0:00:04 And so to do this thing where there was basically a month built in
0:00:05 where I wasn’t going to see these responses.
0:00:08 Sorry, my dog’s vomiting.
0:00:08 Give me a sec.
0:00:13 That’s a new one for the podcast.
0:00:14 I know.
0:00:15 Okay, sorry.
0:00:18 Your dog hates SMS.
0:00:22 Give me a second to deal with this.
0:00:25 I’ve never had my dog vomit while I’m recording a podcast
0:00:27 right next to me before.
0:00:27 That’s a new one.
0:00:30 This is the glamorous life of a podcaster, folks.
0:00:36 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs.
0:00:37 This is Tim Ferriss.
0:00:39 Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show,
0:00:44 where it is my job every episode to deconstruct world-class performers,
0:00:46 people who are the best at what they do,
0:00:52 people who are the deepest in the deep end of whatever their specialty happens to be.
0:00:55 This episode that you are going to hear is my second interview,
0:01:00 my second conversation with Craig Mod, a gem of a human being.
0:01:01 Love the guy.
0:01:06 Now, important note, though, you do not need the first interview to enjoy this one.
0:01:11 This, what you’re about to listen to, is perfectly self-sufficient as a standalone conversation.
0:01:12 So, go forth.
0:01:13 Enjoy.
0:01:18 But if you also want to check out our first convo, which covers his early years and his
0:01:24 winding path to Japan, you can find it at tim.blogs slash mod, M-O-D.
0:01:30 Today’s episode will dive very deeply into Craig’s walking philosophy and practice.
0:01:32 I’ll explain what that means, why it’s relevant.
0:01:38 His incredible experiences and experiments with publishing of all sorts, independent and traditional.
0:01:46 His unexpected celebrity in Japan, which is wild and just so fun.
0:01:50 And the profound impact of reconnecting with his biological family.
0:01:53 And we’ll get into all the nuances and background necessary for that.
0:01:55 This is a packed episode.
0:01:58 Craig is such a joy to listen to.
0:01:59 Great storyteller.
0:02:00 And there are a lot of takeaways.
0:02:02 But I’m getting ahead of myself.
0:02:03 Who is Craig?
0:02:06 He is a writer, photographer, and walker.
0:02:08 We’ll talk about that a lot.
0:02:10 Living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan.
0:02:14 He is the author of Things Become Other Things and Kissa by Kissa.
0:02:16 K-I-S-S-A.
0:02:17 Don’t worry about it.
0:02:17 We’ll get to it.
0:02:22 He also writes the newsletters Roden and Ridgeline and has contributed to the New York
0:02:24 Times, The Atlantic, Wired, and more.
0:02:29 He has walked thousands of miles across Japan in every conceivable place.
0:02:36 And since 2016, he has been co-running Walk & Talks with Kevin Kelly, perhaps the most interesting
0:02:43 man in the world, in various places around the world, the Cotswolds, Northern Thailand, Bali,
0:02:49 Southern China, Japan, Spain, which includes the Portuguese and French Caminos, and much more.
0:02:52 You can find Craig Mod at craigmod.com.
0:02:57 That’s the H-Q for everything Craig Mod, C-R-A-I-G-M-O-D.com.
0:03:02 You can find him on Instagram, at craigmod, and on Blue Sky as well, craigmod.com.
0:03:08 And with that, and just a few words from the people who make this podcast possible, we’ll
0:03:10 get right into the meat and potatoes of Craig Mod.
0:03:15 As many of you know, for the last few years, I’ve been sleeping on a Midnight Luxe mattress
0:03:17 from today’s sponsor, Helix Sleep.
0:03:23 I also have one in the guest bedroom downstairs, and feedback from friends has always been fantastic.
0:03:24 Kind of over the top, to be honest.
0:03:27 I mean, they frequently say it’s the best night of sleep they’ve had in ages.
0:03:28 What kind of mattress is it?
0:03:29 What do you do?
0:03:30 What’s the magic juju?
0:03:34 It’s something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever.
0:03:40 I also recently had a chance to test the Helix Sunset Elite in a new guest bedroom, which
0:03:44 I sometimes sleep in, and I picked it for its very soft but supportive feel to help with
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0:04:08 do that without worrying about other aches and pains I might create.
0:04:13 And with a luxurious pillow top for pressure relief, I look forward to nestling into that
0:04:15 bed every night that I use it.
0:04:20 The best part, of course, is that it helps me wake up feeling fully rested with a back that
0:04:24 feels supple instead of stiff, and that is the name of the game for me these days.
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0:04:54 About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10,000 and 12,000 feet going over the continental
0:05:00 divide, carrying tons of weight, doing my best not to chew on my own lungs, and I needed all
0:05:01 the help I could get.
0:05:07 And in those circumstances, I relied on Momentous products every single day and every single
0:05:08 night.
0:05:12 Now, regular listeners probably know I’ve been taking Momentous products consistently and testing
0:05:15 them, the entire spectrum of their products, for a long while now.
0:05:20 But you may not know that I recently collaborated with them, one of the sponsors of this episode,
0:05:22 to put together my top picks.
0:05:25 And I’m calling it my performance stack.
0:05:27 I always aim for a strong body and sharp mind.
0:05:28 Of course, you need both.
0:05:31 And neither is possible without quality sleep.
0:05:33 So I didn’t want anything speculative.
0:05:35 I wanted things I could depend on.
0:05:36 And it is what I use personally.
0:05:39 So I designed my performance stack to check all three boxes.
0:05:40 And here it is.
0:05:43 Creapure creatine for muscular and cognitive support.
0:05:46 The cognitive side is actually very interesting to me these days.
0:05:49 Whey protein isolate for muscle mass and recovery.
0:05:54 And magnesium threonate for sleep, which is really the ideal form of magnesium, as far
0:05:56 as we know, for sleep.
0:06:01 I use all three daily, and it’s why I feel 100% comfortable recommending it to you, my dear
0:06:02 listeners.
0:06:07 Momentous sources Creapure creatine from Germany, and their whey isolate is sourced from European
0:06:10 dairy farmers held to incredibly strict standards.
0:06:15 And I’ve chatted with the CEO about their supply chain, about how they manage all of these things.
0:06:21 It’s incredibly complex, and they go way above any industry standards that I’m familiar with,
0:06:22 and I am familiar with them.
0:06:27 All Momentous products are NSF and Informed Sports Certified, which is professional athlete
0:06:28 and Olympic-level testing.
0:06:31 So here’s the main point.
0:06:33 What’s on the label is exactly what you’re getting.
0:06:38 And this is not true for the vast majority of companies in this industry.
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0:06:42 Try it out for yourself, and let me know what you think.
0:06:49 Visit livemomentous.com slash Tim, and use Tim at checkout for 20% off of my performance
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0:06:52 One more time, that’s livemomentous.com slash Tim.
0:06:53 I’ll spell it out.
0:06:54 It’s a long one.
0:06:57 Live moment, O-U-S dot com slash Tim.
0:07:00 So livemomentous.com slash Tim for 20% off.
0:07:07 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
0:07:08 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:07:11 Now we’re just in a perfect time.
0:07:12 What if I did the opposite?
0:07:16 I’m a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
0:07:20 Me, Tim, Ferris, yo.
0:07:28 Modo-san, o-hayo gozaimasu.
0:07:29 Hi, konbama.
0:07:30 Konbama.
0:07:31 Exactly.
0:07:33 Time zones.
0:07:36 Lots and lots of time zones between us.
0:07:41 And I suppose that is as good a segue as any to ask you a question related to something
0:07:50 that you said in passing in our last conversation, which was living in a six to Tommy mat room.
0:07:54 For many people listening, they may not know exactly what that means.
0:07:54 What does that mean?
0:07:59 Like in Japan, you used to measure everything by basically tatami mats.
0:08:03 So tatami mat, it’s like two meters by half a meter or something like that.
0:08:05 It’s a rectangle mat basically.
0:08:07 And yeah, you had rooms.
0:08:12 Rooms are kind of like classical Japanese rooms are based on certain tatami mat numbers.
0:08:15 Six mat room, eight mat room, 10 mat room, 12 mat room, things like that.
0:08:23 And I lived for most of my adult life from like age 22 to 35.
0:08:25 I was in like a six mat tatami room.
0:08:28 I lived a really ascetic sort of twenties and early thirties.
0:08:31 Super affordable in the middle of the city.
0:08:32 It worked out.
0:08:33 It worked well for me.
0:08:37 So I’m looking up the name of a movie that I saw recently.
0:08:42 If people want a visual on a roughly six tatami room.
0:08:43 Perfect days.
0:08:44 Perfect days.
0:08:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:08:45 Wim Wenders.
0:08:45 Exactly.
0:08:51 The amazing thing about that movie is I think they wrote it and shot it in like a matter
0:08:53 of just like three weeks, four weeks.
0:08:55 They shot it so fast, but it works.
0:09:00 Which is part of the beauty of an independent film like this.
0:09:06 If you can control the locations, if you’re not throwing in a bunch of CGI, if you can apply
0:09:13 some constraints, you can make a beautiful little film that really does the trick.
0:09:17 And you can rely on that old fashioned thing called storytelling and character development.
0:09:25 I will say that this particular film, Perfect Days, just as a warning slash promise to people,
0:09:27 it starts off very slow.
0:09:32 It gets to a point, at least it did for me, where it starts to get repetitive and almost
0:09:32 annoying.
0:09:41 But then at some point that I could not put a finger on, it starts to become really hypnotic
0:09:45 and then it gets very reassuring and then it ends up very endearing.
0:09:46 It’s worth the whole push through.
0:09:51 I think it’s a good piece of film, but basically where the guy, the protagonist of Perfect Days
0:09:57 lives is exactly the sort of room I lived in for like roughly 13, 14 years.
0:09:58 It’s worth checking out.
0:10:05 The rumor I heard, this was second or third hand, so I have not fact checked this, is that
0:10:13 at some point, I guess it was Tokyo Toilet or whoever actually, I imagine it’s the municipality
0:10:18 that owns the toilets, was looking to do an advertising campaign featuring some of their
0:10:24 more unusual sort of art piece toilets, which people will see in the film.
0:10:30 And that somehow Wim Wenders, the filmmaker, got wind of this and said,
0:10:36 that all sounds great, but why don’t you just give me your entire budget and I’ll make a film
0:10:37 about a toilet cleaner.
0:10:38 Yeah.
0:10:39 Yeah.
0:10:40 Pretty astonishing.
0:10:41 Yeah.
0:10:42 It’s pretty, it’s pretty awesome.
0:10:43 Yeah.
0:10:43 Yeah.
0:10:43 Yeah.
0:10:55 Let’s jump to the meat and potatoes of Craig Mod 2.0, which is huge walks.
0:10:56 Yes.
0:10:59 We covered so much ground, pun intended.
0:11:00 I’m sorry.
0:11:06 We covered so much ground in the last conversation.
0:11:13 We never got to what a lot of people want to know from you, which is huge walks.
0:11:17 Why, how, where, what is it like, all the things.
0:11:18 Where should we start?
0:11:20 What is step one here?
0:11:26 I mean, step one is just, like I arrived in Tokyo, I’m 19 years old, I’m walking through
0:11:29 the city at night and I’m just mesmerized.
0:11:33 You know, there’s just something about being able to move through the city without worrying
0:11:35 about anything, without thinking about safety.
0:11:35 Yes.
0:11:40 And people’s lives are really, I want to say exposed.
0:11:44 Like you walk down a street and you can hear everything and you can hear the baths being drawn.
0:11:47 You can hear the kids laughing behind, you know, closed doors.
0:11:50 You can smell someone having a cigarette in their kitchen as they’re listening to the radio.
0:11:53 And there was something about all of that.
0:11:57 I think that really many, many things kept me here, but like those walks, those late night
0:12:04 walks around Tokyo when I was 19, 20, I mean, that really set something moving in my heart.
0:12:07 And I think I kind of held onto that for a long time.
0:12:11 So before we segue from that, why were you walking around at night?
0:12:13 Was it insomnia?
0:12:14 Were you taking photographs?
0:12:14 What were you doing?
0:12:17 I mean, I was just drinking too much.
0:12:20 I was gulking around with a bottle in hand.
0:12:24 So yeah, no street drinking, but like I would be, you know, I was going to Golden Guy.
0:12:27 You should explain what that was and what it is for people who don’t know.
0:12:34 Golden Guy was a post-war, almost like a black market drinking area in Shinjuku next to Kabukicho,
0:12:35 which is like the big red light district.
0:12:40 And it was a whole bunch of ramshackle shacks, you know, one story, two stories.
0:12:43 And then they all had attics and it was all for prostitution.
0:12:48 So you’d go to these bars post-war and then there’d be prostitutes there and they’d take you up.
0:12:55 If you go in some of the bars in Golden Guy still have these like attic rooms and that would be where the Roxanne stuff would happen.
0:12:56 Yeah.
0:12:57 Where Roxanne would turn on a red light.
0:13:06 And anyway, over time, it became a place of like artists, filmmakers, directors, poets would gather and drink there.
0:13:09 Kind of in the, I’d say probably in like the seventies, eighties, nineties.
0:13:15 Another Wim Wenders film, Tokyo Ga, where he’s kind of exploring, he’s like chasing Ozu and he goes to a bar.
0:13:16 What is Ozu?
0:13:19 Ozu is sort of like, if you had a lot of people know Kurosawa.
0:13:21 So you have Seven Samurai.
0:13:28 Ozu is like the Kurosawa contemporary, where if you flipped all the action of Seven Samurai,
0:13:32 it created like the inverse of it where nothing happens and the camera just sits on the ground.
0:13:36 That is Ozu, but it’s, Ozu made so many films.
0:13:37 Ozu never got married.
0:13:38 He never had any kids.
0:13:45 He made so many films and every single film is about a daughter leaving her father to go get married.
0:13:48 And the father being like super depressed and sad.
0:13:51 Like the daughter being like, I don’t want to leave you.
0:13:53 And he’d be like, no, you have to.
0:13:56 And you should watch, if you’re going to watch one Ozu film, watch,
0:13:58 Sama no Aji is what it’s called in Japanese.
0:14:00 I think it’s Sama no Aji.
0:14:01 Sama no Aji.
0:14:02 So the taste of mackerel.
0:14:03 Sama.
0:14:04 Oh, yeah.
0:14:04 Yeah, yeah.
0:14:05 Sama no Aji.
0:14:06 I love that film.
0:14:07 The Taste of Mackerel.
0:14:08 The Taste of Mackerel.
0:14:10 Yeah, beautiful, beautiful title.
0:14:12 He was a huge drinker too.
0:14:16 And he would kind of go into the mountains with some of his writing partners and they would
0:14:20 measure how far they were on their script by how many bottles of, empty bottles of sake
0:14:21 they would line the room with.
0:14:26 So by the end of his script, and I don’t know why it took him so long, because literally
0:14:30 every script is the same script, but like they would end up, you know, kind of filling the
0:14:31 room with these sake bottles.
0:14:35 But so, you know, like there’s sort of like this Ozu kind of element of people.
0:14:41 And Wim Wenders in Tokyo Ga, he came to Tokyo in the 80s, I think it was like 84, and he
0:14:43 was kind of hunting down what was left of Ozu.
0:14:45 He’s kind of like chasing Ozu.
0:14:49 But what he ends up doing is he captures a bunch of Tokyo in the 80s, and it’s amazing.
0:14:55 And one of the places he goes to is a bar in Golden Guy, which is still, as of like five
0:14:56 years ago, it was still active.
0:14:58 And the same woman is still running it.
0:15:02 And you could go there and you watch the Wim Wenders film and you see this bartender and
0:15:07 this room that’s like literally, I mean, it holds like six people max, you know, and it’s
0:15:09 like this tiny little closet of a bar.
0:15:13 And she has been standing behind that bar for 40 plus years.
0:15:15 And she’s still there.
0:15:17 And she’s got like a little Wim Wenders poster up on the wall.
0:15:20 And, you know, she’s kind of immortalized in that film.
0:15:25 So it was then that in the 80s and the 90s, and I started going there around 2000.
0:15:28 And it was still like, should I be here?
0:15:29 I mean, it was very shady.
0:15:33 It was sort of like, you know, you kind of had to really work your way into these shops.
0:15:39 And then about 10 years ago, with the tourism boom starting here and like really resurgent,
0:15:45 or really for the first time ever, Japan having a mega tourism boom began about 10 years ago.
0:15:47 People found Golden Guy because of social media.
0:15:51 It’s now like you go there and everyone’s just Instagramming and live streaming.
0:15:53 And it’s a circus, basically.
0:15:54 I haven’t been in a while.
0:15:56 It’s really painful to go to now.
0:15:58 Yeah, that sounds rough.
0:16:00 I would go to Golden Guy.
0:16:04 I would go to Otokichi or Brain Busters, I think was the bar that I used to go to.
0:16:05 It’s not there anymore.
0:16:08 And I’d have a few drinks.
0:16:09 And then I’d walk home.
0:16:15 And I’d just like walk home with this like really wistful, you know, kind of like floaty feeling.
0:16:16 And just, I don’t know.
0:16:19 Those were really special, weird walks for me when I was that young.
0:16:21 It was teaching me something.
0:16:25 I’m adding a footnote to this, which is just a recommendation for folks.
0:16:33 Since you invoked the demon of social media by mentioning it, I will mention someone I found on Instagram,
0:16:41 even though I haven’t had any social apps on my phone for two years because it’s like having heroin around the house.
0:16:47 There is a website, Timusphoto, T-E-E-M-U-Sphoto.com.
0:16:56 And it is almost entirely nighttime shots of Japan and urban Japan.
0:17:00 And it gives you actually a very, he loves rain.
0:17:02 It is not always raining in Japan.
0:17:03 Yeah.
0:17:06 But these are beautiful shots.
0:17:09 Talks about his setup and which camera he uses, et cetera.
0:17:12 But it is a really beautiful compilation.
0:17:20 And if you browse through, you’ll get some of the feeling that Craig is referring to.
0:17:20 All right.
0:17:30 So where does Craig go from alcohol and golden guy walks to something more, what would we call it?
0:17:31 Epic?
0:17:32 Yeah, epic.
0:17:33 Truly epic.
0:17:38 So I co-authored slash co-produced a book called Art Space Tokyo.
0:17:41 And it came out 2007, 2008.
0:17:45 And then we reprinted it with a Kickstarter in 2010.
0:17:47 It was one of the first book Kickstarters, actually.
0:17:50 So it was kind of this novel thing to do.
0:17:54 And I met this guy through doing that, this other art-related guy named John McBride.
0:17:56 A mutual friend connected us.
0:17:59 And we sat down for breakfast at like 10 a.m.
0:18:01 And we didn’t get up till like 5 p.m.
0:18:05 It was just like instant, like, just like, go, go, go, go, go.
0:18:06 He’s 20 years older than me.
0:18:09 And he’s just lived this kind of really incredible, rich, interesting life.
0:18:15 When he was 17, 18, 19, he was a Monbushu scholarship student here in Japan.
0:18:16 He went to Gaigodai.
0:18:19 That’s the Ministry of Education, right?
0:18:22 And he had like a full scholarship.
0:18:25 And he was just a Japanese student at a Japanese university, basically.
0:18:26 He’s Australian.
0:18:30 And while he was doing that, he started doing walks because as a literature professor,
0:18:32 they were reading things like Basho.
0:18:35 And he wanted to understand what was Basho seeing.
0:18:37 So he went and did like the Okunohosomichi walk.
0:18:39 You know, the road to the north.
0:18:41 And he went and he walked the Tokaido.
0:18:43 And he went and he walked Shikoku.
0:18:45 So he started doing all this when he was really young.
0:18:49 And then he had this whole career, this wild career, incredible, ridiculous career.
0:18:53 And right around the time we met, he started getting back into walking.
0:18:58 And in 2013, he invited me to come and do Kumano Kodo with him.
0:19:01 And I had never heard of Kumano Kodo.
0:19:02 I had never heard of any of this stuff.
0:19:04 I didn’t even really know what the Tokaido was.
0:19:07 I knew there was a Shinkansen that was called the Tokaido Shinkansen.
0:19:09 I didn’t really know what the Nakasendo was.
0:19:10 I didn’t know what any of this stuff was.
0:19:14 And basically, John was like, hey, come, let’s do some research.
0:19:15 Like, it’ll be interesting.
0:19:26 And he brought me to Koya-san, which is this Shingon Buddhist sort of epicenter in, I think it’s just in Nara prefecture, but it’s on the Key Peninsula.
0:19:28 It’s part of Kumano Kodo.
0:19:31 And I was just blown away.
0:19:39 I mean, Koya-san is one of the most amazing, beautiful, power spot places I think I’d ever been.
0:19:57 And Kumano Kodo, for people, just to wrap a little context around that, it is, well, I’ll keep it simple and let you fill in the gaps, but it’s more than a pilgrimage trail.
0:20:05 It’s like a pilgrimage delta of sorts, but you’re going up the delta as opposed to out to the ocean in a sense.
0:20:14 And it is the, if I’m getting this right, World Heritage Site, Sister Pilgrimage Trail to the Camino de Santiago.
0:20:16 Am I getting that right?
0:20:16 Right.
0:20:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:20:24 So when you get a stamp book for one on the opposite side of that piece of paper that’s folded, you have the other pilgrimage trail.
0:20:26 Exactly.
0:20:29 So yeah, there’s only two UNESCO World Heritage Pilgrimage Trails in the world.
0:20:33 It’s Compostela de Santiago and then Kumano Kodo.
0:20:36 Actually, this year is the 20th anniversary of them getting the UNESCO.
0:20:39 So there’s all these banners and they’re very excited.
0:20:43 The Kumano Kodo is very confusing because it’s a network of trails.
0:20:49 So there’s Kohechi, Nakahechi, Ohechi, Iseiji, and Omine Okugakemichi.
0:20:51 So those are kind of like the five main ones.
0:20:52 Everybody get that?
0:21:01 And the problem is, is like when people are like, oh, I went and did Kumano Kodo, they’ve 99.99% of the time they walked what’s called the Nakahechi.
0:21:07 And it’s a very cool bit, but it’s a very, very, very tiny bit of the whole.
0:21:12 But that’s an interesting, we can talk more about it if you want, but it’s an interesting exercise in branding.
0:21:18 Like how the Nakahechi became the thing that all essentially foreigners would come to do to do the Kumano Kodo.
0:21:21 Let’s sidebar, how the hell did that happen?
0:21:28 I’m super curious because I did part of the Nakahechi with my brother long ago.
0:21:40 And if we were to, as we did, go to a guiding company in Japan and say, we want to do the Kumano Kodo, then lo and behold, that’s where we end up.
0:21:42 So how did that happen?
0:21:53 So essentially, it’s about prefectural investment in infrastructure and like sort of inbound facing books, guides, websites, things like that.
0:22:00 And Wakayama Prefecture, and actually the city of Tanabe in particular, had a, I think he’s Canadian, this guy named Brad.
0:22:03 He’s kind of like this epic, I’ve never met him.
0:22:04 I’ve never met Brad.
0:22:06 It’s like Madonna, Brad.
0:22:10 Brad ended up living in Tanabe City for some reason for like a jet program.
0:22:13 And right around the time, I guess, when it got the UNESCO.
0:22:16 This is an English teaching program, right?
0:22:18 English teaching program that kind of puts you in the countryside.
0:22:20 You know, you kind of come to Japan.
0:22:21 You don’t live in Tokyo.
0:22:21 You don’t live in Osaka.
0:22:23 You get far flung.
0:22:29 And so he ended up in Tanabe and it was right when the UNESCO thing happened and he just ran.
0:22:32 He became like the, he’s like, I’m going to make all the English literature.
0:22:33 I’m going to do it.
0:22:35 And they just focused on that Nakahechi bit.
0:22:36 And so that just became it.
0:22:41 You know, Wakayama put the money in, they put up the signs, they made the pamphlets.
0:22:47 It’s, they worked with the tour agencies and, you know, they kind of won the, won the tourist
0:22:47 bucks.
0:22:49 So that’s amazing.
0:22:54 So John brought me to Koyasan and that just activated like everything in my body about like
0:22:56 things I want to explore.
0:22:58 I didn’t know the side of Japan existed.
0:23:01 These archetypes that you have or don’t have these mentors that you have or don’t have that
0:23:03 open up entirely new pathways.
0:23:09 And this one little trip was sort of like, oh my God, there’s this network of pilgrimage
0:23:10 trails and there’s these other trails.
0:23:13 And then I just became immediately addicted to it.
0:23:16 Like instantly, instantly had to do all of them.
0:23:19 What grabbed you?
0:23:20 Right.
0:23:21 What had teeth?
0:23:27 What was it that took a pit bull grasp on your mind or soul and wouldn’t let go?
0:23:31 It was the combination of incredible fecundity.
0:23:31 We’ll use that word again.
0:23:34 Fecundity of the nature.
0:23:39 I mean, it’s just, you know, the Key Peninsula is one of the wettest places on the planet.
0:23:42 Actually, it gets more rainfall than the Amazon and you just feel it.
0:23:45 I mean, it is just green and mossy and lush.
0:23:52 This is what you described, I think, as the dangling penis of Japan in the last conversation.
0:23:55 It’s a moist, dangling penis of Japan.
0:23:58 So there’s just this incredible richness of nature.
0:24:00 The air was amazing.
0:24:04 The religious and spiritual syncretism that’s happening there.
0:24:09 And one of the reasons why it’s UNESCO World Heritage is that Japan, throughout most of its
0:24:12 history, Buddhism and Shinto, Shinto is the native religion.
0:24:18 The sort of animist, native Japanese sort of spiritual philosophy, theology.
0:24:24 Shinto, which are shrines, and Buddhism, which is temples, they used to coexist extremely
0:24:27 peacefully and they often would be on the same grounds.
0:24:34 And then the Meiji Restoration happened in part of essentially imbuing or creating this
0:24:35 God narrative around the emperor.
0:24:37 They said, hey, we have to split these things.
0:24:38 We want Shinto to be stronger.
0:24:40 This is like a very TLDR.
0:24:44 And so Buddhism and Shinto were forcibly split and a lot of temples were destroyed.
0:24:50 And what was special about the Kii Peninsula was because it was so kind of far away from
0:24:53 Edo, it’s so far away from Tokyo, they kind of didn’t split.
0:24:56 So it’s one of these places, there’s a few places left in Japan.
0:25:02 Yamagata has Dewa Sanzan, which is the three mountains of Dewa, which also has a lot of
0:25:03 syncretic history that’s still present.
0:25:07 And Kumano Kodo is also very syncretic between Shinto and Buddhism.
0:25:09 So that was exciting to see that.
0:25:11 It just felt great.
0:25:12 The ceremonies are amazing.
0:25:14 The temples are amazing.
0:25:17 You can do Shikubo, which is what’s called when you stay at a temple.
0:25:19 Very easy to do, very affordable.
0:25:22 The graveyard up in Koi San was just astounding.
0:25:24 One of the absolute most beautiful places.
0:25:27 So peaceful.
0:25:29 And it’s like all these like shogunates and daimyo.
0:25:33 It’s like the Hollywood Walk of Fame for like Japanese samurai.
0:25:36 It’s pretty interesting.
0:25:40 So I want to give people just a little bit of context real quick.
0:25:45 So Meiji Restoration, this says it began around 1868.
0:25:50 This marked the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and restoration of imperial rule.
0:25:55 And then that was also, correct me if I’m getting this wrong, but sort of a signpost
0:26:02 and an opening for a lot of the rapid modernization and transformation of Japan
0:26:08 that we think of even extending into the mid-1900s.
0:26:12 And then one last thing, I just want to say, Basho, for people who were like, who the hell
0:26:13 was that?
0:26:14 You mentioned it briefly.
0:26:17 I don’t know who the other foreigner was who was wandering around Japan.
0:26:20 I’m blanking on his name, but he was like, I want to see what Basho saw.
0:26:22 Was John.
0:26:23 Yes, right.
0:26:24 My buddy John.
0:26:27 The most famous Japanese poet of the Edo period.
0:26:30 And he put haiku on the map.
0:26:34 He put haiku on the guy who made haiku cool.
0:26:36 And there you have it.
0:26:39 Tell me if I’m getting my timelines right.
0:26:46 Did part of the appeal of these trails coincide, or maybe it was just reinforced at a later
0:26:53 point by you getting sober and deciding to run and move around in that way?
0:26:56 Or did that come later?
0:26:57 For sure.
0:26:57 Yeah.
0:26:59 And this is an extension of that for sure.
0:27:05 I think getting sober and that stint I had living in Palo Alto and kind of just upping,
0:27:09 like we were talking about self-worth, the sense of scarcity, getting rid of that sense
0:27:12 of scarcity, creating more senses of abundance in your life.
0:27:14 I felt a real abundance here, you know?
0:27:19 And then also watching John, because John is this, I mean, truly, I don’t think anyone’s
0:27:23 had more of a bigger, more positive impact on my life than John.
0:27:27 And in my book that’s coming out in May, that things become other things, he’s featured
0:27:29 heavily in it as kind of this background character.
0:27:31 We started doing walks together.
0:27:36 We’d spend like weeks and months together every year in starting about 2012, 2013.
0:27:38 We do, okay, let’s do this walk.
0:27:39 Let’s do this trip.
0:27:39 Let’s do this.
0:27:40 And it was just so easy.
0:27:42 We just traveled together effortlessly.
0:27:46 It was like one of these things where it just totally on the same wavelength, completely
0:27:48 copacetic, just totally easy.
0:27:56 And I would watch John and John’s Japanese is so exceptional, so perfect, so high register
0:28:00 imperial because, so he started doing tea ceremony when he was like 19 in Kyoto.
0:28:05 They had like a super hard to get into tea ceremony temple.
0:28:07 He just kept knocking on the door until they finally let him in.
0:28:09 And he’s been doing that for 40 years.
0:28:17 He was the CEO of Sky TV, which was Rupert Murdoch’s first cable satellite network that was
0:28:18 launched out of Japan.
0:28:19 He ran that for 10 years.
0:28:23 He is just operating at this extremely high level.
0:28:24 So we would be walking.
0:28:26 We’d be doing these, you know, walking the kohichi, walking the nakahichi.
0:28:32 And I would watch him interact with farmers and I’d watch him interact with locals.
