why do we feel this connection to birds that we don't feel for any other animal except maybe our dogs and our cats?
Exactly. A lot of people say that it's because we're drawn to their ability to fly. But for me, it's their color and their sound.
Birds are beautiful. They fill our world with music. They're these fragile, delicate creatures, and yet they do these amazing feats ā like migrate over hundreds of miles of water. They connect us to different parts of the world through the magic of their migration. One of the things that really attracted me to the bird world was that their whole lives are often on display for us.
I first was interested in mammals, and I wasn't a big bird person initially. I especially like small cats. But I realized that if I ever wanted to work with small cats they're usually nocturnal or they're hidden. They're cryptic. A lot of mammals, their lives are hidden from us. They're in the dark or we just don't see them. But with birds, you get to see them feeding their young and fighting over territories and singing to proclaim their territories. They're so visible and they live all around us. It's much easier for us to see them and appreciate them and experience their lives alongside ours. So for me that's a big one.
What do most people get wrong about birds? What do they not understand about birds? What do they miss about birds?
A lot of people aren't aware of how many birds are around us. And the variety and the diversity. Until I really started getting into birds and studying them, I had no idea how many different birds there were around living their lives around us.
We also take for granted that they'll always be there, no matter what we do, because they're pretty resilient, but we could push them to a certain point where a lot of their populations are declining. A lot of them are not doing well. It behooves us to take notice of them and help them out when we can.
You mentioned some of the bird personalities, Sophie, and there were some moments in your book that I laughed out loud, cracking up when you saw a bird do this or that or you had an interaction. Tell us about the funniest thing that's happened to you as an ornithologist.
Some of these birds are very charismatic. I used to laugh working with California condors so often. You wouldn't think that a big ugly vulture would be that appealing. But when you work with them, you discover that they're really playful. They were often playing tug of war with things. Anytime they saw an empty water bottle on the beach, they would have to punt it like a soccer ball, and they would just chase after it. They'd fight over these fun toys, and I always knew that if there was a collection of condors in an area, they'd either found some food ā a carcass ā or else they'd found a bunch of really fun toys.
Once at the Grand Canyon, this garbage can had blown over and the contents had blown over the canyon. I went to the edge of the cliff rim and looked down. It was just a play fest of condors. One of them was standing on the lid, and the other was trying to drag the lid, another was punting a water bottle down the slope and leaping over bushes to get to it. It was crazy, it was a total play fest. The times I've laughed the most is when they're doing these incredible weird interactions and just playing, which is amazing.
It sounds like we should have them over and like open presents under the Christmas tree. It'd be like, it'd be like having more kids.
They would love it. They are so into playing with anything that they can get their beaks on. That's just a fascinating aspect of birds. Also, birds allow you to laugh at yourself and not be too overconfident ā I remember having some funny moments in my life with just incredibly bad calls that I've made. I remember once being all excited going to a wildlife refuge. I was with a friend and I said, āOh, an incoming flock of ducks.ā And he looked at me and said, āSophie, those are blue Jays.ā In my enthusiasm at the moment, I just completely blew it. But we all often do when we're watching birds, there's challenges out there. We get overenthusiastic or we don't see something the right way. We can all make mistakes and remain humble while doing it. So I've laughed at myself at times.
I have to ask a kind of snarky question. You love birds so much. That is evident in our conversation already. It was very evident in your book. I'm just curious. Are there any birds you can't stand? Any birds you hate?
I guess hate might be a slightly strong word, but I do have to confess that there are some birds that I don't love very much at all. It's not even their fault, but I have to say that one of my least favorite birds is the House Sparrow, which is one of our most common birds in cities and towns.
I'm not a fan because it was introduced from Europe, and it's really aggressive about getting nest cavities from our birds. Nest cavities are very limited, and Swallows and Bluebirds nest in them. House Sparrows will go into those cavities, and if there's already Swallows or Bluebirds nesting in there, they'll sometimes kill the young nestlings and build their nest right on top, and take over the nest.
So I don't like them. They are making it much harder for our native birds. Same with European Starlings. That's another introduced bird.
As far as the native birds go, I love them all. Some of the introduced birds, I don't love them because they put so much pressure on our native birds. It's not their fault. European Starlings do the same thing as House Sparrows. They compete for these cavities that are limited. Starlings are at least very smart and they're amazing mimics. So they have those sort of things going for them. Whereas House Sparrows just make me cranky when they come around and try to take over my Bluebird nest boxes. I chase them off and scream at them.
Wow. Sparrows, starlings ā you have earned Sophie's ire.
I'm afraid they have. It's not their fault. It's us messing with the world a little bit.
Let's turn to the book for a few questions, Sophie. Can you update us since the events of the book? Tell us what's going on with the preservation efforts for the Peregrine Falcon, the Hawaiian Crow, and the California Condor. How are they doing today?
The Peregrines are doing really well, by and large. They were taken off the endangered species list in 1999, and they're one of our biggest conservation success stories. Unfortunately, biologists right now are really concerned because we're starting to get a lot of reports of Peregrines dying because of avian flu.
The avian flu is really wreaking havoc on our bird life right now and apparently Peregrines are getting hard hit by that. So I'm a little worried about them from that perspective. I'm also a bit worried because we're having a catastrophic disappearance of our insects and Peregrines rely on birds to raise their young. Many birds feed on insects. And so if there are fewer insects, the birds that feed on them are going to be struggling and there'll be fewer of them. So I'm a little worried about the long term, but so far the Peregrine has really been a remarkable success story, where people got behind it and helped return it to the wild.
California Condors are doing really well. They went down to 22 at one point, and now there are over 500 of them. There are over 300 in the wild, so that's also a very good success story, but they still require intensive management. Without our help to save them from lead poisoning, they would go back toward extinction. So they're doing really well, but they're very dependent on our management. And the Hawaiian Crow ā their situation has turned around recently, and it's very hopeful. In my book they were one of the sort of saddest stories. They've really struggled and had a lot of pressures that they've been up against.
Five of them were just released onto the island of Maui. So it's the first reintroductions that have taken place in a couple of years. And they put them on Maui, which is not their native island. They are native to Hawaii, the Big Island. But the Hawaiian Hawk, which has exacted a lot of pressure on reintroduced birds, doesn't occur on Maui.
They want to give these birds the best shot they can in the wild. They've just reintroduced some birds and so that's really exciting to finally have Crows back out in the wild. That's exciting. They're also trying a biocontrol to reduce numbers of mosquitoes in Hawaii. Mosquitoes have been a big problem transmitting diseases to the native birds.
So there's some good news on all fronts, which is exciting. It just goes to show when we have targeted conservation efforts and really try to help these animals, we are often very successful.
That leads to my next question. Something that came out of your book and especially with the story of the Peregrine Falcon ā when a bird becomes endangered, it sure seems like the 80-20 rule is in effect. Eighty percent of the problem is caused by 20 percent of factors. With the Peregrine Falcon, it seemed even more dramatic. 90-10 or 95-5 The overwhelming problem with Peregrine Falcons was the introduction of DDT and related chemicals into the environment.
The solutions also seem to follow a similar distribution. Twenty percent of the solutions get at 80 percent of the conservation effort. Again, with the Peregrine, getting DDT nixed from the market significantly improved population health. And yet, something that came out of your book is that ornithologists kept pushing on all fronts. You kept hammering on the 80 percent of the solutions that contributed only 20 percent of the solution. I found that fascinating and I'd love to hear from you: Why keep pushing on all fronts, even ones that won't seem to contribute that much to the general result?
You're absolutely right. One thing I did try to convey in my book is when there's a bird like the Peregrine that is basically declining for one reason, if we don't deal with that primary problem, we're not going to be successful in recovering this species. So we were able to get rid of DDT and that helped the Peregrine.
If we could get rid of lead ammunition and replace it with non-lead ammunition, we would take care of the Condor. But a lot of the time, those big threats are so difficult for the general public to deal with. It takes agencies, it takes biologists, it takes non-profit organizations, it takes a lot of entities to work on some of these larger problems like pesticides, like climate change. Right now we're in an all hands on deck moment with bird declines. We've lost about three billion birds in the last 50 years. A lot of us in the general public feel overwhelmed trying to think, how can we help?
I can't stop agriculture from using too many pesticides, but I can keep my cat indoors and put decals on my windows to try to protect birds. A lot of what I was trying to do was inspire people to take care of those other factors that we can deal with.
A lot of birds are disappearing and dying ā a death by a thousand cuts. There's a lot of different pressures on them. The more of us that can help with some of those pressures, then hopefully the agencies and the bigger conservation groups can deal with the bigger problems. If the rest of us chip in and help with the smaller problems, then we have a better chance of helping out more birds.
That's an enormous number. You just said 3,000,000,000 lost in 50 years. Basically, my lifetime.
It's really staggering. Something else I tried to convey in my book ā we often look back to our childhoods as this time when there was more wildlife, less development, and it was a wilder time. But children today are growing up in an environment with far fewer birds and much less wildlife than we grew up with. And we had less than the generation before us.
There's this disappearing wildlife that we adjust to. In this book I wanted to show, especially in Hawaii, what it was like so that children today know what we should try to work to save, what we should work to try to get back to, to recover some of these lost birds and lost species, lost habitats.
That leads to a tough question. Can we have our proverbial cake and eat it too? Can we have the benefits of a modern industrialized society and can we also have a thriving natural earth ecosystem, where wild animals can live in some reasonable equilibrium with the human-created industrial society?
I think we can. It's important that we're clear-eyed about our impacts, that we learn about them, and we recognize and we make changes that help minimize our pressures on other organisms. But I learned with endangered species ā by helping birds, we often tackle problems that harm us too.
Getting rid of DDT doesnāt just help peregrines. It was very beneficial to the environment and to us too. So we definitely benefit by reducing threats to birds. An amazing conservationist said that when we take care of birds, we take care of most of the environmental problems in the world.
A lot of those things are threatening us too. We can have development. We can have our modern industrial society. But it's valuable to recognize that we are sharing the planet with other organisms. By sustaining them, we sustain ourselves too.
Some of that is more nebulous ā in addition to birds pollinating our crops or keeping our insects to a safe number, birds do all kinds of things to contribute to ecosystems.
Also ā being in nature is restorative for us. It's healthy for us. There have been a lot of studies that show that getting out and walking in nature makes us happier, makes us less stressed out, and makes us less anxious. I think we can find a balance there where we can continue to live the lives that we want, but also nurture and sustain the wildlife that enriches our own lives and that shares some of the problems that we face, too.
In the world of bird protection, what's the frontier? It undoubtedly involves technology in some way, shape or form. What's that look like? Tell us about the frontiers, the leading edge of your world.
There's so many of them. There's so much research on birds because they are so visible and vocal. There's always a lot of research on them because they're easier to study. But people are focusing more on their entire life cycle, not just the summer or spring. Many of them migrate huge distances and winter in the tropics.
People are starting to look more and more into their wintering habitat. And also what's happening to the habitats where they stop over and refuel when they migrate. There's been some amazing new research, and technology is key. For example, there's a new thing called the Motus Tracking System. They put tiny little radio tags on birds and insects, and towers track the animals as they pass by. They're able to find out a lot more about tiny organisms like birds and insects as they're migrating. That's one of the really amazing new kinds of frontiers of wildlife tracking.
Then there's a lot of technological advances that are more subtle, but are really important. They're constantly trying to study how to make glass safer for birds. A lot of birds crash into buildings during migration. Now there are different studies to try to make glass more visible to birds to help protect them.
There's some things that are less technological, but have made a huge difference over the years. For instance, when you see radio and communication towers that have red lights on them to warn planes. They discovered years ago that birds were getting drawn to these red lights and circling the towers until they were exhausted or hitting the guy wires and dying. They made a simple switch ā from the steady red light to a blinking light. That really improved the problem.
There's a lot of research going on in how birds are impacted by all sorts of things. There are a lot of people chipping away at these different pressures on birds.
You were talking about the Motus Tracking System. It sounds like every bird is going to get its own Apple Air Tag.
I know! Exactly! It is a lot like that. It is amazing what these technologies reveal about these migratory journeys, and where these birds are traveling. It's just incredible.
Let's look at the flip side of this coin. What're going to be the hardest challenges in protecting birds over the next 50 years?
I think it's our ever-growing population and the pressures that we exact on wildlife in its habitat. We need so many resources to feed and house and clothe ourselves. There's often either an unwillingness or an obliviousness about the wildlife and the habitats around us. Becoming more aware that there is wildlife around us, that they are trying to make a living is really valuable. But I think it is our ever growing population and trying to come up with creative ways to sustain wildlife and wildlife habitats as our numbers increase.
In your book, you mentioned so many people, researchers, scientists, ornithologists, and organizations. Tell us about one unsung hero in bird preservation ā a person, an organization, anybody unsung who's doing heroic efforts to contribute to the effort to save birds now.
I couldn't really think of one person or one organization necessarily because it does take a village. There're so many people involved, as you suggest and I tried to convey in my book. But for me as a group, one group of unsung heroes are often the field biologists ā the people who are out there in the field day to day, working to research these birds, conserve these birds, reintroduce the endangered birds to the wild. It's often the higher ups that are doing the administrative stuff and the policy work that get a lot of the attention. But people on the ground are often dealing with terrible weather and unbelievably long days; birds don't take off Christmas and New Year, so the field people work through weekends and holidays and everything else.
And I tried to give a thank you in my dedication to the field people because I think they're often our unsung heroes in keeping our bird life healthy and happy.
That also very clearly came out in your book. You talk about some of the walks you took ā enormous distances to try to find a bird's nesting place or, unfortunately, to try to find the carcass of a bird. Tell us a little bit about those walks. My newsletter is about walking and I'm fascinated with those walks that you took as a field biologist. What were you thinking about? what were you feeling? What were those walks like?
Sometimes the walks had a purpose. If I was looking for a bird that I suspected had died, I was of course anxious ā I was hoping I wouldn't find a dead bird. When I was looking to try to find if the birds were nesting, that was very hopeful. So I was often thinking about what I might find at the end of my destination. But I never lost sight of how much I loved the moment and being in nature and experiencing the natural world around me, because it is really just amazing to be out there in the wild.
It's often quiet. I did take some very long journeys. One thing I really ended up doing a lot at the Grand Canyon, which I had never expected, was hiking at night. It was so hot down in the canyon during the day so we had to do our hikes in at night.
I had never hiked alone, at night, for 12 miles. I would hear the echolocating noise the bats were making. It was peaceful and beautiful. It was just a magical time to be hiking with very few people around ā whereas in the Grand Canyon, the daytime was crowded with tourists.
Mostly it was just being out there with nature and really enjoying the moment, while also sometimes worrying about what I was going to find when I completed my journey.
I love that. Tell me about your favorite place to take a walk, period.
My favorite place really is mountain country. I spent my early years in Switzerland and then moved to Vermont. I just love mountains. My favorite walks are always along mountain streams or through woods that get me up to a mountain lake. I love those. I love the rushing, tumbling mountain streams. I love having jagged peaks around me. I love mountain country. That's probably my favorite.
That's amazing. This may be a similar answer, but I'm curious ā I've started to ask a few people in life this question, and I'm always fascinated by their answers. Where do you encounter beauty in life?
A lot of it is mountain country. I ended up working with condors in Arizona and canyon country is beautiful, but it wasn't the same for me. So I spent years trying to get back to the mountains. Looking out at a mountain range and the alpenglow, the different light on it at night, is something that I love.
I love so much seeing the ever-changing light in the sky around mountains. But almost wherever I am in wild places, I end up seeing beauty ā big and small ā small flowers in the forest floor or a Tanager perched up in a tree. There's so much beauty around and I really enjoy that.
There's also beauty in our relationships with other people and our pets. It's not a visible beauty, but our important relationships with animals and people are a beautiful thing too.
That's wonderful. I love it. Let me ask you a few last questions here, Sophie. For beginners, and I'm definitely a beginner, what's a good resource to learn more about birds, birdwatching, identifying birds, or the state of birds period? What are good resources for people to turn to?
There's more and more online. Maybe it's because I started out years ago, I'm more old fashioned: I think it's really nice to have a field guide to be able to look at just how the birds are laid out, and compare birds in an easier format. There are some really wonderful field guides. The Sibley Guide to Birds is a great one. He has beautiful pictures of birds that are really helpful for identification. I grew up using the Peterson guides, so there are Peterson's Eastern and Western guides. Those are amazing. And Kenn Kaufman has a book of bird photographs if people prefer to identify birds with photographs instead of drawn pictures. His Birds of North America is great.
As far as apps go, Cornell University has just done a brilliant job with its Merlin app. They've transformed the bird world and made it so much more accessible for beginners through that app. I haven't used the identification portion of it because I usually know what I'm seeing, but I do use their bird songs and calls part of it.
You can hear a bird song that you're unfamiliar with and hold up your phone, record it, and the app will tell you what you're hearing. That's amazing! Even for somebody like me, there's a lot of places where I'm not familiar with the birds or I'm rusty or I'm confused.
It really is an amazing app as far as telling us what's around us all the time. For new people, sometimes you think, āOh, there's probably three or four birds around.ā And you hold up your phone and suddenly, you're hearing birds singing that you didn't even know existed. It can be a lot of fun.
Those are my favorites.
That app is incredible. Our mutual friend, Bryan, mentioned it in one of his newsletters and I got it. It has transformed my walks in nature. It is the coolest app. It's awesome.
Yeah, it's a free app and it's phenomenal. Very occasionally it will have a mistake, but for the most part, it is wildly accurate and it's tremendous. It really does open up the world. One of the things as an ornithologist that I loved was learning bird songs because suddenly, you realized how much is around you that you didn't even know was there. And Merlin does that for you.
You mentioned a few books. Besides, of course, your book, what are your favorite books about birds?
It's funny. I don't have that many favorite books about birds. It's just crazy. Some of them are quite a lot older ā my favorites are the ones that sort of started getting me into birds. But one of my favorites is Wings for My Flight: The Peregrine Falcons of Chimney Rock by Marcy Houle. It was about her work with wild Peregrines. It came out a couple of years before I did my Peregrine work. That really resonated with me. I love the stories of biologists being out there, doing the work. Not surprisingly that resonated with me.
There was another book ā this wasn't about birds ā called Cry of the Kalahari about biologists working in Africa. It had a similar kind of impact on me. I must've been drawn to these stories about biologists working with birds.
