If you missed it, check it out.

I now think about moving forward, like, okay, shorter books, right? You don't have the endurance.

Refine that process, 57 days.

Okay, the next one I'm gonna try to do 45, right? Can I refine it more? Can I prepare better going in? Can I come out of it better? One of the things I really learned with this book, and it's interesting thing about Daoism and, and, and ancient texts, is after the experience of how I wrote this, it also fundamentally changed how I believe I can live with the Dao and how I can exist in it.

And so whereas before the idea of being in an almost permanent state of wu wei wu or, or thinking not thinking was some delirious dream that...

I now believe I can get to that and live in the Dao much more.

I told you on my way out here, you know, I meditated for 30 minutes before I left the hotel, and then for the entire hour I drove out here.

Mm-hmm

Books come and go, whatever, that's fine, but if anything has an opportunity to stick around longer than most things, it's, it's still books.

I hope we revert to some analog world, some more analog world.

I think when social media came along, we were all so thrilled with the idea of this delightful, fun, cool, harmless thing, right? And I think in the sort of really 10 years that it has dominated the culture, we've started to really understand how vapid it is.

The word you used is the perfect word, right? How vapid it is, how soul-destroying it is.

One of the things I did while I was sort of not writing was I, I worked for the world's largest influencer network.

So global chief content officer for the world's largest influencer network, which at the time was a French company called Webedia.

And so I've seen very clearly, I know very clearly how social media works, the tricks that, that are used literally to addict people, right? The whole purpose of, of social media is to addict its users to it so that the companies who m- manage the platforms can turn the users into products.

[laughs] Um, is it true that, uh, you said no great book has ever been written by anyone over fifty?

Is that right?

Well, we did sell it as fiction.

Random House bought it as a novel.

And then when they bought it, in the contract, there was a thing that said there was a chance they would publish it as a memoir.

And in that contract, if you're selling a publisher nonfiction, you have to, you know... copped to the veracity of it, which I refused to do.

I said, this isn't 100% true.

You can publish it however the fuck you want.

Oh, I'm sorry.

it, though.

Oh, that's not true.

That's not true.

No.

So I wrote books.

I sold a bunch of them.

Then I started a business that was sort of modeled after a Renaissance art studio, the way Da Vinci or Michelangelo or Raphael or contemporary versions like Andy Warhol or Murakami, where I came up with the ideas for books, movies, television shows, and video games.

You're always like, wow, I just don't have the private jet.

called the publishing world uh books by and for books by ladies and gentlemen written for ladies and gentlemen published by ladies and gentlemen for ladies and gentlemen to read he had this funny quote and he had this really very similar to you kind of this idea that like you know what it's not about that and um i know his books are for me

writing a book is about you know i i've talked about how books changed have changed my life over and over again I love reading books.

I'm a consumer of books.

I'm a fan of books.

I read every day.

I have for as long as I can remember.

And when I think about the books that mean the most to me, they're books.

I