0:28:42 And I had never seen someone move people through the use of polite language and curiosity about
0:28:48 their history, curiosity about what was happening nearby, what had happened nearby.
0:28:55 And watching everyone become our ally in this way that was so profound and exciting, that
0:28:56 was another big part of it.
0:28:59 Because I was trying to figure out, what am I doing in Japan?
0:29:01 Because I wasn’t working for Japanese companies.
0:29:04 I didn’t have a partner then.
0:29:08 And I was like, okay, I have the language ability and this is my base.
0:29:10 But like, what am I really doing here?
0:29:14 And spending that time with John and watching him move through these old roads, these pilgrimage
0:29:19 routes and ensorcel everybody that we met with this love.
0:29:20 It’s sorcel.
0:29:21 Craig, you just GRE’d me.
0:29:23 What does that mean?
0:29:26 You know, just do a little magic trick on them.
0:29:28 Oh, I’m going to use that.
0:29:30 Totally pull them over to your side.
0:29:32 It’s a magic trick just to use that word.
0:29:35 It was so profound for me to watch that happen.
0:29:37 And then I started emulating it.
0:29:42 And then basically that became a foundation for me after, I’d say it took me about three
0:29:46 years before I felt like I had studied enough with John to start walking on my own.
0:29:49 So it wasn’t until about 2015, 2016.
0:29:54 And how much of the studying was routes, where to stay, and how much of that was the interaction
0:29:55 piece?
0:29:59 I’d say it was like 80% interaction and 20% routes.
0:30:05 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:31:29 This is going to get nerdy, but a lot of my listeners are nerdy, so they might enjoy it.
0:31:37 You mentioned politely speaking, and I don’t want to gloss over this because politely speaking
0:31:40 in the US is like, please, thank you.
0:31:41 Yes, sir.
0:31:42 Yes, ma’am.
0:31:45 There’s a lot more to it in Japanese, right?
0:31:46 You have kegol.
0:31:51 You have exalting language, which you can use to put the person on a higher pedestal.
0:31:52 You have humbling language.
0:31:56 You’ve got a million grades.
0:31:58 You have this whole spectrum in between.
0:32:05 There are entire books written on how to write short letters that are polite at the right level
0:32:07 with the right combination of ingredients.
0:32:19 What made the language that he used so enchanting maybe, so recruiting for the people he interacted
0:32:20 with in the countryside?
0:32:24 I think it was like, okay, he had spent 40 years doing tea ceremony.
0:32:29 And tea ceremony, by the way, is not just like five minutes, you fold a handkerchief,
0:32:29 you pour some tea, you’re done.
0:32:33 It’s like six, seven, eight hours, like a full tea ceremony.
0:32:38 And you’re cooking meals, and you’re presenting stuff, and it’s a really involved thing.
0:32:40 And so there’s a lot of language connected with tea ceremony.
0:32:45 So first of all, he’d just been studying this kind of imperial tea ceremony language.
0:32:50 And then I think being a CEO, where 100% of his interactions were in Japanese,
0:32:54 I mean, he just learned to talk at a CEO level with everyone.
0:32:59 So we’re walking through, we’re meeting farmers, and he’s treating them with the same reverence
0:33:04 he would treat Sonsan, the CEO of SoftBank, with whom he’d have breakfast with once a week
0:33:06 or whatever when he was writing his thing.
0:33:10 And so I think these people, first of all, were just blown away that we could speak Japanese
0:33:11 to begin with.
0:33:16 But then secondly, that they were being seen in a way that they had never been seen before.
0:33:20 They felt, I think, elevated in a way that no one had ever elevated them before.
0:33:23 And kind of weirdly, no Japanese person would probably think to elevate them.
0:33:31 And John, I think, just has this intuitive sense of how to make people feel great.
0:33:33 And he wants, it comes from this totally genuine place.
0:33:39 And he’s so encyclopedically versed about the history of the area.
0:33:42 So he’ll be asking questions, these deep historical questions.
0:33:44 And you can just see people so moved by it.
0:33:46 Like, oh my god, this person really cares about where we are.
0:33:51 And then on top of that, he’s just using verb conjugations.
0:33:54 Or like, you know, they’ll give us, they’ll say, would you like some tea?
0:33:59 And he’ll be like, oh my god, it would be my most cherished honor to accept your humble tea.
0:34:02 You know, like basically something like that in Japanese, which doesn’t sound,
0:34:04 you say it in English and you’re like, all right, shut up, you dickhead.
0:34:10 But like, in Japanese, if you could do it, if you do it the right way, it’s sort of like, wow.
0:34:10 Oh, wow.
0:34:11 Okay, cool.
0:34:12 This person gets it.
0:34:12 Wow.
0:34:13 Okay, yeah, come on in.
0:34:20 So that was profound to see because like, look, I come from a place where we spoke.
0:34:23 It’s like working class, potty mouth to the max.
0:34:24 I grew up with that.
0:34:28 And then I got to Tokyo and I studied or whatever, but they weren’t teaching us tea ceremony Japanese
0:34:29 at school.
0:34:30 And I was playing music.
0:34:31 And so I was in the studio.
0:34:32 I was in clubs.
0:34:35 You know, I learned that like Yakuza Japanese.
0:34:41 It was that golden guy drinking with guys who were like missing pinky fingers and stuff.
0:34:43 So like a lot of people speak Japanese.
0:34:44 This is the danger.
0:34:47 It’s like, you don’t speak Japanese, that opens a lot of doors.
0:34:49 You speak a little bit and people are like delighted that you speak a little bit.
0:34:54 Then once you cross a threshold, they expect more of you and then you don’t hit that politeness.
0:34:56 And then you’re kind of insulting in a weird way.
0:35:03 Yeah, you know enough for them to take it personally when you don’t get the politeness right.
0:35:04 Yeah, for them to be like, yeah, why aren’t you?
0:35:06 You could level up a little more for me, I think.
0:35:12 So I was not polite, but I was definitely not in the super polite zone.
0:35:16 So I would say in the last decade, my Japanese went up multiple, multiple levels.
0:35:21 Thanks to, again, you know, like we were talking about in the previous episode about having people
0:35:24 near you that are better than you, just a couple levels better than you.
0:35:25 And then you learn so much from that.
0:35:28 So when I travel with John, like I don’t say anything.
0:35:30 I’m just listening, taking notes the whole time.
0:35:33 You know, it’s like, oh yeah, wow, you can say that.
0:35:34 Oh shit, you can say that?
0:35:34 Cool.
0:35:35 Okay, yeah, that’s amazing.
0:35:36 That’s so cool.
0:35:47 And just to underscore the complexity of this, a lot of younger generation native Japanese speakers
0:35:53 have trouble with a lot of this politeness and they screw it up and they make mistakes.
0:36:00 And you could probably give a good example, but the more polite you get, and that can take
0:36:03 a number of forms, the longer everything gets.
0:36:05 So, right?
0:36:05 Yeah.
0:36:08 So you would have like, I’m trying to think of a good example.
0:36:13 I’m not going to be great at this because it’s been a hundred years, but this also doesn’t
0:36:14 translate well to English.
0:36:15 None of it translates well.
0:36:21 But I remember my friend’s father, who is from New Zealand, but worked in Japan for like
0:36:22 15 years.
0:36:28 He was somewhere, I want to say in the US, and these Japanese businessmen came in and
0:36:29 they were speaking Japanese.
0:36:39 And he very politely sort of edged into the conversation and was like, thank you so much for indulging
0:36:42 me with your beautiful Japanese, you know, effectively.
0:36:45 It’s a bad translation, but it was like,
0:36:49 you know, that kind of thing.
0:36:49 Yeah.
0:36:50 Yeah.
0:36:53 Which otherwise would be super, super, super short.
0:36:54 I don’t know if I fucked that up, but.
0:36:54 No.
0:36:57 And for the listeners out there, like Tim’s Japanese is very, very good.
0:36:58 Like very, very good.
0:37:01 You’re doing well.
0:37:02 Thank you.
0:37:02 Yeah.
0:37:03 Thanks.
0:37:06 It’s been 25 years, more, 27 years.
0:37:07 I got to get back.
0:37:07 You’ve inspired me.
0:37:13 So quick sidebar in Japan, you know, like a lot of folks here are like, what do we all
0:37:13 look the same?
0:37:18 Like an Asian person might say, because white people have sometimes trouble or just non-Asians
0:37:19 have trouble telling some Asians apart.
0:37:22 But when I was in Japan, they were like, you know who you look like?
0:37:24 I had two people say this to me, but different celebrities.
0:37:26 And I was like, no, who do I look like?
0:37:27 And they’re like, Harrison Ford.
0:37:30 And I was like, I’m not sure about that.
0:37:38 But John, when you say his Japanese is very good, that makes me kind of take a step back
0:37:47 because when we walked in Japan, I was taking notes and you had adopted the John playbook
0:37:53 so well that whether it was a farmer we bumped into or in the case, and we’ll get to this,
0:37:59 I’m sure, of a small semi ghost town that we would walk through and the mayor would chase
0:38:09 us down and give us all little plush town mascots.
0:38:11 That’s another thing we could talk about.
0:38:15 In any case, just incredibly impressed with your Japanese.
0:38:23 And yes, you’ve been there a long time, but it seems to me like the vast majority of folks
0:38:28 who live in Japan, even if they’re there for a long time as non-natives, really do not learn
0:38:29 much Japanese.
0:38:30 That’s my impression.
0:38:35 Maybe that’s unfair, but at least the vast majority of people I know who have moved there
0:38:36 barely speak a lick.
0:38:38 Yeah, you have to commit.
0:38:39 I do think there’s a new generation.
0:38:45 I mean, I think now we’re seeing more and more people who are really great at Japanese who
0:38:47 are coming in and just sort of existing.
0:38:52 I mean, I think YouTube is just full of people that speak amazing Japanese now and stuff like
0:38:52 that.
0:38:53 So I think there’s this new generation.
0:38:59 And actually, I mean, part of what this book also kind of talks about is being, I feel like
0:39:05 I’m one of the first true immigrants to choose to not live in America, to choose to leave America,
0:39:09 to look out into the world and be like, where do I want to live and have America not be that
0:39:09 place?
0:39:11 And I think we’re seeing more of that.
0:39:16 And I just, anecdotally, from my experience, I’ve been encountering more and more incredible,
0:39:23 super talented, brilliant, great Japanese-speaking foreigners here in the last five or six years
0:39:25 than I have certainly 15 or 20 years ago.
0:39:31 And I think there was, in the 80s and 90s, the expat trope was, you come here, you teach
0:39:35 English, you make an insane amount of money doing that, and you don’t really learn any Japanese
0:39:36 besides bar Japanese.
0:39:39 And I think that was very, very common for many people.
0:39:45 Yeah, my reference point might be outdated, because I was there in 92, back in the Pliocene
0:39:50 era, and that was like peak David Spector days, right?
0:39:58 Where it’s like, if you looked exceptionally non-Japanese and spoke pretty good conversational
0:40:04 Japanese, you ended up on television as, you know, gaijin talento, like foreigner talent.
0:40:06 Okay, let’s get back to the walks.
0:40:08 I took us on a huge side quest.
0:40:16 When did, after studying at the knee of John and getting comfortable with doing these walks
0:40:18 on your own, what form did that take?
0:40:22 And what purpose did it serve for you?
0:40:25 I was doing these, and I was just having such an incredible time doing it.
0:40:29 And I started kind of writing about it a little bit on my blog, or I’d tweet about it or something.
0:40:31 And actually, Kevin Kelly reached out.
0:40:35 And he said, hey, I’m going to be giving a talk in Tokyo.
0:40:36 Now you know who he was.
0:40:37 Now I, yeah, yeah.
0:40:39 He had walked to Pacifica a couple times.
0:40:41 He’s like, hey, I’m giving a talk in Tokyo.
0:40:42 I’d love to walk part of the Nakasendo.
0:40:46 And I’d done Nakasendo with John a couple of times, like bits of it.
0:40:47 I was like, great.
0:40:48 Like, let’s walk it together.
0:40:49 So me and you.
0:40:53 And so to prepare for that, I went and walked a little chunk of it on my own.
0:40:54 I was like, okay, this is good.
0:40:55 I want to make sure I don’t kill Kevin Kelly.
0:40:57 And we set that up and we did that walk.
0:41:00 And that was probably 2014, 2015.
0:41:05 And it was so much fun that just the two of us, and we were like, oh my God, we need to
0:41:07 invite more people to do stuff like this.
0:41:09 So we did.
0:41:16 So in 2016, and then I was thinking about, at this point, I was like, these walks, there’s
0:41:19 a richness here because like just the people you’re meeting, the conversations that you’re
0:41:23 having, the photographs that I was taking, the stories I was hearing.
0:41:25 I was like, I want to give shape to these things.
0:41:25 They’re so immaterial.
0:41:27 Like you do the walk and it disappears.
0:41:29 It kind of, it just goes up in the air like smoke.
0:41:30 And I was like, I want to do a book.
0:41:34 And so Dan Rubin is a photographer friend of mine from ages ago.
0:41:36 And I was like, Dan, let’s walk the Kumano Kodo.
0:41:42 And we’ll do like eight days, nine days, and we’ll photograph it.
0:41:46 And then we’ll hide in a farmhouse and we’ll be in the farmhouse for a week.
0:41:48 And we have to produce the entire photo book in that week.
0:41:49 And it’s like, we just have to time boxes.
0:41:50 We’re busy people.
0:41:51 Like, we just got to do this.
0:41:55 Because I just wanted to, these walks just really demanded, like, give them a shape,
0:41:56 give them a shape.
0:41:56 This is 2016.
0:41:59 What do you mean by give them a shape?
0:42:04 Give them a form, like make them immutable in some way because they were just so immaterial.
0:42:09 And so, yeah, I was like, okay, what’s like the most minimum viable shape you can give it?
0:42:11 And it’s like a photo book kind of felt like that.
0:42:12 And so we did it.
0:42:13 We did the walk.
0:42:14 We hid in a farmhouse.
0:42:17 We made the book, kickstarted it, you know, sold it, did really well.
0:42:20 And that activated something in me too.
0:42:24 It reminded me of how much I love books because it had been a while since I had made a book book.
0:42:32 And then Kevin brought over Hugh Howie, who’s the author of the Silo series and the Silo Apple TV show.
0:42:34 Wool and all of that.
0:42:35 Wool, all that.
0:42:39 So Kevin, Hugh, and I then walked the Kumano Kodo in the fall of 2016.
0:42:42 And that was so much fun.
0:42:44 And we were like, oh my God, we got to do this with like bigger groups.
0:42:49 So it was this really organic kind of escalation of like, okay, you know, this is an interesting thing.
0:42:55 But at the same time, like as much as I enjoyed being with these people, I was doing these exploratory walks on my own.
0:43:02 And I realized that there was definitely a register or a tenor of the walk that only existed when I was alone.
0:43:04 And I wanted to explore that more.
0:43:08 And then that is what really kicked off the big solo walks.
0:43:10 Let’s hear about it.
0:43:15 And maybe you could include your discussion of your rules of walking.
0:43:21 The first, I would say, big, true walk I did was 2019.
0:43:23 I had just launched my membership program.
0:43:31 Basically, in 2018, I’d spent the year working on a bunch of magazine articles about walking in Japan that got rejected from every magazine.
0:43:33 And I got ghosted by editors.
0:43:36 And I was in this really depressed kind of space.
0:43:38 And I had been doing the writing residencies.
0:43:39 I had been working on a novel that I couldn’t sell.
0:43:41 Anyway, there’s a bunch of stuff going on.
0:43:42 And I was like, I didn’t.
0:43:43 A daughter who leaves her father?
0:43:44 No, I’m kidding.
0:43:51 That was after I had all the bottles of Nihon shoes sitting around.
0:43:54 So it was the end of 2018.
0:43:56 I was like, what should I do?
0:43:59 And I did Zoom calls with every journalist friend I had.
0:44:02 And they’re like, Craig, you have an audience.
0:44:04 I had a newsletter that was mildly popular.
0:44:05 They’re like, you have an audience.
0:44:06 You know what you want to write about.
0:44:08 Just launch a membership program.
0:44:12 And at that time, Substack was sort of nascent.
0:44:15 And subscriptions were kind of becoming a thing.
0:44:16 And Memberful had launched.
0:44:17 And Patreon had launched.
0:44:20 And people were kind of okay with the idea.
0:44:22 So I launched a membership program in January 2019.
0:44:28 And then it took me a little while.
0:44:35 But within a few months, I was deriving a certain permission from the fact that people were paying me to be a walker.
0:44:36 But essentially, that was the pitch.
0:44:38 It was like, you don’t get anything by joining this membership program.
0:44:39 Now you get a ton of stuff.
0:44:43 Like, if you join the membership program now, you get like 120 hours of video.
0:44:46 Like, there’s so much stuff you get access to.
0:44:49 At the time, it was, I’m going to walk and tell you about it.
0:44:51 This is like NPR.
0:44:53 I’m going to walk and I’m going to write about it.
0:44:54 And like, you’re funding that.
0:44:57 And enough people joined where it was like, okay, this is a thing.
0:45:00 And so for my first big walk, I did Nakasendo.
0:45:02 So, you know, I have a place.
0:45:05 I was based mainly in Kamakura then.
0:45:07 And so I walked Kamakura up to Tokyo.
0:45:15 Tokyo all the way up through Saitama, Nagano into Gifu, all the way to Kyoto.
0:45:17 And then from Kyoto, I ended up going down.
0:45:20 I walked some other bits in the Ki Peninsula.
0:45:22 But the main thing was the Nakasendo.
0:45:23 What distance are we talking?
0:45:25 What does that add up to?
0:45:26 It took 30 days.
0:45:29 And I want to say it was about 600 kilometers, something like that.
0:45:31 It was a pretty, it was a serious walk.
0:45:37 Which is roughly 373 miles, just for people to put that in perspective.
0:45:43 And up until then, the longest solo thing I had done was about seven or eight days.
0:45:45 So this felt like a pretty big jump.
0:45:49 And it was really hard.
0:45:51 I was doing, I miscalculated all the distances.
0:45:53 I like underestimated.
0:45:56 By day four, I was like, oh my God.
0:45:57 What am I going to do?
0:45:59 I didn’t really even know how to wear my backpack properly.
0:46:00 It was like cutting into my shoulders.
0:46:02 I wasn’t doing the waist strap.
0:46:05 So I was wildly under-experienced.
0:46:06 I should have known better.
0:46:08 But the days, you know, I was doing like 30, 40K days.
0:46:09 I was in shock.
0:46:10 My body was in shock.
0:46:12 And every night I was publishing a little thing.
0:46:13 I was publishing a photo.
0:46:15 And I ran this SMS experiment.
0:46:21 I had this thesis that people were kind of tired of email and people were tired of social
0:46:21 media.
0:46:25 And like the most intimate space on the phone was kind of your SMS messaging app.
0:46:31 So I built a one-to-many SMS tool that would allow me to publish every night.
0:46:35 Everyone could subscribe, put their numbers into this thing, and they would get an SMS from
0:46:37 me every night at the end of the day.
0:46:38 And it’d be a photo.
0:46:40 It’d be like a little, like three sentences about the day.
0:46:45 And so I did that and you could respond to it, but I couldn’t see the responses.
0:46:47 So wait, what is it?
0:46:49 If you couldn’t see the responses, what happened to them?
0:46:50 So, so, so, so, so hold on.
0:46:50 So hold on.
0:46:53 The responses were being collected in this database.
0:46:54 Okay, there we go.
0:47:00 And then I hired, I hired, I hired a designer to lay it all out for me in a print-on-demand
0:47:00 book.
0:47:05 And all of the responses, my little photo of the day, my little like three sentences, and
0:47:07 then all the responses for the day would be laid out in a book.
0:47:09 And I had no idea how many there were.
0:47:12 And then the idea was that at the end of the walk, I would come home and the book would
0:47:13 be waiting for me at home.
0:47:18 So I’d have this analog experience of like, I got home from the walk and the book was there
0:47:20 and it was so incredible.
0:47:24 It was thousands and thousands of these messages from people.
0:47:30 And then I spent months writing essays, responding to all the questions and messages that people
0:47:32 sent in there, like in putting that up on my blog.
0:47:39 So it was this beautiful kind of like really long, the loops for social media are so tight.
0:47:39 Right.
0:47:41 There’s seconds you post, you get responses.
0:47:43 And like, there’s something terrible about that.
0:47:45 You don’t have any time to reflect.
0:47:48 You don’t have any distance from the thing that you’re doing and what the expectations
0:47:49 are on the part of your, your audience.
0:47:55 And so to do this thing where there was basically a month built in where I wasn’t going to see
0:47:57 these responses and then…
0:47:58 Sorry, my dog’s vomiting.
0:47:59 Give me a sec.
0:48:03 That’s a new one for the podcast.
0:48:04 I know.
0:48:05 Okay.
0:48:06 Sorry.
0:48:08 Your dog hates SMS.
0:48:09 Sure.
0:48:09 Yeah.
0:48:12 Give me a second to deal with this.
0:48:17 Never had my dog vomit while I’m recording a podcast right next to me before.
0:48:18 That’s a new one.
0:48:20 This is the glamorous life of a podcaster, folks.
0:48:21 All right.
0:48:22 Give me, give me one second, man.
0:48:23 Please don’t lose your, your place.
0:48:25 Sorry, bud.
0:48:26 That was gross.
0:48:33 That could be worked into the, the intro.
0:48:35 That’ll be like the cold open of the show.
0:48:37 Okay.
0:48:38 Where were we?
0:48:41 So I got home and I got the responses and I got that book.
0:48:42 Yeah.
0:48:43 All right.
0:48:45 Then you spent months responding and then the loops.
0:48:46 That’s where it worked.
0:48:50 Because it was, it ended up being this thing of like, oh, wow, actually these social media,
0:48:55 the tightness of the social media loops feels really detrimental and there’s something really
0:48:59 negative and there’s something being lost there and not having more time and space between
0:49:02 very hurried call and response.
0:49:02 Exactly.
0:49:03 Exactly.
0:49:07 And you, you felt it in the responses too, that everyone knew I wasn’t going to see them
0:49:07 in real time.
0:49:13 So there was some really moving things and people were very, it was all anonymous and people
0:49:17 were very, I mean, it was almost like a confession booth for some people.
0:49:21 I mean, you know, it was, it was shocking, you know, it was like, you know, like my mother
0:49:25 just died yesterday and I’m thinking about this as, you know, I’m reading, you know, I’m
0:49:28 getting your message and I’m thinking about where you are on the walk and it, thank you
0:49:28 for doing this.
0:49:32 And it was just like these, how people want to, you know, weave what you’re doing and you
0:49:36 know, this kind of epic thing that you, this journey that you’re on and help them like put
0:49:37 in perspective things that are happening.
0:49:40 Anyway, it was good to see that and good to experience that.
0:49:46 And that led me to think about my own rules for how I wanted to be when I walked.
0:49:48 Let’s do it.
0:49:49 Pregnant pause.
0:49:55 Try to, we’ll be back after this commercial break.
0:49:55 After.
0:49:56 Yeah.
0:50:00 I’m just, I’m just cognizant of the fact that like, sometimes I’m just in bloviation mode,
0:50:02 but like the, basically here are my rules.
0:50:03 No news.
0:50:05 Good, good t-shirt.
0:50:06 Bloviation mode.
0:50:09 So my walk rules, you can’t read the news.
0:50:11 You’re not allowed to read the news.
0:50:12 There’s no social media.
0:50:14 And by you, that means Craig.
0:50:15 That means, yeah.
0:50:19 If you’re walking or if I’m walking, I’m always talking about me in the third person.
0:50:23 So you can’t read the news, you can’t do social media, you can’t touch any of that stuff.
0:50:28 Basically the idea is to just be radically present, radically, radically present and radically
0:50:32 cultivate like a boredom, an incredible sense of boredom and never teleport.
0:50:37 I mean, I think one of the weirdest things about being a contemporary human is like, first of all,
0:50:41 we’re never bored because we always have this stupid black mirror slab in our pocket, right?
0:50:44 That’s like always distracting us with some other dopamine hit.
0:50:47 And we’re constantly teleporting.
0:50:51 If there’s any millimeter of friction, if there’s one millisecond of friction in your life,
0:50:56 you just pull that stupid thing out and start sucking at the teat of whatever information,
0:50:59 you know, cow is in there, right?
0:51:04 So it’s kind of profound to feel boredom, you know?
0:51:10 And actually, in 2015, 2016, I did a 10-day Vipassana retreat.
0:51:15 And that was also foundational for me for thinking about this stuff.
0:51:17 I don’t know if, have you ever done the 10-day?
0:51:20 I have done a seven-day, not a 10-day.
0:51:22 So maybe you experienced this on the seven-day.
0:51:23 When did you do the seven-day?
0:51:24 How old were you?
0:51:29 I was, I want to say maybe, I think about this, 10 years ago?
0:51:29 Something like that?
0:51:30 Okay.
0:51:31 So, yeah.
0:51:33 Yeah, I guess, geez, 2015, 2016, 10 years ago.
0:51:34 Would have been late 30s.
0:51:35 Yeah.
0:51:41 So, for me, when I went to the Vipassana in Kyoto, which was great, by the way, it was amazing.
0:51:42 It was really well-run.
0:51:44 Food was amazing.
0:51:45 It was just great.
0:51:50 It took me like three days, four days to arrive at the retreat center, like psychically.
0:51:51 I just wasn’t there.
0:51:54 It took me about a day to realize I was experiencing information withdrawal.
0:51:57 Or stimulation withdrawal, too, right?
0:51:59 Yeah, stimulation, information withdrawal.
0:52:00 And I was getting angry.
0:52:01 And I was like, what is it?
0:52:02 Where is this anger coming from?
0:52:05 You’re just sitting there for 10 hours a day, you know, observing your body,
0:52:07 the physiological phenomenon that’s happening in your body.
0:52:12 And I was just observing this anger and going, wow, this is so bizarre because I don’t know
0:52:12 what’s triggering this.
0:52:19 And I realized, oh, my God, I’m so addicted to information and just being stimulated by a
0:52:20 phone or the internet or whatever.
0:52:24 And so, getting over that three, four days in and then having all the mystical, you know,
0:52:29 breaking down into particulate matter, which is something that I felt and could control by
0:52:32 the end of my Vipassana retreat, it was pretty bizarre.
0:52:37 And that feeling of attention control, which is, you know, basically what you’re learning
0:52:41 when you do that, was foundational for, I think, a lot of, you know, these rules that
0:52:43 I ended up applying to my walks.
0:52:47 And so, the walks end up for me being, it’s weeks.
0:52:50 It can be two, three, four, five, six weeks of walking.
0:52:53 And what’s critical is the repetition.
0:52:57 And what’s critical is actually the length, doing it every day, day after day after day.
0:53:05 And being off those tight loops of social media and being radically present, not teleporting,
0:53:06 saying hello to everybody.
0:53:09 I force myself to say hello to every single person I see.
0:53:14 And with photography, too, I kind of have these rules where I’m like, I have to take a portrait
0:53:15 of someone before 10 a.m.
0:53:17 Like I said, these really arbitrary rules.
0:53:22 And I just find that by doing that, by setting a, not an unreasonable number of them, but
0:53:24 like a few arbitrary rules, it really opens up the day.
0:53:26 It kind of like really sets the tone.
0:53:28 And, you know, it’d be like 9.55 in the morning.
0:53:30 I’d be like, oh my God, I have to hit my 10 a.m.
0:53:31 Portrait.
0:53:34 No one’s holding me to this, but like, you know, I just feel this covenant I’ve made with
0:53:34 myself.
0:53:36 I can’t break the covenant.
0:53:40 And I would just run into a shop, like there’d just be a shop next to me wherever I was on
0:53:41 the road.
0:53:43 It would be like a tatami shop in the middle of nowhere in Saitama.
0:53:46 And I would just be like, hey, hi, can I please take your portrait, you know?
0:53:50 And you would end up having this conversation, this incredible conversation.
0:53:55 And it would fill you, what I found is it filled me with this sense of possibility and
0:53:57 joy and fullness.
0:54:00 And that just kept escalating.
0:54:05 And I realized the Nakasendo walk was kind of the first big one, but I wasn’t operating
0:54:07 at full walk mode yet.
0:54:11 I was operating at about 65%, 70% walk mode for that first Nakasendo.
0:54:22 And full walk mode for me is I get up at eight, I walk 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50K a day, carry
0:54:23 my pack.
0:54:25 Sometimes I have two, three, four cameras on me.
0:54:26 Sometimes I’m shooting video.
0:54:28 Sometimes I’m doing binaural audio stuff.
0:54:30 I’m talking to people all day.
0:54:34 I am dictating notes constantly.
0:54:40 I find that when I cultivate that radical boredom, that radical sort of like in the momentness,
0:54:43 my mind immediately just wants to write.
0:54:45 I just, it can’t not write.
0:54:47 And it’s just writing about what I’m seeing.
0:54:53 And so I just, I set up like these series scripts to be able to dictate and not really have to
0:54:54 interact with my phone.
0:54:56 What do you mean by series scripts?
0:55:00 So you can kind of do shortcuts in iOS now where you can sort of tap a button on your
0:55:04 home screen and it appends to a note in notes.
0:55:05 It does like a transcription.
0:55:07 So you don’t have to interact with your phone.
0:55:08 You can just like tap a button.
0:55:09 You can set up.
0:55:11 So it’s a Siri call out.
0:55:11 You can do as well.
0:55:14 And you just dictate and it transcribes it pretty well.
0:55:18 I’m just walking and dictating and talking to myself like a crazy person.
0:55:19 And I’ll see someone.
0:55:20 I’ll interact with them.
0:55:21 I’ll photograph them.
0:55:23 I’ll have a 15 minute, 20 minute conversation.
0:55:25 What was it like around here?
0:55:26 Like, you know, what’s your background?
0:55:27 What are your kids doing?
0:55:28 Where do they live?
0:55:28 What’s going on?
0:55:31 You know, and just doing this all day long.
0:55:35 I get to my in, I get to my hotel at like 5 p.m., 4 or 5 p.m.
0:55:36 That’s the ideal.
0:55:38 Start doing laundry.
0:55:42 Oftentimes I’ll just grab something from the community because then I’m going to write and
0:55:43 edit photos.
0:55:44 Convini is a convenience store.