An amazing bird person named Pete Dunne, who actually wrote the introduction to my book, which was a huge honor, has a bunch of wonderful bird books. He has a new one out that I haven't read yet, but one of his older ones was called The Feather Quest. He and his wife went all over the country looking for birds. It was the first time I realized you could travel and see new birds in new places, and that was a revelation at the time. You could get to know the birds in your neighborhood, but then you travel and there's a whole other contingent of birds to experience and learn about and discover. He really made that clear for me. So I love The Feather Quest.
I love it. You mentioned a couple of ideas about how we private citizens can help birds. My daughters, who are 10 and 12, saw me reading your book and they asked me about it. Then I mentioned that I was going to interview you and they were all excited. Maybe they'll listen to this or read this. They had a question, which is: how can they ā again, they're not experts and I'm not an expert ā but what can they do to help protect and save birds?
It's hard to think of just one thing that people can do, because a lot of my philosophy is that there are many small things that we can do. But the number one thing is to open our eyes and be aware of birds ā to notice birds and to learn about them.
A lot of us don't realize how much diversity there is around usā how different these birds are. They all make a living in a different way. If you see birds in your yard, look them up, try to figure out what they are, learn a little bit about them. As we learn about birds and we observe them, we often come to care more about them, especially when we see them and they're familiar in our backyards. When they become familiar and we know about them, we can share our stories about them. I think that makes us want to help them. That's a critical first step.
There are a lot of things that we as individuals could do. Wildlife likes dark places. We can keep our lighting outside darker. You could tell your daughters to turn their lights out when they leave a room. It keeps the house darker for the birds. Or they can put decals on the windows, because birds often strike windows. Keeping our cats inside is a really big one. The biggest pressure on birds is cats ā keep your cats indoors. Other things are plastic beverage containers. There's a circle there that birds could get trapped and tangled in ā cut them so animals donāt get caught. And cut the rubber bands that you take off of fruit or broccoli.
Just be aware that there's a wild world around us that could be impacted by our lights, by our cats, by our trash. Try to take care of some of those things. It's small stuff, but if there are 96 million birdwatchers in the U.S., even if 20 million do some small thing, thatās a lot.
Huge difference, yes. This has been awesome, Sophie. Let me get you out of here on this last question. After your book, what's next for you? What's your next project?
Right now, I'm working right now with a fellow biologist to create an anthology of stories by and about women biologists who are doing work all over the country ā amazing work with wolves or crayfish or other animals. It's all their various adventures in the wild ā crashing in helicopters, getting bitten by a bear in Yellowstone, dealing with poachers in Panama, dealing with a flood in Alaska. We finalized that book, so I'm working on getting that published.
It will hopefully show young girls and women that working with nature and wild animals can be an amazing experience and amazing career, and people really thrive at it.
I love it. I can't wait to read it. This has been an amazing conversation, Sophie. I loved your book and talking with you. They really have been highlights of my year. I've loved every minute of it and I can't thank you enough for your willingness to come and chat with me.
It's such a great pleasure. I love sharing birds with people and it's just so exciting when people are starting to get captivated by that world. There's nothing better for me.
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Sophie. I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Russell. Great to talk to you.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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After meeting Sherry Shenoda at a wedding in the summer of 2022, I interviewed her about her book, The Lightkeeper, later that year. To say I love the book is a massive understatement. I found it so full of rich and beautiful themes: longing and loss; free will and its limits; and finding, coming and returning home; among many others.
In our discussion, we cover fine and fertile ground: how her work as a pediatrician has affected her writing; her writing retreats with a dear friend; books on writing which have influenced her; and we delve deep into The Lightkeeper.
I loved this conversation and hope you do too! Definitely check out her fantastic novel!
Some Points to Ponder
* At one point, Sherry uses a lovely phrase: āthat generous magic that kids are able to create.ā I really love that phrase.
* Sherry notes how fiction, especially fantasy, writing, and music and song, can explore difficult situations without lecturing or sermonizing. I think sheās right, which may be one reason that, since reading The Lightkeeper, I have read far more fiction than at any other time in my life. Itās one reason I felt so drawn to the life and music of June Carter Cash ā in some ways even more than Johnny Cash, her far more popular husband. Johnny at times veered into preachiness and pontificating, which felt odd given his life and some life choices. June never did.
* The Lightkeeper addresses a fundamental problem of human existence ā why there is suffering. The answers from the novel center on choice and the fact we are loved. Sherry has really made me think about this question.
* I love the fact that I loved this novel and so did my wife. That happens a time or two a year, but not often. We both loved this book!
Sherry, it is wonderful to see you and hear your voice again.
Likewise Russell.
I loved our conversation on the Sunday of the wedding. It was really eye-opening and enlightening to me. I appreciate your willingness to chat with me further.
It was really eye-opening for me too. You asked me questions that I had not even considered when I was writing the book. So it was wonderful to speak to someone who had read it so generously. I really appreciate that.
As I told you, over the past many years, I have read a few fiction books, but not many and nothing we could call literature. The Lightkeeper has reawakened the power of literature to me. Iāve been on a big fiction kick since our first conversation.
I love it. Iām so glad to hear that.
You are a physician by training, youāre a writer, youāre a poet, youāre a mother, youāre a wife. Iām curious. How do you describe what you do?
Thatās a good definition. That list that you just gave, and the pediatrician, and writer, and mother: Iām not sure which one I would put first. Maybe mother, then writer and then pediatrician. I would put them in that order. I was a writer before I was a doctor. Iāve been writing stories since I was really little.
As readers read your writing, whatās your hope for them? What do you want for them in that act?
So I was kind of a shy, introverted kid and maybe a shy introverted adult now. Books have been some of my best companions. When people read my writing, I hope that they find a good companion in my stories for at least a time on their journey. Books can keep us company and they can get us through hard times. If my writing can do that for someone, I will be really pleased.
Companions. I love that word. Itās such a beautiful concept, and that brings to mind something you mentioned in a podcast you did last year. You noted a special birthday tradition you have with your friend Veronica, who is one of the people you dedicated The Lightkeeper to. Can you tell us more about that tradition with Veronica? How did it come about and what is it?
We donāt make it every year, but we try to take a writing retreat once a year. Her family has a cabin in the mountains. Itās quiet. We just sit and itās creatively recharging for me. We catch up and we write. We try to do it every year. Sometimes we go twice a year. Sometimes there are years we canāt make it at all. But, we do our best to try to make it.
To the extent you feel comfortable sharing any details about how it goes or what you all work on, Iād be fascinated to hear it.
Itās the opposite of exciting! We wake up. Itās very Hobbit-ish, for lack of a better word. Itās a very Hobbit aesthetic. We have on our cozy sweaters and cozy socks. And we get a fire going. We have candles and we eat cozy breakfasts and put pots of soup on the stove while weāre writing and we stay up at night with a glass of wine. Itās just very cozy and quiet. Then we chat. Whenever one of us gets stuck in a plot tangle, we sometimes talk it out. Sometimes I try to get up in the mornings and go for walks too. Itās a beautiful area. So, a little bit of walking with writing and a lot of sitting and being, just quiet. Itās very low-key, companionable, and peaceful.
That peace and the stillness ā what a great gift to each other.
Yeah. Itās beautiful. Sheās been a wonderful presence in my life. Weāve been friends for almost 35 years. A long time.
Can you tell me more about your friendship with Veronica? Again, in the same podcast, the host mentioned you had āforged a friendship without languageā. Tell us about that.
We met before either of us could speak English. Sheās Cuban and only spoke Spanish, and I only spoke Arabic. We met in a sandbox and it didnāt really matter that we couldnāt speak the same language. Initially, it was just play. It was that generous magic that kids are able to create. We made a friendship without words. And then words became a large part of our friendship later on. Weāve spent countless hours talking about good stories since then. Actually, a friend told me recently that in the Waldorf Education tradition for really young kids, the thought is that theyāre in a dream state until theyāre about 7 years old and the job of the parent is not to wake them. That really struck a chord with me. I feel like we were in that kind of dream childhood state and we didnāt need words. We communicated in a way that kids do.
How has your work with children as a pediatrician impacted your fiction?
Thatās a tough question for me to answer. Iāve worked with a lot of children who have or are experiencing trauma and my fiction is a way to deal with some of what Iāve experienced secondhand through patients. I donāt write at all about medicine. Itās not something that Iām interested in doing. But I find that fantasy, in particular, is a really powerful way to talk about truth. If you look at Tolkien for example. Iām not an expert on Tolkien, but The Lord of the Rings, in many ways, was his way of processing what he had seen during the First World War.
I deal with my own fiction in the same way. Itās not intentional necessarily. Itās not that I saw this trauma and I need to write in a way to get it out of my system. Thatās not what Iām trying to say. Itās more of a way of dealing with the trauma by telling truth in a way thatās universal. Fantasy is universal in a way that music or mythology are universal. It transcends language and culture in many ways. But you can use fiction, and fantasy in particular, as a way to carry heavy truth without writing a sermon or a lecture or an essay. Those formats are other ways to do it, but for me, fiction and fantasy are the ways that it comes out most naturally.
Let me address the same topic but in a different way. On your website, you say you want to help create a ākinder, simpler sandbox.ā Why do you use those adjectives?
I think itās speaking to that kind of magic. Not to romanticize childhood ā there are a lot of things that are really difficult about being a kid, especially when youāre pre-verbal. It can be frustrating to express yourself. But, there is a magic quality in childhood ā children donāt see the same complications that adults do. My son, for instance ā heās almost three. Heāll walk up to strangers in the store, and say āHi, whatās your name?ā āHowās your day?ā Regardless of how that person looks. He approaches people regardless of age, gender, or race. Itās really beautiful. Thatās the image of the sandbox I have ā when you can simply sit beside someone and play together. Youāre unselfconscious about it.
Can I ask a totally different question ā something I am curious about? Do you read professional books? Books like how to become a better doctor, writer or poet? Or books on productivity?
I do actually. I try to be selective about them. But, I do love to. I think they sharpen our skill set. But, not so much about medicine. I read to keep up to date on medical topics that are relevant to my practice. I do read productivity books like Atomic Habits and Deep Work. They were both great.
Yes, Deep Work was excellent.
Attention is the currency of our current economy. Itās a deadly thing for creative work if youāre not able to go deep. If weāre not able to regain our attention, itās hard to do really good creative work. That book really helped. Also, I do read books on the craft of writing. A couple of really good writing books have been helpful for me. One is Steven Kingās book, On Writing. Another one was Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. And then there are a couple by Ursula K. Le Guin and Madeline LāEngle that have been really helpful. And then thereās a poetry kind of manual by Mary Oliver. Itās a technical book, but itās done in a very Mary Oliver poetic way and thatās been helpful. People ask, āwhat is poetry?ā A lot of things can pass for poetry, but the limitation of form is still important and helpful. We can talk about limitations later. But, I think that limitations are still really useful, even in free verse. And so, I like to keep up with writing on the craft of writing. But, once you know the rules, you can either break them deliberately or work within their confines. That can be really creatively freeing ā actually to have limitations. To say to yourself: āI am going to write a sonnetā and then force yourself into the limitation of that form.
Sherry, letās get into your novel, The Lightkeeper. And, as Iāve already mentioned, your novel has sparked a return to reading fiction, and literature for me. I found the book so compelling for many reasons. Since I read it, back in August, there hasnāt been a day where I havenāt reflected on something about it and some lesson itās brought to the fore for me. Letās start with a basic question: you hinted a little bit at this earlier, but why did you write this book?
Thank you so much, Russell, for those kind words. I really appreciate it.
I wrote it mostly to deal with the secondary trauma of my medical training. Itās the beginning of my conversation with God about why thereās suffering in the world. In particular, why thereās suffering directed at children, though there is no trauma directed at children in the book.
Itās a time travel story about a lightkeeper whoās pulled through time against her will. She doesnāt have free will. Sheās kind of this ageless, nameless entity. And her work is to keep lighthouses lit and she travels through time to do it. Sheās called to different places where the need is greatest at the time. Sometimes sheās there to save a drowning sailor or for some other task. Thatās the premise of the novel. It has nothing discernible to do with childhood trauma. But for me, thatās what it was about. It was about dealing with some of the helplessness in medicine. A lot of physicians and medical professionals feel this sort of anonymity that we have to take on to help. We also often donāt know what happened after we helped, what the outcome was. You see a patient. You try to be there for them in their time of need. Then their life is no longer intersecting with yours. Their life moves on and your life moves on, and you have no idea if youāve helped or not. So I was trying to work out a lot of that.
Really itās a story about this lightkeeper and her time travels. And it tells the story of how she ultimately finds a home and finds love, and what happens then.
Can you tell us about the process of writing it? What was the process? How long did it take? What were the steps and how did you know you had something really cool on your hands?
In the beginning, it was actually a dream about a woman who was burying a man who had just died. It was a really awful, tense scene where it was difficult to bury him and she doesnāt know why. I had no idea about the characters: I didnāt know who they were, their names or their relationship to each other. The characters revealed themselves to me over time. Once the characters told me who they were, a lot of it was written in these scenes. Then came the slog of turning it into a coherent novel. Moving portions around so that it made sense and then some of those scenes were eventually removed. Iāve never built a house. But I imagine you build the foundation and a supporting wall and as the rest of the house comes up, that wall may have to come down. Itās a little bit like that. Then there were a couple of years to publication. The publisher is deciding if they want the novel. Itās a lot of hurrying up and waiting. Then thereās a lot of editing. But in the very beginning, the novel started as a dream.
You mentioned a minute ago this theme of free will. Reading the book, free will is such an ambiguous concept. Early on, it seems the lightkeeper has very limited free will. She canāt choose where she is taken, but she does choose whether to give assistance once she gets there. Later, thereās a dramatic moment when the lightkeeper and Ronan have a moment of decision and they can express free will. Can you talk us through this theme?
This book was me grappling with the concept of free will. Initially, youāre right. Sheās pulled through time to the place where the need is greatest and she feels like she doesnāt have free will. But youāre right in that she still can choose. For instance, she could decide, āIām not going to intervene and save these sailors. Iām just going to let them drown.ā There is one flashback that keeps replaying in her mind ā she didnāt intervene and the guilt of it gnaws at her for a long time, because sheās been around for a long time. Then, like you said, thereās a very specific scene where she clearly takes on the burden of free will. Sometimes we think having more options is easier and better, but sometimes more options can be a burden. I was trying to illustrate both sides of that question as best I could. That both options are hard.
I think itās so beautifully done because it just revealed the power of free will, but as you just said, the burden of free will and the emotional toll we take when we have free will and we donāt choose what we really think we should choose.
Yeah.
Another theme from the book, and I think itās a modern theme, is home. The lightkeeper doesnāt have a home initially, either in place or time. But she finds a home, although in some sense she felt strangely when she got there. She had a sense that the place was different than the places she had been before. The modern take on āhomeā has evolved with Covid, and people moving and working in different places than their companies are located. How do we know we have come home when weāve never been there before? Tell us more about this theme of home and place.
I donāt know how modern an idea it is. I completely understand what youāre saying. But, I wonder, as humans, if thereās something in us that wants variations on the same thing. To me, the idea of home is the place where weāre seen and known. Where people recognize us. Even after the main transition in the lightkeeperās life, thereās a sense that people canāt remember her. Her memory is ephemeral. Once she leaves a place, people forget who she is. I wanted her to be that way because a lot of us feel that way. Often, we feel like people donāt really see us. It was this idea that sheās longing for a place. Sheās never been there, but sheās longing for a place where people see her, remember her and know her. In the Orthodox tradition, when someone passes away, we tell their family members, āMay their memory be eternal.ā And in Arabic, in the Coptic Church, we say: āMay you live and remember.ā This idea of remembering the dead to keep them alive is something that Iāve grown up with. The place where we find a home is the place where people remember us. They bring us to memory. They know us. They know us deeply. They see the true version of us. I donāt know, but it feels universal to me. It feels like every human wants a place to belong. Maybe with some exceptions, but it feels like most people want that.
You get that sense in the novel. The lightkeeper, she ā ārebelledā isnāt quite the right word, but she doesnāt always love this life in constant movement, what you call her ātranslations.ā She doesnāt like being forced to go from place to place. She doesnāt like the transitory nature of the relationships she has. She has no idea when sheāll leave next. She can be walking in mid-step and, bam! sheās in a totally new place and time. That becomes deeply disturbing to her. She yearns for a home and a place and a place where people do know her.
Yes, she does. Sheās never had the constancy and the steadiness that most people experience in a family. And she doesnāt know what itās called. But I think itās very human to want that.
This gets us to a different topic. Let me go back to the beginning of our conversation. I asked you how you see yourself, how you see your identity. You chose your identity as a writer, pediatrician and mother, at least to some extent. Your mother is a doctor, so maybe nature or nurture pulled you in that direction. But you had a choice, to some extent. In the book, the lightkeeper does not choose her work. Share with us your thoughts on calling, having a calling and stepping away from your calling.
The idea of individualism is a really Western concept, at least in my understanding. Recently, listening to the mythologist Martin Shaw, talking about finding the story that we are meant to tell in the world. He said that sometimes we have to realize that the story that we are going to tell may not be the one we want to tell; it may not be one we even choose to tell. Sometimes the path finds us, and our decision point is whether weāre going to walk on it or not. That struck a chord with me because the idea of boundlessness and lack of any sort of limitation is very Western. I think there is another path. Itās not all about us and what we want to do with our lives. I think weāre meant to do things with our lives, and the suffering that comes to us illustrates this point well. People donāt choose to have a family member whoās sick or even illness for themselves. Weāve had a lot of illness and accidents in the family. Nobody chooses that. But, individualism doesnāt have a good response to that, I think. The only response to that is the willing acceptance of it, or at least finding a path to work through that. I donāt know that choice has a lot to do with it. I think the choice is how we decide to respond to it. I donāt think choosing the path is always an option for us.
That is so intriguing. We danced around this notion of limits and limitations. The 20th-century British novelist, essayist, and Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton has a line: āall of life is limitation.ā We can never do all of the things we want to do. We can never read all the books we want to. We can never go to all the places we want to go. Every decision, in some sense, eliminates every other decision we could possibly make for that moment. Talk to us about this notion of limits and limitations. Maybe it goes back to what you said earlier about limitation ā in some sense, it can be freeing.