0:55:45 Convenience store.
0:55:47 Just grab a sandwich, grab an udon.
0:55:53 And then I’m writing every night for four or five hours, writing and editing photos every
0:55:53 single night.
0:55:57 So I’m doing eight hours of walking and then I’m doing five hours of creative work every night.
0:56:00 And I’m writing two, three, 4,000 words a night.
0:56:02 And then publishing it as well.
0:56:07 And that for me, that mode, that’s the max of what I can do.
0:56:13 Eight hours of walking, talking, photographing people, being radically, totally bored and present.
0:56:18 And then at night, just living in, because you forget so quickly.
0:56:21 If you don’t write immediately, you really do.
0:56:22 Things just like evaporate.
0:56:27 Just everything you experienced and felt and saw that day, the highlights, a certain conversation.
0:56:30 You know, I’ll be walking and there’ll be a conversation I have and I’ll be like,
0:56:31 that is it.
0:56:33 That’s the hook of the essay for tonight.
0:56:35 This one moment, this one person, this one moment.
0:56:41 And it just got me, first of all, it was this epic shugyo, which is ascetic training.
0:56:46 So like mountain asceticism here in Japan, Yamabushi, is a certain kind of asceticism.
0:56:51 And you train in the mountains and you do smoke inhalation training and you don’t sleep and
0:56:52 you whatever.
0:56:55 there’s like sleep deprivation and all sorts of stuff and fasting and whatnot.
0:56:59 And I had concocted essentially with these walks, my own ascetic training.
0:57:07 And if you spend 30 days doing that physical activity every day to that degree, your body
0:57:08 changes.
0:57:11 You become what I call a bobbing consciousness.
0:57:18 Like by day 20, 25 on the road where you’re walking 20, 30, 40 K, your legs are just so powerful.
0:57:24 And because you’re not teleporting, it feels like you are in a VR helmet that’s just floating
0:57:25 down the road.
0:57:26 It’s totally surreal.
0:57:27 It’s totally bizarre.
0:57:33 And then cranking out every night an essay, two, 3,000 words, editing photos.
0:57:39 So creating this visual narrative mix, doing that every night, 30 days.
0:57:43 And I’ve done now, you know, many, many walks where I’ve done this for multiple weeks and
0:57:44 months at a time.
0:57:49 You just develop this confidence that you can do that, which is wild.
0:57:52 I think this is how newspaper people feel like in the olden days.
0:57:56 You’re in there, you got your pencil in your, the thing comes in, you got 20 minutes to write
0:57:57 the lead.
0:57:58 You got to get this thing done.
0:58:02 I feel like there was a version of journalism and newspaper writing that trained you in like
0:58:07 the 60s, 70s, 80s, 50s, whatever, that is maybe harder to access today because we don’t
0:58:11 kind of, maybe the newspaper room doesn’t work at such an insane kind of pace anymore.
0:58:12 I don’t know.
0:58:15 I haven’t worked in a newspaper, so I’m just talking on my butt, but doing these kind of
0:58:21 weird aesthetic walk training exercises for me, it was like going to writing bootcamp.
0:58:23 It was going to life bootcamp.
0:58:29 And I would finish every day on these walks, get in bed and just feel that was the fullest
0:58:33 possible way I could have experienced that day.
0:58:38 Given the cards dealt to me of this day, there was no fuller version of this day.
0:58:43 And feeling that over and over and over again and understanding what that fullness can be
0:58:48 like when you come out of the walk, you bring that back to your everyday life, which you can’t
0:58:53 operate at that intensity all the time, but you can bring back that archetype of what a full
0:58:53 day feels like.
0:58:58 And man, that bleeds into your relationships with your friendships of fullness, you know,
0:59:02 with my stepdaughter, you know, with my family, with people I love.
0:59:05 It is totally pulled back into that space of life.
0:59:07 So it’s a pretty powerful thing.
0:59:09 Well, a few things strike me.
0:59:12 First is a recommendation for folks.
0:59:17 If you want to see some pretty interesting mountain ascetic practice, the marathon monks of
0:59:23 Mount Hieh, if people want to see some fantastic photographs and also descriptions of some of
0:59:30 these practices and the tiny modicum of food these monks consume while they’re running around
0:59:31 in these woven sandals.
0:59:32 It’s wild.
0:59:33 So people can check that out.
0:59:42 Also, what I was going to say is that what you just described strikes me as almost Vipassana
0:59:51 retreat in motion because part of what allows your mind to ultimately settle, right?
0:59:56 For the snow globe to settle and for you to experience the thing you experienced is this
1:00:06 reliable daily schedule and scaffolding so that you are not distracted by trivial choice and
1:00:08 shifting conditions.
1:00:13 So similarly, when you’re going on these walks and you have this schedule and you have these
1:00:15 rules by 10 o’clock, I must do X.
1:00:19 It’s like you’re a rock climber.
1:00:24 Let’s just say on an indoor route, could be outdoor, where you have the same route every day.
1:00:26 And on the first day, you’re figuring it out.
1:00:28 Then on the second day, you get a little more comfortable.
1:00:34 By the 10th day, your mind starts to go interesting places while you’re doing it with this
1:00:41 automaticity that you couldn’t experience if it were a different route every day, so to speak.
1:00:43 It’s not a perfect metaphor, but you get the idea.
1:00:47 So I guess one of my other rules for these walks too is everything has to be booked in advance.
1:00:51 Whenever I leave on a walk, I have a giant spreadsheet that has all of the distances.
1:00:55 It has all of the bookings for the inns.
1:01:00 I know what meals are included or not included because I don’t want to think about logistics
1:01:02 for one second when I’m out in the field.
1:01:04 Exactly what you’re saying.
1:01:08 Some people hear that and they go, oh my God, but aren’t you missing out on the romance of
1:01:11 you might meet an interesting farmer and they want to take you to their house?
1:01:14 It’s like, hey, if I meet an interesting farmer, I get his number.
1:01:15 I live in Japan.
1:01:16 I can just come back after the walk.
1:01:17 We can have our event.
1:01:21 It’s like, I don’t need to have that in the walk.
1:01:22 This is a different thing.
1:01:22 That’s a different thing.
1:01:30 And so for me, I absolutely thrive on that pre-scheduling of it all precisely because it
1:01:36 gives you the freedom to be so radically present and so, I think, observant and committed to the
1:01:38 craft of what you want to produce that day.
1:01:43 Thinking about where you’re going to stay tomorrow night is a huge cognitive burden.
1:01:44 It’s huge.
1:01:48 Making the reservations, calculating, it sucks.
1:01:50 It could take an hour, easily an hour.
1:01:51 You think it’s like, oh, it’s a 10-minute thing.
1:01:52 It can easily take an hour.
1:01:58 So I spend probably, if I’m going to do a month of walking, I spend a week of making reservations
1:02:00 to do a month of walking.
1:02:02 And just for people who are like, wait, what?
1:02:03 A week?
1:02:05 The way that I sometimes, this may not be fair.
1:02:09 Tell me if this is as outdated as my perception of foreigners speaking Japanese.
1:02:12 Although I still think there are a lot of lazy non-Japanese who don’t speak Japanese.
1:02:17 But the description I give people when they’re like, I’m going to Japan and I’m going to live
1:02:17 there.
1:02:23 If they’re visiting and they’re going to stay at a nice hotel, it’s a different experience.
1:02:26 But if they’re like, I’m going to move there for two months, I’m like, okay, let me just
1:02:30 tell you that you think Japan is Blade Runner.
1:02:36 I’d say it’s 60% Blade Runner, depending on where you are.
1:02:40 And then it’s at least 40% DMV.
1:02:47 Like the number of triplicate copies that you’re going to have to sign, the amount of fucking
1:02:52 paperwork, the number of times you’re going to have to try to get a hold of someone is going
1:02:53 to shock you.
1:02:56 So a week of settling logistics.
1:02:57 A week of settling.
1:03:01 And a lot of it is calling people because they don’t have websites or they don’t take
1:03:01 online bookings.
1:03:04 And like, it’s shocking how much trust there is.
1:03:08 It’s like, you know, you call this in, they go, hey, hello, it’s the end.
1:03:11 You know, that’s kind of like what they sound like in Japanese, basically.
1:03:15 And you go, hey, I’d like to, oh, honorable, sir.
1:03:16 I would love to book.
1:03:16 Hey, you want to, okay.
1:03:17 You want to stay?
1:03:18 When do you stay in?
1:03:18 Okay.
1:03:20 May, May 12th.
1:03:20 Okay.
1:03:20 Okay.
1:03:21 Yeah, sure.
1:03:22 Wait, why don’t you, okay.
1:03:23 What do you, what?
1:03:24 Oh, you want dinner?
1:03:24 Okay.
1:03:25 Uh, sure.
1:03:25 Okay.
1:03:26 We’ll see you on May 12th.
1:03:27 Bye.
1:03:29 Like, that’s how reservations are sometimes done.
1:03:33 And you’re like, and you arrive, you arrive on May 12th and you’re like, are they, are they,
1:03:35 was that really a reservation?
1:03:36 You know?
1:03:38 You’re like, what the fuck was that?
1:03:41 I had this experience firsthand with you.
1:03:47 So you and Kevin and I in a small group did a walk in Japan and it’s like, you’d show up
1:03:49 and you’d be like, are they here?
1:03:49 I don’t know.
1:03:51 Maybe, maybe not.
1:03:52 We’ll find out.
1:03:53 We’ll find out.
1:03:59 And it’s not like if they’re not there, you just walk four doors down and you have a holiday.
1:04:00 No, no.
1:04:03 I mean, the experience of booking is probably what it was like booking in the 1950s.
1:04:06 Like, honestly, like that hasn’t changed much.
1:04:11 Japan is Blade Runner is what we imagine the future would be in 2000.
1:04:14 And then it just never evolved beyond that, basically.
1:04:15 It’s been stuck.
1:04:18 It’s been stuck in 2000 for the last 25 years.
1:04:20 So question for you.
1:04:20 Yep.
1:04:24 2021 is what I have written down here.
1:04:30 You had an essay, a piece come out in Wired magazine, Walking Across Japan, Disconnected and
1:04:30 Bored.
1:04:35 I remember reading this piece and you did certain things.
1:04:41 You imposed certain restrictions, say on digital distractions, to induce productive boredom.
1:04:47 I’m wondering if you could maybe describe briefly what you did then and what you do now.
1:04:52 That Wired essay kind of is exactly what we’ve been talking about.
1:04:57 Just the no social media, no distraction, no podcasts, no music even.
1:04:58 Basic flip phone, right?
1:05:03 You downgraded to a basic flip phone and an offline Kindle.
1:05:03 Am I getting those right?
1:05:09 I didn’t downgrade to a flip phone, but I ran software on my iPhone that disabled everything.
1:05:11 It disabled like, because I needed GPS.
1:05:13 I needed a map.
1:05:14 I needed to have a map.
1:05:18 So I needed, I mean, I didn’t need GPS, but I could have gone even more analog, but I had
1:05:18 GPS.
1:05:22 I ran the software called Freedom, which is actually pretty good.
1:05:24 Freedom.to is the website.
1:05:28 I’ve used that for a while to like basically break my devices to make them form.
1:05:31 Yeah, my friend and also fellow writer Neil Strauss uses it all the time.
1:05:37 Yeah, I would say a lot of what I’ve accomplished as a writer is thanks to Freedom, turning off
1:05:40 the internet at night and keeping it off until after lunch.
1:05:45 So yeah, that Wired article is a good, if you’re listening and you’re like, oh, I just kind of
1:05:48 want to read, give me the 3000 word distillation of all this.
1:05:49 Like that’s a good place to go.
1:05:55 And I remember when that came out and you mentioned it, I think on your podcast and you said you’d
1:05:58 printed it out and put it up on your, like part of it on your wall.
1:06:00 I think you’d like to print out a quote.
1:06:03 Yeah, I was like, I was very moved to hear that.
1:06:07 And also I got so many freaking emails from people who were like, oh, Tim Ferriss, print
1:06:08 out your article, man.
1:06:10 I was like, okay, cool.
1:06:12 I was like, that’s good to know.
1:06:16 I still print, maybe in part Japanese.
1:06:19 You fax, I’m surprised.
1:06:20 I’ll fax you the next one.
1:06:25 Yeah, they do love, I mean, is faxing still a thing in Japan?
1:06:26 It is, it’s gotta be.
1:06:27 Yeah.
1:06:27 It must be.
1:06:31 That Wired article came out of that Nakasendo walk as well.
1:06:34 There was just a few things that came out of that Nakasendo walk.
1:06:37 And then also, so, okay, let me explain what the Nakasendo is too.
1:06:43 In the Edo period, you had the shogun at takeover and to consolidate a certain amount of wealth
1:06:50 and power, they enacted this thing called Sankinkotai, where the daimyo, the rulers, the local rulers,
1:06:55 had to basically keep residence in Edo, which is what Tokyo used to be called.
1:07:00 And they commuted to Edo, every year they had to do like a commutation.
1:07:04 And so they had to build roads, they had to build infrastructure for all these daimyo, which
1:07:09 sometimes, you know, for the bigger prefectures, the band of people would be 2,000 people long
1:07:12 that would be traveling with the daimyo to go to Edo.
1:07:13 Hell of an entourage.
1:07:14 It’s a big entourage.
1:07:21 You know, it’s like turtle, just imagine turtle, like 2,000 turtles, you know, and that character
1:07:22 from the show, no one remembers turtle.
1:07:24 I have no idea what you’re talking about.
1:07:24 Yeah.
1:07:27 You got me thinking about 2,000 turtles though.
1:07:28 We should never think about turtle.
1:07:31 So they built infrastructure.
1:07:32 Oh, turtles from the show.
1:07:34 I was thinking actual turtles with shells.
1:07:36 I was like, I don’t know where this is going, but I’m in for the road.
1:07:37 Okay, got it.
1:07:38 Yes, turtle.
1:07:38 Part of the entourage.
1:07:43 And so they built infrastructure in Nakasendo and the Tokaido were the two main,
1:07:46 main arteries of essentially the commute.
1:07:49 It was like the 101 of Edo period, Japan.
1:07:53 And so the Nakasendo kind of goes north.
1:07:54 It’s more mountainous.
1:07:55 It has fewer river crossings.
1:07:59 And so people liked it, even though it was more arduous in the mountains, people don’t
1:08:00 like river crossings.
1:08:05 And in the Edo period, essentially you weren’t really allowed to build bridges in order to
1:08:07 protect domains from attacks.
1:08:11 So all of the river crossings kind of had to be on people’s shoulders or ferried across.
1:08:13 So it was kind of a pain in the butt to cross rivers.
1:08:18 And the Tokaido, which if you’ve come to Japan, you’ve ridden the Shinkansen from Tokyo to
1:08:20 Kyoto, you may have ridden the Tokaido Shinkansen.
1:08:21 The bullet train.
1:08:28 The bullet train follows the old Tokaido route roughly, which was Kyoto to Tokyo, kind of along
1:08:28 the coast.
1:08:31 And that has many river crossings.
1:08:34 And so people would not love that, for example.
1:08:36 And even on the Tokaido, there’s like kind of detours.
1:08:40 They’re called the Hime Kaido, which was like a detour to avoid this one river crossing.
1:08:45 It’s called the princess route because women didn’t want to ride on the shoulders of strange
1:08:45 porters or something.
1:08:49 I don’t, there’s all sorts of different things why people chose Nakasendo or they’d go on Nakasendo
1:08:54 and they’d come back on the Tokaido just to mix it up, just to have some fun in the 1600s.
1:08:59 And so the Nakasendo is the northern mountainous route.
1:09:00 And that’s the one I walked in 2019.
1:09:03 I’ve since done the Tokaido twice.
1:09:04 So I’m walking the Nakasendo.
1:09:06 I’m going up into these mountain villages.
1:09:09 What I’m witnessing is depopulation firsthand.
1:09:13 So there’s two buzzwords you hear in Japanese.
1:09:17 Shoshika mondai, which is child birth problem.
1:09:19 There’s just like no children being birthed.
1:09:25 I think Japan’s at 1.2 now is the per woman sort of number of children being produced.
1:09:31 Korea, Gideon Lewis-Krauss just wrote this amazing article about Korea’s situation, which
1:09:33 I think is 0.7 or 0.6.
1:09:35 Yeah, not a great situation.
1:09:37 They just hate kids there.
1:09:39 Anyway, so Japan’s not quite that bad.
1:09:43 I could explain more related to that.
1:09:46 I don’t know how much of a digression we want to take, but there are actually a bunch
1:09:48 of structural problems that help to produce that in South Korea.
1:09:49 But we’ll come back to it.
1:09:51 For instance, I’ll give one example that doesn’t get talked about.
1:09:56 Very briefly, very briefly, is that rent is very, very expensive.
1:09:57 A lot of people move to, say, Seoul.
1:10:07 And in Seoul, to upgrade to a larger apartment, you would often have to put down a six to 12-month
1:10:09 security deposit.
1:10:11 And people can’t afford to do it.
1:10:19 So a lot of the reasons for fewer kids relate to some of these, I don’t want to say intractable,
1:10:24 but systematized economic hurdles that people just can’t clear.
1:10:25 Anyway, please continue.
1:10:28 Hey, man, my homestay, there’s one kid living in a closet.
1:10:29 The other kid slept between his parents.
1:10:31 Like, you could do it in a tiny room.
1:10:33 Just make the babies.
1:10:36 So you have Shoshika Monday, right?
1:10:38 Which you hear this a lot, but you don’t experience it in Tokyo.
1:10:42 Because Tokyo is growing, and there’s actually a lot of kids in Tokyo, and it feels very vibrant.
1:10:44 Tokyo is growing pretty steadily.
1:10:48 And then the other one is Koreka Shakai, which is the elderly society.
1:10:51 So basically aging population.
1:10:57 And you hear these words bandied about all the time, but you don’t feel them until you
1:10:59 really walk the countryside.
1:11:04 So the Nakasana was the first time I felt that, like, palpably, viscerally, every day.
1:11:08 And I would walk through these villages that were essentially disappearing, and there were
1:11:10 two things left in all these villages.
1:11:14 And it would be a barbershop that was, like, very bizarre.
1:11:17 And I actually, up until last year, I’d been shaving my head for five years.
1:11:21 And so part of the reason why I was shaving my head was because you get your head shaved
1:11:23 anywhere, and it’s, like, pretty easy and fast.
1:11:26 And so I would start going to these barbershops in the middle of nowhere to get my head shaved
1:11:27 because it was just, like, they were there.
1:11:31 And then the other thing that’s around is Kisaten.
1:11:35 So these are the old-style, basically, Showa era.
1:11:36 We were talking about Ozu.
1:11:38 His films kind of embody the Showa era.
1:11:40 And if you want to see what Showa looks like—
1:11:42 —26 to 1989.
1:11:43 —26 to 89.
1:11:48 And Showa is the post-war Japan, the mid-century Japan.
1:11:51 It’s mid-century modern architecture and, like, design.
1:11:57 And Kisaten were one of the many sort of local mom-and-pop things that kind of grew out of
1:11:58 this post-war economy.
1:12:02 And people who didn’t want to join the workforce, didn’t want to be a salaryman or salarywoman,
1:12:05 they opened Kisaten, which are little cafes.
1:12:10 And they became de facto community hubs in a lot of these villages.
1:12:12 And they’re one of the few things that are left.
1:12:14 So I hadn’t planned to go to Kisaten every day.
1:12:18 But it turned out nothing was left for me to go have lunch at.
1:12:22 So I’d be walking, and, like, basically, the one bit of logistics was I had to figure out
1:12:22 where I was going to have lunch.
1:12:28 And I realized by, like, day 10, every day I was going to a Kisaten, and every day I was
1:12:29 eating pizza toast.
1:12:34 Like, I was just like, oh, wow, I’ve had a lot of pizza toast on this walk.
1:12:36 Like, this walk is kind of fueled by pizza toast.
1:12:39 And that’s toast with some tomato sauce and cheese on it?
1:12:40 Basically, yeah.
1:12:44 So, like, the food that Kisaten serve is, again, a post-war construction.
1:12:46 Like, people didn’t have money.
1:12:48 Japan was extremely impoverished post-war.
1:12:50 Again, watch Ozu.
1:12:51 You can kind of see some of that in action.
1:12:56 And so Kisaten would open, and it’d be like, well, what is the minimum viable food products
1:12:57 that we can make?
1:12:58 Essentially, two things came out of it.
1:13:00 One is toast and pizza toast.
1:13:05 If you have a toaster oven, you can make pizza toast with, like, craft cheese, cheese
1:13:08 singles, spaghetti sauce out of a can.
1:13:12 Maybe you get some peppers you cut up and some onions, and that’s it.
1:13:13 That’s your pizza toast.
1:13:16 Maybe, like, a salami, like a cheap salami from the shop.
1:13:21 And then the other thing is Neapolitan spaghetti, which is just basically spaghetti with ketchup.
1:13:29 Spaghetti with ketchup and pizza toast fed a big chunk of Japan in, like, the 50s, 60s,
1:13:30 and 70s.
1:13:33 So I was eating pizza toast all the time, and I was like, this is really fascinating and
1:13:34 kind of amazing.
1:13:39 And it’s interesting because, like, we might make pizza toast in America, but, like, a
1:13:41 shop would never think of serving pizza toast, which is too weird.
1:13:48 So I became obsessed with that, and then that grew into an article which then grew into my
1:13:53 book that I launched during COVID in 2020 called Kisa by Kisa.
1:13:54 Yeah, that’s right.
1:13:55 15 feet behind me.
1:14:01 And that title is a reference to Bird by Bird, which I think you’ve talked about before as
1:14:02 a book.
1:14:02 Yeah.
1:14:04 Anne Lamott, of course.
1:14:04 Bird by Bird.
1:14:05 Yeah.
1:14:05 I love that book.
1:14:10 That’s also, actually, now that I think about it, literally, Bird by Bird is probably two
1:14:14 bookshelves above your book, and I never put it together right back there.
1:14:17 That is 100% homage to Anne.
1:14:26 And so, yeah, Kisa by Kisa, which was basically me riffing on pizza toast and these cafes along
1:14:28 this walk and producing a book.
1:14:29 COVID had hit.
1:14:29 COVID hit.
1:14:36 It was April 2020, and I was like, okay, well, all of this travel I’d planned on doing,
1:14:36 I’m not going to do.
1:14:37 And it was actually a big relief.
1:14:41 I had been doing too much traveling internationally.
1:14:42 I’d been teaching at Yale.
1:14:45 Every summer, I’d been teaching at the Yale Publishing Course.
1:14:50 I’d been sort of giving the keynote lecture about books and digital publishing and blah,
1:14:50 blah, blah.
1:14:52 Anyway, I’d run out of stuff to say anyway.
1:14:58 And so, I was like, okay, let’s produce a really beautiful book based on this walk.
1:15:03 Kind of, again, like the Dan Rubin book that we made was like one version of it, one degree
1:15:03 of it.
1:15:08 And then that one-off print-on-demand SMS book was another kind of like, oh, wow, this
1:15:09 is really cool.
1:15:13 And then this was going to be like, okay, what if we took all of that and really did the apotheosis
1:15:16 of like a beautiful walk book with photos and the narrative?
1:15:21 And I made this book, and I priced it $100 a copy.
1:15:27 I launched it in August 2020, and I was like, okay, based on my publishing history, I know
1:15:27 how these things sell.
1:15:37 I’m going to make a thousand copies, and I’ll be lucky if we sell out of that print run in
1:15:38 like a year or two.
1:15:39 I was like, it’s an expensive book.
1:15:40 It’s a weird subject.
1:15:42 Like, no one’s going to really be into this.
1:15:43 I launch it.
1:15:47 We sell a thousand copies in like 36 hours.
1:15:49 So what happened?
1:15:50 Why did that happen?
1:15:53 I had underestimated the audience I had built up, I guess.
1:16:00 And people were just excited about these walks and what I was doing, and they were just psyched
1:16:00 about it.
1:16:01 It was like very weird.
1:16:05 Maybe not weird if you think about the timing also, right?
1:16:06 I think the timing was really good.
1:16:10 And what I did that was really smart, I had been running the membership program by that point
1:16:11 for 18 months.
1:16:16 And I was like, okay, I want to do this book, and I want to have it be expensive, but I want
1:16:17 to offer a big discount to members.
1:16:20 So if you’re a yearly member, you’re paying $100 a year to be a member.
1:16:23 This was like the first real perk I’d ever offered members.
1:16:27 And it was like kind of like a thank you and treating the membership payments almost as like
1:16:30 an investment to allow me to do these things.
1:16:34 And then I want to give a little bit of that investment back to you, pay a little dividend.
1:16:36 And so I set up a thing.
1:16:39 I looked at Kickstarter, and I was like, Kickstarter hadn’t really changed in like 10 years.
1:16:43 And I was like, why am I going to give these guys like such a high percentage?
1:16:44 You couldn’t do coupons.
1:16:47 I wanted to offer coupons, and Kickstarter didn’t have like coupon functionality.
1:16:51 And so I looked at Shopify, and I have my engineering background.
1:16:53 I know how to program and, you know, enough to get me in trouble.
1:16:58 And I was like, well, you know, Shopify is actually amazing, and you can modify the templates.
1:17:01 And so I cloned Kickstarter, and I called it Craigstarter.
1:17:06 And I basically added, it’s on GitHub.
1:17:08 You can clone it if you want and like start your own Craigstarter.
1:17:12 But like, I wanted to own the whole stack of software.
1:17:15 And like, it’s weird with Kickstarter, like you get all these purchases.
1:17:20 And then to get the addresses into the shipping software, it’s like different software.
1:17:21 Anyway, it’s kind of dumb.
1:17:21 Everything’s all over the place.
1:17:24 So Shopify, everything is just right there.
1:17:26 And I was like, this makes sense.
1:17:29 So I made Craigstarter, and I made some promises.
1:17:33 I was like, oh, you know, if we sell, if we do 300 copies, I’ll sign them all.
1:17:35 If we do 500, I’ll include postcards.
1:17:40 If we do 800, then I will make a documentary about pizza toast.
1:17:41 I was like, I’m never going to have to make this documentary.
1:17:43 And we sold 1,000 immediately.
1:17:46 And I was just like, oh, shit, all right, I got to make this documentary.
1:17:53 But what the real, I think, sort of piece de resistance that I figured out by accident
1:17:55 was by offering the discount.
1:17:59 It was like a $40 or $50 discount off the 100 bucks if you were a yearly member.
1:18:03 The conversion rate I got of people buying the book.
1:18:04 So basically, you’d land on the page.
1:18:05 You’d be like, oh, yeah, I want this book.
1:18:06 It’s 100 bucks.
1:18:06 Sure.
1:18:10 Plus, by the way, like $30 in shipping because we were doing DHL and yada, yada, yada.
1:18:11 And it was expensive to ship.
1:18:12 It’s still expensive to ship.
1:18:14 So it’s 130 bucks.
1:18:19 So I was like, you could do that or you could pay another $100 to become my member, join the
1:18:23 membership program, get a discount on the book, then buy the book.
1:18:27 So basically, it was like you could spend $130 or you could spend $200 and get the membership.
1:18:33 And the conversion rate of people who did the membership was like 30% of everyone who bought
1:18:33 it.
1:18:34 Wow.
1:18:35 Which is insane.
1:18:36 Insane.
1:18:36 That’s wild.
1:18:39 And I was like, okay, we just unlocked something special.
1:18:40 It’s a great, great experiment.
1:18:45 That for me was this like light bulb moment of, okay, this is what I’m doing for the next
1:18:45 20 years.
1:18:46 Got it.
1:18:47 I want to make these books.
1:18:48 I want to do these walks.
1:18:50 There’s an audience here.
1:18:53 There’s like a product market fit.
1:18:55 To use that terrible expression.
1:18:59 PMF.
1:19:00 Somebody just texted me yesterday.
1:19:01 I was like, what the fuck is PMF?
1:19:02 They’re like product market fit.
1:19:04 I was like, oh yeah, I know the full word version.
1:19:05 Yeah.
1:19:06 Yeah.
1:19:12 So that was this really like, whoa, okay, this is interesting and special.
1:19:14 And like, look, I’m operating at my scale.
1:19:17 My scale, you know, whatever you have people on here selling 400 trillion books and stuff
1:19:17 like that.
1:19:20 I love my scale because it’s sustainable.
1:19:21 It gives me total creative freedom.
1:19:23 You should talk to that, right?
1:19:28 Because Noah Kagan, his friend of mine, considers scale to be almost a four letter word.
1:19:38 Because people become intoxicated and make bad decisions chasing, in some cases, a false idol
1:19:39 or worshiping a false idol.
1:19:41 So maybe you could speak to that.
1:19:49 And I’m going to offer an on-ramp in the form of something of yours that I printed yet again.
1:19:49 Yes.
1:19:50 Yes.
1:19:58 And what I printed, people can find this at craigmod.com slash essays slash membership underscore
1:19:59 rules.
1:20:05 So these are your membership community rules, which are of great interest to me because
1:20:13 I currently have, really for the first time, an active community, or certainly the first
1:20:20 time in a decade, an active community of test readers for the new book that I’m working on.
1:20:26 And we have about 100, which is the right scale, like 85 to 100, I’d say.
1:20:30 I started off with super, super high engagement, like 90% posting.
1:20:37 And then it became more manageable, at least for me, since I’m consuming and digesting and
1:20:38 synthesizing the feedback.
1:20:44 Probably at a nice kind of 35% in terms of lurkers to active posters.
1:20:49 But here, I’m going to not touch everything, but I’m going to run through real quickly here.
1:20:51 So here are some of the rules.
1:20:53 One, have clear creative goals.
1:20:56 Mine are make books and educate.
1:20:59 Number two, staple those goals to your walls, your mirror, your forehead.
1:21:03 If you ever have a decision to make, ask yourself, does it help me achieve these goals?
1:21:06 Number three, all membership activities are in support of these goals.
1:21:10 Four, the program exists for the goals, not the members.
1:21:10 I’m going to say that again.
1:21:13 The program exists for the goals, not the members.
1:21:16 Number five, equally important.
1:21:17 That’s my wording.
1:21:22 That may sound cold, but if you frame it properly, the members understand and enthusiastically support
1:21:22 this.
1:21:25 Six, fundamentally, you’re building a community.
1:21:28 Seven, but your goal is not to manage a community.
1:21:31 And then there are a number of bullets under that.
1:21:36 Eight, by the way, deadlines are not only your friends, they’re the only way work gets done.
1:21:40 So obsessive, irrational adherence to deadlines and work is non-negotiable.
1:21:42 Number nine, and there are a number of bullets underneath this.
1:21:46 I won’t necessarily get into all of them, but you can certainly elaborate.
1:21:51 Don’t let the shape of membership software determine the shape of your activities slash work.
1:21:54 Ten, make strict decisions, but be willing to change your mind.
1:21:59 And then a parenthetical, I renamed my membership program 18 months into it, and I’m glad I did.
1:22:01 As an example.
1:22:03 Eleven, and finally, know your scale.
1:22:05 This is why I wanted to bring this in.
1:22:07 So know your scale, then there’s a link to that.
1:22:12 Or I should say a link under those three words, know your scale.
1:22:14 What scale do you want to work at?
1:22:15 What scale makes you happy?
1:22:18 Use that knowledge to drive membership decisions.
1:22:19 All right.
1:22:20 Take it away, Craig.
1:22:22 Scale.
1:22:29 Yeah, I think a lot of people are, to use the word again, ensorcelled by this idea of mega scale.
1:22:38 They’re just like, you know, I remember in the late 2000s, I did not have a great impression of Facebook.
1:22:41 I was very early of not being like, oh, I think this is a great thing.
1:22:42 I did not love it.
1:22:56 I was sad seeing so many talented designers go to Facebook in like 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, who were previously up until that point doing incredible independent work and doing kind of like almost what you could say art projects and things like that.
1:23:03 And they went to Facebook and a lot of them were saying things like, well, how else can I affect 100 million people?
1:23:06 Or, you know, same with people going to Google and saying that too.
1:23:08 In tech, this is a very common trope.
1:23:11 You know, like I want to have this impact on like hundreds of millions of people.
1:23:12 This is the only way to do it.
1:23:14 And I think, okay, yeah, sure.
1:23:23 And then you kind of go to these places and you realize in the end that like you’re a very, very tiny cog and the amount of change that you can affect on these things is quite small.
1:23:25 It’s like you’re a worker on the Titanic in a certain degree.
1:23:30 And you’re going to hit an iceberg, whether you’re causing genocide in Myanmar or something that like you just don’t see coming.
1:23:39 And so I think it’s kind of like a false narrative to be like, oh, yeah, the only way to have a real effect in the world is to like be operating at this crazy mass scale.
1:23:41 And I had a little bit of that working at Flipboard.
1:23:54 I mean, part of like going there and working with those guys was to both give myself confidence that I could hang with top tier people and be surrounded by great, incredible, loving, generous, talented folks.
1:24:03 But also to touch that scale a little bit, like that app had a huge scale, you know, and we launched, I remember we launched the iPhone version of it and I just felt nothing.
1:24:06 I’d been very attuned to like, does my heart move or not?
1:24:09 And I remember launching that and just being like, that was cool to work on.
1:24:13 But like, I felt absolutely nothing seeing like user feedback come in or whatever.
1:24:22 Whereas at the same time, by that point, I had made many books that had sold thousands of copies as opposed to millions or hundreds of millions or whatever data points that we were hitting with Flipboard.
1:24:28 And those hundreds of readers, thousands of readers to me felt so good.
1:24:29 I just felt drawn in that direction.
1:24:36 And I remember the first time I told someone at a party, I was like 23 and I was at a party and they’re like, what do you do?
1:24:38 And I was like, I work on books.
1:24:40 Like I run a little publishing company.
1:24:43 And I remember being so happy.
1:24:46 I said, I could say that something felt so right about that.
1:24:49 Right from the very first, I remember exactly where I was standing.
1:24:50 I could picture it.
1:24:53 I kind of know, I can almost remember what apartment block I was in.
1:24:57 Like, anyway, it was this real moment of like, okay, this is something to follow.
1:25:00 This feeling is something special and we need to protect this.
1:25:06 So for me, scale, I had spent my 20s working on my art projects, doing independent publishing.
1:25:10 And for me, that was a scale that really resonated with my heart and made me feel good.
1:25:15 And I knew there was a way to do it sustainably, in part because of the cost of living thing that we talked about happening in Japan.
1:25:24 And so when Kisa by Kisa hit like that, and we’re going back to print next week and we’re doing like the sixth edition.
1:25:27 So we sold like 6,000 copies of this thing.
1:25:29 So it’s like $600,000 in book sales.
1:25:32 Also, non-trivial number.
1:25:38 Not to invoke the kraken of scale, which is not what I’m doing, but like that is not a trivial number of books.
1:25:47 Like my initial print run for my Random House book, my very first book, which was intended to have national distribution, was 10,000 copies.
1:25:51 And did not sell all of those immediately.
1:26:01 6,000 copies is enough in a soft week to put you on a lot of national bestseller lists, depending on the category you end up in.
1:26:02 Like that’s a real number of books.
1:26:04 Also, this is an art book.
1:26:05 It sells for a hundred bucks.
1:26:06 That’s what I’m saying.
1:26:08 You don’t sell this many books normally.
1:26:12 You talk to publishers like Mac Press in the UK is doing some of the most beautiful photo books around.
1:26:15 And their print runs will max out at a thousand.
1:26:17 You know, they’ll do runs of 500.
1:26:22 So the fact that this book sold 6,000 is just bananas and continues to sell.
1:26:24 And, you know, that’s why we’re kind of going to print again.
1:26:26 It just moved me.
1:26:28 And for me, that is like such a beautiful scale.
1:26:29 It’s totally uncompromising.
1:26:32 I can do exactly the kind of book I want to do.
1:26:35 I’m lucky enough to have incredible editor friends.
1:26:40 I’m getting editorial feedback at the highest level I would get with anyone else.
1:26:44 And I have enough design experience and I’m connected with incredible designers.
1:26:48 Gray 318, John Gray, who’s done all of Zadie Smith’s covers.
1:26:51 Like I can just call John and be like, hey, can we go over?
1:26:52 Like I’m working on this cover for my book.
1:26:53 Can you give me some feedback?
1:26:54 And John hops on a Zoom call with me.
1:26:55 So I’m very, very lucky.
1:27:01 I’m able to be totally uncompromising about this stuff, which is why the Random House relationship
1:27:06 is really exciting for me too, because it’s kind of stepping outside my comfort zone of scale.
1:27:11 And it’s moving up to this different level for the book that’s coming out in May.
1:27:13 Why did you decide to do that?
1:27:20 And was there anything interesting or of note in terms of deal structure or how you thought
1:27:21 about approaching it?
1:27:22 There was.
1:27:26 Because you’re sort of like the MacGyver who’s done every job, right?
1:27:31 So you’re coming into it with a much broader awareness of how all the different pieces
1:27:33 move and how you can move them.
1:27:34 It’s a different situation.
1:27:36 And I have a, you know, a relationship with a printer.
1:27:37 I have a distribution network set up.
1:27:39 I have my Shopify thing set up.
1:27:40 So I’m all set.
1:27:46 So, but this book, Things Become Other Things, the story of it about Brian, essentially me
1:27:52 doing this 300 mile walk around the peninsula during the peak of COVID and walking through
1:27:58 this depopulated peninsula, very spiritual and kind of reflecting on my childhood and reflecting
1:27:58 on this friendship.
1:28:02 There was a kind of political element, very subtle.
1:28:07 It’s a very sly political element, but commentary on the state of America.
1:28:09 Again, like who’s being supported?
1:28:11 Why are people being supported?
1:28:13 Why are some people not being supported?
1:28:15 Why are certain towns supported more than other towns?
1:28:20 And then reflecting that through the lens of my experience in Japan, which is like the foundational
1:28:23 societal baseline is so much higher.
1:28:28 Like the social safety net is so high here relative to what I experienced growing up in
1:28:28 America.
1:28:35 Those themes to me feel like they warranted potentially a larger scale than I could bring on my own.
1:28:41 So let me reframe that for a second, just for people who are like, oh, the P word, politics.
1:28:42 I’m out.
1:28:43 Where’s the parachute?
1:28:52 Is it fair to say it’s more of a societal commentary than a political diatribe, right?
1:28:54 It’s not a left versus right, right versus left.
1:28:57 It’s more of a societal commentary, right?
1:28:57 Cultural commentary.
1:28:59 It exists between the lines.
1:29:00 There’s nothing didactic about it at all.
1:29:05 I’m telling a story of friendship with this kid, Brian, who I dearly loved.
1:29:07 We were best friends all through elementary school.
1:29:09 We graduate and he’s murdered.
1:29:14 It’s reflecting on that, basically the first 18 years of our life.
1:29:22 And in reflecting on that, it’s invariable that certain commentary about society just
1:29:25 comes, it’s just embedded in that reflection, embedded in that story.
1:29:26 And it’s not didactic.
1:29:28 There’s absolutely nothing didactic about it.
1:29:34 And the whole time I’m talking with all these farmers and fishermen and port people and people
1:29:35 working at the inns.
1:29:41 And there’s this incredible, colorful cast of characters of the peninsula of Japan that you
1:29:46 will never be able to meet in any other context unless you’ve lived here kind of as long as I
1:29:48 have and you’ve started to do these walks and things like that.
1:29:54 So it’s both, you get this adventure in Japan and then alongside that adventure is this story
1:29:55 of friendship.
1:29:59 But I just thought that story of friendship, because there was kind of a universality to
1:30:04 it that was more than just like, hey man, pizza toasts and wacky mid-century cafes.
1:30:11 I thought, let me try to pitch this to some publishers and some agents in New York and see if anyone’s
1:30:11 interested.
1:30:12 Everyone rejected me.
1:30:14 I’m going to push at that for a second.
1:30:17 So why see if people are interested?
1:30:22 Is it to reach more people with a lower entry point?
1:30:28 Because it’s a story that maybe has broader appeal than the Kisa by Kisa.
1:30:33 Why explore the traditional route, so to speak?
1:30:37 First of all, it’s meant to honor both, I think, like the people of this peninsula.
1:30:40 And I think they are really amazing and they deserve kind of a big platform.
1:30:44 And then also to honor Brian and this friendship and his memory.
1:30:52 And I almost felt like for Brian, this story should be given every opportunity to hit the
1:30:54 scale that it wants to hit.
1:30:56 You finish a book and it’s out of your hands.
1:31:01 And I was kind of willing to say like, well, let’s go explore where this book could possibly
1:31:01 go.
1:31:04 And I love talking about the themes of it.
1:31:09 Just the reality of the world is that there’s a status connected with having a big publisher
1:31:13 behind you that publishing something independently, you’ll never accrue.
1:31:15 And it’s not because like, oh, like that makes me feel good.
1:31:17 But it’s like, oh, to do like an NPR show.
1:31:20 If you want to be on Terry Gross, it’s true.
1:31:20 It’s true.
1:31:24 You know, if you want to do something like that, you need Penguin, you need Random House
1:31:28 behind you, unfortunately, you know, and I just felt like this may be one of the only
1:31:30 stories I ever tell, you know, I have my next five books.
1:31:33 I’m in the middle of writing and they’re like, they’re definitely weirder.
1:31:34 Your next five books?
1:31:35 Yeah.
1:31:37 Good Lord, Craig.
1:31:38 All right.
1:31:41 Well, that’s, I guess that’s what you can do if you can write 4,000 words a day.
1:31:44 For fuck’s sake, Craig, I need to eat whatever you’re having for breakfast.
1:31:45 All right.
1:31:46 Natto, natto kimchi.
1:31:48 Oh, my microbiome.
1:31:48 Yeah.
1:31:48 Oh, my.
1:31:49 Yes.
1:31:54 I had a MRSA infection last year and I was on a heavy antibiotics.
1:31:55 Nasty.
1:31:56 Yeah, it was pretty nasty.
1:32:01 And I blasted myself on the antibiotics and that got me on this mega natto kimchi gohan
1:32:02 kick.
1:32:03 And I freaking love it.
1:32:04 My body just craves it now.
1:32:05 No.
1:32:09 So I just thought, look, I’m talking with Kevin Kelly and he’s like, Craig, just try new
1:32:10 things.
1:32:11 Just bitch it to these people.
1:32:12 Like, give it a go.
1:32:14 You know, he’s like, why not?
1:32:14 Why not?
1:32:15 Might be a fun adventure.
1:32:19 So I went out and I pitched to a bunch of agents because you’re supposed to have an
1:32:21 agent before you go to the publishers and blah, blah, blah.
1:32:22 And everyone rejected me.
1:32:26 This is shocking to me, Craig, because you are a very good writer.
1:32:33 You had a number of things go viral, do very well online with reputable outlets.
1:32:39 You can point to your self-publishing track record with these, I don’t want to say obscenely
1:32:45 expensive, but by traditional bookstore, let’s just say trade, paperback, hardcover standards,
1:32:47 very expensive books.
1:32:51 Did anyone give you a plausible reason for saying no?
1:32:58 Most of it was like, hey, you’re interesting, but I don’t think we can sell this book.
1:32:59 That’s kind of…
1:33:01 How many followers do you have on TikTok, though?
1:33:03 Let’s get to that.
1:33:06 So in the end, it was this weird thing.
1:33:13 One of my members, actually, of the membership program, runs a podcast at Penguin Random House.
1:33:17 And he was like, hey, look, I love your work.
1:33:22 I think Andy Ward, who’s the publisher of Random House, he’s the editor of George Saunders,
1:33:26 who I, if I’m listing my favorite authors, George Saunders, George’s top five.
1:33:30 Human being and author, just incredible, incredible person.
1:33:31 Just amazing.
1:33:36 And Andy Ward, my friend Matt goes, hey, look, you got to meet Andy Ward.
1:33:37 You just pitch this thing to Andy Ward.
1:33:38 And I was like, okay.
1:33:40 And I was going to be in New York for something.
1:33:43 And Andy was like, hey, I’d love to meet you.
1:33:43 Let’s meet up.
1:33:46 I went to Andy Ward’s office, Penguin Random House.
1:33:48 It’s me, Andy Ward, and the vice president.
1:33:50 Andy’s like the president of Random House, right?
1:33:53 And we have the most high-energy, mind-meld.
1:33:54 I bring Kesa by Kesa.
1:33:57 I’m like, look, I sold thousands of copies of this thing.
1:34:00 I got this next book, and it’s this walk, and blah, blah, blah, and Brian, and yada, yada,
1:34:01 and all this stuff.
1:34:03 And he’s like, this sounds amazing.
1:34:03 Great.
1:34:04 Send it over.
1:34:06 Let’s make this work.
1:34:09 And four months go by, crickets.
1:34:13 And this is just what happened with everyone else, too.
1:34:15 Everyone just ghosted me.
1:34:18 And I was in a really dark place.
1:34:20 I was just like, what?
1:34:21 What am I supposed to do?
1:34:22 I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
1:34:25 I’m coming at this really vulnerably.
1:34:29 And I’ve gotten 30 rejections or whatever for this thing.
1:34:32 And so I go, OK, I’m going to do it on my own.
1:34:34 I’m going to do it on my own.
1:34:36 I’ve done everything else, blah, blah, blah.
1:34:38 I queue up printer time.
1:34:41 I’m buying paper, and I get this email, and it’s from Andy.
1:34:43 And he goes, hey, yeah, we want the book.
1:34:47 This is like, four months later, zero feedback or anything.
1:34:51 So I hop on a call with Molly, who ends up being the editor, my editor.
1:34:53 And she’s just like, I love the book.
1:34:54 She’s saying all the right things.
1:34:55 She just totally gets it.
1:35:02 And I go, look, I just booked printer time, and I’m going to be producing my fine art edition
1:35:03 of this in November.
1:35:04 This was July.
1:35:06 I said, I’m going to go do this.
1:35:09 I would love to produce an edition with you guys.
1:35:11 Can you get me an offer in the next two days?
1:35:15 And she’s like, OK, we’ll get back to you in two days.
1:35:21 So two days later, a call with Molly and Andy, and they’re like, can we pay you not to do your
1:35:21 version of the book?
1:35:25 I was like, look, I don’t think these are going to compete.
1:35:26 The fine art edition is going to be $100.
1:35:28 It’s just not going to compete.
1:35:31 We’re going to re-edit it for you and blah, blah, blah, blah.
1:35:35 I felt so broken by the process and all of this rejection.
1:35:41 I was just like, if I don’t protect my fiercely independent capabilities of doing the work I
1:35:46 want to do, then I don’t want to be in this position where I’m that vulnerable.
1:35:46 I’m that exposed.
1:35:49 I was like, look, I’m just going to do my edition.
1:35:50 Don’t worry about it.
1:35:52 And I was able to stand my ground.
1:35:55 And we were able to come up with a contract.
1:35:58 I think it’s one of the first contracts in Random House history where it was written
1:35:58 into the contract.
1:36:05 Like I got fine art rights to the book and there’s a price minimum that I’m not allowed
1:36:07 to sell under of my edition.
1:36:09 It’s capped how many I can produce.
1:36:12 But after we sell a certain number of the Random House, I can produce more and yada, yada,
1:36:13 all this stuff.
1:36:16 So that felt really good to keep that.
1:36:17 Yeah.
1:36:18 It must feel fantastic.
1:36:21 I mean, it’s like a psycho-emotional insurance policy.
1:36:26 Well, it was funny listening to Brandon Sanderson talk about getting the leather-bound rights back
1:36:27 for his books.
1:36:29 It was sort of like, oh, that was interesting.
1:36:30 But this was from the get-go.
1:36:32 It’s like, okay, I’m going to do this edition.
1:36:34 And so I published it.
1:36:36 I kind of like talking about this makes it all really complicated.
1:36:40 But I published my edition 16, 17 months ago.
1:36:45 And what was great about that, it was sort of like getting, you’re talking about your test
1:36:45 readers.
1:36:49 I basically produced 2,000 copies, and we sold all of those.
1:36:58 And so in doing that, I got amazing feedback and amazing emotional letters and responses from
1:36:58 people.
1:37:01 But because I had done that, it freed me as a writer.
1:37:03 It was this crazy thing psychologically.
1:37:08 And when I went back to do my revisions for Random House, and Molly basically took my manuscript
1:37:11 that I had published, and she just peppered it with questions.
1:37:13 She put like 800 questions in the manuscript.
1:37:15 And I loved them.
1:37:16 They were amazing questions.
1:37:17 And I was so hungry.
1:37:22 Because I had done my edition uncompromisingly, it felt like the weight was off my shoulders.
1:37:23 I could relax.
1:37:25 And like, let’s go for it.
1:37:29 And the thing that came out, I doubled the length of the manuscript by simply responding
1:37:30 to Molly’s questions.
1:37:37 And it unlocked all of these layers of the story that I had wanted to get to, but I didn’t really
1:37:37 know how to.
1:37:40 And I was nervous, and I was kind of like uptight about it.
1:37:45 And so this Random House edition to me, like this relationship has been really, really
1:37:45 good.
1:37:49 It got me to a place I couldn’t have got to on my own, which is always what I’m looking
1:37:51 for in working relationships and editorial relationships.
1:37:54 It’s like when I published with the New York Times, or I published with the Atlantic or
1:37:57 whatever, it’s like, it’s always about that editorial back and forth.
1:37:58 Here’s an essay.
1:37:59 How do we make it even better?
1:38:04 And so this book, I can say, this Random House edition, I am so proud of.
1:38:07 And it taps into this emotional vein I couldn’t get to on my own.
1:38:11 And I love the fact that it’s going to be like $22 or whatever.
1:38:15 It’s like you can pre-order it now on Amazon or bookshop.
1:38:17 And it’s like, I think, $28 for the hardcover or whatever.
1:38:20 That’s also a price point I’ve never operated at before.
1:38:22 So that’s exciting.
1:38:24 Super exciting.
1:38:24 Super exciting.
1:38:25 It’s super exciting.
1:38:27 Things become other things.
1:38:28 Craig’s writing is amazing.
1:38:30 Everybody, go get the book.
1:38:31 You’ll be glad you did.
1:38:36 And I want to hop to a few other things.
1:38:43 Your wild and strange celebrity in Japan around promoting mid-sized cities.
1:38:45 How did this start?
1:38:47 And what the hell is going on?
1:38:51 Because I remember reaching out to you not too long ago.
1:38:55 We were like, yeah, I’m really busy because I’m doing like 12 TV shows and doing this and
1:38:55 doing that.
1:38:57 And then I’m like, what?
1:38:58 What are you doing?
1:38:58 Yeah.
1:39:01 And this was the explanation.
1:39:02 So what’s the backstory?
1:39:03 How did it start?
1:39:04 And what is it now?
1:39:07 This is another reason why I love independence.
1:39:12 And I love operating at my scale and doing the weird things and following, basically funding
1:39:12 quirks.
1:39:15 You know, it’s like the membership program funds my quirks.
1:39:17 And so I was doing all these walks.
1:39:20 And I would take trains to kind of like go to the start of the walk or whatever.
1:39:23 And like, there were all these cities I’d pass through.
1:39:24 The Shinkansen would stop at.
1:39:25 No one would get off at.
1:39:27 And I always thought like, what is this city?
1:39:35 And so in 2021, I decided to go on a 10 city tour of mid-sized cities that no one ever
1:39:37 goes to across Japan.
1:39:39 I went to Hakodate.
1:39:41 I mean, these are like, people go to these cities a little bit.
1:39:43 We call them the B side of Japan.
1:39:52 So I went to Hakodate, Morioka, Sakata, Matsumoto, Suruga, Onomichi, Yamaguchi, Karatsu, Kagoshima,
1:39:53 and Matsuyama.
1:39:55 That was the 10 that I went to.
1:40:03 And my thesis was, I would go to these cities, do three nights, four days in each city.
1:40:07 And I would force myself to try to walk 50 kilometers inside of the city limits.
1:40:13 My thesis was that if I tried to walk 50 kilometers, I was not only going to like touch most of the
1:40:14 city.
1:40:19 And in just doing that, having that weird rule of walking 50 kilometers, I was going to meet a bunch
1:40:19 of people.
1:40:20 It was going to be an adventure.
1:40:22 And so I did that.
1:40:23 I had an amazing time.
1:40:26 The tour was called Tiny Barber Post Office.
1:40:27 That’s what we named it for some reason.
1:40:28 That was like, fine.
1:40:29 That was what it was called.
1:40:32 And I name all of my tours, strange tour names.
1:40:33 And it was incredible.
1:40:34 Incredible.
1:40:36 That was in November, December, 2021.
1:40:38 And then I was writing stuff for the New York Times.
1:40:40 I do an article every now and then.
1:40:45 And in the fall of 2022, my travel editors reached out to me.
1:40:49 And as they reached out to hundreds of people a year and they say, hey, we’re doing our 52
1:40:51 places to visit this year.
1:40:53 And we want you to recommend somewhere.
1:40:56 And I had done that 10-city tour.
1:40:59 And one of the cities that really moved me, because the people were incredible.
1:41:00 The coffee was great.
1:41:01 There was a sense of independence.
1:41:03 There was a vibrancy.
1:41:04 The cityscape was beautiful.
1:41:06 The history was interesting.
1:41:12 It was an old castle town that had a beautiful park, two rivers connecting, a beautiful mountain.
1:41:13 I was like, this is just a great city.
1:41:19 And I was like, and literally in 23 years of living in Japan, not one person has ever told
1:41:20 me to go to the city.
1:41:23 So I’m going to effusively go to bat for the city to the New York Times.
1:41:26 So I wrote my little pitch to the Times people.
1:41:28 And they’re like, oh, that sounds great.
1:41:34 And timing-wise, Japan had basically been under lockdown for COVID still.
1:41:36 And it was just coming out at the end of 2022.
1:41:39 And so this list comes out in January 2023.
1:41:42 And so they don’t tell you where they’re going to put these places.
1:41:45 And I knew that it had gotten in.
1:41:47 Which city was it that you’d recommended?
1:41:51 It was Morioka, which is up in Tohoku.
1:41:52 It’s up in the north.
1:41:53 It’s in Iwate Prefecture.
1:41:57 If you go north on the Shinkansen, you go to Sendai, you go to like Fukushima, Sendai,
1:41:59 and then everyone gets off.
1:41:59 No one keeps going.
1:42:01 Morioka is kind of like the next stop on the Shinkansen.
1:42:05 So Morioka, I knew it was going to be in there.
1:42:06 I had revised my pitch.
1:42:08 You write a little 300-word article.
1:42:10 And in January, the list comes out.
1:42:12 Number one is London.
1:42:14 And number two is Morioka.
1:42:21 And Japan went bananas.
1:42:25 They were just like, what is happening?
1:42:31 Who put London and then Morioka?
1:42:32 Like what?
1:42:33 How?
1:42:36 I mean, what would the equivalent be?
1:42:42 It would be like Paris and then, I mean, not Flint, Michigan necessarily.
1:42:44 I’m not throwing shade on Flint, Michigan.
1:42:49 But I’m just imagining the response to a parallel universe.
1:42:54 It would be shocking, right, for this place that everyone skips in Japan to end up number
1:42:54 two.
1:42:58 It’s a little bit like Asheville, North Carolina to a certain degree.
1:43:03 But the difference is that Asheville people have pride in Asheville and they’re super psyched
1:43:03 about Asheville.
1:43:05 And they’d be like, yeah, yeah, number two after Paris.
1:43:06 That makes sense.
1:43:09 Japanese people, you know, aren’t like, oh, dude, our city’s awesome.
1:43:13 Like, actually, that’s one of the things that these mid-sized cities kind of have to overcome.
1:43:16 They can be great places, but they’re really bad at self-promoting.
1:43:19 And they feel like, oh, you know, like maybe we aren’t that great or like, you know, yeah,
1:43:22 we’re a cool city, but like we shouldn’t be number two, not after London.
1:43:23 That doesn’t make sense.
1:43:28 So it was this perfect storm of so many things happening.
1:43:32 And then word got out to Japanese media that I spoke Japanese.
1:43:34 And then that was the end of things.
1:43:35 Like.
1:43:36 The unlock.
1:43:40 This tidal wave of.
1:43:41 Pandora’s box.
1:43:41 Holy crap.
1:43:42 Enter stage left.
1:43:48 Every single TV show, newspaper, magazine, radio show.
1:43:53 I did 40 or 50 TV shows and radio shows in like three months.
1:43:58 And so it was weird because you might be like, oh my God, this is my dream.
1:44:00 Like I’m on media in Japan.
1:44:02 Like, oh, I’m a famous like on the TV now.
1:44:04 Like I had no desire to do this at all.
1:44:10 And so the reason why I said yes to everything was I felt so bad for putting the spotlight on this place.
1:44:16 And I felt like such a sense of duty to help them get the most out of it.
1:44:20 And for them to gain the most benefit from this spotlight, which I knew could be really annoying.
1:44:22 You know, they didn’t come to me.
1:44:24 They weren’t saying, hey, like, please send people to Morioka.
1:44:28 But I also knew it was remote enough that you wouldn’t get you.
1:44:29 It wouldn’t suffer from over tourism.
1:44:31 Like you weren’t going to suddenly have a trillion.
1:44:33 The conversion wasn’t going to be off the charts.
1:44:34 It wasn’t going to be off the charts.
1:44:39 But I felt this real need to help them believe in themselves.
1:44:44 And so it ended up being a duty and obligation for them to have pride.
1:44:48 If I was speaking to anyone, I was speaking to like the kids in the town, the high school kids.
1:44:52 I wanted to instill the sense of like, hey, your town is kind of amazing.
1:44:53 There’s amazing companies coming out of it.
1:44:55 There’s amazing cafes.
1:44:57 There’s amazing music spots.
1:45:03 These places only can exist because of this mid-sized city life baseline that they give you.
1:45:04 Like the cost of living is quite low.
1:45:06 Running a business is quite low.
1:45:09 And yet you have universal health care and like all these other infrastructures there.
1:45:10 You got the Shinkansen, blah, blah, blah.
1:45:16 And so like, if you do go to study in university in Tokyo, think about coming back because your city is kind of amazing.
1:45:18 So that was kind of my theory.
1:45:19 And that’s why I went on and did all these shows.
1:45:22 That was really bizarre and really surreal.
1:45:23 And I thought, okay, great.
1:45:24 Six months of doing that.
1:45:26 That’s the end of that.
1:45:30 Last year, the New York Times asked me again.
1:45:34 And I was like, okay, yeah, I’ll recommend another city, Yamaguchi, one of the other places I went to.
1:45:35 I was like, this is a really cool place.
1:45:38 They put it at number three on the list last year.
1:45:41 Again, just this torrent.
1:45:43 And by then I was pretty good at it.
1:45:44 Good at which aspect?
1:45:52 I was good at judoing the conversation into like weird places because they would be like,
1:45:57 all the typical questions are like, uh, Modo-san, like, what’s your favorite noodle in Morioka?
1:46:01 And I’d be like, my favorite noodle is universal healthcare.
1:46:06 You know, it’s like, because I was like, the really interesting thing isn’t the noodles.
1:46:11 It’s the fact that like these, these places exist and they exist because we have a good healthcare
1:46:12 system here.
1:46:13 And everyone’s like, oh my God.
1:46:13 Yeah.
1:46:14 We’ve never thought of that.
1:46:17 So those conversations were really fun to have.
1:46:19 The peak of it was last year.
1:46:21 I’ve never owned a TV in Japan.
1:46:22 I’ve never watched TV in Japan.
1:46:24 I don’t know anything about Japanese pop culture.
1:46:26 I just don’t have an interest in it.
1:46:30 I have a vague sense of celebrities, but I really don’t know who they are.
1:46:33 I got this email and I get so many emails.
1:46:37 I had to hire an assistant just to deal with media arbitrage because it was, there was just
1:46:38 so much coming in.
1:46:41 And I got this email and I ignored it.
1:46:45 And then the team reached out to the soba shop in Morioka that I’m like, I’m friends with
1:46:46 the owner now.
1:46:49 And they were like, hey, Modo-san won’t respond to us.
1:46:49 Can you poke him?
1:46:56 And this soba guy, this soba guy reaches out to me and he’s like, he’s like, Modo-san, you
1:46:57 need to do this TV show.
1:47:00 This is like the biggest TV celebrity in Japan.
1:47:05 And he will only come to Morioka if you agree to come and walk with him.
1:47:07 And I was like, who is this guy?