Sometimes younger women ask me, āhow do you do it all?ā And I always quickly answer that I donāt. My time and energy are limited. If Iām parenting, Iām not in clinic. If Iām in clinic, Iām not writing. Iām unable to do something else at the same time. Even though itās uncomfortable to hear, itās really true. And Iām not interested in telling people empty platitudes. A difficult truth is much preferable to a pretty, dressed-up untruth. My opinion and my belief ā limitations are essential for humans to thrive. We need the boundaries of a limited life and limited time. Things begin to lose their value if theyāre not outlined for me, with limitations. You could potentially trace back many of our failings to a lack of limitations. Things like climate change, for instance. We donāt like the idea of being limited in our options, or capacity, or consumption, especially in the West. But thatās the truth of it. The writer Paul Kingsnorth talks about limitations with respect specifically to climate change, if anyone is interested in that. But I think that it extends to many aspects of our lives and I think limitations help. Theyāre uncomfortable, but they help.
I like that. Limitations are essential. Let me shift gears in talking about the book. Ronan and the lightkeeper become friends, then they fall in love, then they get married. You give us, I think, a beautiful, touching look into their home life, their domestic life. Itās not Instagram-worthy, glamorous, or fast-paced. Talk to us about the beauty of ordinariness.
Thereās plenty out there to glamorize the exciting. The lightkeeper goes on these amazing adventures and she travels through time. She goes back to ancient times to tend ancient lighthouses. She goes into the future. Thereās plenty in her work life thatās exciting and it needed to be balanced with an ordinary, plain home life, a small life with someone that loves her. I also wanted to subtly communicate, especially to women, who are told that our work should define us, that we need to be educated, and that we need to be working in the marketplace and contributing to society. But, thereās a whole lot of society at home too. To give women all of their options, both need to be treated with equal respect and dignity. Thereās a lot of dignity in making a small, comfortable, and noble existence at home. And I wanted to show both. The lightkeeper enjoys both; she has fulfillment in her work but she always wants to go home.
That is the limitation she chose in her own life. Her work life was her entire life and she freely chose to have a home, and a life with one person in one place. She seems happy with that choice and happy with what they have together.
Yeah.
The lightkeeper says her favorite translation is to 1743 Japan to assist a blind lightkeeper whose wife has passed away. The lightkeeper is not saving him and sheās not repairing a lighthouse to help a ship to safety. These scenes in Japan donāt contain intense action. They are scenes of intense heart. I find it intriguing that the lightkeeper favors these moments more than anything she gets to do. Tell us more about that.
In that particular scene, she doesnāt tend to an actual light, which is her usual task. Sheās there to be present for this lonely lightkeeper on the most difficult night of the year. Itās an anniversary for him. Sometimes the sacrament is in our presence with someone. Simply being there when someone needs a compassionate presence and support. Thereās not much that really can be said, but we can show up for each other. It doesnāt look like sheās doing much, but sometimes the best we can do is show up and sit with someone. Thereās this beautiful scene in one of my favorite movies. Itās called Lars and the Real Girl. Thereās a tragedy in the family. The women of the town come and they bring their knitting. Theyāre just sitting around. At one point, one of them says āThatās what you do when something happens. You come and sit.ā Thatās an indescribable gift when someone is in the thick of it. You know, to show up and be there for them.
Letās expand on this theme a bit. What youāre getting at is the idea of community. Community is clearly a theme in The Lightkeeper too. You come from an immigrant community and so Iām curious to know your thoughts about community. Today it seems like community is weakening. Online communities are trying to take the place or partial place of roles that have traditionally been taken on by āthe community.ā Talk to us a little about the theme of community in the book, Sherry.
Anyone who hasnāt had a home, when you get a little bit of it, you latch onto it. She eventually becomes nostalgic for this place that sheās never been to or sheās been to once. We want similar things. Even for people who have been transplanted, as my family has been from one place to another, a lot of things are the same. Being around people that love you, eating good food, and having a place to go where you can let your guard down. A common language is helpful. One of my favorite writers, Wendell Berry, talks about arriving to America. He says: in some ways weāre still arriving to this country. I canāt speak to what we call the immigrant experience because every immigrant experience is very different. But even people that have been in this country for a long time, we are still arriving to this place. It takes a long time, to settle your roots into a place. Having people around you who see you, remember you and know you ā that helps us put our roots down. I think anyone whoās ever chosen a family understands this. I have family members who feel that their friends are really, really close. Veronicaās really, really close. Sheās family. Weāve decided to be family. This idea of creating community, even as immigrants coming to a new place: often it has a lot to do with choosing the people who make you feel seen and at home. And then creating a loving space between yourselves. People can create a community almost anywhere. You can see it in small neighborhoods. You can see it in religious communities. I have found and made really good friends online. I think online friendships are helpful when they lead to in-person friendships.
Yeah.
Thatās the main utility for online forums like social media. Community is a place where we can find each other and be seen.
You made my heart sing, Sherry, when you mentioned my fellow Kentuckian, Wendell Berry. And you mentioned him in the book. Youāre a Wendell Berry fan. Iām a Wendell Berry fan. In some sense, weāve been talking about Wendell Berry themes this whole conversation. I mean, the notion of limitation. Berry argues that we canāt have a hyper-charged consumer industrial culture and environmental health. We have to be concerned about place and community in our world and the bonds that bring us together. Those are all themes that Wendell Berry has written about for 60 years. You mentioned him as one of your favorite writers. Tell us a little bit about his impact on you and your writing.
His themes of place really speak to me, even as an immigrant. His idea of staying in the same place for a long time in order to become a part of that place, and then allowing the place to impact the writing, really speaks to me as a writer and as a mom who is trying to build a community for my children. Thereās something to be said about putting down roots in a place and not just consuming the place. Learning the rhythms and patterns of the place and then being a part of it. Sometimes we think of the non-human world as a prop in our own lives. And itās here. Itās here before us, itās going to be here after us. We have to find a way to live in the same place and to build community.
Once we become of a place and not just from a place, we can take responsibility for any sins that have been committed there. There are many sins that have been committed in the United States. You know, chief among which is slavery. Berry talks about that. Once we stop saying the people that lived here did this, and start maybe taking responsibility for the things that have happened to the land and to the people that lived on the land before us, we can start to become from the place. Thereās a concept in Orthodox Christianity that we are responsible for everyone and everything; once we make ourselves responsible, the whole of creation can be saved, redeemed and enlightened.
There is power in saying āI may not have done something with my own hands, but Iām still responsible for it because I see it.ā The lightkeeper does this. Sheās not responsible for a ship about to sink, a light thatās gone out, or someone whoās not doing his job. But because sheās there and because she sees it, it actually is her responsibility. And like you were asking earlier, sometimes she chooses not to do it. But then there are consequences to all her decisions. If we see a wrong, being present and part of the human race, once we see something wrong, it becomes our responsibility. So Wendell Berry has taught me a lot of that. It has a lot to do with staying in the same place.
Thereās this concept also among the desert fathers in Egypt where they would go out into the desert to escape the annoyances of other people. People can be annoying. One monk is so annoyed by the community that he goes into the inner desert by himself. Thereās nothing around him except palm trees. Then the wind through the palm trees starts to annoy him. I think weāre like this. We think that if a situation were perfect, the things that are inside of us would settle themselves. But we donāt always want to take responsibility for the thing thatās inside of us thatās unsettled to begin with. For me, Wendell Berry articulates that with his fiction and with his poetry in particular. He isnāt saying any of that necessarily, but thatās the truth of what heās portraying. For instance, in Hannah Coulter, which is one of my favorite novels, he tells the story of a womanās life in very plain terms. Itās a beautiful story and it carries so much truth about human nature. He doesnāt have to say it directly. He shows it.
Youāve given me another 20 questions to think about. That was amazing. Sherry, do you mind if I share one of my favorite passages from The Lightkeeper, for us to end the interview on? This is later in the book. This is in Ogaki, Japan, 1743.
He took a long, trembling breath and drew back from her so that she could see his strong, smoothly shaven jaw, his dark straight hair combed back neatly from his pale skin, and his lips curved into a slight smile. Gently, and slowly enough to give her time to pull back had she wanted to, he bent his head and reverently kissed her forehead, before opening his arms and drawing away.
She stood, frozen to the ground, while he walked back to his seat and held out a hand to her, inviting her to sit across from him. āWelcome home, dear one,ā he said softly.
Her feet carried her forward and she ungracefully knelt across from him at the low table, relieved that she didnāt immediately knock over the bowl in front of her. To see that look in anotherās eyes, she thought. She thought she had seen it the night before, when Ronan named her. It was a look that focused all the whirling planets and bright stars in the cosmos into a single person, and crowned her queen.
She steadied her breath and watched him fold back his sleeve from a strong, pale wrist to pour the green-gold tea. It steamed fragrantly between them, and she breathed deeply of it, heady with the scent and the bittersweet joy he emanated.
I choose to be here with you, she thought, her eyes smiling at the man across from her. They sipped their tea slowly, taking their time with the ritual, and Aineās eyes caught again on the keeperās face when he lifted his tear-filled eyes to her, honoring his beloved with his tears. This time, her shoulders relaxed, her brow unfurrowed, the knot in her middle loosened, andāglory beāshe wept with him.
Oh, I love it. Oh, itās so good.
Thanks so much Russell. Iām so glad that speaks to you. Thank you.
Well Sherry, can I ask you just one last question?
Of course.
You have just been long-listed for the National Book Award in Poetry for your new book, your new volume of poetry, Mummy Eaters. What is next for you?
I donāt know Russell, but Iām excited for it. Iām trying to serve the work when it knocks on my door. Thereās a really beautiful poem by Rabindranath Tagore in the book Gitanjali. Tagore writes,
My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music.
I think of my creative work in this way ā Iām just the reed, and whatever music comes out, I hope that Iām able to serve it properly. I just get out of the way, so the characters can speak, so that the words can take shape and end up where theyāre supposed to. I do the best I can to separate myself from the outcome of the work. I try to just do the work, if possible.
Do the work. I love that. I love that. Well, Sherry, thatās an appropriate place for us to end. Youāve been so kind and so generous with your time. Iām so excited to read Mummy Eaters. My copy just arrived. Will you come back again in a few months and talk with us about Mummy Eaters?
Oh, Iād love to.
That would be so amazing. That would make my year.
Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate you and the generosity of your reading. Your questions are so deep and thoughtful. Theyāve actually helped me see my writing in a new light. So, thank you so much for that.
Sherry, itās been such a great pleasure. Itās been such a great pleasure getting to know you a little bit, Andrew [her husband] a little bit and your family, and having Kara [my sister-in-law] join your family. Thank you for joining me today.
ā
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A few months ago, I interviewed Henry Oliver about his book, Second Act, which is my book of the year.
Second Act offers wonderful in-depth biographies and analyses of late blooming luminaries like Katharine Graham, Maya Angelou, Chris Gardner, Samuel Johnson, Ray Kroc, Margaret Thatcher, Frank Lloyd Wright and others. He also delves into less-heralded but no less instructive personalities, such as Audrey Sutherland, who began her solo kayaking adventures of the Arctic after age 60. It also includes shorter, snippet-like lessons from Grandma Moses, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Vera Wang, Norman Maclean, and many others.
(Alas, Henry had to cut a chapter on Dwight Eisenhower. Here it is. Pair it with my biography of General Fox Conner, Eisenhowerās great mentor, and my interview with Steven Rabalais, who wrote the best biography of Conner.)
During our interview, Henryās revelations about the commonalities among the late bloomers and features unique to one fascinated me. Like the book, I learned so much from Henryās wisdom during our discussion.
Some Points to Ponder
* I appreciated Henryās research into people who found success later in life. In the modern age, we have such a fascination with and devotion to youth and achievements of the young. Iām glad Henry has finally given this topic the research and treatment it deserves.
* I came away with a much deeper appreciation of how we might view āsuccess.ā Audrey Sutherland fulfilling her dream of solo canoeing the waters of the Arctic, after age 60, counts as a remarkable success. Even if sheād never written about her adventures, doing them marks such a massive success. Henry David Thoreau died not having sold half the copies of Walden he paid to have printed. Was he a failure?
* We seem to struggle mightily to learn from people we disagree with or dislike. In my case, Iāve never read a biography of Napoleon because, well, he was a despicable human being. Margaret Thatcher seems woefully under-appreciated in todayās liberal European milieu. Henryās book suggests we would do well to take a look at people we disagree with or dislike. They might have valuable lessons to tell.
* Henry notes the importance of The Club to Samuel Johnsonās success. Do you have a group of peers cheering you on? Helping you become better at whatever challenges you face? If you donāt, finding such people would make a huge difference in your work and life.
* I simply loved the conversation. Henry has so much knowledge, thoughtfulness, and wisdom about so many topics ā old and new. Iāve gone back to listen to our talk several times ā new joys pop out every time.
Tell me about the origin of the book? How did you come up with the idea for this book? Also, how did you meet Tyler Cowen and get connected with the Emergent Ventures grants?
My day job was in marketing, but we did not do advertising for chocolate bars or trainers or white goods. We did advertising for employment. All major companies, organizations, even mid-level places, have an advertising agency for their products and services. And then another one for their jobs. You have to go out to market and appeal to candidates and explain to people: āWhy is this a good culture? Why is this a good place to work?ā I was the research guy thinking about āWhere is the talent? Where's the audience for these jobs? What's going on in the labor market?ā
And I was increasingly seeing people in the 50-plus bracket being available, but not being chased by corporations. Then I got ill, and I took some time off work. I was doing a lot of reading of Penelope Fitzgerald, who is a novelist I really love. I was just thinking about her and her life. I read the biography and the letters, all of it. This started bouncing backwards and forwards with going back to work. I was thinking about the changing structure of the labor market and the idea that actually you don't always know how much potential someone has. Fitzgerald wrote her first serious novel when she was 60, and no one really expected it, right?
I became really interested in this topic. And I realized that my clients were not interested in it. The idea of a late bloomer was simply not on the radar for these organizations. You can come back to the labor force if you're a mother and you've been out of the labor force for five or six years. Organizations are desperate to appeal to you, and to reform their recruitment process for you. Because this is obvious talent that is finding it really difficult to come back into the labor force. But if you're a 55-year-old, and I'm saying, āhey, this person could have a whole new career,ā organizations are not open to that.
Then I heard Tyler Cowan on a podcast say the phrase, āpeople who haven't done anything yet, but maybe they will.ā And I was like, āOh, that's it.ā That's what I've been noodling on. I started blogging about it. One of my friends said to me, āthis is a real thing that you're blogging about.ā Then separately, it got to the point where I wanted to quit my job. And I thought, āto hell with it, I'll apply for an Emergent Ventures grant and see what happens.ā And I got it. And I wrote the book. It's a long story, but I do think ideas often come out of there being a light bulb moment after a whole load of murky, fuzzy kind of stuff.
You say in the book it's difficult to spot late bloomers before they emerge. Why is that? Is there anything that can be done to spot them in advance? And do they detect themselves? Do they feel they have something inside themselves?
Well, I'm going to start with that last question. I don't think they always do. Some of them do, for sure. I don't know even if what I'm about to say is true. I think to some extent the poet always knows that they are a poet. Now that's obviously not literally true, because there are poets like Edward Thomas, who had to be told by Robert Frost: āyou must write poetry.ā But some people know that they have something in them, I think. But there are lots of late bloomers for whom that's not true, depending on their circumstances.
Katharine Graham, who I start the book with, had lost her confidence through years of her mother, and then her husband, essentially bullying her. That really did get in the way of how she thought about herself and what she was going to do. But it's very notable that at the crucial moment her husband killed himself, and she inherited the paper ā which had been her father's paper, her family's paper ā everyone said, āWell you should sell it. You should not run it.ā And she said, āTo hell with that. I'm not going to be the one who sells the family paper.ā She had this great reserve of courage. When she wrote her autobiography, she looked back and she realized that her father had believed in her and supported her. Now, he was long dead by this point, so it was kind of there, but her courage had been squashed down by her mother and husband for years and years. Even the fact that she was quite patrician and privileged ā even all that had been knocked out of her. So, I think it varies a lot depending on your circumstances and what's happening in your life.
We have this problem with the books in the nonfiction section called āSmart Thinking.ā They present some great rule as if āThis Is The Way Things Are. This Is Some Solution.ā Psychology tells you that āThis Is True,ā right? But sometimes what actually happens would be a more accurate way of describing this phenomenon. With late bloomers, I didnāt want to sell you some grand theory that they're all the same. There are some core connections between them, such as having a secret life, or theyāre quietly very persistent about their work. Or, often the trigger point for them becoming a late bloomer is some change in their circumstances: a midlife crisis or some opportunity comes through their network.
But they are individuals. We should spend more time thinking, not just about the averages we see when we measure them. Those averages are important and indicative. But we should also be thinking about the deviation from the average. And my contention is, basically, I don't think we pay any attention to these late bloomers who deviate from the average. We really donāt know how many there are or could be. Why don't we try to find more of these people? Because if we got, say, two more of Katalin Kariko ā the woman who did so much mRNA research that was so crucial during Covid ā what would the world be like? Great. Fantastic.
So, I'm always reluctant to average answers about late bloomers. Yes, they do have secret lives. Yes, itās instructive to examine what they persist at. Don't think about what persistently happens to them, because that is the wrong indicator. Rather, look at: āWhat do they persist at? Do they have it?ā
When you say, āLook at what they persist at,ā what do you mean?
Letās look at Margaret Thatcher. If you take an external view of her career, which is what most of her political colleagues were doing, you would see a woman who got elected to Parliament, held a couple of junior ministerial roles and then was put into the Cabinet because they had to have a woman, because otherwise they would look sexist. They thought: āWe have to have a woman; itās statutory. Weāll give her the education post, because thatās a feminine post.ā They did not respect her. They did not. They were not interested in her. They thought she was a real pain in the ass and she was going to be difficult.
So, the external view of Margaret Thatcherās career is: she's done great. She's one of a kind ā one of the small number of women that's been elected in Parliament. But really no one is thinking that. No one is saying, āOh, my goodness, Margaret Thatcher's going places.ā No, no one is thinking she'd be Prime Minister.
Now, a couple people did get behind that appearance, and were not bound up with her being screechy and irritating and right-wing. And theyāre saying, āActually, you know what? She's energetic. She's decisive. She's got integrity.ā A few people are actually seeing these kinds of leadership qualities.