1:47:09 I was like, I don’t really want to do this.
1:47:11 And I was like, I’m going to do this other walk.
1:47:13 And like, the timing is really bad.
1:47:14 I don’t, I really didn’t want to do it.
1:47:19 The team came out and met me and they’re like, please, Modo-san, do this thing with this guy.
1:47:19 And like, da, da, da.
1:47:24 And I was like, okay, this will be my final gift to the city because like, clearly everyone
1:47:29 loves this guy and he’s never been to the city and he wants to do a special about the city.
1:47:32 And we’re going to walk together for two days or all around the city and just talk to people.
1:47:34 And I was like, okay, fine, let’s do it.
1:47:42 So we did this thing and it was the craziest experience I’ve ever had in public in my life.
1:47:45 So this guy’s name is Tamori-san, Tamori, T-A-M-O-R-I.
1:47:47 He’s 80 years old now.
1:47:51 He’s been on TV every day for like 55 years.
1:47:54 He literally every day, like he hasn’t been canceled.
1:47:55 There’s no Me Too stuff about him.
1:47:58 He’s like, I think he’s like genuinely like a pretty good guy.
1:47:59 He’s smart.
1:48:00 He loves history.
1:48:05 He has a walking show called Buddha Tamori that ran for like decades.
1:48:08 You know, John watches it and like the theme music comes on.
1:48:08 He starts crying.
1:48:10 Like people like just love this guy, right?
1:48:13 And I didn’t know anything about him.
1:48:15 I literally knew nothing about this guy.
1:48:17 And we meet up and he’s got this team.
1:48:21 It’s like a 30 person crew of this TV shoot.
1:48:22 There’s like five cameras.
1:48:24 Like everyone’s holding like mics and stuff.
1:48:29 The first shoot was in front of the trade station and they’re like, okay, Modo-san, stand here.
1:48:35 And then there was like another announcer with us, this like beautiful young woman who was like kind of like also just in the mix, like talking about history.
1:48:38 And she was standing there and then they’re like, okay, we’re set.
1:48:40 Call out Tamori-san, bring him out.
1:48:42 He comes out of like this like vault in a van.
1:48:43 You know, he’s like, protect it.
1:48:45 And we hadn’t been introduced.
1:48:47 And I’m just like, what is happening?
1:48:50 And this like tiny little dude in a suit with sunglasses on.
1:48:52 He lost his eye when he was a kid.
1:48:54 So his thing is he always wears these dark sunglasses.
1:49:00 He comes out and he stands him next to me and they’re like, okay, all right, start all.
1:49:03 You know, like it was like totally this lost in translation moment.
1:49:06 And Tamori-san is like, you go so.
1:49:07 He’s like, Tamori desu.
1:49:10 And then the woman’s like, whatever her name is, Mori desu.
1:49:13 And then I just go, ah, I just scream.
1:49:16 And I grabbed Tamori-san and I start shaking him.
1:49:19 And I go, we have to hug before this starts.
1:49:26 And the crew, I swear to God, like six people almost committed ritual suicide in front of us.
1:49:33 Like I had never seen people so terrified that I like, I don’t think anyone had ever touched Tamori-san before.
1:49:36 And like, I’m like, he’s this tiny little dude.
1:49:37 I was just like, dude, we got to say hello.
1:49:39 We can’t just, I don’t know what I’m doing.
1:49:41 I’ve never done a TV show like this before.
1:49:42 Wait, hold on.
1:49:43 How did he respond to that?
1:49:46 Did it just go into like a deathly silence?
1:49:49 Was he like taking it back?
1:49:50 And then thought it was awesome?
1:49:54 He kind of laughed and he was just like, what, who is this joker?
1:49:55 I thought we had a pro.
1:49:57 Like, you know, it’s like, I’m like, sorry.
1:49:59 Sorry, Tamori-san.
1:50:00 I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
1:50:03 I’ve just, you know, I’m like a talking head on TV if I’m doing anything.
1:50:05 I’m not like doing location stuff.
1:50:09 So anyway, that was trial by fire, ice bath to start it.
1:50:15 And we’re walking through town and it is like walking with John Lennon.
1:50:17 It is insane.
1:50:20 People are stopping their cars.
1:50:21 Buses are screeching.
1:50:25 Construction workers are screaming down, Tamori-san, ohio gozaimasu!
1:50:30 Like, we went to the market and there were like hundreds of people in the morning market.
1:50:32 And it was like Moses parting the Red Sea.
1:50:34 Old ladies were jumping up and down crying.
1:50:37 I was getting this contact high.
1:50:43 I had never like been in proximity with someone for whom the beams of love were so intense.
1:50:45 And it was just like, what is going on?
1:50:47 And everyone in town knew who I was too.
1:50:48 I was like, Molo-san.
1:50:54 And so everyone was coming up to me and like hugging me and being like, Molo-san, you brought Tamori-san to our town.
1:50:58 And like shaking my hand and like, Molo-san, thank you so much for bringing Tamori.
1:51:01 And I was just like, what the fuck is going on?
1:51:03 Because I had no cultural context.
1:51:06 I was just like, all right, I’ll do this thing with this guy.
1:51:08 Everyone wants me to do it.
1:51:08 Sure, let’s do it.
1:51:10 That was the peak of it.
1:51:11 Pretty insane.
1:51:13 Pretty insane.
1:51:30 Yeah, and just for those who might think you’re exaggerating about his ubiquitous appearance on television, I just looked him up and I’m like, oh yeah, I saw that guy every time the fucking television was on when I was 15 as an exchange student.
1:51:33 Literally 55 years every day, TV.
1:51:34 Consistently.
1:51:35 Yeah.
1:51:36 Just incredible.
1:51:40 So have you retreated into the cave of creativity?
1:51:44 Have you forsaken the glamorous television life?
1:51:50 Or are you going to put something at number three or four again, and then you’re going to get thrown right back into the arena?
1:51:54 Well, this year I recommended Toyama City, and that one was on the list.
1:51:56 Not three or four, but they learned their lesson.
1:51:58 It’s kind of a one trick.
1:51:59 You can’t do that every year.
1:52:04 But it beat Osaka, because Osaka has the Expo this year, and it was ranked higher than Osaka.
1:52:11 But now, what’s happened, what’s really interesting is that the 52 Places thing is now a brand, and it kind of doesn’t matter where you are.
1:52:13 And just to be on it is a big deal.
1:52:16 And it’s become Moldo-san’s pick of the year.
1:52:23 And everyone in January is waiting with bated breath to see what city I’m going to pick.
1:52:28 And I get emails constantly from cities that are like, please, come walk in our city.
1:52:33 Like, we’d love to have you walk by the coast in this city, you know, in the middle of nowhere, you know, over here and whatnot.
1:52:34 It’s very sweet.
1:52:37 But I now batch it all.
1:52:44 Toyama wanted me to come out and meet the mayor, meet the governor, and kind of do some press stuff talking about why I picked the city.
1:52:45 And I’m going to do that all in the fall.
1:52:47 I was just too busy in the spring.
1:52:50 I just got too much going on with the random house stuff.
1:53:00 What has been the economic impact, if you have any idea, what has been the economic impact of this spotlight that you’ve put on these different cities?
1:53:03 So Morioka has definitely been the biggest one.
1:53:08 And in part, that was because Morioka had a couple key people in the city who were really good at promoting.
1:53:12 So, like, they, when this happened, they were ready to run with it.
1:53:13 They were, like, totally prepared.
1:53:18 So they were able to, I think, catalyze more activity, more inbound.
1:53:20 It’s not just inbound from abroad.
1:53:26 It’s a lot of, like, Japanese people traveling to these cities now, too, because, like, just a buzz picks up.
1:53:28 People moving to the cities.
1:53:36 So one study was done, and I think they estimated the impact in Morioka over, like, the first two years is something, like, close to $100 million.
1:53:43 Like, a financial impact, which, like, I wrote 300 words.
1:53:47 So whatever that is, that’s, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars of impact per word.
1:53:48 That’s so cool.
1:53:51 I’m never, ever, ever going to impact something like that.
1:53:52 I mean, that’s just insane.
1:53:54 We’ll see.
1:53:55 Yeah.
1:53:56 We’ll see, Modo-san.
1:53:57 We’ll see.
1:54:01 But it’s been two years and change in Morioka.
1:54:01 I was just there.
1:54:02 I just launched a book there.
1:54:08 I ended up forming this relationship with a great indie publisher, and we put out a Japanese edition of Kisa by Kisa.
1:54:10 We launched it in Morioka.
1:54:17 It was so wonderful to be able to do this event in the town and have everyone come out and see everyone.
1:54:22 And honestly, I think it’s been almost entirely positive.
1:54:27 And it has added this, like, a bit of vigor to the town that maybe wasn’t there before.
1:54:29 And it has not burdened them.
1:54:31 And I think it’s been really heartening to see.
1:54:33 And it’s kind of a relief for me as well.
1:54:36 Two years later, I didn’t ruin this place.
1:54:37 Yeah.
1:54:37 I’m just real great.
1:54:38 It wasn’t the hug of death.
1:54:39 It wasn’t the hug of death.
1:54:40 Thank God.
1:54:43 If you’re listening, you should totally go check out Morioka if you get a chance.
1:54:45 It’s a cool place.
1:54:53 What is a place you have not written about in the New York Times or shared widely that people should check out in Japan?
1:54:56 If they do not speak Japanese, I’ll just make that a condition.
1:55:02 Well, so when I recommended Yamaguchi City, part of it was because there’s a great walk there.
1:55:04 And it’s called the Hagi-Oukan.
1:55:08 And it connects Yamaguchi and Hagi City.
1:55:09 And it’s a two-day walk.
1:55:10 You can actually do it in one day.
1:55:12 If you really power through, you can plow through in one day.
1:55:14 There is an inn to stay at in the middle.
1:55:16 It’s above a tofu shop.
1:55:17 Oh, that one.
1:55:18 What’s it called?
1:55:19 I just stayed there last week.
1:55:23 Anyway, if you search for the inn on the Hagi-Oukan, it’s the only one that pops up.
1:55:24 How do you spell that?
1:55:31 H-A-G-I, Hagi, and then O-K-A-N, Okan.
1:55:33 Anyway, it connects to Hagi City.
1:55:42 And Hagi City is this really beautiful, kind of very undervisited, mainly because it’s kind of a pain in the butt to get to.
1:55:53 But a great combo would be to go to Yamaguchi City, which has Yuda Onsen, which is a great little onsen town that’s basically connected with Yamaguchi.
1:56:04 And there’s an amazing inn called San Sui En, which is a beautiful Bunkazai, cultural heritage inn from Taisho era.
1:56:06 So it’s about 100 years old.
1:56:11 Amazing baths, beautiful gardens, wonderful owners.
1:56:12 The original family still owns it.
1:56:16 And you can walk from there over the Hagi-Oukan to Hagi.
1:56:17 And I’d say spend a couple of days in Hagi.
1:56:18 It’s an incredible city.
1:56:20 This is good.
1:56:33 We’ll introduce a little friction for people who want to hunt down this Easter egg of sorts, meaning the inn, near, or off of, or inn, Hagi-Oukan.
1:56:42 You can send that to me afterwards, and we’ll put that in the show notes for people so they can track that down if they’re sufficiently motivated.
1:56:46 You can stay there if you don’t speak Japanese, but the people who run it don’t speak English.
1:56:48 But you can figure it out.
1:56:49 It’s a little bit of work.
1:56:53 Google Translate’s become pretty good, and other tools like that.
1:56:54 The tofu’s amazing.
1:56:55 The dinner is amazing, truly.
1:56:56 All right.
1:57:08 We’re going to keep this particular part short, but lest people think you’ve only done big walks in Japan, where are other places outside of Japan where you’ve done big walks?
1:57:11 Well, I haven’t done big solo walks.
1:57:12 Not solo.
1:57:12 Elsewhere.
1:57:14 But I’ve done the walk and talks.
1:57:16 Walk and talks with Kevin Kelly.
1:57:17 I did the Nakasendo with Kevin.
1:57:19 Then Hugh Howey comes out.
1:57:20 We did Kumano Kodo.
1:57:21 And then we were so excited by that.
1:57:26 We’ve done now, I don’t even know how many, seven or eight or nine others around the world.
1:57:28 We’ve done Southern China, Thailand.
1:57:30 We’ve walked across Bali.
1:57:32 We’ve done England twice.
1:57:35 We’ve done Japan with bigger groups again.
1:57:38 It’s been great.
1:57:45 We’ve done Spain once, and I’m actually doing Spain again with him, a different part of the Santiago, Camino de Santiago, next week.
1:57:46 We’re heading out next week.
1:57:47 Oh, wow.
1:57:47 Yeah.
1:57:48 Yeah.
1:57:49 I’m busy.
1:57:50 It is a busy period.
1:57:52 Kevin’s an enthusiastic walker as well.
1:57:55 And both England trips were the Cotswold Way?
1:57:56 Cotswolds, yeah.
1:58:00 And I also did, independent of Kevin, I walked with another friend.
1:58:04 We did Wayne’s Rite coast to coast, which is in northern England.
1:58:09 And it starts in the Lake District on the west, and you walk across the coast to coast across the country.
1:58:12 And that is pretty amazing.
1:58:13 It’s 300 kilometers.
1:58:16 It takes about 10 to 12 days.
1:58:18 And that is beautiful.
1:58:25 If you think of England, and as you should, you think of it as rolling hills, Lake District is like serious mountains.
1:58:26 It’s very cool.
1:58:27 It’s very beautiful.
1:58:28 It’s wonderful.
1:58:30 Highly recommend it.
1:58:38 So what I also highly recommend is that people go to the source of all good things, CraigMott.com.
1:58:45 And if you go to CraigMott.com slash Ridgeline, one word, slash 176, you can also just Google this.
1:58:46 It’ll be a lot easier.
1:58:49 The Walk and Talk, subtitle, Everything We Know.
1:58:54 This describes how you and Kevin architect these Walk and Talks.
1:58:59 And I’ve had the good fortune to walk with you guys.
1:59:06 And the basic idea, there’s a lot more to it, but the basic idea is you are walking extensively every day.
1:59:14 And then you have a group meal at the end of the day, which is Jeffersonian style, meaning there’s only one conversation.
1:59:21 And the participants in the walk get to choose the topic or the question that they want people to explore.
1:59:22 And it’s wonderful.
1:59:24 It is just such a lovely experience.
1:59:43 And so counter to so much of what we experience, as you described it earlier, with the increasingly contracted feedback loops of social media and so on, which we’re not evolved to metabolize very well.
1:59:45 So I encourage people to check that out.
1:59:46 We’ll put the link in the show notes.
1:59:49 Craig, I have a very important question that I need to ask you.
1:59:53 And that is, is Maude your birth name?
1:59:55 Where does Maude come into things?
2:00:06 Maude is not my birth name, but because I’m adopted, the parents who adopted me got divorced when I was basically 18 months, two years old or whatever.
2:00:12 And my father, whose name I ended up keeping, and my mother didn’t go back to her maiden name.
2:00:16 There was a point in teenage years where it just seemed weird.
2:00:18 He wasn’t raising me.
2:00:20 He literally taught me nothing.
2:00:22 He was like an anti-archetype.
2:00:23 He was like, okay, this is like what you shouldn’t do.
2:00:25 Ha-men-kyo-shika.
2:00:26 Yeah, exactly.
2:00:26 Exactly.
2:00:27 Yes.
2:00:27 The opposite.
2:00:28 Opposite teacher.
2:00:29 Opposite teacher.
2:00:33 It’s somebody who role models the opposite of what you want to do.
2:00:39 So look, he had a really tough childhood and he came from a place bereft of archetypes as well.
2:00:41 And so he didn’t know how to be a dad.
2:00:44 But anyway, it just seemed weird to kind of have this name.
2:00:46 And so, yeah, no, I just changed it.
2:01:05 That is a little ET Reese’s Pieces trail to lure you into telling the fucking wild story related to the recent chapters in your adoption journey.
2:01:11 I will cue that up and you can tackle it any way you want.
2:01:16 I think adopted people in general, you can have very different experiences of being adopted.
2:01:24 But I think a common one is, like I explained in part one of what we were talking about in my history, you know, you feel apart from things.
2:01:29 You do not feel necessarily of a group, of a family.
2:01:33 The family who adopted you can do all the right things and you can still not feel that way.
2:01:40 You feel like there’s kind of a mythology out there elsewhere and it can kind of haunt you, you know.
2:01:44 And I think different people can want different things from that mythology.
2:01:52 And as 23andMe and Ancestry.com and all these like DNA testing things have become more and more commonplace, I think it’s become more and more easy for people to find out who their birth parents are.
2:02:02 And so all of my life, you know, I had never really been that curious about who my birth parents were.
2:02:08 Part of it is, I think you don’t want to dishonor your adoptive parents by having this.
2:02:18 And I think if I was going to give a piece of advice to adoptive parents, it would be, you have to work so hard to remove the stigma of curiosity around where you come from as an, for an adopted kid.
2:02:21 And you actually have to have so many more conversations than you think you have to have.
2:02:31 You have to really get the taboo out by airing that conversation over and over and over again, beating it to death and to a certain degree to say, hey, you know, like, do you want to look up your genetic background?
2:02:34 If you ever want to connect with your birth mother, let me help you.
2:02:35 I’m here to help you.
2:02:36 I’m here to give you support for that.
2:02:38 My family didn’t do any of that.
2:02:42 So I think I kind of suppressed a lot of the curiosity, but it’s always there.
2:02:49 And the one thing I did have, as I explained last time, was I had adoption paper notes and my birth mother was 13 when she got pregnant.
2:02:55 And my birth father, according to the adoption notes, there was a car accident and he was murdered at the site of the car accident.
2:02:55 So he was dead.
2:02:57 And that’s all I knew.
2:03:03 And I joined 23andMe like 12 years ago and I got, you know, whatever, fourth cousin hit.
2:03:04 We’re probably like third cousins or something.
2:03:06 You know, it’s like everyone’s a fourth cousin, fifth cousin.
2:03:10 It’s sort of meaningless and nothing really close.
2:03:16 And then I was on actually a walk in England two years ago, three years ago now, three years ago with Kevin and everyone.
2:03:18 I was like, yeah, you know, I did 23andMe.
2:03:20 And they’re like, oh, dude, you got to do Ancestry.
2:03:21 That’s where everyone is.
2:03:22 And I was like, really?
2:03:23 I was like, all right.
2:03:24 I came back, did Ancestry.
2:03:27 And lo and behold, boom, there’s my mom.
2:03:30 And it was like, oh, okay.
2:03:31 I guess, yeah, people are on Ancestry.
2:03:33 So I get a name.
2:03:38 I was mainly interested just in genetic history and health history.
2:03:44 You crest 40 and if you have things you want to live for, you start thinking about health.
2:03:45 Stuff just starts popping up.
2:03:53 And my relationship with my stepdaughter became so profound to me in the last five years and gave me such a strong sense of self-worth.
2:03:55 All of this other stuff was ratcheting up.
2:04:00 Like I talked about the sense of scarcity, this lack of myself having value that I felt all through my 20s.
2:04:08 And if there’s one thing that supercharged all of it, of abundance and value, self-value, it was the relationship with my stepdaughter.
2:04:17 And particularly when she was 8, 9, 10, 11 years old and working through conflicts with her, not big conflicts, just weird little things.
2:04:18 We’d get in these little fights.
2:04:19 She wouldn’t get up to go to school.
2:04:22 I’d like squirt her with a water bottle and then she wouldn’t like talk to me for three weeks.
2:04:28 That stuff, you know, it’s just like, whatever, little girls could be kind of insane sometimes.
2:04:36 And like, I was driven to such places of sadness by that because I had never seen reconciliation.
2:04:38 I’d never had that modeled for me.
2:04:44 And I thought this little girl is going to throw me away because that was my default for all of my relationships in my life.
2:04:45 This person can throw me away.
2:04:51 And what I realized was, not only does she not want to throw me away, she really wants to reconcile.
2:04:53 She really wants to repair things.
2:04:57 And she desperately, desperately wants even more of me in her life.
2:05:04 And once we went through a few cycles of like, she kind of got upset at me for something dumb or whatever, like, you know, she was acting up or whatever.
2:05:05 And I was like, I took away her iPad or something.
2:05:13 And once we went through a few cycles of that, I realized how much of a great dad I could be.
2:05:16 And that was something I never believed because I’d never had it modeled for me.
2:05:20 And so this is an important thing to cue up, you know, connecting with my birth mom.
2:05:28 Because by the time we matched on Ancestry, I had gone through so many, I think, iterations of self.
2:05:34 And the self I was when we connected, when we matched, I was really proud of.
2:05:36 And I felt really good about it.
2:05:36 And I believed in my value.
2:05:38 I had like empirical evidence of it.
2:05:44 And I was anonymous on Ancestry because I’m protective of a lot of stuff.
2:05:49 Even though I’m like being quite open here, I’m also quite protective as you are to a certain degree, as we all are.
2:05:51 And so she couldn’t see my name.
2:05:53 And we matched.
2:05:56 And then we didn’t send each other a message for a year.
2:05:59 And I was just like, oh, okay, she doesn’t want to match.
2:06:00 Maybe her family made her join.
2:06:02 You know, she has a traumatic experience.
2:06:06 In my mind, it was like being pregnant with me was tremendously traumatic.
2:06:10 And I was like, okay, I don’t want to rustle her feathers.
2:06:11 I don’t want to disrupt her life.
2:06:12 I had her name.
2:06:13 I found out everything about her.
2:06:15 I could just like Google, you know, you get all the records.
2:06:17 I knew where she worked.
2:06:18 I knew where she lived at her home address.
2:06:19 I knew who she was married to.
2:06:20 I knew she had been divorced.
2:06:21 Like all this stuff.
2:06:22 I could see that.
2:06:23 And I was like, okay, cool.
2:06:25 Like I just kind of know who this person is.
2:06:27 I don’t feel the need to meet her.
2:06:29 I don’t feel this need for like a mom.
2:06:30 Like I have my mom.
2:06:32 Like I don’t need another mom.
2:06:33 Like there was none of that.
2:06:39 And then a year later, she sent me a message that just said, hi, with like no punctuation.
2:06:41 And it was like, hi, I think we’re related.
2:06:42 Do you live in Japan?
2:06:44 It was like the weirdest message.
2:06:46 And it was like, you think we’re related.
2:06:48 We share 50% of DNA.
2:06:50 Like we’re definitely related.
2:06:55 And it triggered this thing in me where I was like, I grew up with not having a lot of adults
2:06:57 be adults around me.
2:07:10 And she sent this message and it just made me feel like, okay, here’s another adult who doesn’t want to do the hard emotional work of being the adult, of being a parent in this situation and being like, hey, I’m your mom.
2:07:12 This is great to match.
2:07:13 I joined because of these reasons.
2:07:14 Would you like to connect?
2:07:15 Da, da, da.
2:07:17 Instead, it’s this weird, cryptic, bizarro message.
2:07:21 So I didn’t respond for three months.
2:07:28 And then I finally, like after stewing on it for a while, I was like, okay, what would I want to get if I was her, who I had this kid when I was 13, 14.
2:07:32 And so I wrote her this message that I stayed anonymous in.
2:07:34 I said, look, I just like kind of outlined my life.
2:07:42 And I just, I was like, look, not everything has been easy, but I’ve gotten to this place and I’ve been really lucky and I’ve been really blessed in a lot of ways.
2:07:46 And I have this amazing relationship with this young daughter.
2:07:54 And I, you know, I’ve been successful in many ways and like, I’m so grateful and I can only imagine how hard it was for you to have done what you did.
2:07:56 And thank you for having me.
2:08:05 And thank you for going through the process of putting me up for adoption, basically like to assuage any sense of worry about who I might be or what had happened to me to give her that gift.
2:08:10 And so I sent her that message and I’m still anonymous and I get no response from her.
2:08:11 And I’m like, oh my God.
2:08:11 Okay.
2:08:13 This is like a lost cause.
2:08:22 And then three months after that, I get this message and it’s like, oh my God, I don’t have notifications turned on for Ancestry.
2:08:24 I am so sorry.
2:08:36 And it’s a 5,000 word letter that is the most emotionally intelligent, beautiful, thoughtful thing I had ever gotten.
2:08:40 And it was just like, this person is so tuned in.
2:08:42 And I was like, what do I do with this?
2:08:43 I was like, so overwhelmed.
2:08:47 I was launching my fine art edition of T-Bot and like things become other things and doing all this.
2:08:49 I was like, oh my God, how do I process this?
2:08:53 And then a week later, she sends me another 5,000 word letter.
2:08:56 And she’s like, I’m so crushed that I didn’t respond to your other message.
2:08:58 I just want to tell you about my childhood.
2:09:00 I want to tell you about like where you came from.
2:09:02 I want to tell you about like the family you come from.
2:09:06 And like, I’m the youngest of five siblings and my father died when I was nine.
2:09:10 And so like, I had to work at a sandwich shop when I was 13 and I was super entrepreneurial.
2:09:15 And like, it was just like, we had pet turtles and I had three goldfish and six cats and this thing and that thing.
2:09:19 And I was like, oh my God, I couldn’t process it.
2:09:23 I wasn’t ready for someone to be so hungry.
2:09:26 And she was just like, I know you may not want to meet.
2:09:29 I am happy to talk on whatever terms you want to talk on.
2:09:30 Here’s my address.
2:09:31 Here’s my phone number.
2:09:32 Here’s my email.
2:09:34 And I was just like, I couldn’t process it.
2:09:36 And I had so much going on in my life.
2:09:41 And I sent her a little email at the end of the, a little message at the end of the year, still anonymous.
2:09:43 I just said, hey, look, I’m so overwhelmed.
2:09:44 I’m going to get back to you in the new year.
2:09:45 And she’s like, no worries.
2:09:45 Don’t worry.
2:09:47 I didn’t respond.
2:09:48 Mother’s Day comes.
2:09:49 She sends me a letter.
2:09:50 I’m thinking about you on Mother’s Day.
2:09:55 Like, I hope you’re with your adoptive mom and I hope she’s giving you a big, I’m just like, oh my God.
2:09:57 Like now I’m a terrible son to like two moms.
2:09:58 And like, I haven’t even met this person.
2:10:00 And finally, I’m with Kevin.
2:10:01 We’re on a walk.
2:10:01 We’re in Bali.
2:10:03 I’m talking about this.
2:10:06 And Kevin just goes, Craig, just go have lunch with her.
2:10:09 And I was like, you know what?
2:10:10 Yeah, screw it.
2:10:10 All right.
2:10:12 I messaged her, still anonymous.
2:10:14 I said, hey, how about we get lunch in August?
2:10:15 I’ll be in Chicago.
2:10:16 I’ll meet you out there.
2:10:17 She lives in Chicago.
2:10:18 And she was like, great.
2:10:20 Let’s do it this day, this time, blah, blah, blah.
2:10:21 We set it up.
2:10:23 I’m still anonymous.
2:10:24 I still haven’t told her my name.
2:10:25 I’m like, I don’t want her to Google.
2:10:27 I don’t want her to know anything.
2:10:28 I fly out to Chicago.
2:10:30 Pretty nervous.
2:10:32 Don’t know what to expect.
2:10:36 But also, I’m not going into this needing something.
2:10:37 I’m not like, oh, I need her to be this.
2:10:38 I need this relationship.
2:10:40 I’m just like, this is kind of a fun adventure.
2:10:42 Like, let’s go meet this person.
2:10:44 She’s standing outside this like steakhouse that she booked for lunch.
2:10:49 And I see her and I like, hi, you know, I’m the anonymous weirdo that I’m like, I apologize
2:10:51 for not like telling her my name before we met.
2:10:58 I give her a big hug and we go into this steakhouse and sit down and it takes us two hours before
2:11:00 we order drinks.
2:11:04 Like, it was just, we sat down in this booth.
2:11:08 The waitress came over and was just like, honey, you’ve got something going on.
2:11:10 I’ll come back when you’re ready.
2:11:16 And she goes, I’ve been thinking about you every day on your birthday.
2:11:21 And she pulls out of her wallet a baby photo of me that the adoption agency had given her.
2:11:24 And she goes, I’ve been carrying around this my whole life.
2:11:30 And she goes, I have thought about you every year.
2:11:32 I’ve wondered who you’ve become.
2:11:36 And I’ve never once felt bad.
2:11:39 I have no negative feelings.
2:11:41 I have no negative emotions around the experience.
2:11:47 Actually getting pregnant with you, it was this accident, but it was totally copacetic.
2:11:48 And by the way, your father’s still alive.
2:11:50 I lied.
2:11:50 She was 13.
2:11:54 She’s like, he was 22 and that was going to cause a bunch of problems.
2:11:57 So I just picked a guy out of the newspaper who had been murdered.
2:11:58 And I said, that was the father.
2:11:59 I was like, oh my God.
2:12:04 She was so strong-headed.
2:12:08 She was just like, I was just going to handle this pregnancy on my own.
2:12:10 But in the end, my sisters helped me out.
2:12:12 I moved out with my aunt and uncle in Connecticut.
2:12:13 That’s how you ended up in Connecticut.
2:12:15 And everyone was so supportive.
2:12:16 And it was so beautiful.
2:12:18 And it was such a great experience.
2:12:20 And the school, the high school supported me.
2:12:21 And they gave me a mentor.
2:12:25 And she’s like, when I gave birth to you in the hospital, I held you.
2:12:27 I could only hold you for two days.
2:12:28 And I wrote you a letter.
2:12:29 Did you get the letter I wrote?
2:12:30 I was just like, oh my God.
2:12:32 It’s just, she’s telling me all this.
2:12:36 And my Genesis story is just being completely reconfigured in real time.
2:12:37 And I don’t know what to do with it.
2:12:38 And she tells me her story.
2:12:41 And she’s just like, she’s a computer programmer.
2:12:42 And she runs a consultancy.
2:12:44 And she’s totally self-taught.
2:12:48 She’s like, I bought my first car at 16, my second at 18, my first house when I was 24.
2:12:50 I was just like, who are you?
2:12:52 And we’re sitting there.
2:12:59 And I just go, this is the first time ever in my life that I understand where my brain
2:13:00 comes from.
2:13:04 We have some features that it wasn’t like looking into a mirror, but it was like listening to
2:13:08 someone who had jacked into my brain talking about their life.