Someone from the American Embassy arranged for her to go to Washington and meet people. He believed she had talent, was the new talent in the House of Commons, and that the Americans should make a note of her. It's notable to me that the one person who truly saw her abilities was outside of the English system. He was not blinkered. He was going around meeting people and thought she had a lot of energy compared to some others in Parliament. āWhat a decisive woman this is, my goodness!ā And that's the real clue to what Margaret Thatcher was capable of. Whether people love or hate her, they always say she is indefatigable, she is relentless. She could do 10 hours a day of paperwork and not be tired. She does 10 years of that. Sheās constantly scuttling around Whitehall trying to change things. This guy from the Embassy, he got a little glimpse into the secret life of Margaret Thatcher. He didn't know the whole story, but she was there.
She was sitting up at night obsessed with politics ā reading, making notes. There's a wonderful story that she was reading the official biography of Winston Churchill. I'm sure many of your listeners-readers will know about it ā itās huge. Many volumes. Each time a new volume was issued, it had a companion volume of supporting documents. You have the narrative book, and the companion volume of government papers. Obviously, most people read only the narrative. Most people are not leafing through 800 pages of documents. But, Margaret Thatcher wrote to the biographer saying, āI found this footnote in the documents volume that mentions a speech Churchill was drafting. Do you have a copy of the draft?ā
With Margaret Thatcher, that's who you're dealing with: a woman who goes home in the evening, and she's deep in the footnotes of the documents volume of this biography. Itās difficult for her colleagues to know that she's like that, because they're predisposed to see her as the irritating woman or the right-wing woman.
You're never going to make a proper assessment of her capability. To spot late bloomers, you need the ability to be the outsider and see someone and their qualities, rather than overfitting what you know about them into the patterns you're already used to seeing.
This is amazing, Henry, thank you. In your introduction, you talk about characteristics of late bloomers ā Persistence, Earnestness, Quiet. You just talked about being persistent. And you hit on earnestness too. Tell me more about those three characteristics, and how they show up in late bloomers: Persistence, Earnestness, Quiet.
Let's look at Penelope Fitzgerald, the novelist. She was born into the upper class establishment in England. Both grandfathers were bishops. She was born in the middle of the First World War, so it still means something that theyāre bishops. She was born in the Bishopās Palace in Lincoln. She's born into this kind of significant family and they're a very intellectual family. Her father edited Punch, which was one of the major magazines. Her uncles are the Knox Brothers: one is code breaking at Bletchley Park in the war, another is a famous detective novelist, one is a Bible scholar, and one is a biographer. They're all writers. And you know what I mean: sheās born into this kind of cultural milieu, the last of the great Victorian tradition. That and the family are feminists. Her mother studied at Somerville College, Oxford, for instance. So she's born into a family of very high expectations.
Fitzgerald goes to Oxford, and she does very, very well. Then she goes to London and writes reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. Then she works at the BBC. But then she doesn't become a writer. Now there's this whole debate about why that is. Letās put that to one side and look at the question of people coming from intellectual families. They get great education, they go to big cities like London. Theyāre among journalists and writers and all the right sort of people. And they do great. And Penelope Fitzgerald does great ā but not initially. Not for a long time. Why? Whatās the difference with her?
The first difference is that she lived an extraordinarily difficult life. Her houseboat sank. Her husband was an alcoholic. They had to leave London because of their creditors. Obviously, nobody wants this to happen to them, but sheās given the material to write. She had stories.
The second thing is all through her life she's learning. Sheās learning languages, sheās traveling, sheās going to the opera, getting very cheap tickets, sheās reading. When she becomes a teacher, she really rereads the whole of the European tradition. She goes into really close detail. How does Jane Austen do it? Not: āWhat is she doing? What are the themes?ā Or this kind of rubbish. She is taking a very detailed look: āHow does Austen do it? What are the techniques?ā She spends years doing this.
Her novels are very historical. They're very much rooted in fact ā both of her own life and of historical research. They're very European. In a funny way, she is the most European of the 20th century English novelists. She set her novels in Russia and Germany, these kinds of places. And one critic, I really love this phrase, talked about āthe Russianness and the Germannessā of her novels. How does she make it so German?
Itās because she spent 30 years learning German, traveling to Germany, watching operas and reading German novels in German. She possesses an amazing dedication to the intellectual life and to the life of the mind, while she is living on a houseboat, while she is homeless, while she is scrambling around trying to get a council flat, while she's got children, while she has a husband out of work, while she has a teaching job. And that is amazing persistence.
Now persistence might suggest she kept trying really hard. I don't know whether it's that or whether she's an obsessive, and she couldn't live any other way. I don't think it matters very much. It'll change for people.
Same with Katharine Graham. Even at her lowest point, she's obsessed with the news. She's a real news hound, you know, the newspaper is in her blood. Oh, my goodness, this woman is constantly sniffing out newspaper ink, right? But I think that's really important.
We rate that persistence or obsessiveness very highly in young talent, as we should. But we forget that it is still an important indicator about someone later in life. Maybe it's a more important indicator, because the fact that it hasn't worn off is actually quite telling.
This is a bit speculative, but I think these late bloomers take things a bit more seriously than other people. Not to the point of being humorless, but to the point where they may come across as a bit humorous, because oftentimes by middle age people are a bit like, āthings are what they are. I am where I am.ā Ray Kroc, who turned McDonald's into a global business, always had business ideas. It got to the point where his friends would joke that āOh, Ray's had another idea.ā But he was simply more earnest than the rest of his peer group. And again, I think that's very significant. Persistence and earnestness.
And then quiet. It's like what I said about Margaret Thatcher. She's keeping her work to herself. She's doing it in the background. Ray Kroc, too. He's quietly persisting. He's quietly getting on with it.
You can work in public. I don't think that's a bad thing, but I saw most of these late bloomers quietly working in private.
Now, some people have said my book is about hardworking people and thatās it. Maybe that's a legitimate criticism. And there are other sorts of late bloomers. But these were the things that stood out to me. As far as I'm aware, we haven't got another book that really goes into this topic in appropriate depth. Those were the main characteristics as I viewed them. But I'm very open to people coming along and saying theyāve looked at it in a different way too.
When I was reading your book, a word kept coming to mind: obsessed. These late bloomers were following their interests, and if something came of it, great. But if nothing ever came of it, they were alright following their obsession. That was what lit them up, made them feel alive, or what they couldn't get out of their heads and their hearts in some sense.
I would caution about that a little bit. In a sense, you're absolutely right. They were doing what they wanted to do. But I think they did feel the want of success. Very often, I think obsession and ambition are twins.
I believe the psychologist Frederick Herzberg came up with the theory that your internal motivation means youāre happy doing your work, even while you are very unhappy about the conditions in which you are doing it. That dynamic was often true for these people before they found success.
I think the other word that comes to mind is prepared. You note Margaret Thatcher: āchance favors the prepared mind.ā You and I corresponded to set up this interview. I mentioned General Fox Conner, who I wrote a short biography about. He was a huge mentor of Dwight Eisenhower, who you also call out in your book. Before World War I, Conner remained a Major in the Army for 15 years. That whole time he was preparing; he was attending the right Army schools. He was becoming an expert in this, becoming an expert in that. He didn't know whether a war would come, whether his chance would ever come. But he acted as if it would. He prepared. That leads me to a question: how do we know we're preparing and not simply following our crazy interests or our obsessions? Or we're not just treading water in a stale pond?
A lot of the time you might not know. Maybe I'm too cynical. There's lots to say about Eisenhower on this. I actually cut a whole chapter about him, but I'm probably going to put it on my blog, because it's fascinating. He wrote to his son, saying. āOh, it's a shame I'm going to retire before the war, but it's been a good life.ā I find that amazing.
I wrote an article recently where I noted a famous quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald: āThere are no second acts in American lives.ā Thatās from The Last Tycoon, which was published in the same year that World War II came to America. And Eisenhower began his second act, which must be one of the great second acts in American history.
He actually thought, āYeah, okay, well, I missed that. They're going to retire me and I missed out on the next war.ā But he was fine with it because, as you say, he wanted to be in the Army. All his friends left the Army to make money, but he wasn't interested. That's important. But, again, it's notable that he's a man in the mid-century. It's easier for him to be happy with a choice like that. And with Eisenhower it was much more obvious. Everyone believed that there would be another war. When he was thinking, āShould I leave the army?ā, his wife was saying to him, āDon't be crazy. There's no way you would ever be happy outside of the Army.ā And his senior officers were saying to him, āThere's going to be another war. It's just a question of when.ā They thought his chance would come ā it seemed quite predictable to them in between the two World Wars. Whereas for a lot of people, it may not be so predictable.
So no, you don't really know. Let's say you want to be something artistic, or something entrepreneurial ā there's a lot more you can do. You don't have to wait, right? You can do a lot more and get your work out there. That obviously does not guarantee success. I think it'll vary a lot.
I almost wonder if you shouldn't worry too much about that. If you've made the wrong choice about what path you're on, how easy is it for you to change, anyway? I don't know. That's a very deep and difficult question. And I would think that talented people are good at intuitive imagination. They're good at thinking about whether theyāre on the right path.
Something you just said sparked another question. You mentioned āyou can get your work out there.ā Late bloomers, like Penelope Fitzgerald ā sheās writing and doing her work. You also mention the Paul Graham quote of expanding their chance of a lucky strike hitting them. Make your target for luck big. On the one hand you write, āIf you decline to participate, the world will decline to pay attention to you.ā The other hand, there's a limit to the groups, the networking, the selling yourself. In the modern world, that means social media, meetups, networking, all that stuff. And I really like this quote from psychologist Richard Wiseman, that you put in the book: āthe lucky are relaxed, not anxious. They don't spend their life searching for their magic moment.ā Can you talk about this dynamic of working the work, but also expanding your chance of getting the lucky strike? And yet, not being anxious about it?
There's a great difference between networking and self-promoting as a means to an end, and doing those things for their own sake. The more you can reach a kind of overlap between the work being self-promotion, presumably the less anxious you will be. While I'm not an expert on this, I do think a lot of people who are anxious are too focused on the foam on the wave of networking and self-promotion ā as opposed to doing work and putting it out there.
Obviously, it's good to push your work, particularly for writers. You see a lot of people saying how it's difficult and demoralizing to have to do so much self-promotion these days. But it depends what you're benchmarking yourself against. If there's a particular type of success you want, and you're not getting it, you probably will be anxious about networking and self-promotion. This will cause you to do it for its own sake, and I think that makes it much less effective.
There's an interesting story in the book about Maya Angelou. She's done writing programs. Sheās been around writers. She's written stuff. She's sent her work to writers and so forth. It's not going very well. She's in New York and not very happy. Her friend James Baldwin tells her to come out to a dinner party. She doesn't want to go. Sheās demoralized by a lack of success. And he tells her āto just shut up and come to the dinner party. Let's just go.ā So, she goes and there are publishers there. She's chatting, and sheās telling the story of her life, basically. These publishers, not being idiots, tell her immediately they will buy her memoir. Of course, it became I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Thatās not anxious networking and self-promotion. She didnāt moan, āOh, God, I've got to go out and do it.ā No ā she has done loads of work and is ready to tell this story. I think this illustrates the difference rather well.
Obviously, people will counter this point by arguing that not everyone gets to go to those dinner parties. But that's a slightly separate thing. Getting the lucky strike, it does involve a lot of work.
The Wiseman quote. I mean, is the lack of anxiety genetic? Is it inherent temperament? Who knows? I would say, maybe don't worry about these things too much. But it's an interesting point.
You can work on your work. And when potentially interesting opportunities come your way, you can consider them. But you canāt determine who you meet. You canāt absolutely determine the circles you run in.
I know of really good work that is overlooked right now. I try to write about it on my blog. Itās a small example, because my blog is not that big. But I know it makes a difference to those writers whose work is getting overlooked.
So, there are two responses to āmy work is getting overlooked.ā I like the Samuel Johnson quote from the book: āMany have complained of neglect who have never tried to attract the world's regard.ā You have to keep going. I'm not saying that it's going to work. I'm not going to promote some theory that this is the secret to success. But is there another method? I don't know. I don't think so. What's the alternative here?
I don't know what it is. It seems like a lot of people quit.
Yeah. And maybe that's the right choice for them, right? But it's an important point. Thomas Edison said, āPeople don't know how close they were to success before they quit.ā Again, that obviously is not going to be true of everyone. But when we're looking at late bloomers, I do think it's significant. They kept going.
By and large, you look at superlative performers that the world knows, or a significant niche knows about. A late bloomer in a local setting could have a terrific inflection point and a massive impact in aāsmaller way,ā but it still matters enormously in their corner of the world. That's a really cool message of your book. It's not that you become Katharine Graham or Samuel Johnson. It's that in your corner of the world, you can have a different impact tomorrow than you had today.
I was careful in the opening of the book to say: we learn from the best. That's why these people are here. We're interested in great talent. It matters very, very much that we find and put to use the great talents. But this is a more applicable idea. I am interested more generally in the phenomenon of late bloomers.
A lot of people confuse the idea of success with doing what they want to do. People write to me, and they've done great work, and it is pretty much overlooked. Even though it would never make them globally famous, this book should change the way you think about things. Maybe you're just trying to do your thing, you're never going to be on the news about it, and that's cool.
This is amazing. I want to explore your idea of the āswitch,ā or as you put it, āan important type of late bloomer is someone who successfully changes the balance of their life.ā Tell us more.
So, I think these are two slightly different points. Changing the balance of your life is like what I was just saying. You don't have to be Samuel Johnson, Ray Kroc, Margaret Thatcher, or Vera Wang to be a late bloomer. You can simply live differently. I think a lot of people do want to live differently in some way, and they don't quite know how to do it, or they're not quite sure if they want to make the series of tradeoffs involved.
The point about making the switch: I read this wonderful paper out of Northwestern. The question was, why do people have a hot streak? Artists, scientists, sportspeople. Why do they suddenly get this 10 or 15 year period where everything they touch is on fire, right? Everything turns to gold? The paper argued: it's an explore-exploit dynamic. So, people have a period in their career where they're looking around, trying new things, new ideas, exploring different options. Then at some point they go into the exploit phase. They say, āI've discovered the most interesting things from my explorations. I'm really going to work on them and deliver stuff based on them.ā For example, if you're a scientist, maybe you've worked in an academic setting or a research lab. You've been exploring there. When you go into exploiting, you're probably going to a more commercial organization. Maybe now you'll have a team and you'll be a project manager. So these hot performers are really set up to exploit.
The Northwestern paper said these hot people have both phases. But what's really important is that they choose to switch. The particular factor that makes the difference for a hot streak is deciding to move from explore to exploit. That's really important. My argument is it happens to different degrees of intentionality with late bloomers. And it happens through networks, circumstances, all that kind of midlife crisis type things.
My favorite example is Audrey Sutherland. She looked in the mirror at age 61 and said, āCome on, lady, you're getting old. If you want to do this, you've got to go now.ā And she did. She quit her job, and she went solo kayaking in Alaska in the Arctic Circle. She had bear encounters, and it was phenomenal. She kept doing it for 20 years. The woman is a total hero. Everyone should read her books Paddling My Own Canoe and Paddling North. They're very well written. And she was her own interruption. She knew that she had to make that switch. She knew that no one was going to make her.
So sometimes the switch happens in a very intentional way. Other times it's like Maya Angelou: James Baldwin takes you to dinner and you have an opportunity. You choose to switch into the exploit mode here.
Interesting. I love that explanation, Henry. You also write about late bloomers finding a peer group. You quote Paul Graham, āNothing is more powerful than a community of talented people working on related problems.ā You give the example of the Inklings of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and friends, and also The Club of Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and others. I found that so intriguing. How do people go about finding a peer set that they fit in with, that will support them, and that they can support.
Very difficult question. I don't know. Do they find their peer group or does their peer group find them? I don't know. That's a great question. I don't know.
I think this is linked to the idea that if you decline to participate, the world will decline to pay attention. While you're doing your work and networking, you're trying to find your peer group. Some late bloomers don't realize they should do that.
Not all of them have an important peer group, right? This is just one way it happens. There's a quote from Henry James, talking about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says something like, āHawthorne's obviously brilliant. He taught himself to be a genius writer. But it's such a shame he didn't have a group of peers to work with, because he would have learned it all so much quicker.ā
It is not necessarily the only way. But once people find that group, it becomes very important. I mean, obviously, just you have to be looking. But it's very difficult to know. What group will be right for each person, because it'll change so much?
Where are the people who you find interesting? Go to them. Email them, find them on social media. There are lots of these options now.
It does seem to be the case a lot of the time. Doing the work is one thing. Associating with people ā it's not just for promotional reasons. It makes your ideas better. It changes how you work. Thereās a wonderful Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: āTruly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul.ā I love that. And I think that's true.
That's a great quote. As a Kentuckian, probably our most famous writer right now is Wendell Berry. He is an environmental writer. Very famously, he knew he was onto something in his writing career. He moved to New York to be in that milieu. And he rejected it. He said, this is not home. This is not where I need to be. The things I'm writing about require me to go home to the family farm in Henry County, Kentucky. He left New York and moved back to Kentucky. He did have support: Wallace Stegner and others. Itās so interesting to me that some people find their peer group is a place, an environment. They feel the need to go to a particular place and be surrounded by that place. They have to live a particular way in order to flourish. That came to mind as you were talking.
The two are connected, right? Whenever you read a Paul Graham quote, he's talking about startups. If you want to be Wendell Berry, walking around in the woods is probably a much better idea than hanging out in New York. If you want to do a startup, succeed in business somehow. For that person, walking in the woods is for weekends.
This is what I mean. It varies a lot. Depending on what you want to do and by temperament, some artists will flourish in a group. Other artists will do it on their own and it will happen in its own way.
There's a kind of wisdom in knowing which one you are. What is the correct balance for you?
One of the reasons I love this book is you wrote so many biographies of fascinating people. Even the little sketches of two or three sentences are fascinating. One person you wrote extensively about is Samuel Johnson. You and I corresponded about him as we set up this call. Until then, I'd almost forgotten I took a class in Samuel Johnson. I loved it. I have a bunch of his essays and books and James Boswellās famous biography. Now I want to revisit all of that. Iād forgotten how wonderful a writer and moralist and philosopher he was. I would love to hear you riff on Samuel Johnson, his life, and why you love him so much.