2:13:12 Like they had used my, I was like, that’s, this is where my brain comes from.
2:13:15 Because no one in my family has any of the impulses I have.
2:13:17 No one I grew up with has any of these impulses.
2:13:21 And it was just so clear, like how she handled everything
2:13:23 in her life is exactly how I’ve handled everything in my life.
2:13:25 And it was this, it was so surreal.
2:13:27 And she goes, do you have friends in Chicago?
2:13:28 And I go, yeah, I have friends.
2:13:29 I’m going to have dinner with one tonight.
2:13:31 And she goes, you have dinner plans?
2:13:33 And I was like, yeah, I thought we were just getting lunch.
2:13:36 She’s like, I got us tickets to the symphony.
2:13:38 I got us a riverboat ride.
2:13:39 We have pizza dinner.
2:13:40 I was just like, oh my God.
2:13:42 I’m like, obviously I’m going to cancel my plans.
2:13:45 You know, like, of course, let’s go to the symphony.
2:13:51 And we ended up, you know, spending the whole day talking, going to the symphony, going to get pizza.
2:13:53 It was so surreal.
2:13:56 And at the end of it all, we were going to do more.
2:13:58 And I just said, look, I need to be alone now.
2:13:59 And she’s like, I totally get it.
2:14:01 And she gave me this little gift basket.
2:14:04 And the whole time, we hadn’t cried.
2:14:05 We hadn’t gotten emotional.
2:14:10 At the end of brunch on Sunday, she goes, I can’t tell you how much this meant to me.
2:14:12 Thank you for trusting me.
2:14:13 Thank you for meeting up.
2:14:15 This means so much.
2:14:17 And I hope this isn’t the end of this relationship.
2:14:20 And here’s this gift basket.
2:14:21 She’s like, don’t look at it now.
2:14:22 It’s embarrassing.
2:14:24 And I opened it up later.
2:14:27 And it had, like, chocolate bars and Twizzlers.
2:14:32 And it had this, like, this print-on-demand book of, like, my entire family tree.
2:14:34 And history and family photos.
2:14:35 And, like, my grandparents.
2:14:37 And, you know, all of her brothers and sisters.
2:14:39 And this is who you come from.
2:14:41 And this is, like, when they came to America.
2:14:44 And it was just, like, the whole thing was just so overwhelming and so moving.
2:14:48 And I feel like the timing of it was so perfect.
2:14:53 Because I could go to that meeting with her, not needing anything from it.
2:14:54 To just be there in the moment.
2:14:56 To be totally, radically present.
2:14:57 Focused.
2:15:01 And also just so, I know this sounds weird to say, but proud of who I was.
2:15:02 Who I had become.
2:15:04 To say hello to her.
2:15:04 To meet her.
2:15:07 And you just saw it in her as well.
2:15:08 Like, I was like, oh, I’m doing this thing.
2:15:10 And she’s like, I can’t believe you’re my son.
2:15:11 She was just so proud.
2:15:13 And it was obviously on Saturday night.
2:15:13 She went home.
2:15:15 She went back to the hotel Saturday night.
2:15:16 And she called everybody.
2:15:19 She called her aunt and uncle who she stayed with when she gave birth to me.
2:15:22 I started getting all these emails from cousins.
2:15:25 You know, I get this email from someone in, like, Wyoming.
2:15:26 They’re like, hey, I run a flower shop in Wyoming.
2:15:27 I’m 33.
2:15:27 I’m your cousin.
2:15:28 Like, let’s do a Zoom.
2:15:29 I’m like, what?
2:15:32 I’ve suddenly got all these aunts and uncles, all these cousins.
2:15:33 I’ve got this whole family.
2:15:36 And she was, like, obviously so proud of, like, who I was and who I’d become.
2:15:38 And I don’t know.
2:15:40 The whole thing has just been really, really cool.
2:15:43 And it turns out that I also have a half-sister who’s 28.
2:15:45 She lives in Alaska.
2:15:48 We did a Zoom call, like, a month ago.
2:15:49 And she’s awesome.
2:15:50 She’s so cool.
2:15:52 She’s married to this Coast Guard.
2:15:54 They’re going to come out and do a walk in Japan.
2:15:56 I’m going to go to Alaska and go hunting.
2:15:59 And I’m doing a book tour in America in May and June.
2:16:02 They’re going to fly out and join, like, one of the dates on the book tour.
2:16:03 She’s also an only child.
2:16:04 I’m an only child.
2:16:07 And we’re both, like, we love that we now have a sibling.
2:16:09 We’re like, this is so cool.
2:16:11 Texting every day, sending stupid photos.
2:16:15 It’s a very weird, unexpected chapter of life that came out of nowhere.
2:16:18 And I’m here for it.
2:16:19 I’m ready for it.
2:16:20 I’m excited by it.
2:16:22 So you went into it not needing anything.
2:16:25 Initially, you did not have the impulse to reconnect.
2:16:27 What does it feel like now?
2:16:29 Like, what has it done to you?
2:16:32 You know, it’s been eight months since we met.
2:16:35 And the sister thing is just, like, a month ago.
2:16:41 It takes a long time to unravel the mythologies that you’ve set for yourself, your Genesis story.
2:16:43 And I feel it.
2:16:51 It’s almost like these tightly wound springs of tension are slowly unwinding, like a spring in a watch or something.
2:16:53 Like, slowly, like, loosening.
2:16:59 And I just feel like my heart is opening in a weird way that it’s never been opened to before.
2:17:02 And, again, that sense of value.
2:17:09 It’s like, I don’t come from this place of, I thought, you know, 13 years old, raped, the guy’s murdered, he’s like a gangster, it’s like terrible, blah, blah, blah.
2:17:11 It turns out it wasn’t.
2:17:17 She was just kind of a sexy 13-year-old, I guess, and, like, looked older and was, like, older for her age or whatever.
2:17:22 And I guess my biological father, whatever, like, his dad owned the sandwich shop that she was working at.
2:17:25 So, like, I guess he’d come to get sandwiches and they met.
2:17:27 And whatever, they wanted to have sex.
2:17:29 So they had sex and it happened.
2:17:33 It wasn’t, like, this place of pain there.
2:17:34 And the pregnancy wasn’t painful.
2:17:37 Like, it’s just weird to think all these things.
2:17:39 And so it just takes time.
2:17:46 And it’s this slow but really, really beautiful unraveling and opening of the heart.
2:17:47 And I don’t know.
2:17:49 I think it’s going to take even more time.
2:17:50 And we’re going slowly.
2:17:53 We’re just taking it very respectfully in both directions.
2:17:56 And not too much communication.
2:17:58 Not too much expectation.
2:18:00 And just being like, this is cool.
2:18:01 Let’s have fun with it.
2:18:03 And just see where it goes.
2:18:04 It’s great.
2:18:05 It’s really good.
2:18:06 I’m so happy for you, man.
2:18:07 So happy for you.
2:18:13 I remember, I guess it was over a dinner when you first shared pieces of this.
2:18:21 There were a handful of folks there and everyone’s jaws dropped, mouths agape.
2:18:22 Like, wait, what?
2:18:25 Such a beautiful story.
2:18:28 And it’s still unfurling, right?
2:18:34 This is the first steeping of the tea leaves with many more steepings left to go.
2:18:40 And the flavors and the aromas, the entire texture of that emotional experience, I’m sure,
2:18:42 will continue to develop.
2:18:44 Not to mix too many metaphors.
2:18:46 I was going to say, like, photograph in a dark room.
2:18:47 But it’s true, right?
2:18:50 It’s like certain things you see, certain things you feel.
2:18:51 I’m really excited for you, man.
2:18:52 Super happy for you.
2:18:54 I’m psyched to have a younger sister.
2:18:55 I’m just like, cool.
2:18:57 I want, you know, ask me questions.
2:18:59 I know about stuff.
2:19:00 Ask me questions.
2:19:01 It’s like, I want to help you.
2:19:02 I want to give you knowledge.
2:19:05 I want to, like, you know, I’m happy to mentor you about stuff.
2:19:05 I don’t know.
2:19:07 Like, that impulse is just so intuitive.
2:19:10 I look forward to cultivating that relationship.
2:19:16 It’s just so weird to suddenly, to go from, like, being an only child who, you know, my
2:19:17 adoptive family is very tiny.
2:19:19 There’s, like, three people left alive.
2:19:24 To go to having this, like, there’s an aunt in Switzerland who’s, like, a yoga teacher.
2:19:26 And I’ve got, like, 14 cousins now.
2:19:27 And, you know, all this stuff.
2:19:29 It’s, like, it’s pretty interesting.
2:19:29 Pretty exciting.
2:19:31 Yeah.
2:19:33 Well, man.
2:19:38 So, are you going to connect your stepdaughter with your family?
2:19:39 I’d love to.
2:19:39 Yeah.
2:19:40 I’d love to do that.
2:19:45 If the timing works out, do, like, a little trip to the States with her and have her meet
2:19:45 everyone.
2:19:45 That’d be fun.
2:19:53 Well, Craig, this is not something I often say on the podcast, but you have a beautiful
2:19:54 soul.
2:19:55 I love spending time with you.
2:19:57 You also write beautifully.
2:20:01 And I really want to encourage people to check out Things Become Other Things.
2:20:04 I mean, this is the tip of the iceberg.
2:20:15 And the way you weave prose and sort of inject nostalgia and liminality and…
2:20:16 That’s a good word.
2:20:17 Yes, it is.
2:20:28 And the emotional experience of moving slowly and then historically, flashback, moving quickly
2:20:35 through the world, all of these things that you put into a beautiful tapestry of a reading
2:20:36 experience.
2:20:38 I really encourage people to check it out.
2:20:39 So, Things Become Other Things.
2:20:44 People can find all things Craig Mod at craigmod.com.
2:20:46 Easy to remember.
2:20:50 Is there anything else you’d like to say, Craig, before we wind to a close?
2:20:55 Just to, like, extra plug the book, because, like, why not?
2:20:55 Why not?
2:20:56 You’re here.
2:21:02 But, you know, yesterday, two days ago, I got an incredible email from David Mitchell,
2:21:03 who’d read the book.
2:21:07 Explain who that is for people who may not recognize it.
2:21:09 David Mitchell wrote Cloud Atlas.
2:21:10 That’s probably his most famous book.
2:21:13 But he’s done Number Nine Dream, Ghost Written, Cloud Atlas.
2:21:16 There’s one, it’s like Green Swan, Black Swan or something.
2:21:18 That’s actually one of my favorites of his.
2:21:20 Black Swan Green, I think is what it’s called.
2:21:22 He’s an incredible writer.
2:21:26 He’s someone that I’ve admired and have been reading his work.
2:21:26 in Japan.
2:21:27 He lived in Hiroshima.
2:21:28 He taught English in Hiroshima.
2:21:30 Some of his books take place in Japan.
2:21:37 I’ve always admired this guy and the felicity with which he writes and his use of language,
2:21:37 everything.
2:21:42 He’s a beautiful—oh, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob DeZoe, I think, is his book about Dejima
2:21:44 over in Nagasaki.
2:21:46 Historical fiction, beautiful book.
2:21:51 Anyway, if I was going to pick three authors in the world that I’d be honored to have them
2:21:53 read the book, he would be top three for sure.
2:22:02 And the fact that he read it, he sent over a 2,000-word email just saying how much he loved
2:22:03 it.
2:22:07 And it was, honestly, it was just one of the most shocking emails I’ve ever gotten.
2:22:08 He blurbed it.
2:22:09 He did a nice blurb.
2:22:14 But David Mitchell really, really, really, really liked this book.
2:22:18 And he was quoting extensively.
2:22:20 I was just like, I was embarrassed by the end of this email.
2:22:22 So just putting that out there.
2:22:26 It’s like, if you’re a David Mitchell fan, if you’re a David Mitchell fan, if you like Cloud
2:22:29 Atlas, you’ll like things become other things, possibly.
2:22:31 Maybe.
2:22:32 Anyway.
2:22:33 Check it out, guys.
2:22:34 I’m just proud of that.
2:22:35 It made my week.
2:22:35 Yeah.
2:22:36 Oh, you should be.
2:22:38 I mean, well, we were texting as it happened.
2:22:38 Yeah.
2:22:41 I was like, oh my God, David Mitchell, this is insane.
2:22:43 It was so wild.
2:22:44 So wild.
2:22:48 And just, God, talk about full circle in a way.
2:22:50 I’m excited for your next chapters, Ben.
2:22:52 There’s a lot to come.
2:22:53 Who knows what?
2:22:57 But I also hope to do a walk with you again soon.
2:22:59 So I’ll have to figure out what that looks like.
2:23:03 And that’s all I got for now, Craig.
2:23:03 That’s all I got, too.
2:23:05 It is God knows what time.
2:23:06 It’s like 1 a.m.
2:23:07 It’s 2 a.m.
2:23:07 Where you are.
2:23:09 At 2 a.m.
2:23:10 And I need to get to the airport.
2:23:13 So everybody out there.
2:23:15 CraigMod, CraigMod.com.
2:23:21 And we will link to everything, including some Easter eggs, in the show notes.
2:23:24 That’s Craig’s homework assignment.
2:23:25 It’s the in name.
2:23:29 And you will be able to find that at tim.blog slash podcast, as always.
2:23:37 And until next time, be just a bit kinder than necessary to others, but also to yourself.
2:23:45 That’s an important piece of the puzzle, as Jack Kornfield would say, if your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
2:23:48 And thanks for tuning in.
2:23:50 Hey, guys.
2:23:51 This is Tim again.
2:23:53 Just one more thing before you take off.
2:23:55 And that is Five Bullet Friday.
2:24:00 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?
2:24:07 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
2:24:08 Easy to sign up.
2:24:09 Easy to cancel.
2:24:18 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.
2:24:20 It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
2:24:32 It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.
2:24:39 And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you.
2:24:47 So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.
2:24:50 If you’d like to try it out, just go to tim.blog.com slash Friday.
2:24:54 Type that into your browser, tim.blog.com slash Friday.
2:24:56 Drop in your email, and you’ll get the very next one.
2:24:58 Thanks for listening.
2:25:10 About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10,000 and 12,000 feet, going over the continental divide, carrying tons of weight, doing my best not to chew on my own lungs, and I needed all the help I could get.
2:25:17 And in those circumstances, I relied on Momentous products every single day and every single night.
2:25:25 Now, regular listeners probably know I’ve been taking Momentous products consistently and testing them, the entire spectrum of their products, for a long while now.
2:25:34 But you may not know that I recently collaborated with them, one of the sponsors of this episode, to put together my top picks, and I’m calling it my performance stack.
2:25:37 I always aim for a strong body and sharp mind.
2:25:40 Of course, you need both, and neither is possible without quality sleep.
2:25:42 So I didn’t want anything speculative.
2:25:45 I wanted things I could depend on, and it is what I use personally.
2:25:49 So I designed my performance stack to check all three boxes, and here it is.
2:25:52 Creapure creatine for muscular and cognitive support.
2:25:55 The cognitive side is actually very interesting to me these days.
2:25:58 Whey protein isolate for muscle mass and recovery.
2:26:05 And magnesium threonate for sleep, which is really the ideal form of magnesium, as far as we know, for sleep.
2:26:11 I use all three daily, and it’s why I feel 100% comfortable recommending it to you, my dear listeners.
2:26:20 Momentus sources Creapure creatine from Germany, and their whey isolate is sourced from European dairy farmers held to incredibly strict standards.
2:26:25 And I’ve chatted with the CEO about their supply chain, about how they manage all of these things.
2:26:31 It’s incredibly complex, and they go way above any industry standards that I’m familiar with, and I am familiar with them.
2:26:37 All Momentus products are NSF and Informed Sports Certified, which is professional athlete and Olympic-level testing.
2:26:40 So, here’s the main point.
2:26:43 What’s on the label is exactly what you’re getting.
2:26:47 And this is not true for the vast majority of companies in this industry.
2:26:49 So, this is a differentiator.
2:26:52 Try it out for yourself, and let me know what you think.
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2:27:02 I’ll spell it out.
2:27:03 It’s a long one.
2:27:07 Live moment, O-U-S dot com slash Tim.
2:27:10 So, livemomentus.com slash Tim for 20% off.
2:27:17 As many of you know, for the last few years, I’ve been sleeping on a Midnight Luxe mattress from today’s sponsor, Helix Sleep.
2:27:23 I also have one in the guest bedroom downstairs, and feedback from friends has always been fantastic.
2:27:24 Kind of over the top, to be honest.
2:27:28 I mean, they frequently say, it’s the best night of sleep they’ve had in ages.
2:27:29 What kind of mattresses, and what do you do?
2:27:30 What’s the magic juju?
2:27:34 It’s something they comment on without any prompting from me whatsoever.
2:27:41 I also recently had a chance to test the Helix Sunset Elite in a new guest bedroom, which I sometimes sleep in,
2:27:46 and I picked it for its very soft but supportive feel to help with some lower back pain that I’ve had.
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0:00:04 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode
0:00:10 of The Tim Ferriss Show, where I explore the strange, the edge, the practical, the nuance,
0:00:15 the tactical. And my guest today is a dear friend. I’ve wanted to have him on the podcast
0:00:22 for a very long time, Craig Maude. Craig Maude, M-O-D. He is a writer, photographer, and walker,
0:00:28 we’ll talk about that a lot, living in Tokyo and Kamakura, Japan. He is the author of Things
0:00:34 Become Other Things and Kissa by Kissa, K-I-S-S-A. Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to it. He also
0:00:39 writes the newsletters Roden and Ridgeline and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic,
0:00:46 Wired, and more. He has walked thousands of miles across Japan in every conceivable place. And since
0:00:53 2016, he has been co-running Walk and Talks with Kevin Kelly, perhaps the most interesting man in
0:01:00 the world. In various places around the world, the Cotswolds, Northern Thailand, Bali, Southern
0:01:06 China, Japan, Spain, which includes the Portuguese and French Caminos, and much more. Today’s episode
0:01:12 is wide-ranging, and I had so much fun with this. We ended up discussing Craig’s early life,
0:01:19 his path to Japan, his struggles with self-worth and alcoholism, and how he overcame both of them,
0:01:25 creative development, his writing experiments, his initial experiences with walking and writing,
0:01:30 and so much more. I really think you will get a lot out of this conversation, as I did. I took copious
0:01:36 notes, and I also decided to keep some of the behind-the-scenes banter before the interview in
0:01:41 the recording that you’re going to hear, which I thought might be fun for shits and giggles,
0:01:47 just for the fun of it. Why not? You can find Craig Mod at craigmod.com. That’s the H-Q for
0:01:53 everything Craig Mod, C-R-A-I-G-M-O-D.com. You can find him on Instagram, at craigmod,
0:01:59 and on Blue Sky as well, craigmod.com. And with that, and just a few words from the people who make
0:02:03 this podcast possible, we’ll get right into the meat and potatoes of Craig Mod.
0:02:10 I am always on the hunt for protein sources that don’t require sacrifices in taste or nutrition.
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0:02:20 And that’s why I love the protein bars from today’s sponsor, David. They are my go-to protein source
0:02:25 on the run. I throw them in my bag whenever I am in doubt that I might be able to get a good source
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0:02:42 introduced to them by my friend, Peter Atiyah, MD, who is their chief science officer. Many of you know
0:02:48 of Peter, and he really does his due diligence on everything. And on top of that, David tastes great.
0:02:53 Their bars come in six delicious flavors. They are all worth trying. And as I mentioned before,
0:02:58 I will grab a few of those from running out the door if I think I might end up in a situation where
0:03:03 I can’t get sufficient protein. And why is that important? Well, adequate protein intake
0:03:10 is critical for building and preserving muscle mass, especially as we age. And one of the biggest
0:03:14 things that you want to pay attention to is counteracting sarcopenia, age-related muscle
0:03:19 loss. And for that, you need enough protein. When in doubt, up your protein. Protein is also the
0:03:24 most satiating macronutrient. What does that mean? It means that protein out of carbohydrates,
0:03:29 fat and protein inhibits your appetite while also feeding all the things you want to feed,
0:03:33 which helps you consume fewer calories throughout the day. You’re less inclined to eat garbage.
0:03:37 All of that contributes to fat loss and reducing the risk of various diseases.
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0:04:06 This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep,
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0:06:04 Good morning.
0:06:12 You’re good, you’re good.
0:06:19 Japan, yeah, Japan, U.S. is always a little tricky with the time zones. I typically do kind of end-of-day
0:06:26 my time, early morning, Japan time. Yeah. But this morning’s good. It’s getting me back on
0:06:31 central standard. I was coming from mountains, so this is like three hours before I usually get up.
0:06:32 Okay.
0:06:39 Just totally fine. It’s good. No, it’s good. I mainline some caffeine and we are ready to go off
0:06:44 to the races. This is going to be fun, man. I always love an excuse to do creepy internet sleuthing
0:06:54 on my friends. And what would make this? I ask this question always. You know all the housekeeping
0:06:58 rules, bathroom break, water break. If you start something, you’re like, ah, let me try that again.
0:07:04 We can clean it up in post since this isn’t Carnegie Hall. What would make this time well spent? I know
0:07:10 you got the new book. What else, anything come to mind? Like this comes out, you’ve done interviews,
0:07:17 you’re pro, you know how to weave prose, you’re a man in the public to some extent. What would make
0:07:18 this time well spent?
0:07:24 I mean, probably the most like affecting story of the last year or so of me is the adoption stuff.
0:07:26 Yeah, for sure.
0:07:34 So I think that that’s pretty fecund of emotion. It’s got a lot going on there.
0:07:38 Might want to work on that headline, but I like it.
0:07:44 So, you know, that’s the thing. And then all this stuff that’s happened with the cities has been
0:07:46 really kind of a weird journey.
0:07:52 I got like the very short kind of summary tease of things, but I don’t know the story,
0:07:54 which always makes it more fun for me as well.
0:07:59 Yeah. So I think in terms of like, what will listeners get the most out of, I think like
0:08:05 that, that story about the cities and the New York times stuff and what’s come out of that,
0:08:08 because it encompasses a lot of like, what does travel mean today? Why are we traveling?
0:08:15 What does over tourism mean? How do you handle these massive tourism surges that are happening?
0:08:18 Is there a way like to mitigate them or to send them to different parts of the country?
0:08:21 So I think that’s like really interesting. I think the adoption stuff is really interesting.
0:08:23 I mean, everything ties into the walking.
0:08:25 What about you?
0:08:26 What?
0:08:30 Like this comes out and three months after it comes out, I appreciate you being so listener
0:08:37 focused because God bless my dear listeners. But as far as this interview, like it comes
0:08:40 out, what would make it, you look back and you’re like, God damn, I’m so glad I did that.
0:08:43 I’m going to point people to that interview.
0:08:47 I think it aligns very much with what I think would be interesting for listeners to listen
0:08:51 to. I mean, I think the adoption stuff is, so basically I haven’t talked about the adoption
0:08:52 stuff in English anywhere.
0:08:53 Yeah.
0:08:55 I haven’t written about it.
0:08:56 Awesome.
0:08:59 This is like the first time me doing anything public about that.
0:09:02 And the debut of the fecundity.
0:09:04 The emotional garden.
0:09:09 So I, you know, I think that being able to like kind of crack that knot well would be
0:09:10 really nice.
0:09:11 Yeah.
0:09:12 And everything else, I don’t know.
0:09:13 I’m just happy to chat.
0:09:15 Let’s just chat, man.
0:09:16 Let’s just chat.
0:09:17 I mean, we never have trouble doing that.
0:09:19 I was trying to think how we initially connected.
0:09:20 Do you even remember?
0:09:29 I mean, I remember saying at some point, maybe, no, well, okay.
0:09:35 So there was, there are two moments that we met one in 2011, right?
0:09:40 In the beginning of 2011, I was at, what’s the neighborhood you lived in, in San Francisco?
0:09:44 Glenn park down South, just South of the mission.
0:09:48 Isn’t there another one kind of up where like I’ve lived up on the hit, like you kind of go
0:09:51 up, not Pacific Heights or anything like that, but it was.
0:09:53 It was close to Bernal Heights.
0:09:54 Yeah.
0:09:55 West.
0:09:57 Boy, I’m a left, right kind of guy.
0:09:58 Embarrassingly.
0:09:58 Anyway.
0:09:59 Let’s see.
0:10:02 I was working in a cafe there with one of the Flipboard engineers.
0:10:04 Ev must’ve been in a fancier place.
0:10:05 Okay.
0:10:05 Flipboard.
0:10:06 Right.
0:10:06 Yeah.
0:10:08 This is as good a place as any.
0:10:08 Yeah.
0:10:09 Let’s keep going.
0:10:09 Okay.
0:10:11 So then I said, hi to you there.
0:10:13 I said, Hey, oh, Hey, it’s blah, blah, blah.
0:10:14 And you were like, Oh, cool.
0:10:14 Yeah.
0:10:15 Flipboard’s great.
0:10:19 Then we exchanged words in the bathroom at food camp.
0:10:20 Oh, thank God.
0:10:21 I was like, Oh shit.
0:10:23 What happened here?
0:10:25 Power exchange.
0:10:27 How do we end up at the power exchange?
0:10:27 Kidding.
0:10:28 Yeah.
0:10:28 Yeah.
0:10:32 So, and then I think it was just, yeah, I think it was the Japan walk.
0:10:35 That was the first time we ever really talked.
0:10:39 So that was got to two and a half years ago now already, which is mega hang.
0:10:39 Yeah.
0:10:40 That’s bananas.
0:10:47 I was looking at the printed book of the walk with the photographs just the other day.
0:10:51 And I was like, wow, that’s wild.
0:10:55 And I don’t want to sound like too much of a old geezer, you know, although I am every day
0:11:02 turning into more of an like, but the fact that it was two years ago is just mind blistering
0:11:03 in a sense.
0:11:04 It does not seem that long ago.
0:11:05 Yeah.
0:11:06 Yeah.
0:11:06 All right.
0:11:08 Well, let’s just hop into it then.
0:11:11 And you mentioned Flipboard.
0:11:12 So let’s start there.
0:11:14 You lived in Silicon Valley.
0:11:15 I did.
0:11:17 And for a lot of people, that’s the dream.
0:11:24 But you left Silicon Valley, ended up back in Japan.
0:11:27 Could you just give us a bit of a thumbnail sketch?
0:11:28 It doesn’t even need to be a thumbnail.
0:11:29 We have all the time in the world.
0:11:33 But where did you grow up?
0:11:38 We’ll make it the really boring back in childhood intro.
0:11:40 But where did you grow up?
0:11:42 How did you end up at Silicon Valley?
0:11:44 And why didn’t you stay in Silicon Valley?
0:11:47 So, yeah, I mean, it’s funny to start with Silicon Valley because that was probably like,
0:11:50 that was the shortest period of anything I did in my life, for the most part.
0:11:51 It was very truncated.
0:11:56 The reasons for which it’s truncated, I think, might be interesting, though.
0:12:03 I mean, I grew up in this sort of like lower middle class post-industrial town.
0:12:07 Like I grew up in this town where like an airplane engine factory was the heart of the town.
0:12:08 What state was that?
0:12:10 This is in Connecticut, weirdly.
0:12:16 You really don’t think of Connecticut as like an industrial state, but there is stuff happening.
0:12:16 Yeah.
0:12:20 You know, ever since I was really young, I mean, I love books.
0:12:21 I love writing.
0:12:25 I was sort of like drawn to that, but I was also really drawn to video games.
0:12:28 And like, I did not grow up in a place where people were reading, like no one around me
0:12:30 was reading Ulysses.
0:12:36 You know, it was like, it was pretty like culturally a bit of a desert, but there were video games
0:12:38 and, you know, those came from Japan.
0:12:40 And that was sort of intriguing to me.
0:12:45 That was like my first contact, I’d say, with a culture outside of the town I came from.
0:12:48 And there were computers.
0:12:49 And I was really, really lucky.
0:12:53 Like we did not have much money and our school districts were not well-funded.
0:12:59 And, you know, it was just, I look back on it and I was extremely, extremely lucky with
0:13:03 these chance opportunities I had, which basically enabled me to do everything I’m doing now.
0:13:08 Very, very, very sliver, sliding doors style chances of opportunity.
0:13:14 Like my family couldn’t really afford a computer, but my neighbor bought one and my neighbor was
0:13:16 divorced and he lost his son in the divorce.
0:13:18 So he was kind of like lonely.
0:13:21 And I was like really hungry to be using computers.
0:13:23 I was like, you know, eight or nine years old, 10 years old.
0:13:27 I started going over there so much to use his computer that he just gave me the key to his
0:13:30 house and he bought me my own phone line.
0:13:34 And like, this guy’s kindness and he was really kind.
0:13:36 He was just genuinely just a kind guy.
0:13:39 I went to go about 10 years ago.
0:13:43 I went to go find him and just say, thank you for having me lent me his computer.
0:13:45 I mean, it really changed my life, this computer thing.
0:13:47 And he had passed away.
0:13:48 It really, he had a heart attack.
0:13:53 So if you have someone in your life that you really want to thank, go thank them while
0:13:55 they’re around.
0:14:00 But you know how it is when you’re a kid, you don’t realize the luck that you’ve fallen
0:14:01 into with something like that.
0:14:01 For sure.
0:14:03 So that was going on.
0:14:06 And then I started using at his place, I got onto IRC.
0:14:10 I started using PPP emulators to be able to use Mosaic.
0:14:12 I was in the antsy art scene.
0:14:13 I was like…
0:14:14 What does PPP stand for?
0:14:17 Just going to take a brief side quest here.
0:14:20 We don’t need to get into the hyper specifics or what was it?
0:14:24 It’s so funny that we’re starting here because this is like such a bizarre, almost like a
0:14:25 footnote to like everything I’m doing now.
0:14:28 Like nothing, everything I’m doing now feels so removed.
0:14:30 I like starting with the footnotes.
0:14:32 This is a pretty serious footnote.
0:14:34 So I don’t even remember what PPP stands for.
0:14:36 Basically, you had shell accounts, right?
0:14:37 So you had these text-based shell accounts.
0:14:39 These are like the first ISPs.
0:14:42 I swear to God, this is going to get more literary if anyone’s listening.
0:14:44 Internet service provider.
0:14:45 Even I know that one.
0:14:45 Yeah.
0:14:49 No, but like we’re going to talk about books and walking in Japan and stuff.
0:14:49 That’s all coming.
0:14:53 But this kind of Genesis story is sort of interesting in that, you know, you have these
0:14:54 text-based things.
0:14:56 You could use IRC, which is like chat.
0:15:00 It was like Discord, old school Discord, not owned by anyone.
0:15:05 It was totally open, you know, like hosted on university servers, stuff like that.
0:15:09 And I got connected with the ANSI art scene in there and I started doing ANSI art.
0:15:16 I was really kind of captivated by design and by computer programming in the sense that what
0:15:17 it could do for storytelling.
0:15:20 That’s kind of how I saw it and that’s what sort of really captured my attention.
0:15:23 And so I started working, you know, doing artwork with these guys.
0:15:25 I was like 12, 13.
0:15:26 These guys were all like five, six years older than me.
0:15:28 They were mostly in California, a lot of them were.
0:15:32 And they were all sort of getting into the internet.
0:15:37 And so when I graduated high school, I had these weird connections that I had made on this
0:15:40 text chat room when I was 13.
0:15:43 And these guys were like, hey, we’ve started like a design agency.
0:15:44 We’re doing a startup, whatever.
0:15:46 Come out for the summer, be an intern.
0:15:47 So that was my connection.
0:15:51 And essentially, like, you know, I didn’t grow up with money and no one around us had money.
0:15:52 There was no wealth.
0:15:53 There was no real.
0:15:57 Looking back now, I mean, there was absolutely no real wealth happening in our town.
0:16:02 And if you look at the GDP statistics and stuff like that, I mean, it’s sort of like 20%
0:16:06 of the national GDP was the average sort of GDP per capita of our town.
0:16:08 America’s GDP is really high.
0:16:14 Like per capita GDP is like $85,000, way higher than Japan, for example.
0:16:16 Japan’s like 40, 45, something like that.
0:16:19 Didn’t realize there was such a high discrepancy.
0:16:20 The delta is pretty insane.
0:16:23 So I did not come from money.
0:16:27 And so I saw two ways to get out, essentially.
0:16:29 From a very early age, I’m adopted.
0:16:32 So there’s a sense of disconnection from that.
0:16:37 And then from a very early age, I realized the place that I was growing up in was very,
0:16:37 very tiny.
0:16:40 And I needed to get far away for a number of reasons.
0:16:41 But I knew I needed to get away.
0:16:45 And I saw money as critical for that escape.
0:16:48 And I saw two ways of making money.
0:16:50 And one of them was the stock market.
0:16:54 I joined the stock club as soon as I could at high school and was super geeking out.
0:17:00 I think when I was 18 or 19, I was 19 when I opened an E-Trade account.
0:17:03 I think I was one of the first probably 10,000 people to have an E-Trade account.
0:17:05 I was like, yes, okay, I need this.
0:17:06 Very weird.
0:17:08 I mean, because there was no one in my family that had ever bought a stock.
0:17:11 I was raised by my mother and my grandparents.
0:17:15 My father was sort of out of the picture, even though it was an adoption.
0:17:17 This is your adopted mother.
0:17:19 These are my adopted parents.
0:17:22 Even though they adopted me, they got divorced when I was like two.
0:17:23 I mean, which was good.
0:17:27 My father wasn’t a great guy, so it was good to kind of push him aside.
0:17:31 But there was no archetypes for me of like, oh, this is how you generate wealth or create
0:17:33 wealth or cultivate wealth or grow wealth.
0:17:34 There was absolutely none of that.
0:17:39 Or even just how to engage culturally with the world, to think about literature or to think
0:17:39 about art.
0:17:43 So I was just kind of like scanning the horizon, you know, and it was like, what do we knew?
0:17:48 Like lifestyles are the rich and famous, you know, think about like what is as an 80s kid.
0:17:54 I remember watching that, eating TV dinners with my parents watching Lifestyles of the Rich
0:17:55 and Famous.
0:18:00 I mean, like I didn’t eat a single meal that wasn’t like, that didn’t involve TV for my entire
0:18:01 basically childhood.
0:18:03 Yeah, same.
0:18:06 I’ll do that differently when it’s my turn to set the rules, but yeah.
0:18:11 So, you know, it’s like you think about when you come from a place like I come from, like
0:18:12 what are your archetypes?
0:18:14 Who establishes what’s possible in the world?
0:18:16 And it really is like pop culture.
0:18:17 Like those are the things you kind of reach for.
0:18:19 Anyway, so you have like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
0:18:20 What are those people that do?
0:18:24 They buy stocks, you know, they invest in stocks, blah, blah, stuff like that.
0:18:26 So I was like, okay, I need to do that to get out.
0:18:27 That’s like step one.
0:18:31 And then I just loved the potential of the internet.
0:18:34 Like as soon as I saw the World Wide Web, I was like, yes, this is where I want to write.
0:18:37 This is what I want to build on top of.
0:18:38 Like it was just so obvious to me.
0:18:43 I was like 14 when I used Mosaic for the first time and it was just, oh, okay, great.
0:18:44 I don’t have to think about anything.
0:18:45 This is like just what I do.
0:18:50 And very quickly I realized like if I became good at web stuff, I would be making more money
0:18:52 than anyone in my town.
0:18:56 You know, it was just like this weird, again, this arbitrage of kind of information and skill.
0:18:58 And like, I just saw this very early on.
0:19:01 The ability to kind of go out to Silicon Valley as like an intern.
0:19:03 I drove my Honda Civic.
0:19:06 It was like a 93 Honda Civic with no power or anything.
0:19:09 It was like all, I basically had to like crank the thing to keep going.
0:19:12 Drove across America and went out there and interned.
0:19:14 And I just, I really loved it.
0:19:17 And I loved the people and the culture and the opportunities.
0:19:19 And it really just set my mind ablaze.
0:19:20 I mean, it was really exciting.
0:19:24 And I was kind of working on blogging software before Blogger launched.
0:19:30 I mean, there’s definitely, when I talk about like opportunity and, you know, they say basically
0:19:34 wealth is unevenly distributed, but really what you’re talking about is opportunity being
0:19:35 evenly distributed or not.
0:19:40 When you like listen to the generous story of someone like Bill Gates, he’s just surrounded
0:19:42 by this like abundance of opportunity.
0:19:47 You know, like the fact that the university had these terminals he could use and like, it was
0:19:51 just, people were all kind of cultivating his ability to take advantage of these opportunities.
0:19:55 And there’s definitely an alternate reality where like I had a little more opportunity.
0:19:56 I was in Silicon Valley a little bit earlier.
0:20:02 And like, I just had the sense of self-worth and confidence, I think, to do things differently
0:20:02 and build stuff.
0:20:05 That was like one timeline that didn’t happen.
0:20:07 And I went out there and I loved it and I enjoyed it.
0:20:11 At the same time, I really wanted to live abroad.
0:20:12 I knew I needed to get away.
0:20:16 And because of certain things that kind of happened and things that I felt in my town,
0:20:21 not being kind of the people of my town, not being supported by the greater whole, I kind
0:20:28 of had this from a very early age, a lack of, I would say, belief in the American system.
0:20:29 And I just felt like I had to leave America.
0:20:30 There’s a very strong impulse.
0:20:34 Like I have to get outside of this country to see things differently.
0:20:36 This felt important to me for some reason, intuitively.
0:20:37 What about the system?
0:20:40 When you say system, what specifically?
0:20:44 Because we’ll spend a lot of time talking about Japan, I am sure.
0:20:49 But Japan is, it’s not exactly North Korea, right?
0:20:52 It’s similar to the US in some respects.
0:20:55 So what do you mean by the American system in that context?
0:20:58 Could just be a felt sense of something, right?
0:21:00 It doesn’t have to be super Wikipedia.
0:21:03 In the moment, I had absolutely no words for it.
0:21:04 I had no way to describe it.
0:21:07 It really was just a, just because like you’re operating from a lack of experience.
0:21:11 Like you haven’t seen enough of the world, but you just intuitively, there was a sense
0:21:13 of, okay, we aren’t being supported.
0:21:17 And then when I went to college, that was the big shock for me was getting to college and
0:21:21 meeting everyone else and immediately feeling this gap of kind of abundance.
0:21:22 I was lucky.
0:21:23 I scored really well.
0:21:27 I could, even though I’m bad at tests taking, I don’t like taking tests.
0:21:32 I tested well, I was able to go to a good college, really some, you know, a really good
0:21:32 university.
0:21:37 And it was just the first three days, four days, I was just in shock.
0:21:39 I was like, oh, these people are from a different planet.
0:21:44 The resources they had, the archetypes they clearly had in their lives, the way they’ve
0:21:48 learned to learn, to speak, to move through the world, like what they expect.
0:21:51 I was just like, this doesn’t compute for me at all.
0:21:53 And it was immediately, I bounced off of it so fast.
0:21:55 I was just like, I need, I can’t be here.
0:21:56 I shouldn’t be here.
0:22:01 There’s something fundamentally missing, broken, sort of like lacking inside my, inside
0:22:02 my chest.
0:22:04 And I get it.
0:22:08 That’s what drove me to just go, okay, I should live abroad.
0:22:12 I need to leave this country in part to rebuild that on my own.
0:22:13 Got it.
0:22:13 Okay.
0:22:20 So when did you move to Japan at what year, what age?
0:22:23 I was 19 and it was 2000.
0:22:25 2000.
0:22:26 Okay.
0:22:26 Yeah.
0:22:27 Which is insane.
0:22:29 I can’t believe it’s been 25 years now.
0:22:30 It is.
0:22:31 Okay.
0:22:32 Got it.
0:22:35 And you, just to paint a picture for folks.
0:22:40 So you, you moved to Japan when you’re 19 and then you bounced around after that.
0:22:42 You didn’t stay in Japan the entire time.
0:22:43 Am I right?
0:22:45 Of course, because we met after that.
0:22:47 Yeah, sort of.
0:22:52 So to give you like the, the macro timeline, I go when I’m 19, I stay for a year.
0:22:54 I go to university there.
0:22:54 I love it.
0:22:58 While I’m there, the Silicon Valley bubble, the first bubble pops.
0:23:00 So there really isn’t a Silicon Valley to go to.
0:23:01 My plan was to go to Japan.
0:23:06 I applied on a whim to university there and I applied independently.
0:23:10 So I wouldn’t have to, normally when you kind of do study abroad, you’re, you keep paying
0:23:11 your American university fees.
0:23:12 Yeah.
0:23:12 Right.
0:23:13 International.
0:23:18 And I looked at the fees for Japanese universities and for like a year with homestay, it was like,
0:23:20 you know, $8,000, 5,000.
0:23:23 It was like an absurdly affordable amount of money.
0:23:26 And you know, there was scholarships available.
0:23:27 It was like, why wouldn’t I just go do this?
0:23:28 Of course I’m going to do this.
0:23:33 But I, my plan was to drop out and move to Silicon Valley and just build stuff.
0:23:34 Okay.
0:23:37 So Japan for like a year or two and then go back to Silicon Valley.
0:23:37 Yeah.
0:23:38 Japan for a year.
0:23:41 And then in the middle of it, everything collapsed.
0:23:44 And then I was like, okay, well, maybe I should graduate university.
0:23:48 So I applied in the middle of it as a transfer student to a university.
0:23:50 I thought I would like better than the one I was at before.
0:23:54 And I got in, I ended up going to UPenn.
0:23:58 And so for me, I was the first person in my family.
0:24:00 To go to university, certainly big university.
0:24:02 My mom went to community college.
0:24:06 She worked her butt off to become a elementary school teacher, but I was the first person
0:24:07 to go to like university, university.
0:24:08 My father didn’t go anywhere.
0:24:11 My grandparents were both working at the airplane engine factory.
0:24:12 So this is a big deal.
0:24:14 And should I have gone to Penn or not?
0:24:17 I mean, honestly, it was just the Ivy.
0:24:24 So this incredible sense of, I have to create or generate on my own a sense of self-worth.
0:24:29 And the draw of an Ivy was just too big.
0:24:32 So anyway, I ended up getting in much to my shock.
0:24:36 And so after that first year in Japan, I went back, went to UPenn.
0:24:37 I did that for two years.
0:24:40 In the summer between, I came back to Japan, did an internship at a magazine.
0:24:45 And then as soon as I graduated UPenn, I was back to Japan, going back to Waseda, doing
0:24:49 another year of intensive language studies in a grad program.
0:24:52 And then I basically just stayed since then.
0:24:52 All right.
0:24:55 We’re going to take yet another side quest.
0:24:56 It’s not really a footnote.
0:24:59 I know quite a few people who’ve moved to Japan.
0:25:06 You’re the only non-Japanese person as an adult I know who speaks exceptional Japanese.
0:25:13 As you’re aware, there are a lot of foreigners who kind of stay in the expat bubble, which is
0:25:13 fine.
0:25:17 People do that in the US too when they move here, for instance.
0:25:18 Plenty of examples of that.
0:25:20 How did you learn your Japanese?
0:25:24 If there are people listening who think to themselves, man, I would really love to learn
0:25:25 Japanese.
0:25:28 Any thoughts based on your own experience?
0:25:32 Well, I think in general, language learning is easier if you have a musical background.
0:25:39 And I grew up all through my teens obsessively playing drums, just drumming, drumming, drumming,
0:25:42 playing jazz, playing classical, playing in big band orchestras, playing everything.
0:25:47 So I think listening, being a good listener, obviously, is paramount.
0:25:50 But when I got to Tokyo, I did a homestay.
0:25:52 They couldn’t speak one word of English.
0:25:59 And I immediately just joined the music circle at university, which was only Japanese people.
0:26:01 I wasn’t trying to avoid the international crowd.
0:26:04 In fact, the international group I was with were amazing.
0:26:11 It was actually, I got to the school, I got to Waseda, and the international program was what I had always dreamed and hoped university would be.
0:26:15 It was super international, super mixed, kids from all over the world.
0:26:18 They were all extremely serious about their studies.
0:26:21 They were all way better Japanese speakers than me.
0:26:24 I had had like one year of university Japanese before I came.
0:26:26 To give you an example, there are 13 levels.
0:26:26 Which is not a lot.
0:26:28 Which is not a lot.
0:26:29 It’s nothing.
0:26:30 I mean, basically, I could barely say hello.
0:26:33 And even that was probably not correct.
0:26:35 So there are 13 levels of Japanese class at the university.
0:26:36 I was in two.
0:26:41 There were kids who came from SOAS in London who had done one year at SOAS.
0:26:42 They came there.
0:26:43 Sorry, you said SOAS.
0:26:47 And I thought about the muscle that causes me so many problems.
0:26:49 What the hell is SOAS?
0:26:53 SOAS is the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
0:26:54 Oh, wow.
0:26:55 Unfortunate branding.
0:26:56 But yes.
0:27:01 They have the most total badass language program.
0:27:03 Like, honestly, if you want to learn Japanese, go to SOAS.
0:27:04 Just go to SOAS.
0:27:04 I got it.
0:27:06 Those kids, they had done one year at SOAS.
0:27:07 They arrived in Tokyo.
0:27:09 They were in level 10, level 11.
0:27:10 Holy shit.
0:27:11 Good for them.
0:27:12 It was insane.
0:27:13 Must be a brutal boot camp.
0:27:15 So they were amazing.
0:27:19 Yeah, it’s like 70% of kids drop out of it or something like that.
0:27:19 Yeah.
0:27:20 Babysitting mutants.
0:27:22 Basically.
0:27:25 The kids were, they were amazing speakers.
0:27:29 And so when we hang out, it’s great to hang out with people who are a few levels above where
0:27:31 you speak because then you’re able to pick it up.
0:27:31 For sure.
0:27:33 You’re like, oh, what’s that little grammatical thing you’re doing?
0:27:33 What’s that word you’re using?
0:27:36 And then I just hung out with Japanese people constantly and played music.
0:27:41 And music was really, you know, this lingua franca sort of thing where I could just hang
0:27:42 with all these incredible musicians.
0:27:44 I’ve been playing drums for so long.
0:27:45 I was in the studio all the time.
0:27:49 And you just start to pick up slang and casual Japanese.
0:27:56 It also gives you a context through which you can develop Japanese friendships without having
0:27:57 a lot of Japanese, right?
0:28:00 Which was judo for me because I came from wrestling.
0:28:07 And they didn’t care if I sounded like, you know, a caveman with traumatic brain injury.
0:28:07 They didn’t care.
0:28:12 As long as I could actually help the team and do something, they were like, great, we’ll support
0:28:12 the savage.
0:28:15 And that worked.
0:28:21 And I’m curious to know, did you end up, at least in my case, way back in the day, this
0:28:26 was probably in, I think it was in Shinjuku maybe, where I found Kinokunya.
0:28:35 And I went there to the Japanese language learning section and found English language judo textbooks.
0:28:36 Right.
0:28:44 So it also became a way for me in terms of motivation to learn how to read.
0:28:49 Because once I made it through those textbooks, I was like, well, all that’s left are judo textbooks
0:28:56 in Japanese, which means I’m going to need to learn to read Japanese, which is its own thing.
0:29:00 I’m very envious that you had the students who were a few levels above you, because that
0:29:03 just seems like the perfect recipe, right?
0:29:03 Huge.
0:29:08 Because to teach, if you’re at a homestay like I was when I was 15, I had three different
0:29:11 host families, not because I was a delinquent, but that’s how it was set up.
0:29:15 You would rotate through different families over the course of a year.
0:29:23 And the first, let’s just say, first family, pretty much a wash because I couldn’t communicate
0:29:27 at all, nor could I ask them questions in Japanese to clarify what they were saying.
0:29:33 And then the second family probably took me a month before I found my legs and could finally
0:29:34 start communicating with them.
0:29:40 My host family was very lovely, but completely, completely bonkers.
0:29:43 Let me paint this picture for you.
0:29:45 So they ran an udon noodle shop, right?
0:29:47 So every meal was udon.
0:29:53 So udon, you should explain, but it’s like these very thick noodles, right?
0:29:53 Yeah.
0:29:54 Yeah.
0:29:54 Yeah.
0:29:59 So it’s like soba is sort of, soba is weird because it’s both like the fast food of Japan
0:30:03 in the sense like there’s tachigui soba in front of stations that you can go to at seven
0:30:05 in the morning and just slurp something up before you go to work.
0:30:06 And it costs like two bucks.
0:30:08 Soba means standing and eating literally, right?
0:30:09 You’re at a countertop standing.
0:30:15 But at the same time, soba can also be incredibly refined where you spend $30 on a bowl and it’s
0:30:16 like two slurps and you’re done.
0:30:21 And so anyway, soba’s got that weird gamut, but udon is like firmly just like working class
0:30:22 food.
0:30:24 Like it doesn’t really get fancy.
0:30:27 And so there’s some places that try to make it fancy, but it’s really not that fancy.
0:30:29 So anyway, this is a working class family.
0:30:30 So it was, it was sort of ironic.
0:30:35 I left my working class town to go across the world and I get plopped down basically
0:30:38 in, in a place that felt really, I was like, oh, okay.
0:30:39 I know these people.
0:30:40 I know this part of town.
0:30:42 It was a very working class part of Tokyo.
0:30:46 And, um, you know, there was like kind of homeless people out walking around that I’d like say
0:30:47 hi to all the time.
0:30:51 And like, I’d go to the arcade and there’d always be, you know, these weird, like middle
0:30:54 aged people that just clearly didn’t have jobs playing street fighter all the time.
0:30:55 So we’d just play together.
0:30:57 I was like, I get this.
0:30:58 These are, these are totally my people.
0:31:01 So they had an udon shop and there was an 11 year old son.
0:31:07 And unfortunately for me, he slept in his parents’ bed.
0:31:13 So he didn’t have any privacy and he decided he had discovered his penis soon after I arrived.
0:31:21 And he decided that he was going to release frequently around the house in different places.
0:31:27 So, so I would be, try to send an email at the kotatsu.
0:31:29 So it’s, you know, it’s like November, it’s kind of chilly.
0:31:30 I’m sitting under the kotatsu.
0:31:32 We’d had like, there was, the house was so cold.
0:31:33 What’s a kotatsu?
0:31:36 Kotatsu is a low table with like a heater underneath it.
0:31:38 So it’s basically, you put your legs under it.
0:31:40 There’s like a big, heavy blanket.
0:31:42 Like everything that’s under the table is kind of a mystery.
0:31:44 You don’t know what, what’s lurking under the table.
0:31:45 Oh no.
0:31:48 This house was so cold.
0:31:52 This house got, I swear to God, probably like three minutes of sunlight a year.
0:31:56 Like it was just, I don’t even know how they architected it to have so little sunlight.
0:31:58 It was just so freezing, no insulation.
0:32:02 One of the people I met at the arcade, I was like complaining about like how, how cold it
0:32:02 was.
0:32:05 And they bought me a full body snowsuit to wear to bed.
0:32:10 You’re like Kenny from South Park when you went to bed.
0:32:13 I was like, well, how, what am I supposed to do?
0:32:15 This is literally the coldest I’ve ever been in my life.
0:32:17 Anyway, so we’re, we’re sitting under the kotatsu.
0:32:21 I’m doing emails, the little 11 year olds, like reading manga.
0:32:24 And then suddenly I realized he’s doing a little more than reading.
0:32:26 So he’s just jerking off everywhere.
0:32:29 This kid is just, he’s just masturbating all over the house.
0:32:33 And like, I don’t know how to say don’t masturbate.
0:32:38 So I, I came home from school the next day and we were alone and I was just like, I got
0:32:40 to tell him to not, not jerk off everywhere.
0:32:41 And so I was like, I mimed it.
0:32:46 I had to like mime, don’t masturbate under the table, you know, and like his brain, I’m
0:32:51 like, I’m sure if Japan had therapy, you know, which no one goes to therapy in Japan, we
0:32:52 could talk about that too.
0:32:56 Like, which I think is like a great travesty of Japan, but like if Japan had therapy, this
0:32:58 kid definitely, I probably caused him some therapy.
0:33:01 He probably, he hasn’t masturbated in 24 years.
0:33:05 Like one way or another, he was going to need some therapy or an equivalent, but yeah.
0:33:06 Oh, wow.
0:33:08 So, so that was insane.
0:33:11 And then now in your mind, are you like, these people are insane.
0:33:12 You’re like, wow, this is Japan.
0:33:14 No, I was like, oh my God.
0:33:16 I sort of pulled the short straw on my homestay.
0:33:20 Like other kids’ homestay families, it was like, they were like, oh, I live on the 34th
0:33:23 floor of this beautiful, you know, tower apartment block.
0:33:25 And my family is taking me skiing next weekend.
0:33:28 My family, they’re like, oh, we’re going to go to our summer home.
0:33:29 You want to come?
0:33:30 I was like, yeah, great summer home.
0:33:31 They take me to their summer home.
0:33:35 It’s like a shack by the river, like with cockroaches.
0:33:38 I was like, what, what is going, where, who are these people?
0:33:42 They were very sweet, but it was, I was like, I don’t know if these people should have homestays,
0:33:42 dudes.
0:33:47 Well, my guess is they got paid by Wasida or whoever, right?
0:33:48 So it’s a gig.
0:33:49 It’s a gig.
0:33:50 And they had so many gigs.
0:33:57 So they had another gig was they were like hosting a Korean kid who was just working,
0:34:01 I guess, like as like a laborer at the Udon restaurant.
0:34:03 Like, but he lived, he slept in the closet.
0:34:05 So they’re getting a two for one.
0:34:07 They get free labor.
0:34:10 So I’ve got the 11 year old son jerking off all over the place.
0:34:13 And then there’s this Korean guy who was like maybe 25.
0:34:14 He sleeps in the closet.
0:34:19 He was super Christian because, you know, it’s like Christianity is sort of like a, it’s a huge
0:34:19 thing in Korea.
0:34:26 And so he would come into my bedroom every night and you kneel in the entryway of my
0:34:31 bedroom and go, Craig, son, I want, will you please come with me to church?
0:34:32 Like every night he would ask me to come to church.
0:34:38 So I’m like, I’m just in the most, and I’m trying to like figure out who I am.
0:34:40 I’m trying to like recreate this, like a personal identity.
0:34:43 And I’m just like, there’s ejaculate flying everywhere.
0:34:45 There’s cockroaches like shooting across the room.
0:34:47 I’m going to sleep in a snowsuit.
0:34:49 This Korean kid is asking me to go to church with him.
0:34:51 All I’m eating is udon.
0:34:56 It was, it was a weird, it was a weird landing.
0:34:56 Oh my God.
0:34:57 All right.
0:35:02 So you can see why I like to explore the footnotes because we could have skipped that whole story.
0:35:03 We could have skipped all that.
0:35:10 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:36:16 I want to point out a few things to folks who have not spent a lot of time in Japan,
0:36:19 or maybe they just went to Japan and stayed in some fancy hotels.
0:36:21 There are a lot of cockroaches in Japan.
0:36:22 Oh, yeah.
0:36:23 A ton.
0:36:23 A ton.
0:36:24 Oh, yeah.
0:36:28 And my second host family, who I’m still very close to, I’m actually going back to see them
0:36:29 next month.
0:36:30 I’m very excited.
0:36:35 This is, God, I mean, this is more than 30 years later.
0:36:38 I’m still close to my host parents and my brothers.
0:36:41 It’s just an amazing blessing in my life.
0:36:49 Talk about inflection points were real moments that at the time seemed special, but you don’t
0:36:51 realize quite the significance, kind of like the computer.
0:36:52 Way to rub it in, Tim.
0:36:53 Yeah, just rub it in.
0:36:55 I’m glad you had a good host day.
0:36:56 Hold on, hold on.
0:36:59 I had a good host day, but the house was full of cockroaches.
0:37:02 And this is in Tokyo.
0:37:04 It’s very common.
0:37:11 And these cockroaches, people weren’t probably betting on getting a lot of cockroach talk in
0:37:16 this conversation, but the cockroaches also in Japan are very fond of flying.
0:37:21 They will not just scurry, but they’ll take off and just fly right into your face.
0:37:27 And so my host mom, when she went into the laundry room, the dog’s name, this little tiny
0:37:30 like miniature Shiba was called Aichan.
0:37:35 And she would walk in there and then a bunch of cockroaches would like fly out of the laundry
0:37:35 into her face.
0:37:38 And she’d go, Aichan, Aichan, Gokipuri, Gokipuri.
0:37:40 She’d be like, cockroach, cockroach.
0:37:46 And this little miniature Shiba would storm in and kind of porpoise nose these cockroaches
0:37:46 to death.
0:37:52 And this was like a daily, at least multiple times a week kind of thing.
0:37:54 But yeah, that homestay sounds pretty formative.
0:37:57 It’s funny now, but it was pretty stressful.
0:37:59 It speaks to how much I was enjoying everything else.
0:38:04 And it was so clearly a business for them too, because I was like, for a spring break, I hitchhiked
0:38:05 across the country.
0:38:10 And I told them, I said, hey, I’m going to go hitchhike to Fukuoka now.
0:38:11 And they’re like, oh yeah, good luck.
0:38:11 Bye.
0:38:16 It was like, there was no, it wasn’t like, hey, do you want, do you need some supplies?
0:38:17 Do you want us to drive you somewhere?
0:38:19 It was like, oh yeah, good luck.
0:38:20 We’ll see you in a month.
0:38:25 I have to just tell you one story, which I don’t, we’ve never talked about, but we’ve
0:38:26 talked a lot, but we haven’t covered this.
0:38:30 So my very first host family, I got the distinct impression they didn’t really want me there.
0:38:35 They were also being paid and they were reasonably polite.
0:38:40 But there’s a difference, you learn this, I think, pretty quickly in Japan, like there
0:38:42 is a difference between polite and nice.
0:38:45 There is like tanin gyogi, right?
0:38:49 Like there’s like stranger formality where you’re like, oh, so polite.
0:38:50 Yes, very polite.
0:38:51 But they didn’t really want me there.
0:38:59 And my host mom really begrudged having to make me lunch, school lunch, right?
0:39:05 So basically I got these like mayonnaise sandwiches on like white bread every day for lunch.
0:39:10 And after a week or two of this, I was like, I can’t, I just can’t do this.
0:39:13 So I would go to lunch in my uniform.
0:39:16 I was the only American student for most of my time there.
0:39:20 It was very easy to find where’s Waldo in my school uniform.
0:39:26 And there were other kids, though, who had been given the same like curry rice by their
0:39:27 mom every day.
0:39:28 And they were pretty sick of it.
0:39:30 So I started trading my breakfasts.
0:39:37 And when this was discovered by my host brother, he actually started a fistfight with me.
0:39:43 He was so offended that I’d like dishonored his mother by trading her mayonnaise sandwiches.
0:39:44 Oh my God.
0:39:48 Because a lot of folks who’ve never been to Japan or if they’ve just been in the hotels,
0:39:50 right, they have a certain image of the Japanese.
0:39:53 Here, here’s my advice.
0:39:53 Okay.
0:39:54 You’re listening to this.
0:39:55 You’re like, you’re a teenager or whatever.
0:39:56 You think you want to go to Japan.
0:39:57 Go to Japan.
0:39:58 Don’t do a homestay.
0:39:59 That’s my advice.
0:40:03 Like I think, you know, all of my friends who were in the dormitories, I was so jealous
0:40:07 of them because it was just sane and like controlled and like you had heaters and stuff
0:40:07 like that.
0:40:09 Now I’ll push back though.
0:40:14 If you were in a dormitory, depending on how it was configured, especially in this day and age with
0:40:18 smartphones and so on, you might not learn as much Japanese.
0:40:19 I mean, there’s a chance.
0:40:20 I don’t know.
0:40:25 I would do a homestay again, even though I took some bruises, not as many moments of
0:40:32 ejaculate flying as you experienced, but nonetheless, also this is such like inside baseball, but
0:40:35 holy shit are houses in Japan cold a lot of the time.
0:40:43 I mean, it’s like, and I just remember getting up to go to the bathroom and if you think like my
0:40:49 parents were very cheap with electricity growing up on Long Island and it was cold, but if you
0:40:54 think that’s cold, go to Japan and experience the lack of insulation in the middle of the winter
0:41:00 and get up and it is freezing, freezing cold.
0:41:01 All right.
0:41:03 So we’ve covered a bunch of that.
0:41:08 That was now, tell me when you left Japan to go back to UPenn.