Well, that's a very Johnsonian experience, because, of course, Samuel Johnson famously said, āMen more frequently require to be reminded than informed.ā
I have a great love of Samuel Johnson, and have since I was 18 ā well no, earlier than that. But when I was 18 or 19, I sat down to read him properly in university. He's one of those writers that some people just aren't going to love and some people are.
I have a great love of Samuel Johnson because of several things. First, he has this huge appetite for knowledge. We have a very myopic sense of the literary, a very narrow sense of what literature is. But of course, literature is a very, very broad thing. And if you look at the great traditions of novel and poetry and drama writing ā it's about everything. Everything. In John Milton and in the romantic poets, you have many references to the most up-to-date scientific discoveries and ideas. Many of the newest political ideas, the newest philosophies ā they're all being written about in poetry. Poetry is a real vehicle for ideas.
Johnson is one of the broadest of writers ā economics, science, morals, philosophy, the nature of language. Johnson could write anything. We think of him as writing these great essays, the Dictionary, the essays. He also wrote books, advertisements, sermons, and legal opinions. Oh, my goodness, anything you can think of. In some ways, that's the mark of a true writer.
He's also personally a very fascinating individual. Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is one of the greatest books. Johnson is alive and rambunctious on every page. He's argumentative, provocative, usually knowledgeable and entertaining. He's a candle that never goes out.
At the time, people complained about the same things they complain about now. People would read the Rambler essays and complain about the hard words in it. So itās maybe an acquired taste. I don't know. But Shakespeare is the most important imaginative writer in English, and Johnson is the most important nonfiction writer. I see them as kind of twin pillars of English literature.
If you're going to make a tripod, I think you'd add the King James Bible.
Well, maybe John Wickliffe. But yeah.
Can you tell us a little bit more about someone who you uncovered as part of your research that you didn't get to include in the book, or only very briefly.
Yes, the Ray Kroc chapter was initially a double story. In that chapter I take David Galensonās theory of late blooming in artists and I apply it to the life of Ray Kroc, who worked in fast food. I'm trying to show that this is a pattern that's not only for writers and painters. It also applies to people who fry burgers.
It was initially a double chapter on Ray Kroc and David Ogilvy. In advertising, words like tycoon, kingpin and mogul don't seem appropriate. Whatever you call him, he was the big guy on Madison Avenue. I cut the whole part about Ogilvy.
He has this fascinating life. He worked as a chef in a French hotel. He sold AGA Cooking Stoves. He'd worked in market research with George Gallup. He worked in advertising for a couple of years, but in the business side of it, not the creative side. He'd never written an advert before he started his agency. He worked in intelligence during World War II. The year before he opened his agency ā when he was 38 or 39 ā he was living on an Amish farm and he was play-acting being an Amish farmer. I don't think he was a very good farmer. So heās kind of just a guy setting up an advertising agency.
But he'd been obsessed with advertising for his whole life. From his time with Gallup, he had this idea of bringing market research into advertising. At night on the farm, he would study the history of advertising. By the time he opened his agency, he really knew everything there was to know about advertising. He demonstrated that kind of quiet persistence. I took him out of the book. Maybe I'll publish that chapter on my blog, because he's a very interesting figure.
That's great. I would love to read the chapter about Ogilvy. As we age and if we haven't caught the success we think we are capable of, what are we hampered more by? Are we hampered more by our diminished sense of ourselves through frustration and failure? Or are we more hampered by other people's disappointment in our lack of success?
I think that will change a lot depending on the individual. I think that's a question of personality and temperament.
Maybe some people don't feel that disappointment at all.
I don't think that's a thing we should generalize about. It's a great question, and I think people should give it some attention. But I don't know that I've got a good answer. Thinking about the people in the book, weād have different answers for all of them.
Katharine Graham very clearly felt a low sense of herself because of the treatment from her mother and from her husband.
Well, but it's both, isn't it?
And it's both. Yeah.
By the end, she clearly felt poorly inside and from peopleās treatment of her. That's my point. I think the answer is often quite complicated.
If you're someone reading this interview, or reading the book, and you feel deep inside that you have some contribution to make to the world, but you haven't yet: How would you say that you can improve the odds of making that impact?
Well, I don't know, because again it would vary so much by the person. Some of the main messages of the book come through: do the work right, and then get it out.
Yes.
Think about: where is the gap in your opportunity? Are you in the right circumstances? Changing the culture that you're operating in and living in is very significant. Do you have the right peer group? All these things we've been discussing.
Do you need to look at yourself in the mirror, like Audrey Sutherland, and say, āCome on, if not now, when?ā I think all of these things are there. The particular combination is down to the individual.
A lot of books would tell you what the answer is. But I think that's a lie. What I'm trying to do in this book is give you all these different bits, and then your answer will be some version of it for you.
Yes, right!
But I canāt tell you the answer. You are not an average line on the graph. You are who you are.
Like I said at the beginning, Henry, I love, love, love your book. Youāve made such a valuable contribution to our appreciation of an underutilized source of talent ā late bloomers. I'm curious. Coming out of publishing the book, what are the next set of questions related to late bloomers that fascinate you?
I don't know if I have any more questions about late bloomers now. I'm interested to note that there are so many of them in public life.
There's a wonderful article, I think, in the New York Times, that shows many charts of when Taylor Swift's most successful songs and albums were launched. To me, she very clearly seems to be a late bloomer. I was fascinated by that.
The debate, if that's the right word that you're having in America about Joe Biden's age, itās remarkable that you have a President doing the job at that age. It's symptomatic of what's happening in the wider workforce. There are many, many more people in work above retirement age than there used to be, both in America and here in Britain. There's a big trend there.
We've also got older actresses winning Oscars; Larry David is doing the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm in his seventies. There are a lot of late bloomers in the culture.
There was a big video shared somewhere of a woman who became a park ranger in her 80s and now sheās 100 years old. These late bloomers seem to be a real phenomenon more and more in the news.
Let me ask you a couple of questions about your work and you. What were the big takeaways you took from writing the book? It could be lessons from the book, or just the process of writing the book, or the research, or working with Tyler. What do you take away from the last year or year and a half of your life?
A lot of things. Oh, my goodness! In the book, there are a lot of topics that I either hadn't considered properly, or I changed my mind about. I was most fascinated by network theory. I came to take that idea much more seriously than I had ā the importance of peer groups and networks.
I'm very pleased to be part of the Emergent Ventures group, which is where I got my grant to write the book. The people in that group ā endlessly interesting. I came to both a theoretical and a practical appreciation of networks and peer groups in a way that I had not. That's the biggest thing for me.
Interesting! How has writing the book changed your work, or your life, or your approach to life?
Well, I quit my job. So that was quite a big change. And my wife chose not to work when we had children, and she's homeschooling. So that has also been quite a big change.
In many ways you would look at it and say, āThis is not a sensible arrangement financially and professionally.ā Iām trying very hard to make a go of doing exactly what I want to do.
And Seinfeld! Jerry Seinfeld gave an interview recently. When he got the opportunity to do the pilot for Seinfeld, someone who was then a very significant comedian, said to him, āDon't let them change it. All the suits are going to tell you you've got to do it this way, youāve got to do it that way.ā He said, āDo it exactly how you want, and then when you fail, you won't care because you'll have failed, but you'd have done your thing. Whereas if you fail, because you took all this advice and did what they made you, youāll resent it.ā That's a really good. I like that, and that's kind of where I am.
What's the next work you want to do?
I've been thinking a lot about patronage and the question of patronage. Writers used to have patrons who gave them money, right? We think of it in politics ā politicians give their associates jobs and so forth. In some ways, this is a bad thing. It's favoritism. It's nepotism. Economists would say it's not very efficient. If you allocate positions based on who you know rather than based on meritocracy, you're obviously going to get inferior performance.
And yet, if you look around, there is a lot of patronage in the world. Through grants and schemes like them. But also, in a corporate environment, you have to have a mentor to rise above a certain level. Now that's not exactly patronage. But you want your mentor to become your patron, and say to the other bigwigs, āThis person is great and we should be encouraging and promoting them.ā
Why does a profit-driven corporate environment use the supposedly inefficient mechanism of patronage? This is a question that I'm working on right now.
I also have written a series of articles about talent for a firm called Entrepreneur First. I wrote a piece about Rene Girard and his theory of mimesis, which a lot of people think explains the world. I really enjoyed writing those pieces as well.
Would your ideas around patronage extend to sports too? It seems like so many sons and daughters of sports figures are becoming well-known and successful athletes themselves. They've lived that life since they were two years old.
Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't seen any studies about patronage in sports, but I'm gonna go and look that up. But I've been reading the studies and trying to work it out. Because patronage obviously works in some way. It's honestly not totally rigged. I'm not a very sports-oriented person, but that's a great hint. I'm gonna go and look that up.
But I'm actually more interested in this question of patronage as a selection mechanism. Why is patronage being used in highly meritocratic environments, when the economic research suggests that it should be counterproductive?
I wonder how that relates to Boards of Directors, too. Going back to some of my early work, typically the CEO selects or has a heavy influence on new board members. There's something like patronage there. Does that lead to better outcomes?
This is my point, right? It's a question of talent selection. Patronage is still a very live issue in modern society, and I think it should get some more attention.
Well, I can't wait to read whatever comes out of your research and analysis of the topic.
Great.
Henry, this has been amazing! Iāve loved this conversation. I'm so grateful for your willingness to speak with me and all your time. This has been a highlight of the year!
Well, you had really good questions and you made me think. And now I'm worried that I'm going to have to change some bits of the book. Haha! So that was a good interview for you. Haha!
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In 2017, coming off a health scare, I needed to become more active physically. My nutritionist suggested I reach out to Laurie LeCompte about yoga. At the time, she was offering private lessons at the Meridian Center on Wallace Avenue in Louisville. Laurie took great efforts to understand my health background ā my congenital heart defect, sloped shoulders, near-scoliosis, and weak left arm. She created a yoga practice around my needs and with my aims in mind. For example, itās good if I can improve my strength and posture ā but itās imperative that they donāt degenerate. Now Laurie owns Yoga Baum, a thriving yoga studio, still in the Meridian Center. Iāve worked with her for more than seven years. My weekly yoga class is a bedrock of my health and strength routine. Theyāre critical for me.
In 2022, I sat down for a conversation with Laurie. We delve into her journey into yoga and becoming a business owner, how you should evaluate your yoga and fitness āprogress,ā her interest in ferrets, what āself careā really should mean, reading horror books, and much more!
How did you first get attracted to yoga? What got you interested in yoga?
I was always into physical things and physical fitness. Really, I was looking for something as cross-training for running. I was running a lot of half-marathons. I needed more flexibility, mobility, those kinds of things. And I was having the typical runner-type pains, in my knees and hips, and I wanted to work them out. I'd only ever done endurance sports. I ran cross country in high school. I rowed in college. So I didn't have any experience with anything else. And I was curious about it. Also, it was a time when I was feeling a lot more stressed and anxious. So the idea of a more relaxing and meditative practice was appealing to me, as well as focusing on myself and not having to talk to anybody. Having that time for myself was really attractive.
How did you get started? Did you find a yoga instructor?
There was a studio that I would always pass. They had a 30-day deal and I went there. I had tried yoga a couple of times before that ā with friends in college for a couple of classes. But nothing much. So doing yoga was pretty intimidating.
How did things develop from there? You started trying to solve a physical problem, and you became a teacher and then a yoga business owner. Thatās quite a progression. Tell me more about that.
I always tend to make my hobbies into jobs somehow. I don't know if that's the perfectionist in me, but I always want to know more about what Iām doing. I had this desire to know more so I completed yoga teacher training. I didn't plan on actually being a yoga teacher. I already had jobs teaching German as an adjunct around town. So I took the teacher training because I wanted to know more, I liked it a lot, and it was fun. But of course, a lot of teachers will tell you that it starts that way. Then as soon as people know that you're a yoga teacher, you're called on to be a substitute teacher in classes. So literally the week I returned from teacher training, I had my first classes to teach. It took no time to find a job.
The fact you found a teaching role immediately ā it speaks to the explosion of interest in yoga across the country over the past 20 or 30 years. What explains that astounding growth?
There was a big yoga boom when people in Hollywood started getting into yoga and looking into different types of fitness and spiritual practices. Some teachers would go to India to study and bring back what they taught, and some places started hosting famous yoga teachers for workshops. So a lot more people had exposure to yoga through these visiting teachers, and through what they were seeing celebrities doing.
Here's a terminology question I struggle with. I have a strength ātrainerā and a physical ātherapist.ā When it comes to you and yoga, I struggle to describe what you do. What do you call yourself? How do you describe what you do?
The terms āteacherā and āinstructorā are mostly interchangeable to me. If I want to get picky, teacher has a better ring to it, maybe more clout. I am actually teaching something and instructor sounds more like a fitness instructor simply leading people through the motions. And yoga is more than fitness. You can definitely get fit doing yoga, but since it's more, I prefer the term teacher. But please donāt call me your āguruā!
How do you think about a student's progress? Is āprogressā even the right way to think about it? How do you evaluate how a student is doing and what they need to do going forward?
That's a really interesting question because people come in with certain goals, and oftentimes just by practicing yoga, their goals will change. They may start wanting to achieve something physically impressive. But then the more they practice yoga, that becomes less necessary for them ā they just want to feel good. So it really depends. When my clients start out, I have them fill out an intake form. It gives me a lot of information about why they're seeing me in the first place. I want to understand what progress looks like for them. A lot of people's goals are oriented around pain relief. When they come to see me for private lessons, the most common reason they come is because they're in pain. And it's a pretty easy thing to measure: how much pain were you in when we started? And how much pain do you feel today?
So for private lessons, most people see you because of pain. What is it? Acute pain? Chronic pain?
Back pain is the main reason. But there are also injuries and people who are recovering from surgery, like a knee replacement. Some people feel terrified to move after a surgery like that. They think if they move a certain way, itāll hurt really badly. And that sort of perpetuates the cycle of those areas becoming super-sensitive. So they come to yoga to learn a different way to move that hopefully feels better.
Whatās the right timescale to be thinking about progress when you start a yoga practice? Looking back, I could tell a huge difference after about a year.
I think it depends on why they're here. For some of the pain issues, I would say a couple of sessions can make a difference. That doesnāt mean the pain will be gone. But they can tell a difference ā in pain level and in their movement. Your goals were long-term, and so it took you longer to become aware of the progress.
I plan to keep doing this for life because I want to postpone regression as far as long as possible. Again, getting stronger is great, but I do yoga with you to help prevent deterioration.
We also have to be realistic with goals. People who want to get stronger ā at some point theyāre going to reach a limit, either because of age or just physical capacity for those things. So yes, there are reasonable goals and sometimes we have to have those conversations too, about whatās realistic. People might come in wanting to learn how to do a handstand. If they can't hold a plank for 15 seconds, we're pretty far off from the handstand.
We've gotten me up to where last year I held a five-minute plank. But my desire to go to a six-minute plank is virtually zero. It doesn't matter. But being able to maintain a plank for four of five minutes, thatās somewhat indicative that Iāve maintained strength, which is what I want to do. Letās move to a different subject. Tell me about the mental shift you made when you moved from being a yoga student to a yoga teacher. And how do you think about being a teacher today?
Even now, thereās more and more to learn ā absolutely a universe to explore. Continuing education is super important to me and at the studio. If you teach here, there's actually an annual continuing education requirement. So itās very important to me that we all remain students and we all remain fresh. And I think that we should change as teachers throughout our careers. When I started teaching yoga, I was already teaching German. There was definitely an advantage there ā I knew about teaching and about being in front of people. Coming into teaching yoga, a lot of people take a lot longer to get over their fear of public speaking before they can successfully get through a 60-minute class. And that was easy because I had already been doing it.
How about the mental shift in moving from being a yoga teacher to being a studio owner? Tell me about that.
I was very ready to be a business owner and to work for myself. I was getting pretty fed up with the bureaucracy at the university level and working in that environment. And like I said, I was an adjunct, so I had zero power. I needed more say in what was going to happen. I think that most yoga teachers probably already see themselves as business owners because they are independent contractors. And even if they're teaching all over town, that is their business. That's their brand. The dramatic shift for me was owning the physical space. But earlier, I already was running my own business and I was building my own brand. It might not have been called Yoga Baum yet but it was always building to that. There is a natural progression with yoga teaching. You keep learning more. That lends itself to leading workshops. And that leads to teacher training. And then you need a space for teacher training. So now you have a space and you might as well also offer group classes. So it builds in that way. But having my private clients led me to want a location, and that's when I started renting space at Meridian. At some point, I needed more space.
As you got into teaching and then owning the business, what's something you spent a ton of time and energy on that you could've skipped entirely?
I trained in Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga initially. And there's hardly any verbal instruction, as far as how to do the postures, when leading in that style in a group class. You memorize the Sanskrit name of the pose, and the Sanskrit count because there's a number in Sanskrit for each movement. So it's literally like: you say āoneā in Sanskrit and āinhaleā and that is the cue to lift your arms. Then you say ātwoā in Sanskrit and ā exhaleā and thatās the cue to fold forward. Itās very formatted. I trained in that style, but I never ended up teaching that style. It wasnāt a waste because I learned a lot of Sanskrit and that first training I completed went way beyond that simple memorization. But I never taught in a traditional Ashtanga Vinyasa class. I teach the postures from that series all the time, but not in that strict method. Since I teach private yoga, none of my sessions with clients are ever the same and everybody's different. So the Ashtanga Vinyasa approach didn't really have a lot of practical application in what I am doing. So as far as my teaching goes, that memorization of the series with Sanskrit counting was not useful.
How do you find or recruit or select new Yoga Baum teachers?
That's a great question. It's actually a question that we go over in our teacher training when we talk about the business of yoga. When we talk about finding jobs, we discuss how to reach out to studios. For me, it's really important that potential teachers know us and that they know the vibe of our community. I get a lot of emails that say, āHey, I'm a yoga teacher. I live in Louisville. Here's my experience. Can I teach for you?ā And they've literally never stepped foot in the door. They've never met me. And it bothers me that they've never been here. It feels like they donāt care much, right? Most of our teachers have come from our teacher training classes. Teachers donāt have to have graduated from Yoga Baumās teacher training, but it often works out that way because those people end up being part of our community. I want to see that teachers are dedicated ā to their students, to what weāre building here. Our community has a certain energy and I want to keep it that way.
Tell me about the community you're trying to build.
I think it's honestly about the approach that we have to teaching yoga. I think we attract certain students because of our approach. Weāre really trying to help people build a sustainable and empowering yoga practice. Thatās part of our mission statement. We're not prioritizing really extreme postures or postures that are really popular because of Instagram or because they look cool. Weāre really trying to help people feel good. We might do some postures that are harder to do, but it's always in a way thatās approachable and accessible for all levels. So that's a really big part of who we are. We want everybody to be able to practice yoga.
We offer a mixture of practices. We have flow yoga, we have restorative yoga. We think that balance is really important. We offer challenging practices, but we also have much softer practices. We think that they're both important. Our philosophy centers around the idea of accessibility, and making movement feel good and empowering.
Letās go back to something you said earlier. You run, you row, you weightlift. You do yoga. Tell us about this multi-pronged approach to fitness. How do you think holistically about fitness or strength?
I don't think that there's one way necessarily that it should be, but I do think that people should enjoy what they're doing. One of the things that can happen when people get really into yoga, and one of the reasons that they don't stay with it is they put all of their eggs in one basket. They expect yoga to be everything ā their cardio, their strength training, the way they gain flexibility, they want to feel relaxed ā everything. And they come once a week ā and we can't do it. Itās not going to work and it doesnāt work that way. Yoga can give you all of those things, but you're going to have to practice a lot. But it also doesn't have to be everything. When we put so much pressure on yoga to be all of that, it's not successful. In order to enjoy my practice, I also donāt expect everything from it, and I do different things. I can lean on the different parts of yoga depending on what I need in that moment, but realistically, I know that Iām not getting fit while Iām laying on bolsters in a restorative yoga class and I also know Iām not resting and recovering as much as I need to if Iām doing flow classes every day. So I do different styles of yoga for balance, and I do other activities because I enjoy them and they have benefits outside of what the type of yoga Iām practicing can give me.
How'd you get into like weightlifting? You have an entire Instagram page just dedicated to your lifting.
I've weight lifted on and off for a long time because of other sports. We had to lift in college for rowing. I started up a more serious strength-training routine because one of my friends wanted me to go with her. Then I figured out that I was pretty decent at deadlifting, so I focused on that. I've always been attracted to intensity. That's part of why I need yoga. I need to chill out. I need to be still, I need some time for myself. And yoga gives me that. There's something about the intensity of strength training and always challenging myself to get stronger that I love. And strength training practices have helped me a lot as a yoga teacher. Getting ideas for how I want to approach my classes, getting ideas for new movements. There are certain aspects of the movement or the training that translate into me being a better teacher. All of that crosses over in a really powerful way that helps me to be a more interesting teacher.
On Instagram, you describe yourself as a āself care curator.ā What does that mean?
I want to help people figure out what they would have the most success in as far as keeping up their self care practices. And if they don't even know what self care is, that's a good place to start.
So what's that mean to you? Self care, self compassion. We see those terms a lot in todayās world. How do we do that in the modern world?
I'm glad you're asking this because this is actually something I've thought about changing the wording of because it's so overused now. It barely means anything anymore. But for me, self care is like a dedicated activity or something you're doing for yourself simply to do it for yourself to feel better or to feel good about it. It could be a lot of different things, but it doesnāt need to be educational. It doesn't need to be anything other than enjoyable for you. Setting aside the time to actually have that opportunity is I think the hardest part for a lot of people. I think where they get stuck is they don't know what it looks like for them. We could and do have a conversation about it. What do you like? Whatās your schedule like? We could talk about yoga, or meditation or mindfulness or things like journaling. When I say that I'm a self care curator, I want to help them choose practices that make sense for their schedule, budget, and life. And if I can help them, maybe we work together. Maybe it has nothing to do with me. Maybe their self care comes through fishing. I donāt do that and I canāt help with that. But maybe I can help them discover that as a path for self care.
Letās shift gears. You are a vegetarian and you probably get asked a lot: āWhat's the hardest thing about being a vegetarian?ā I want to ask you: What's the easiest thing about being a vegetarian?
I've been a vegetarian for so long ā since 2008. Fourteen years. So it is just easy now. I'm what they call a āBambi vegetarian.ā I love animals so much that I can't stand the idea of eating an animal. The question that made me switch was: could I slaughter this animal? Because I want to be connected with the whole process. This food I am consuming ā what is happening in order to put it on my plate? And I realized that I couldn't do it ā not even for fish. I couldnāt eat animals, knowing what it takes to get them onto my plate.
That's a very Michael Polian or Anthony Bourdain point. We are so removed in our current food cycle from the processes it takes to feed us animal meats and products.
I agree. I don't have problems with people who aren't vegetarians, but I do wish that we were all a little bit more connected to the process and understanding what really goes on.
Here's a question I want to ask because I will learn from this myself. You give the best gifts. Your gifts come across as personalized and sincere. But from what I can gather, theyāre not super-customized or super-expensive. One year you gave us an air plant, one year was an eye mask, a couple were coffee mugs, and last year you gave a terrific tote bag. How do you approach client gift-giving?
Itās really hard. Itās a hard mix because I have a lot of clients. I start with our budget for this: how much per person? That plays a big role. Then I look at possible options. Then I try to think about items that either I would like or make sense for what we enjoy together. Something thatās universally appreciated ā tea or coffee or something. But then itās not only about getting a cup. How can we personalize it to make it a bit more special? I try to not select items that will clutter up peopleās spaces or that theyāll just throw away. It has to hit that sweet spot. I will ask my husband for input or reaction to items. He has definitely shot down ideas!
When do you start thinking about this yearās gift? How long does this process take?
I probably start thinking about it pretty seriously in October and I try to buy it in November. Last year it was still late, despite having planned so far ahead, because of COVID supply chain issues.
This section of the interview comes from an economics podcast that I listen to. It's called āOverrated or Underrated.ā I will say something. And you're going to tell me whether itās overrated or underrated. First one: Thich Nhat Nanhās influence on the world?
This is hard, right? He was so amazing, but I don't know what other people think. Heās probably underrated.
Stephen King's novels?
I mean, he's so popular. Well, let's say underrated because I like him a lot. You know what a lot of people haven't read? When he was writing as Richard Bachman ā The Long Walk? That is so underrated. I don't even think anybody knows about it.
All right ā a few fitness ones. The corpse pose?
Underrated. People will leave sometimes and they won't even do it. They're like, āI'm not here for that.ā They don't even know what they're missing. Underrated, for sure.
The deadlift?
Underrated. Everybody thinks it's a back killer. But if you do it right, it's going to make your back into steel.
What about the squat?
I mean, I hate squats. So I would say overrated. But I will admit squats are great. Everybody should squat, but there doesn't need to be as much hype. Why don't we talk that much about the deadlift? There's too much hype, so it's overrated.
The plank?
People are down with the plank now. I think they appreciate it. So it's appreciated appropriately.
Ferrets as pets?
I will say it's underrated, but I am not saying that people should go get ferrets as pets. I don't really think most people can handle it. I have actually ended up with ferrets because people have gotten them because they liked my ferrets, and then they couldnāt take care of them properly. People think that they're easy ā they think ferrets are like a hamster that you keep in a cage. But ferrets want their space. You have to get them out and they're super hyper and they want to play with you. Also, if you have dogs or cats or other pets, it's problematic. And ferrets do things like put their heads through the small open spaces in open doors, and you have to watch out for that. Most people donāt want to be that vigilant. If you have kids, they're great with kids, but kids might not be great for the ferrets. So I think that they're underrated, but most people shouldnāt get them as a pet.
Social media for business?
Everybody's using it now, right? But people arenāt using it to its maximum capability. So, maybe it's underrated.
Social media for personal use?
Overrated. It's such a time suck. Social media is a necessary evil in a lot of ways. I think that it can get really negative and I've read studies that say 30 minutes is all we can handle before it starts getting depressing. I think we can do a lot less on social media.
Margaritas?
Underrated always. I mean, they're still coming up with all these great flavor concoctions!
You read a lot ā what books or thinkers have impacted you the most, however you define impact?
I read a lot of fiction. I don't read a ton of nonfiction unless it's for my yoga work. Reading is my self care, my way to decompress. I think I am more creative because of it ā seeing all of the stories and characters. When you watch a movie, you get some sense for the characters. But in a book, you get to know them more intimately and you open your mind and imagination in new ways. Reading fiction has been shown to help with emotional intelligence. I feel like I can relate to the world better when I'm in a good reading space.
I find you really interesting because you combine these different things. You are American, but you know and have taught German. You attended a Catholic high school. Then you have this yoga-Buddhist-Asian influence too. You have this intriguing multi-faceted piecing together of your life. Whatās a lesson you've learned about life that you think you've learned because of that multi-faceted approach to your life that I donāt have because my life isnāt that combination of influences?
My life has given me a lot of opportunities to experience different cultures on a pretty deep level. And that's helped me relate to people better and become more empathetic. I think that's something that we should see more of in business owners and especially a client-facing business like this one. In my day-to-day, I'm not just behind the scenes ā I'm working with real people all the time and seeing a variety of personalities and cultural influences. If I can see things better from their point of view ā it helps me understand what's important to them, how important it is, and how they can reach their goals better. Having a better read on people, and what truly matters to them, is the main thing.
Last question. Where do you see Yoga Baum in 10 to 20 years? Do you consider it your lifeās work?
Oh yeah, totally. Absolutely. I've made jokes about this: now that I have my own business, I feel like I'm unhireable. I can't go back. Itās amazing to have a vision and then see it come to fruition like this. We definitely have long-term plans. We want to keep building this special community. I'm not talking about opening more locations, but expanding our offerings to different kinds of yoga that maybe arenāt on the schedule now. We started as a private client business. Group classes came later. So we're still working to build the group classes. We'd love to see growth and build our community. But we have lots of plans.
Laurie, thank you so much! Iāve truly enjoyed our conversation!
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Over the past three years, Iāve interviewed some fascinating and accomplished people. Iāve learned much from each person. Iāve felt delighted to share their loves, laughs, trials and feats with Solvitur Ambulando readers through the edited transcripts of the conversations.
But look, podcasts reign supreme in the world. Over the past 10 years, people have become accustomed to engaging with the interview format through audio or video recordings of conversations. They have less interest in reading a lengthy transcript, even when edited for readability.
The time has come for me to, er, catch up to the times. Today, I launch the podcast companion to the written Solvitur Ambulando newsletter, āWalks of Life.ā
The podcast will carry my interviews with these terrific writers, thinkers, artists and businesspeople. Each episode will include the audio interview and a lightly edited transcript. It will also include my analysis of the interview ā what especially stood out to me, my key takeaways, and how the conversation has impacted me since it occurred. I hope my short after-action-analysis gets you as excited to listen to the interview as I was to converse with the interviewee.
Without further ado, let me introduce the first conversation of this podcast!
To paraphrase Mark Twain, the death of the physical book has been greatly exaggerated. Amid the two-decade assault by online writing and e-books, and the ascendancy of new media formats, the paper codex takes a lickinā and keeps on tickinā. And yet, keen observers have pondered a malaise among book publishers. New books seem increasingly alike. Up-and-coming authors engaging in weighty research and analysis, like Ron Chernow, John McPhee and John Keegan, seem virtually non-existent because the new economics of publishing donāt allow for extended deep toil on a subject unless itās absolutely guaranteed to become a hit.
In the next half-century, when we look back at book publishing, the name Ellen Fishbein and her company, Altamira Studio, will loom large. Currently frenemies with the legacy book publishers ā not from ill will, but simply more attuned to the illnesses affecting the patient than the patient is ā Ellen and Altamira are blazing a new trail for book publishing. From unique ways of marketing to the purposeful architecture of their books, Ellen and team love books, and want to create a publisher known for loving readers too. They also do excellent work as writing coaches.
In this fascinating talk, Ellen and I discuss in detail the dysfunctions of the book publishing industry; the future of online writing and associated businesses; her āpersonal bibleā and what books it includes; and what she learned from studying with the Jesuits at Fordham University.
Some Points to Ponder
* Ellen gives voice to the frustration Iāve felt for a couple years with Amazon. Its recommendations, well, suck. For all its logistical prowess and Prime Big Deal Days, Amazon has not been able to unlock for us a supremely human emotion: serendipity.
* I truly enjoy writing Solvitur Ambulando and I relish reading many newsletters. And yet, and yet, reading them does not replace reading books. In a book, an author has spent months, maybe years or decades or a lifetime digging deep into a topic. There is something powerful about learning from a thinker who has wrestled, mulled over, mused, re-thought, and struggled with a topic for a long period of time. Even with authors of both books and newsletters, increasingly I find myself gravitating back toward the books. Iād rather read Martin Shawās books than his Substack. Ellen and I did not directly discuss this aspect of content consumption, but in reviewing our interview, this idea kept coming back to me.
* What books do you read again and again and again? Why do you continue to invest time and energy in them? What did they teach you differently this year than five years ago? I explore that question with my annual reading of Charles Dickensās A Christmas Carol. (2023, 2022 ā two of the 28 years I have read it).) Ellen offers a beautiful answer as we talked about her āpersonal bibleā and the 10 books she includes in it. Such a highlight of our talk.
* Our conversation has prompted a lot of thinking around the ephemeral nature of modern yearnings contrasted with longings for permanence and immortality by our ancestors.
* Very clearly, Ellen absorbed so many lessons from her philosophy classes in college. Those lessons come out in her answers and her approach to life and work. Her love for and learnings from poetry ā beautiful, lyrical writing ā also sing throughout this conversation. One of the age-old questions in Western philosophy is whether we as a civilization fundamentally side with the philosophers or the poets. Ellen makes me wonder whether we need to find a way to give them equal footing, and commensurate honor.
Again, I love love loved this talk with Ellen. Whether you listen to the audio, or read the transcript below, you will too! Thank you, Ellen!
Let's start with the basics, Ellen. I've known you for a while through a writing group we're a part of called Foster. But your main day job is helping to lead Altamira Studio. What is it and what are you trying to do?
Our business has two components: the Writing.coach service and Altamira Studio, our publishing branch. It began in late 2019 with just writing coaching. I started offering this service on a friend's advice, and it quickly took off. I immediately needed to build a team to meet demand, partly due to coinciding with COVID.
The writing coaching service primarily caters to people with business-related writing needs, including software company CEOs, investors, and entrepreneurs focused on writing. Through this business, we became involved in projects within the legacy publishing industry that produces mainstream books for retailers like Barnes & Noble. We learned a great deal about the book pipeline and the industry. It answered questions I'd had for years.
Given our position as a respected editorial team that had worked on several high-profile projects, we decided to start our own publishing experiment: Altamira Studio. It's an independent, highly experimental publishing company. We've produced six books for sale, experimented with a subscription model involving printing and publishing, and created an audiobook and some eBooks.
We're forging our own path within the larger publishing world, operating at the frontier of what might be possible in modern publishing. That's what Altamira Studio is.
You use the phrase āwhat might be possible at the frontier of publishing.ā What are your hopes for the frontier? What do you think could be possible at the frontier?
There are some really basic, nuts and bolts, extremely ground-floor-level things covered by bureaucratic bloat in the industry. Let me step back to the origin story I like to share, which is true, but it took me a while to put the pieces together.
Growing up, reading was a huge thing for me. I was always reading ā a huge bookworm. Books were really inspirational and important to me. Then somehow, 20-ish years passed, and I found myself feeling like I'd lost my love of reading. I'd walk into bookstores, look at all the new books, and typically walk out with nothing. Something similar happened with Amazon giving book recommendations. I'd consistently find that new books didn't interest me, or when I did get them, I wouldn't finish them. I'd get about 40 pages in and just get bored ā especially with nonfiction.
This happened gradually over years. For a long time, I blamed myself. I thought, "I must've become a shitty person. I must've lost my attention span. I guess I've just been 'interneted' into not being interested in books anymore."
Eventually, as a result of insights from experiences with the publishing industry, I realized, "Oh, here's a sausage-making factory. No wonder I don't like these sausages. The factory's all messed up. All the machines are broken. All the processes are messed up. The distribution is messed up. The ingredients are a disaster. Everything's a mess."
Coming back to the question of what's possible at the frontier, a basic example is that publishing companies are locked into a minimum length of 300 pages for most books, or at least 250. They have these minimum word counts built into authors' contracts. It partly makes sense, because if you pay someone to write a book and they give you 2,000 words, that's not good. But the publishersā minimum word counts are very high, often resulting in nonfiction authors adding fluff to books just to meet the publisher's word count. The publisher doesn't cut it; in fact, they encourage this fluff-adding.
I've had experiences where I've advised people on putting together an airtight 180-page book with nothing inessential and everything essential. Then it went to a legacy press, and a year and a half later, it came out 250 pages long. Looking at what they added, it's just all fluff. This is totally standard practice, partly due to the status quo and partly due to weird internal bureaucratic pricing models. They don't believe they can charge as much for a shorter book.
To me, that's ridiculous. Look at Common Sense by Thomas Paine ā it's about 24,000 words, 100 pages, and it changed the world.
The next level up, in terms of frontiers, also speaks to the bureaucratic bloat, because of how publishing companies have collided with the internet without really adapting. What used to be distinct media ā books, magazines, radio, TV ā are now all ways of consuming information on the internet. The book market started to change, and publishers wondered how to continue selling 10,000 to 50,000 copies of a book. Thatās how many they need to sell to avoid losing money.
They created a process based on social media followings. Authors who can build a big following on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or newsletters ā as long as the numbers are big enough ā are attractive to publishers. If you have 500,000 newsletter subscribers you can potentially push your book to, the publisher knows probably 20,000 of those people will buy the book.
The problem is, there's a whole skillset and a lot of overhead, money, time, and effort that goes into building such a following online. The people who are good at that, or more importantly, inclined to build a following of that scale, are very rarely the kind of people who really have a book to write.
You end up in this weird situation where publishers have a long roster of ghostwriters. The recipe is: find somebody with a big social media following and pair them up with a writer who's going to write the book. Sometimes that person gets paid pretty well, keeps the lights on for their family. But often they're generating the ideas and someone else is taking credit, or they're diluting the ideas. This collaboration is distorting the content and creating a pipeline of content that I think is generally inferior to what would happen if we got back to first principles and focused on people who are really good writers and whose stuff might resonate with readers.
Originally, I was very adversarial against the publishers and even the ghostwriters for this. I took a very combative stance, but I'm revising my stance somewhat. I think one of the biggest things that really needs to be fixed ā and this goes to maybe the most complex part of the frontier thing ā is Amazon and the book discovery world.
Amazon is doing a lot to push the same kind of book again and again to people and regress everything to the mean in ways that aren't serving authors, publishers, readers, or anybody in the whole thing. You're shaking your head. Yeah, it's a big mess.
Yeah. I can't remember the last time I bought a book on Amazon from their recommendations because of exactly the phenomenon you're talking about. Amazon recommends a ton of books that are 90% of the book I just read. When I'm looking up books on Amazon now, I put in weird search terms and I see what comes up. That usually gives me better suggestions than Amazon suggestions.
It's tough because Amazon owns Goodreads, which basically reinforces that same pattern they're doing on Amazon. Verbal recommendations from friends arenāt much better, because everybody's so connected to the internet. There's so much homogenization of what people are getting served up to them because of how the internet works.
That's the furthest ā maybe the most abstract and complex ā problem on the frontier of publishing. Even beyond that, there's AI, which is interesting as well. I actually have a number of friends in publishing, and I told one of them what ChatGPT was when it was going viral. They hadnāt even heard of it! And really, they should really be with the program on AI.
Do you think AI is going to take over book writing? It's like my daughter taking tennis lessons. I give it a year until she can beat me and my wife. She's just getting that good, that fast. How soon until AI can write a novel that you and I can't tell wasn't written by a human being?
There is a fictionānonfiction divide there. In certain ways, I think AI will be better at "independently" writing fiction, but only according to very strict formulas. If you look at all those pulp sci-fi and mystery novels, I'm pretty sure that similar to how Midjourney can generate images that look so much like DeviantArt images, it's analogous. If you feed in all these pulp mystery, sci-fi, and true crime type of writing, I think AI is going to get really good at matching that pattern and swapping the names, mysteries, and names of planets, and so on.
With nonfiction, there's a really interesting opportunity. What we have found so far ā and I'm putting out an article about this in the next few days ā is that LLMs are not as good at the nonfiction book architecture process. Let's say you have a subject matter expert, like a rocket scientist, and you're trying to work with that person to put a book together. My team and I have done this a bunch of times, helping people take their subject matter expertise and systematize the idea, put it into the orderg in which it should be encountered and understood in a book by a reader. We call it book blueprinting.
We've done experiments with AI where we've tried to get an LLM to do that job, where it interviews a subject matter expert, or at least takes inputs from them and turns that into an actual functional book architecture that can be followed. It doesn't seem to be so good at that task, because there's a relevance filtering issue. In a nutshell, when people talk about their area of expertise, they'll say a bunch of stuff. Some of it is redundant, some is irrelevant, and the LLMs don't seem to be catching up very quickly. They're a little too agreeable; they kind of accept everything.
We're very interested in talking to people who want to experiment further and train some models in more sophisticated ways around that. There's a big opportunity to take that blueprinting architectural skillset and take subject matter experts who might have never written a book otherwise, use the transcription of what they say about their subject matter, engage in that relevance filtering exercise, and produce some really interesting books. It does shorten the amount of hands-at-the-keyboard time it actually takes to get people's expertise down. Does that make sense?
It does. As you were talking, I had in mind Tommy Caldwell's book, The Push. Heās the guy who free soloed The Dawn Wall on El Capitan in Yosemite. I read the book, which had a ghostwriter named Kelly Cordes. I kept thinking about The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. Malcolm X would go to Alex Haley's apartment at 2:00 in the morning, crash on his couch, and then riff for the next four hours. Alex Haley would record it, digest that, and then the next time Malcolm X came over, they'd talk about it and he'd riff some more.
With Alex Haley, you got one of the great autobiographies of the 20th century. Tommy Caldwell's was good, but there was something weird where there was too much filtering ā and not enough filtering, if that makes sense. There was so much Tommy Caldwell that it almost seemed unreal, and in another sense, there was too little of him. It was too polished, too ghostwritten, and that kind of turned me off too. Anyway, that dichotomy between those two books kept coming to mind as you were talking.
There's a place for books that are more heavily transcription-based than that, because what happens there is there's too much hands-at-the-keyboard ghostwriting where somebody's changing how somebody talks and just straight-up making stuff up.
I think a better process, which we've already applied to create some drafts in production that are going to be pretty awesome, is where we create a very detailed step-by-step blueprint outline of the book. Then we get together for an intensive, three days with somebody. We ask each of our questions from the blueprint, and we have the writer speak to each point. Then we transcribe all those paragraphs and put them where they belong.
Then the only kind of "ghostwriting" is writing connecting sentences. Because we've so meticulously mapped out what we want to say, we're just giving them a container and saying, "Okay, pour that substance into this container." And then, "Okay, here's the next one. Here's the next one. Here's the next one." But you have to have the right process.
Honestly, this is my co-founder Bill Jaworskiās superpower. I asked him, "Do you think you could teach me how to be as good at this as you are at this book blueprinting job? Being able to exactly identify what these containers are? This ability to hold the architecture of a book in your head?" He replied, "It would take a long time." He's really, really good at it. He's very skilled at it. He advised on a lot of dissertations, he's advised on a lot of books, he's written a bunch of books. So it's a talent as well as a practiced skill.
You have to have that human component. Then the AI component is more of a transcription and cleanup job. That could be an interesting category of books where that El Capitan book could have been done better if theyād had better architects involved. That's how I see it.
I want to go back for a moment. You keep saying āwe,ā and then you just mentioned your co-founder, Bill. Tell us about the team at Altamira Studio.
One of them is actually my partner in life as well as business. We've been together for a very long time. We met online dating back in 2011 and we've been together ever since. His name is Sam. We moved to Texas from New York, thinking we were going to start a business together. It ended up taking us a long time to figure out how to do that. He was previously at Palantir, which is a big software company that's involved in AI. At some point, he was done being at Palantir - it was very high pressure and crazy. He wanted to do something else and I wanted to be involved in entrepreneurship.
We ended up coming to Texas with these vague notions of entrepreneurship. It took a long time before this writing coaching opportunity emerged. The first person I really needed to call was actually not Sam, but Bill. Bill was a professor at Fordham University where I got my bachelor's degree. We met in New York when he was teaching analytic philosophy and symbolic logic. He got up in front of a group of about 120 students and basically said, "Most academic writing is terrible writing. It's really bad. We're not going to do any of that in this class. We're going to prioritize clarity." I knew at that moment that he wasn't long for the world of academia. I just knew. This was my freshman year, a couple of weeks before I incorporated my first company, which was also an editing and writing business.
That was around 2013. I kept in touch with him for years after I graduated. Circa 2018, he was having thoughts of leaving academia. In 2019, we started working together on these writing coaching projects. Now we've been doing this together for years. We've got a bunch of bestsellers under our belt and we started this publishing company.
His expertise is really phenomenal in terms of knowing the architecture of a great book, having this ridiculously rigorous, logical approach to mapping out concepts. Sam has been tremendously helpful as well. The three of us started this effort and became equal co-founders.
Sam is going to be moving on to doing something else full-time. This was always the plan - Sam wanted to go in a direction involving film and fixing some of the same problems in the film and cinema world that I wanted to fix in the book world. If you talk to movie buffs - maybe you are one, I don't know that about you - but if you talk to movie buffs, they have a lot of the same comments that I was having about books. They watch all the new movies and they complain, "This stuff is so cookie-cutter. Why don't we have anything like The Matrix or Pulp Fiction anymore?"
You're nodding. You know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, absolutely.
Now there's a big opportunity involving AI and film and visual AI. And Sam, as an engineer who really knows computers, AI and film, is perfectly suited to be in that space.
He continues to be a co-owner of the business. He did some really important things, including underwriting the very early unstable phases of our work. "Hey, I got your back if you miss payroll." That kind of stuff. Also setting up a lot of technology and processes for us. And helping us work through our initial strategy.
Ultimately his heart is in the cinema and TV world. So, he's going in that direction. Bill and I are continuing to be full-time on Writing Coach and Altamira Studio. All of us are very unified in this cultural mission around making a difference. We have a lot of optimism around cultural assets.
We have other people who are really important to the business. A few contractors who we work with are really important. An illustrator who is incredible and who did a bunch of the cover illustrations. We have a very savvy social media guy who found me because he was looking for a writing coach for his self-published book. And now I pay him to work with me on social media and staying organized and all that kind of stuff.
We have a print shop that we found after calling a bunch of places. And so, these various pieces have all come together over the years as necessity has brought them into the fold.
That's awesome. Let me go back to our conversation about publishing. I want to look at publishing in a few different ways. You and I share a skepticism about what's called the production economy ā the sheer number of products out there. How many travel blazers do we need to sell on Huckberry, people? We see it with intellectual assets, too. Think of online platforms like Substack. I'm on it, somewhat reluctantly. I don't hate it, but I don't love it. But it basically exists as a tool for blasting more email out to people ā constantly sending more and more emails out there to people. Do people really need more emails in their lives? Dig into your critique of the production economy.
Yeah, so my point of view upsets a lot of people, but it's hard for me to not hold this point of view. I think that the dogma or the message that āif you're a creative person, if you're a writer, in this day and age, then your art form is emailsā - you should be focused on writing the best emails and getting all these people to buy access to your emails ā I think that's a very unimaginative, very cynical fad. I don't think that's something that's going to stand the test of time.
Now, I'm not a technophobe at all. I think all these platforms are really interesting, including Substack. They all have a place in the evolution of things. After I came to Texas, I worked for about three years at a consumer media company comparable to Business Insider. I was hired to be an editor. And there was a 700 article per month quota. That is actually truly insane. We had about 20 writers and that quota meant every writer publishing more than one article per day.
We also knew that there was this crazy power law or tail-of-the-dragon effect. One of those 700 articles was actually driving 80% of the traffic for the month. That one article was keeping the lights on.
I showed up and saw this situation. I didn't even get hired full time at first. I was on a contract getting $2,500 a month. And I said, "This is not how we're going to run things." Because writers were just taking a YouTube video that was going viral, putting a headline and three sentences on it, and embedding the video in an article. And that would actually work, which is ridiculous, right?
We had this incredibly low-quality content. We had a two-person editorial team that had to read all these articles. We would go home and our heads would hurt. I went to the CEO, who was, to his credit, incredibly receptive to me being extremely unfiltered about the whole thing. I told him, "This 700 article quota is completely insane. You have to look at the audience and think about what they're interested in. We could do 100 articles a month, which is still a lot. We can publish three times a day. We can have an article in the morning, an article at lunch, and an article in the evening. Each of the 20 writers can write about five articles a month."
I said, "We're going to look at what the audience has responded to." Fortunately, the website had been operational for a little while. It was a small number of topics. There were clear patterns that you could identify even from the crap that they had been publishing.
I said, "OK, we're going to try this for the next quarter." The publication was related to the outdoors ā hunting, fishing, hiking, National Parks and so on. I said, "It's fall. It's deer season. We're going to do all these deer articles. And here's a good blueprint for the kind of deer articles we're going to do."
Within a couple months, everyone at the company was saying I had changed the whole company, which was really nice. We went down to a sane quota. When I came in, the editorial team was working seven days a week. It was completely insane. We took it down. Traffic didn't suffer at all from going from 700 articles to 100 articles. As a matter of fact, traffic did fine and even better than before on many days. And it kept growing.
That was the first clue I had that there was some misguided behavior in this world where content is technically free. It doesn't cost money to put the article on the website. Not in the concrete way it costs money to put an article on a piece of paper. This was my first clue that something was not quite right in that whole mindset.
I think that the dogma around a lot of the Substack and similar writing mirrors what that company was doing when I showed up. There's a lot of "do more and more and more, ship more and more, screw quality, go for volume." I think that is a fad. People are wising up to that. Now that approach is more undifferentiated from AI than anything else.
Let me mention something else. And I really don't want this to be misunderstood because I don't have any ill will toward these people whatsoever. In fact, I think they've done some really great things. There's another writing company that has recently and famously announced theyāre doing their last writing cohort ever, then they are shutting down. I'm friends with the CEO. We know each other really well. That company started around the same time as mine.
Their original idea was "We have a five-week writing boot camp where we're gonna write five articles in five weeks." At the same time, I was doing a six-week writing coaching program where I was saying, "Write one article with me over six weeks." And so, people would constantly come to me and go, "Why would I come to you and get one article in six weeks when I can go to that guy and get five articles in five weeks?" And I replied, "Because we're going to do something that you're really proud of. We're going to do something that's high quality. We're going to do something that's gonna have a shelf life. It's going to stand the test of time. It's gonna differentiate you. If that doesn't make sense to you, then you should probably go to that guy."
I had a lot of people not work with me because they decided to do the other writing approach. But two years into that program, the other company changed their approach. When AI started to get big, they changed to a program of writing one core article over five weeks. My response was, "That's what I've been doing the whole time."
Except by the time they got there, I was already somewhere further. We had been producing physical books for months by then. We figured out how to create books because it was the next step. When you've realized that one good article is better than five crappy ones, one good book that stands the test of time is better than online articles. We were already moving in this analog direction ā "Write one book."
We worked Brian Gitt, who works in business development in the nuclear energy space. He wrote a short book with us. And he has used it to get speaking engagements and podcast appearances and a lot of recognition. And writing with us helped him land a really great job in exactly the space that he wanted to be in. Before he had the book, he was writing articles at a very slow pace. But he was really betting on quality. And in particular, he was really hammering home one core idea, one high-quality thing. And he had been working with us since 2020.
And so, I think that all that stuff is very much a fad. I think AI now makes it even less relevant in terms of staying power than it ever was. I think it's just not a good use of time. What are your thoughts?
As you were talking, I went up and I got my handy copy of Thucydides from my bookshelf. Thucydides wrote one book, after he was ousted as a general of the Athenians. It took him an enormous amount of time and effort and thought to write that book. It takes the reader an enormous amount of time and thought and effort to digest that book. Today, it is not that hard to publish something. But it's actually a non-trivial amount of effort to digest it, for a reader even to determine whether to continue reading. That production versus consumer effort and time imbalance is a real danger for consumers, for readers. I have to read this from Book I of Thucydides. āThe absence of romance in my history will, I fear, distract somewhat from its interest. But if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things, must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.ā How many people today are writing something for all time?
āA possession for all time,ā yes. Altamira Studio ā we picked that because of the caves of Altamira, which I'm sure you're familiar with, in northern Spain. I really want to go there on a weird business pilgrimage. The caves contain gorgeous paintings from 20,000 years before writing was invented.
Those paintings were created for the people around the caves ā and also to stand the test of time. The fact that they're still there from these cave-dwelling, tiny tribes from 25,000 years ago, says so much about our shared humanity.
The internet and the last 10 years of "best practices" ā the idea that we know what the "best practices" are with something that was invented in the last few decades. On this grand timeline of human history, it's completely brand new. No idea. We're still totally at the beginning of learning how to use these tools.
People think, "The best practice is to do high-volume writing." I think that's a trap. And I think it's very cynical to treat the creative spirit in that way.
Let me keep going with the theme of slowing down and different publishing modes. Youāve begun experimenting with good old-fashioned snail mail, actually sending items to people through the mail. It's called Muse by Mail. Tell us a little bit about it and tell us why you're embracing slow communication, slow mail.
We've just shipped out the first one. So itās still experimental, like a lot of things at Altamira. This kind of goes back to the problems with Amazon and book discovery and content curation that you and I were talking about.
In your questions that you sent me before the call, you asked about what the next 20 years in book publishing will look like. It's already been proven that there's going to be an analog book market that is not going to get deleted by all the digital options. It can get changed, but there are people who like physical books. In fact, there are a lot of people who are digitally native and who still like physical books very much. That's going to continue to be a thing. But there are opportunities to shape it in new and different and interesting ways.
Again, we have a book discovery / reading material discovery issue. It's a burden on readers to find new things coming out. That's part of why you have these massive marketing machines that publishers and authors are building for each individual book.
People have said this to me and I feel really proud to repeat it - if Altamira published a book, chances are you will find it valuable. We are starting to have a brand that has earned the trust of readers. We are so anti-fluff ā readers know we will not waste their time. And we are interested in presenting them with something that might be off the beaten path and that would appeal to them.
So the concept of Muse by Mail is that every quarter, every season, I'm going to send you a package. What's in the package? Itāll have a pocket inspiration book ā called The Muse and edited by me. Itās all about creative topics - fiction and nonfiction. This one includes a nonfiction piece called āThe Forbidden Courseā and a fiction one called āThe Messenger.ā And it includes seven writing prompts from me. Itās an inspirational, cool, creative thing, from me.
You will also receive a book ā curated for you by me. Maybe a book we published, maybe not. Right now, I'm having a good time with the fact that this is not at scale. For example, I sent a subscriber a copy of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 because he hadn't read anything by Ray Bradbury. He was interested in classic sci-fi and I knew he had to read it. You just have to.
Over time it's probably going to get streamlined into people receiving one of the two latest things that we think are interesting. And always also getting The Muse.
So far so good. The 30-ish people who are subscribing to Muse by Mail are really into it. Again, it takes the burden of content discovery off of them. They know the items we send will be well-chosen and inspirational.
Over time, I'm also hoping our strong connection with readers will get us to a virtuous cycle. They give us great feedback and we use that to deliver books that delight them.
Why physical items? Why am I attracted to that? Just today, thereās a change going viral about a big lawsuit concerning Internet Archive. Some publishers have some copyright issues and are trying to delete 500,000 books from the digital lending library. The trouble is, many of these books on Internet Archive ā which has 500,000 books ā are out of print. You canāt find them anywhere else. So you see how ephemeral the digital world is. Things can get changed, things can get deleted.
There's a permanence to the analog format that is really not symbolic, but really powerful.
You can take my physical book from me when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Exactly, exactly. It's a cold, dead hands thing. And something else. I will read on my phone, but it is really nice to have a single-purpose object ā one that is not also calling to you to answer various messages and get on the internet and do all sorts of other stuff. I think there's going to continue to be interest in single-use objects, like a physical book. I have an interest in that.
Finally, we have an amazing connection with an American print shop that does all its manufacturing 35 minutes away from where I live. We love their work. We love showcasing their work.
That is awesome. Let me go back. You mentioned briefly your prognosis for the next 20 years of book publishing. Talk to us also about the next 20 years of online publishing. You already mentioned a massive shift in emphasis from another online coaching / content creation company. What's the next 20 years of online publishing look like? Will Substack reign supreme? Will 9 out of 10 creators go away because they can't make a living?
It's a really good question. One place I landed ā the book format will continue to be a format that people are into.
As far as online publishing, articles and content, I think that two-way networks like Twitter and TikTok and YouTube ā where you can post items and people can comment and have dialogue ā are here to stay. The idea of people being able to talk to each other with all these other people who are also online on the same platform is ridiculously powerful.
With online publications, you've seen some really successful people, like Ben Thompson and Lenny Rachitsky, who have taken a lot of eyeballs away from legacy publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic. A lot of people will go and read their newsletters or other solo writer. They're opting to engage with them over institutional journal-type media. As a source of red hot information ā and maybe better than you might get from the āmainstreamā ā I think that pattern will probably continue.
But I also think that, by and large, those people will not be monetizing their writing exclusively. I think that especially over the long term. In the near term, it's less clear. Over the long term, this idea of subscriptions and you're going to only write and people will pay you for your blog posts and that's your business ā I don't really think that will last.
More likely, itāll be like Paul Graham, the Y Combinator founder. He writes and has written a ton of essays. All of it is in service of attracting attention to Y Combinator. Thatās how he actually makes money. In the book world, a lot of best-selling authors, for example Nir Eyal, who wrote Hooked, donāt make their money off of book sales. Even though he's done a lot of book sales, he probably makes more money off of speaking engagements.
This idea of making money as an online writer blogging is tricky. Some people will make money writing in service of business ventures, either their own or for their employers. Companies will continue to put out writing. Public companies will continue to put out articles and reports to manage their stock prices. There will be jobs for writers for quite some time.
People will do what I do ā I write free articles, then people work with me as their coach. Thatās how I make money. That will be a continuing trend. But the idea of monetizing the writing specifically ā I'm not sure about that. There are opportunities for writers to write for all the media ā TV and movies and speeches.
The number of writers who will do the Lenny Rachitsky thing ā will be a very small number of people. Most of whom have already done it. Even he has other components to his business model. More people will monetize online communities or courses, coaching, other virtual products or services. Or retreats, shows and performances. Things like that.
So that's what I think. I don't really think that that archetype of a writer who's making money only on blog posts and newsletters is a real thing.
This is awesome insight, Ellen. I want to ask a few questions about your personal approach to life. For instance, you have shared your notion of a āpersonal Bible.ā What is that? What's included in your personal Bible and why?
I'm super grateful for that question because back when I was working at that consumer media company, I realized I was not long for that company. Not because of any ill will, but just because I'm ultimately unemployable on some level. I realized that.
I started participating in a forum that Shane Parrish started, the Farnam Street Learning Community. This was around 2018. At that time, there were around 1,000 people ā all people who were interested in books and reading. And I thought, this is cool, super cool. I'm an editor at this weird media company and I'm going to eventually move on to doing other things. So, I better check these people out.
At the time, I had some downtime at the office every day. So, I was posting stuff on this Farnam Street Learning Community. I decided to challenge myself to start some forum topics and see what people got excited about.
The topic of books people re-read kept coming up. So, I started a conversation about books that are like the Bible. People who are very religious, they'll read and reread and reread the Bible or any of the sacred texts. So I wrote a post called, "Have you found your Bible?" And I said, there are people who have pointed to a book they've read and reread, and that they love as much as scripture. For example, at his funeral Steve Jobs gave everybody copies of Autobiography of a Yogi.
Yeah, great book.
Great book. And I've noticed that a lot. Bob Dylan had that with Jack Kerouac. There were other examples. And, I have my own. I came up with four books that I had read multiple times that were biblical for me. And this was a viral post. People loved it. Over time it became something that people would ask me about. It's really funny.
Because you are curious about it, I decided to revise the Bible. I made it 10 books.
Wait, wait, are we hearing this first on this newsletter? Are we hearing this?
This is the very first time I'm sharing this.
Breaking news, everybody. Breaking news, Ellen's new Bible. Let's hear it.
I'm cracking up.
This is so great.
These are 10 books that I have read and reread quite a few times. Iāll share a one sentence explanation of why I'm so into it.
Oh, this makes my day.
The first one on the list is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The reason I love it so much is that what this book taught me about writing and life is that Shakespeare really matters. Shakespeare is absolutely super powerful. Brave New World was my gateway drug to reading Shakespeare. And the book itself is absolutely brilliant. The way that Aldous Huxley shows his devotion to Shakespeare is really one of a kind. Love, love that.
The second book on the list is Shakespeare's Sonnets. I've read and reread Shakespeare's Sonnets a million times, all of them. The big lesson that I learned from them was that Shakespeare put in the reps. You can see him learning how to write and getting better by wrestling with the sonnet constraint. If you read the Sonnets, you start to understand it as the training ground or the whetstone for his writing skills. It's fascinating to see how he's teaching himself how to write by dealing with this constraint of the sonnet form.
Third book on my list is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. What that taught me is that success in terms of writing, what is going to be successful, what kind of book is going to be successful can surprise the author ā and everyone. It can be very unexpected. There's a lot of things I have to say about Atlas Shrugged and about Ayn Rand in general, which are all super controversial and polarizing.
The fourth one on the list is Metaphors We Live By. Incredible book. And what I learned from it was that language is metaphor. The book completely changes your paradigm on writing and it's amazing.
Fifth book is Zero to One by Peter Thiel. That book taught me that business writing is actually an art form in itself and can be really beautiful and timeless and doesn't have to be whitewashed and crappy the way that it normally is.
The sixth book is one I know you love a lot, The Glass Bead Game. Love that book very, very much. I've read it many times.
It's a great book.
I've read it many times. I go back to it when I'm lost. What that book taught me about writing is that people are smart. The fact that the book has had as much uptake as it has, and the fact that he actually won the Nobel Prize for it... the book is super complicated and very abstract and crazy, but it is beloved by many people. It's a reminder to not underestimate people. If a book like that can surface the way it did, then there's hope for pretty much anything, I think.
Next ā Five Dialogues by Plato. I have a particular collection of five of the dialogues, especially Plato's Apology and a couple other dialogues that I've read a million times. That's where I learned about the idea of peaceful disagreeableness. You can be non-combative and you can challenge the status quo. The whole Socratic thing is incredibly valuable. That's biblical for me.
The eighth book is a collection of William Butler Yeats poems that I really love. Pretty much any collection I think counts, but basically all of his poems. I'm obsessed with William Butler Yeats. I think he's incredible. After Shakespeare, and Bob Dylan, he's my favorite poet. He's really great. And what I learned about writing from him was that it's a long game. My edition of this book has the dates of when all the poems were written. You see a very slow evolution of William Butler Yeats learning one thing at a time and getting better. When he was in his 50s, he wrote a lot of his very best stuff. When you compare that to some of his earlier stuff, you see what happens when you do this day in and day out. He even refers to the practice of writing as an "accustomed toil," which I love. That's totally right. Itās a long game. Whenever I start to get impatient, I go to Yeats.
The ninth book on the list is the screenplay for this movie, Network, which Paddy Chayefsky wrote. I think Paddy Chayefsky is the only person who's won best writer three times without a co-writer ā something like that. He's really great at screenwriting. In particular, the screenplay for Network is totally genius. It's got some monologues that are on Shakespeare's level, to my mind. So, what I learned is, you can still do something that's as good as a Shakespearean monologue in more modern dramatic English. Thatās great ā I love that.
The last one is the Tao Te Ching, which I have read many times in many translations. I took many lessons from it. One was the idea of letting the rivers flow into you. There's a metaphor in one of the Tao Te Chingās chapters: the ocean is the master of all the waterways, because all the rivers flow into the ocean. There's something very profound about this idea of placing yourself beneath the rivers and letting them flow into you. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it means something very profound about writing and life.
Yeah, that's amazing. That is an amazing list of books, Ellen. I've got to ask you a question about #7, Platoās Dialogues, specifically The Apology. Here's my question: do you agree with Plato and the philosophers or do you agree with the poets? Plato using Socrates is basically accusing the poets of lying. And the poets are saying, put Socrates to death - heās the one damaging the place. Who do you agree with?
I have to side with Socrates. I think that there are a lot of people who can be lyrical and who can be poetic, but can still be wrong. There are a lot of times when people simply want to avoid the truth. It's painful to be challenged. It's painful to have people's fakery challenged. We have a lot of people now who are like the Sophists of that time period. We have a lot of people who are ruining everything by teaching stuff that doesn't help anybody.
So yeah, I have to side with Socrates. At the end of the day, I think that's part of why I picked a philosopher as my co-founder. Being able to take a stand for what is fundamentally philosophically right and being able to stand for the truth supersedes pretty much everything.
Nice. I love this list. It includes books I know and love, and books I disagree with, and ones I havenāt read and want to read now. I love this list. This is awesome.
I figured it might be a little spicy.
Oh, it's so good. I love it. I have a couple of points of curiosity.
I'm ready.
How do you think about bringing beauty and nobility into your life?
It's interesting. One of the things I'm really grateful for is Sam. Even though he has an engineering and technology background, in many ways, he's an artist at heart, even more so than I am. And I am definitely an artist, in terms of writing poetry and all this kind of stuff. He has a sense for beauty being an end in itself. He has a deeper connection to that idea than I even normally have in my day-to-day life.
I have a little bit of a pragmatic, business-minded, day-to-day posture. Sam sees the world and he emphasizes truth and beauty. He says, civilization could collapse just because people stop telling each other true, beautiful stories. And he's totally right about that.
Having people in your life who have an internal compass oriented toward beauty on a fundamental level is really good. That compass is very strong. When my own internal compass is going haywire and getting distracted, Sam and other artists in my life are able to clear that away. They remind me that what actually matters is beauty. That this is worth doing because of a kind of reverence for beauty.
I actually count on people around me who have a really strong orientation toward beauty. I think we have those people who are born like that among us, right? A friend of mine is very business-minded and his wife is very much the artist in the relationship. We talked about that ā what if we could protect and serve our artists better?
Also ā you are a contributor to this answer ā a lot of people in my life take a lot of walks.
Yeah, totally.
The people I know who religiously take a walk every day are some of the most creative and wonderful people. When I'm in the practice of walking, it helps a lot. I live in a place with beautiful trees and animals and stuff. That is very nice.
Seeing six baby birds all fly out of the nest at the same time ā as cliche as it sounds, putting yourself in situations where you will encounter small, beautiful things. Itās not a matter of bringing it into your life. Itās theerās Itās a matter of showing up for it.
I'm curious about your answer to that question about beauty in life.
My family is a big answer. My daughters and my wife. The growth of something beyond me is really beautiful. When you were talking about Metaphors We Live By, I find language beautiful. I'll read a story or a novel and Iāll encounter a brilliant, beautiful way of constructing language.
I listen to a podcast, The Emerald by Josh Schrei. He is such a beautiful storyteller ā interweaving different modes of communication ā music, singing, incantation, the inflection of his voice. It all reinforces what he's trying to get at. I find that fascinating.
Nature, too.
I find my office beautiful. I've constructed this space the way I want it. That beauty reflects back to me. I love my picture of Wendell Berry thinking. I love my cacti and my bonsai here. Iāve got my crazy cactus office jungle here. I get so much joy from it. I find it beautiful. And Iām trying to contribute to its beautiful growth. I love my totally goofball, Lego Zodiac figures that I put together every February.
Maybe itās weird ā because I was born with this heart problem, I find beauty in a lot of things. I find beauty in something almost every day.
I find beauty in all these things. Sometimes I simply look up. Or in my daily cup of tea, I find beauty in that ritual. I find it beautiful that long ago, a human thought, āI'm going to steep this leaf in hot water and see what happens.ā And another human then created a beautiful ritual and ceremony around steeping that leaf. I find that really wondrous and amazing and beautiful.
I totally love that. I have a friend named Cam who is like that too. I asked him if he meditated. He's said, no, but I do another thing that's very reminiscent of what you described. I love that.
I find not giving up beautiful. Like a lot of cities right now, in Louisville, there's a real struggle with homelessness ā with finding adequate housing for people who are on the fringe of society and really struggling. I find it beautiful that there is a non-trivial portion of our population that is willing to dedicate themselves to trying to solve that problem for other humans. Thatās a really special, beautiful thing.
Appreciating people who are taking initiative to do good things for other people. That's one of the best things that can happen. A hundred percent.
Let me ask you a couple of last questions, Ellen.
Yeah.
Back on Altamira Studio: When somebody comes to you and says, āhey Ellen, I have a great book idea.ā What filters do you put up? What screens do you put up? Is it the famous venture capital screens where you really care more about the person than the idea? Or is it more nuanced than that?
I thought about this and I talked to Bill about it too. If we meet somebody who wants to write a book, we want them to tell us what's on their mind. We both kind of have an attitude of openness to anybody who feels like they are being pulled in the direction of writing a book. We start openly. Then typically people will say a few things and we can hear that there's like a book thing in there or there's not.
It's really hard to pin down what the characteristics are. But it has something to do with the depth of the potential implications of the idea.
Someone recently came our way with a book idea. I was really unsure at first. Bill and I kind of both started asking questions. As it turned out, there is something there. But a lot of times when people talk about their idea, they don't have the perspective to exactly identify where the book is. It's a strange thing that way, actually for both fiction and nonfiction.
If we find that we think has a book in it ā that someone could read in a 100 to 200 page format ā and it would potentially cause them to restructure some element of their life or their worldview, or the way in which they think, feel, or change some aspect of life ā we pay attention. If you think about it ā how many conversations have you had where someone's actually changed your mind? It's rare, right?
With fiction, we're still trying to figure out how to publish fiction, honestly. Fiction, I'm looking for someone who has the fundamentals of dramatic structure figured out. That's very, very rare. With nonfiction, again, it's determining whether this person has something to say that would cause anybody to live their life differently moving forward. Is there a transformative experience somewhere in there?
The person I was talking about was saying there needs to be a new management style for this new day and age. And I canāt think of anything less interesting than that. Then we started to uncover what he was actually talking about. He was actually talking about a way to have a team of people, with every single person able to do deep work. Every person has to be able to focus in a safe way on the pursuit of their craft.
We started to go deeper and we saw some powerful anecdotes here. The guy has stories and experiences that coalesce around an idea that could lead people to change something about how they see the world, how they operate, and act differently.
That's not a very concrete answer, but we talked about it as a team. We tried to find a concrete answer. We landed with the notion that weāre willing to listen with wonder about whether a book is inside that idea. Would someone change because of reading that idea in a book format. Does that make sense?
It does. It's a beautiful answer. And I think it relates back to the 10 books in your Bible. As you were going through your one liners, I was taking a few notes. As you were just speaking, I was looking back on my notes. So much of what you said, you were reflecting to me how the book changed your worldview or your actions.
Shakespeare's Sonnets ā putting in the reps. That book helped you see the importance of you putting in the reps. The Tao Te Ching, the letting the rivers flow into you ā you don't exactly understand what that means in your world, but you know that it's a poetic thing. The words influenced you, that image has influenced you, in a profound way.
We talked earlier about fleeting, ephemeral (by the way, one of my favorite words) online writing. The books you talked about have changed generations and will change generations. They contain profound distillations of reality and lessons about truth. So much of online writing is groping, seeking, and not in an elegant way. It doesn't even have much to teach the writer. Not literally nothing, but it's online diary writing. Thatās fine, but don't elevate it beyond its real station in the world.
Diary writing / casual conversations with people online. We have this concept on our team called rehearsing. Anytime you're talking with anybody about some of your ideas and anytime you're drafting something, that's a rehearsal. And this is a rehearsal for which I'm very grateful.
Definitely.
People appreciate being able to get on a podcast, because they like to rehearse what they're trying to say. And we help writers do that ā through conversation and through writing. Social media and online publishing are good opportunities for rehearsal.
All right, last question for you. We've talked a lot about what you've learned ā business, publishing, writing, and books. You went to a great Jesuit institution of America, Fordham University in New York. I also attended a great Jesuit university, Georgetown University in Washington, DC. What did you learn from the Jesuits? What did you learn from it being a Jesuit school that was a unique contribution to your learning? Except that Bill was not long for academia?
First of all, if he fit in anywhere, it was within the Jesuit setting. He is a rigorous political philosopher. Compared to other universities, the philosophy department at Fordham is huge. So, there's something to be said for the fact that meeting Bill there was actually very fortuitous.
The opportunity to take that much philosophy and also, I would say the opportunity to take that much philosophy as part of my degree, which was not in philosophy, definitely stands out. I took a philosophy class in high school. Everybody who took it had a great time and really liked it. Philosophy is this guilty pleasure. Most people who did it in college, maybe they took one philosophy course. I took something like four of them, you know? And theology too ā I overlap them a bit.
I think it is really cool that it was built so I didn't have to feel like it was a guilty pleasure. It was required and that was cool. It was a setting with more room for reflection than the typical four-year degree is supposed to allow.
That was really huge for me. Like the fact that philosophy was not only allowed and available, but required. There was so much robust infrastructure for it. The logic courses were ridiculously valuable to me. To this day, a huge amount of what I do is asking people about premises. About counter arguments.
Itās incredibly valuable. It would be cool if more universities took that stance instead of treating it like a guilty pleasure. I do think there was a lot of value. Some of the most valuable stuff that I learned was definitely in the philosophy department.
That's awesome.
Do you feel that way?
So much of what you said resonated. I studied political philosophy. I started out in the School of Foreign Service and then I realized I like the theory of politics more than the reality of politics.
Oh, I did not know that about you, but that makes perfect sense.
I took enough classes to like minor in philosophy, theology, Spanish, English, Shakespeare, history, English. I was just too lazy to fill out the paperwork. I loved it, you know? I got my teeth kicked in by logic. It was so hard.
It's very hard, but it's really good.
I loved the presence of the Jesuits. A number of my friends later became Jesuits. That was really special. I attended some of their ceremonies, which was very moving. Georgetownās motto is Utraque Unum ā āboth are one.ā There are different meanings, but one is traditionally understood as: faith and reason are one. Georgetown was the first place that I encountered the notion that maybe matters of the heart and matters of the mind bring us to a common place.
People try to draw a hard line and the line's not real.
This has been amazing, as I knew it would be, Ellen. I'm so grateful for your time. It's been so much fun to talk with you. I loved every minute.
Thank you for having me. This has been crazy fun and very helpful and extremely thoughtful on your end with all the questions. I'm beyond honored.
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