0:41:11 I guess we can kind of peg it in your macro timeline.
0:41:13 You get back.
0:41:15 What happens after UPenn?
0:41:21 The summer between junior and senior year, I did an internship in Tokyo at a magazine
0:41:25 and the editor in chief there was like, Hey, I want to start a publishing company.
0:41:26 Do you want to like be the art director?
0:41:27 And I was like, yes.
0:41:31 Just because one of the summers in Silicon Valley, I did an internship with like a startup,
0:41:32 like a small design agency.
0:41:33 And it was great.
0:41:39 And then the second summer I got a job with a bigger company and I got a taste of being
0:41:39 in a company.
0:41:40 And what does that mean?
0:41:44 And like being part of the system and I was just immediately like, okay, I can’t do this.
0:41:46 So I had no intention.
0:41:47 I just couldn’t do it.
0:41:49 I was like, okay, this isn’t for me.
0:41:50 This isn’t for me.
0:41:51 This system is broken.
0:41:52 Whatever this is.
0:41:53 I can feel it in my chest.
0:41:54 I can’t do this.
0:41:58 And I remember walking around San Francisco that summer that I had, I was working at the
0:42:00 big company and I was just like talking with my friend Rob.
0:42:03 And I was just like, and they offered me, they’re like, Hey, we’ll pay for college.
0:42:04 Like stay with us.
0:42:06 They really, you know, I was like, whatever.
0:42:08 I was kind of talented at doing web crap.
0:42:10 Like back then, not many people were.
0:42:12 And I was like, no, I can’t do this.
0:42:13 And I was like, I’m running away to Japan.
0:42:16 I had always had this fierce independence and it’s connected with where I come from because
0:42:20 like where I came from, I saw there was no healthcare.
0:42:22 People were fairly struggling.
0:42:26 You know, a lot of my friends, their sisters were pregnant as teenagers.
0:42:29 It was like kind of endemic, like people just weren’t really being supported.
0:42:32 So from a very young age, I was like, I have to be independent.
0:42:33 I have to control my destiny.
0:42:40 I have to be sort of pathological about making sure I’m secure to like get to the next stage.
0:42:42 And so being independent was really important to me.
0:42:45 My buddy, you know, the editor-in-chief’s like, Hey, let’s start a publishing company.
0:42:47 I was like, great, let’s do that.
0:42:48 I’ll move back to Tokyo as a student.
0:42:50 I want to go do grad school stuff anyway.
0:42:53 We can start like getting the publishing company up and running.
0:42:57 And when I was at UPenn, I had a couple of amazing professors.
0:43:02 The reason why I picked UPenn was because I, it had a computer science and fine arts program.
0:43:04 And it was called the DMD, digital media design.
0:43:05 That’s cool.
0:43:06 I didn’t realize that.
0:43:07 That’s early.
0:43:09 It was super early, super early.
0:43:12 Cause you had the MIT media lab, but that was only grad school.
0:43:17 And I loved John Mita’s stuff, Ben Fry’s stuff, Casey Ray’s stuff that was all coming
0:43:18 out of MIT media lab.
0:43:22 And I was so into all that, but I was too young to go to MIT as a grad student.
0:43:24 And I was like, okay, where can I do this?
0:43:27 And, you know, and it was like NYU kind of had a program that was like technology, I think
0:43:33 and maybe our CMU had technology and theater and UPenn had fine arts and computer science.
0:43:34 So I was like, great, let me do that.
0:43:37 And the fine arts component was incredible.
0:43:40 And I had two professors that kind of changed my life.
0:43:45 One was Joshua Mosley, who he was an acclimation animator guy.
0:43:45 He runs the department now.
0:43:52 He was just, he was just this incredible archetype of like the artist doing these bizarre claymation
0:43:52 things.
0:43:52 Wait a second.
0:43:58 So even at that time, he’s doing like claymation stop motion stuff in this digital media lab.
0:43:58 Yes.
0:43:59 Yes.
0:44:03 And teaching us how to use the latest 3d programs.
0:44:07 It was this totally interesting kind of like analog digital thing happening.
0:44:10 I had some amazing photography professors.
0:44:15 My focus was photography, but I also had a design professor, Sharka Highland, who was
0:44:16 like this Eastern European.
0:44:22 I don’t really know what her background was, but she was like the meanest, unless she liked
0:44:23 your work and wish she loved you.
0:44:27 You know, it was like one of these teachers that like she would not pull any punches.
0:44:30 And so like everyone has their, you know, designs.
0:44:35 Like I remember we had to like design a book cover and I had like the sun also rises or something.
0:44:36 I think it was a Hemingway cover.
0:44:39 Everyone’s got their stuff up on the wall and like kids are like crying because she’s
0:44:40 like, this is gotta bitch.
0:44:41 I hate this.
0:44:42 This sucks.
0:44:43 This is terrible.
0:44:43 This is bad.
0:44:47 This is, you know, and like, but like be very specific or specific than I think.
0:44:49 Let me tell you the ways I hate this.
0:44:49 Yes.
0:44:50 So many.
0:44:51 Where do I start?
0:44:51 Yeah.
0:44:52 She was amazing.
0:44:53 She was so great.
0:44:57 She blew open my mind about design and about book design.
0:44:59 And it got me obsessed with wanting to make books.
0:45:00 I’d always loved books.
0:45:01 I’d always loved technology.
0:45:05 You know, all the tech stuff, the blogging stuff, you know, the online writing, whatever,
0:45:09 the news groups, all this was interesting, but nothing really captured my attention like
0:45:09 physical books.
0:45:15 And around the same time, McSweeney’s, the publisher out of San Francisco, Dave Eggers,
0:45:18 he’s got his heartbreaking work of staggering genius comes out.
0:45:20 In the moment that was like, what is happening?
0:45:21 This book is so meta.
0:45:23 This is like, you know, this is so much fun.
0:45:24 You know, he’s funny.
0:45:25 It’s a moving story.
0:45:29 And he founded McSweeney’s and McSweeney’s was doing so many interesting things with the
0:45:30 book as a form and design.
0:45:35 And basically this editor-in-chief and I were like, hey, let’s do like mini McSweeney’s
0:45:37 that’s kind of connected with Japan.
0:45:38 That was kind of the thesis.
0:45:40 Well, let me pause for a second here.
0:45:41 So Sharka, was that the name?
0:45:42 What a fucking name.
0:45:44 I think I’m getting that roughly right.
0:45:45 All right.
0:45:46 Sharka Highland.
0:45:46 Yeah.
0:45:48 Sharka Highland.
0:45:51 That is straight out of a comic book.
0:45:59 So Sharka Highland, what was it that she taught you or showed you or imbued into you that got
0:46:02 you excited about book covers or that type of design?
0:46:03 It could be a feeling.
0:46:05 It could be her enthusiasm.
0:46:08 Like what was it that clicked for you?
0:46:15 So I think I’d spend a lot of my teenage years in this like autodidactic way of trying to
0:46:16 understand design.
0:46:18 I didn’t know any of the greats.
0:46:23 And I remember the first summer I was out in San Francisco, I remember going to Razorfish
0:46:24 back in the day.
0:46:24 Yeah.
0:46:29 I printed out a portfolio at Kinko’s, this really terrible design portfolio.
0:46:31 And I went to Razorfish.
0:46:31 I went in there.
0:46:35 I was like, hey, I’d like to talk to someone about, you know, maybe interning here or working
0:46:35 here.
0:46:39 And they like brought over this manager and he just, he was this really nasty guy.
0:46:41 And he just, he was like, who are your favorite designers?
0:46:42 Who do you like?
0:46:46 And I was like, uh, you know, I hadn’t gone to design school at this point.
0:46:47 I was like 18 years old.
0:46:48 I was 19 years old.
0:46:52 I came from this place that like literally no one had picked up like a John Updike book,
0:46:55 let alone looked at the cover, let alone thought about who designed it.
0:46:58 And I’m like, you know, I was really into internet design.
0:46:58 So I was like K10K.
0:47:02 And like the, I was naming all these handles of like antsy artists and stuff.
0:47:03 And he’s like, who’s that?
0:47:08 So I was just like, yeah, he was totally, he was terrible.
0:47:09 He was terrible.
0:47:12 But like, this is the thing I think that’s difficult for people to understand.
0:47:18 If you come from a place where you aren’t surrounded by a kind of a sense of culture or a sense
0:47:20 of archetypes or whatever, and then you leave and you go into the bigger world and you realize
0:47:25 people aren’t sort of operating with the same deficit you might have in those ways, that
0:47:28 your sense of self-worth to ratchet that up is a really difficult, long process.
0:47:30 And that’s basically what I spent all of my twenties doing.
0:47:36 And I think Sharka saw in me that I had a certain intuitive, like eye for design.
0:47:42 And she was able, even though she was so critical and she was critical of some of the things I
0:47:45 remember she asked me, she’s like, why did you make that red?
0:47:46 And I was like, I don’t know.
0:47:47 I kind of like red.
0:47:48 She’s like, look at this idiot.
0:47:50 He doesn’t even know why he made it red.
0:47:51 You know?
0:47:52 And I was like, I was like, oh man.
0:47:56 But really the reason was I, you know, I’m colorblind and like, I don’t really see that
0:47:56 many colors.
0:47:59 And so I was like, oh, red is like a color that like is easy for me to use.
0:48:01 Well, hold on a second.
0:48:03 So let me just double click on that.
0:48:09 I know this is my habit, but when I think of colorblind, usually I think of red as one
0:48:11 of the most commonly missing colors.
0:48:12 Yeah.
0:48:14 Because you don’t have the cones.
0:48:14 Right.
0:48:15 Red, green.
0:48:15 Yeah.
0:48:15 Red, green.
0:48:18 But like a strong, vibrant red, I can see really well.
0:48:20 And so that’s kind of what I was drawn to.
0:48:26 If you look a lot of my early design slash all of my design, it’s like red plays a pretty,
0:48:27 it’s basically black, white, and red.
0:48:31 It’s like, that’s what I’ve been riffing off of for 25 years.
0:48:34 The Sin City color palette.
0:48:34 Yeah.
0:48:39 But Sharka, I would say, you know, saw enough of like potential slash an intuitive sense of
0:48:41 design that she elevated.
0:48:42 And I did some branding work.
0:48:46 I did branding work for the publishing company that I started with this guy, the editor-in-chief.
0:48:50 And, you know, she kind of reviewed it and she like gave me all this amazing feedback.
0:48:54 So she really, she made me feel like I could do it, which is incredible.
0:48:58 I had one teacher in elementary school, kind of like that.
0:49:00 It was like a brutal woman.
0:49:05 But if she decided she really loved you, then she paid attention.
0:49:12 And I don’t know if this is true with Sharka, but was it your intuitive sense or was there
0:49:20 part of you, did you reflect in what you did in the class in some way pointing to you caring
0:49:21 more than other students?
0:49:22 I’m just curious about that.
0:49:28 Because I remember the moment when this teacher went from brutalizing me to actually deciding,
0:49:30 okay, now I’m going to give you a little extra attention.
0:49:36 And it’s because I spent like 10 times more time than I needed to on this class project where
0:49:39 I illustrated all of these different components of it.
0:49:41 She was like, oh, okay.
0:49:42 All right, fine.
0:49:45 I’d like to say that I was caring more, but I’m not sure.
0:49:47 I’m not sure I knew how to work yet.
0:49:52 When I think back to who I was back then, I don’t think I understood what really, truly
0:49:54 committing to a creative project felt like.
0:49:56 I wish I could go back in time.
0:49:59 Going to university, I think when you’re 18, 19, 20 is such a waste.
0:50:01 But you just don’t know what you’re doing.
0:50:02 I certainly didn’t.
0:50:06 There’s a part of me that’s like, I’d really love to go back to school.
0:50:11 As a footnote, I just dropped my stepdaughter off at boarding school.
0:50:13 Big backstory to all of this.
0:50:14 But I dropped her off.
0:50:16 She’s going to school in New Zealand.
0:50:19 We wanted her to kind of find an interesting place.
0:50:20 This is like my ex’s kid.
0:50:24 So it’s like this, we can talk about this and adoption and like what blood means for
0:50:24 family or whatever.
0:50:29 But like, I consider her, she’s my daughter, you know, even though it’s a complicated situation.
0:50:31 Anyway, to New Zealand.
0:50:34 And I brought her there in January, the two of us.
0:50:35 I took her down to school.
0:50:37 I went to like the parent initiation and all that stuff.
0:50:43 She’s 15 and I was so excited for her.
0:50:45 I mean, it was a little bit embarrassing.
0:50:46 I was probably too excited.
0:50:49 But I was just like, oh my God, I would have cut off.
0:50:54 I would have literally cut off a finger to have had this opportunity when I was 15 to be able
0:50:55 to come to a place like this.
0:50:56 It’s not that fancy.
0:50:58 It’s like, you know, whatever.
0:51:00 It’s like, I didn’t want her surrounded by a bunch of pricks.
0:51:02 So it’s like, it’s very like sane.
0:51:04 It’s like a sane boarding school.
0:51:08 It’s not, it’s not fancy, but there’s resources and there’s like a great music program and she
0:51:10 can take piano lessons and guitar lessons.
0:51:12 And there’s like a great sports program and all this stuff.
0:51:16 And I was just like, oh my God, you are so, I’m like, you don’t understand.
0:51:17 I’m like shaking her.
0:51:18 She’s like, please stop.
0:51:19 You’re embarrassing me.
0:51:22 Like why go leave, please dad, get out of here.
0:51:26 But I was just like, I was like, this is so, so incredible that you could do this.
0:51:31 And just as like the sense of like, I know how I could use those resources in a way.
0:51:34 I think even when I was at UPenn, I didn’t quite understand, but I did, I worked hard.
0:51:35 I was committing to these things.
0:51:35 I was working hard.
0:51:39 You know, I think we’re going to weave in and out of Japan.
0:51:42 So I feel like we can pause on that for a minute.
0:51:47 I ultimately want to get an idea of what it is, like, what are the things in Japan that
0:51:50 attract you so much to it that keep you there?
0:51:56 Maybe things that people miss, but I want to ask you as maybe a segue into
0:52:00 some of your huge walks and trips in general.
0:52:05 Tell me if this makes any sense, because I have not read the full context on this
0:52:10 because I didn’t know this story, but I wanted to ask you about it.
0:52:12 2009 hike to Nepal.
0:52:14 Is that enough of a cue?
0:52:16 Can you tell this story?
0:52:18 Yeah, that’s an inflection point.
0:52:20 I just got like goosebumps actually.
0:52:23 So I really struggled with alcohol in my twenties.
0:52:25 My teenage years, I didn’t touch anything.
0:52:28 I was militantly straight edge ish.
0:52:33 And basically looking back now, I realize I had such a strong impulse to make sure I could
0:52:35 get to whatever the next place was.
0:52:40 Anything I saw that could hold me back, which included falling in love or doing drugs or anything
0:52:43 like that, that was like a retarding agent.
0:52:46 As a teenager, I was like, immediately I was like, okay, I don’t need this.
0:52:49 And I got to Japan and it was like, oh, this is a place to reinvent myself.
0:52:54 And I started drinking because as you do, because people drink so much here.
0:52:57 And it turns out that I can drink a lot.
0:53:00 I can have 15, 20 drinks, not throw up.
0:53:01 I lack out.
0:53:02 Sure.
0:53:06 But like there’s something in my genes that allows me to just drink.
0:53:11 And then after two or three drinks, something activates where it’s just all we live for is
0:53:11 more drink.
0:53:17 And I think, you know, from most of my twenties, because I had such a low sense of self-worth
0:53:21 because of where I came from, because of, I felt this abundance of people around me that
0:53:22 I didn’t feel I had.
0:53:24 And I didn’t know how to ratchet that up.
0:53:32 And I had this desire to produce culture or to produce art, to produce literature at a
0:53:35 level that I didn’t know how to, and I didn’t know how to bridge that gap.
0:53:39 And what I ended up doing was, because I didn’t have mentors, because I didn’t have
0:53:41 archetypes near me, I just drank like a fish.
0:53:45 And I played a lot of music because that was one thing I did have mastery over.
0:53:48 And I played a lot of music and I played a lot of that blacked out.
0:53:51 And, you know, it was just, I’m really lucky I didn’t die.
0:53:55 I mean, it would be one of these things where many, many mornings of my life, I’ve woken up
0:53:58 and it’s just been checking, is my face okay?
0:54:00 Did I break my skull open or, you know, something like that.
0:54:02 And I was madly in love.
0:54:03 I fell madly, madly in love.
0:54:05 I was 26, 27 years old.
0:54:11 And I just, I had the most incredible love connection I’d ever felt.
0:54:14 This like otherworldly sense of being in love with this person.
0:54:22 And we connected so intensely and immediately went on a 40-day trip.
0:54:26 Like a week after meeting, a 40-day trip through Tibet.
0:54:28 We went to Tibet.
0:54:30 I was possessed by a spirit.
0:54:32 I like, I spoke in tongues.
0:54:33 Wait, hold on.
0:54:34 We hiked up to a glacier.
0:54:38 I mean, we can’t really skip over getting possessed by spirits.
0:54:50 I mean, it was, yeah, there was, we stayed at this one little hotel in Laza that had not
0:54:51 always been a hotel.
0:54:52 You know, it was this old structure.
0:55:00 And woke up the next morning and my girlfriend was being very strange.
0:55:01 She was being very weird.
0:55:02 And I was like, what’s going on?
0:55:04 She’s like, I’ll tell you when we get outside.
0:55:04 I was like, what?
0:55:06 You’ll tell me when we get outside?
0:55:06 Like, what’s this about?
0:55:11 And we go outside and she goes, okay, last night we had to get out of there because last
0:55:14 night I woke up in the middle of the night.
0:55:19 You were on your side of the bed cradling something that was not there.
0:55:21 You were speaking in Tibetan.
0:55:23 I couldn’t get you to wake up.
0:55:27 And I was trying to speak to you in English, trying to speak to you in Japanese.
0:55:28 You wouldn’t respond.
0:55:35 And I finally crawled over on your side of the bed and I kind of took the air that you
0:55:41 were holding and I turned you on your side and you were able to like calm down and go
0:55:41 to sleep.
0:55:47 And I was like, oh my God, I had this, cause I had had this vision slash dream of this woman
0:55:51 in white standing in the doorway and for at the foot of the bed the night before.
0:55:53 And I don’t know what was, what was happening.
0:55:56 And like, even now I’m like full body goosebumps right now.
0:56:00 Oh God, it’s like straight out of paranormal activity or something.
0:56:02 I’m just like, oh God.
0:56:03 It was so bizarre.
0:56:06 And we had been, you know, and you have to imagine like, I don’t know if you’ve ever been
0:56:10 in love to this degree where it just feels like everything in the world is fated.
0:56:13 Like everything is a sign that you need to be together, that this is magic.
0:56:16 Like only these things can possibly happen because you’re connected, you’re together.
0:56:20 We both bought, I remember we like pulled out our books on the first day of the trip.
0:56:23 We had both brought The Stranger by Camus.
0:56:27 You know, it was like, it was like, oh my God, we’re fated.
0:56:31 I went back to the hotel and I went to the manager and I was like, hey, uh, I don’t
0:56:32 think we could stay here tonight.
0:56:33 He’s like, oh, what’s wrong?
0:56:36 And I was like, well, you know, I was kind of possessed, saw this.
0:56:37 He’s like, did you see the woman?
0:56:43 And I was like, yeah, he’s like, he’s like, oh, oh yeah, yeah, no, I, we know what’s going
0:56:43 on with that here.
0:56:45 We’ll take you to the dream reader.
0:56:47 And so I was like, what?
0:56:48 You’ll take me to the dream.
0:56:52 So I ended up, I’ll try to, try to truncate this cause it can, it can kind of get a little
0:56:56 bit long, but I mean, I’m not sure anybody listening wants you to truncate this particular
0:56:56 story.
0:56:59 So go wherever you want.
0:57:03 One of the workers there is like, you know, the manager’s like, okay, take him to the dream
0:57:03 reader.
0:57:05 So, and I’m thinking, okay, this is a scam.
0:57:06 I’m getting scammed.
0:57:12 And he takes us and we go to like the outskirts of Lhasa.
0:57:16 We go to this like really kind of weird apartment block that was just made of concrete.
0:57:18 It was maybe like two or three stories tall.
0:57:22 And he takes us to this room on the third floor.
0:57:25 And there’s a line of people, a line of Tibetans waiting at this door.
0:57:28 And they were all waiting to have their dreams read.
0:57:30 So it was like, okay, this is bizarre.
0:57:32 So we wait, we stand in line, we go inside, we sit down inside.
0:57:35 The most beautiful, I don’t know how old she was.
0:57:39 She was anywhere between 15 and a thousand years old.
0:57:44 Like she was just this, this creature of just the most bizarre light walks out.
0:57:46 It was like being in the matrix, you know, the scene in the matrix where they’re like with
0:57:50 the spoon and the bending and you’re in this random apartment, the TV’s on, you know, it
0:57:51 was like that situation.
0:57:56 She comes over, brings some yak, buttermilk tea, some cookies, because someone’s in the
0:57:59 dream reader room and we’re waiting for them to get out.
0:58:00 And then our term comes up.
0:58:04 I go in there, you go into this room, it’s all candles, Dalai Lama photos, like all this
0:58:04 stuff.
0:58:06 It’s like, you feel like in this really holy space.
0:58:09 And the guy from the hotel interprets for us.
0:58:10 I tell her the dream.
0:58:10 I tell her what happened.
0:58:16 And she gives me this blessing, puts a white wreath around my neck, gives me this little
0:58:20 satchel of seeds and tells me to put them under my pillow when I sleep and then writes me a
0:58:21 prayer.
0:58:24 And she says, okay, here’s these three pieces of paper.
0:58:27 You have to take them to these three temples and they will burn them for you tonight.
0:58:28 They’ll know what to do.
0:58:31 Just tell them the dream reader sent you and you’ll be okay.
0:58:31 You’ll be fine.
0:58:32 Everything will be good.
0:58:36 And I was like, no one’s asking me for money.
0:58:39 You know, and the guy, the hotel guy’s like, oh, you can like leave a tip if you want or
0:58:39 whatever.
0:58:42 And like, you know, it was like a $2 or something.
0:58:43 I like put $2 in a little thingy.
0:58:48 And then we go to the temples and like, it ended up becoming this incredible adventure.
0:58:50 This connects with a lot of my walking as well.
0:58:53 You know, it’s like having experiences like this, I think informed the sense of like, just
0:58:58 give yourself up to what the day could potentially give to you.
0:59:01 And so I ended up going to all these temples I would have never gone to.
0:59:04 I went to the dream reader’s apartment, which was like the most bizarre, beautiful place I
0:59:07 went to in all of Tibet in that entire trip.
0:59:10 We went to these temples, you know, met these monks, say, hey, can you burn this for me?
0:59:11 Oh yes, of course.
0:59:12 Absolutely.
0:59:15 You know, give them like a dollar, you know, 50 cents or whatever.
0:59:17 You know, the whole thing costs nothing.
0:59:18 It was clearly not a scam.
0:59:24 It was clearly this thing that a lot of locals were participating in and it was magic.
0:59:25 It was just pure magic.
0:59:30 So anyway, things like that were happening with this woman and I screwed it up because of my
0:59:30 drinking.
0:59:32 I ruined the relationship.
0:59:36 She punched me in the face at one point, very rightfully so, you know, and she was like,
0:59:38 hey, I can’t be with someone like you.
0:59:39 This happened on that trip?
0:59:41 Not on that trip.
0:59:42 That happened a couple months later.
0:59:44 We ended up staying together for about three months.
0:59:49 And basically, I mean, it was just, it was about 10 years worth of lifetimes in three months.
1:00:01 But losing her was probably the biggest psychic damage I’d ever encountered in my life, you know, as an adult.
1:00:08 And I remember just lying in my tiny apartment in Tokyo, my six mat tatami room apartment in Tokyo.
1:00:09 It was three in the morning.
1:00:11 I wanted to die.
1:00:13 It was rock, rock, rock, rock bottom.
1:00:15 This isn’t like a ritual story.
1:00:17 I didn’t like get up and run 40 miles or anything like that.
1:00:19 But I was like, I’m going to start running.
1:00:23 And I went out and I ran like 5k at three in the morning through the streets of Tokyo.
1:00:28 And I was like, okay, I need to stop drinking.
1:00:31 And to stop drinking, I’m going to run this marathon in November.
1:00:33 I think it was like July when this happened.
1:00:34 And I just started preparing for that.
1:00:42 These were actually the first steps for me to deliberately address this lack of self-worth that I’ve been carrying around for all of my adult life.
1:00:50 And that had, I think, driven me to drink the way I drank, that to give into whatever those genetic impulses were, and to start to go, okay, we’re going to run.
1:00:51 We’re going to be someone who runs.
1:00:54 A lot of this is also like very Atomic Habits style stuff.
1:00:57 It’s like, who are you going to be and how are you going to set yourself up to be successful?
1:00:59 I’m going to be a person who runs.
1:01:01 I’m going to be a person who doesn’t drink.
1:01:03 I’m going to be a person who charges a lot.
1:01:12 So I was at this time, you know, with the publishing company thing, we were producing these books that were winning awards and making absolutely no money.
1:01:17 And so I was consulting, doing like web design consulting and stuff like that.
1:01:21 And I was like, okay, I’m going to start charging absurd amounts of money for my time.
1:01:22 The worst that can happen is people reject.
1:01:24 And they started accepting it.
1:01:32 And I was like, oh, little by little, all of these stupid little steps from the time I was basically 27 to 30.
1:01:36 These were the most important years of tiny little steps.
1:01:37 My time is more valuable.
1:01:39 I’m going to be a person who runs.
1:01:40 I’m going to be a person who can take care of himself.
1:01:44 I still drank, even though I tried to not drink, but I started lowering it.
1:01:51 It took me about four full years to completely get off the sauce in a really dangerous way.
1:01:58 And it kind of, part of it culminated in going to Nepal and climbing up to Annapurta base camp.
1:02:03 And that was after we had broken up and I felt like all the magic of my life was done.
1:02:05 I felt like there was no way for me to experience magic again.
1:02:10 I felt like she, and again, it’s this totally irrational sense of scarcity.
1:02:16 The amount of scarcity I felt as an adult in my twenties is just shocking.
1:02:18 It was this fathomless sense of scarcity.
1:02:20 Like the money’s not going to be there.
1:02:21 The love isn’t going to be there.
1:02:22 The support isn’t going to be there.
1:02:27 And then when I lost her, I was like, I’m never going to have anyone who will ever love me.
1:02:28 Like this person loved me.
1:02:31 And like, well, I’m never going to be able to create like I created with this person.
1:02:34 And I had to start proving to myself that that wasn’t true.
1:02:36 And I climbed up.
1:02:39 I was like, okay, I’m just going to go to Nepal and I’m going to climb up Annapurta, go to base camp.
1:02:41 It was a pretty random choice.
1:02:43 What’s the elevation on something like that?
1:02:44 Roughly.
1:02:44 Do you have any idea?
1:02:46 It’s headache elevation.
1:02:47 That’s the elevation.
1:02:51 You’re definitely not comfortable.
1:02:53 You’re definitely at altitude sickness levels.
1:02:58 It’s like, yeah, that’s 13,550 feet.
1:02:58 That’s high.
1:03:01 But it’s going to be enough for altitude sickness for sure.
1:03:02 Yeah.
1:03:04 So I fly out there.
1:03:08 I go to Pocata, which is the town that kind of everyone starts the trek from.
1:03:10 I wasn’t going to hire a guide.
1:03:13 At the last second, I thought, okay, maybe I shouldn’t do this alone.
1:03:16 And I went to like the random guide shop and I said, hey, do you have a guide?
1:03:18 I just want him to be there to make sure I don’t die.
1:03:19 I need to be alone.
1:03:21 This needs to be kind of like a solo thing.
1:03:22 I’m being like a weirdo.
1:03:25 And he’s like, the guy’s like, yeah, no problem.
1:03:25 No problem.
1:03:25 Yeah.
1:03:28 He gives me this young guide.
1:03:29 He must’ve been like 18.
1:03:36 And he was the sweetest, most compassionate, incredible human.
1:03:40 We bonded as brothers.
1:03:41 He was calling me older brother.
1:03:42 I was calling him younger brother.
1:03:44 Die and bye.
1:03:49 And I got to base camp on my 29th birthday.
1:03:56 It was, and it was a full moon and I put this thermos of coffee or hot water in my jacket.
1:04:00 And I walked out to the edge of the moraine looking out over the, essentially you’re on
1:04:01 the moon up there.
1:04:02 I mean, it really is incredible.
1:04:03 The edge of the, what did you just say?
1:04:04 Moraine?
1:04:05 What is a moraine?
1:04:11 Moraine is sort of like when a glacier pulls back and it leaves this kind of valley, essentially.
1:04:11 I see.
1:04:12 Got it.
1:04:14 And you’re kind of at this lip.
1:04:19 It’s a huge fall down, but you’re also in this, not caldera, but you’re in this cradle.
1:04:23 You’re surrounded by Annapurna and Machu Picchu and like all these other mega peaks.
1:04:24 It’s just amazing.
1:04:28 The base camp is in this cradle of beauty and lifelessness.
1:04:29 It’s like you’re on the moon.
1:04:35 And I sat up there and it was just a really important moment to sit there and not have
1:04:38 a smartphone and not to be like taking photos and like trying to tweet or whatever.
1:04:40 That trip was so powerful to me.
1:04:44 I came back and I was like, I have to write about this and I have to write about the camera
1:04:45 that I was using.
1:04:48 And I have to create something from this.
1:04:52 I have to wrest something from this experience, give it form.
1:04:58 And I wrote this ridiculous camera review that was kind of one of the first, I don’t want
1:04:59 to say it was the first field review.
1:05:02 You know how like everyone does like the field review of like iPhone cameras and stuff now.
1:05:04 But this was early.
1:05:05 I mean, very early.
1:05:09 This is 2009 and it was the Panasonic GF1.
1:05:11 It was this tiny little camera that was actually made.
1:05:15 I think it was made to market to women because it was like meant to be this like really tiny,
1:05:20 cute camera, but it was also this amazing camera and it was micro four thirds, this new
1:05:21 technology, this new sensor.
1:05:23 And I was like, this is really kind of exciting, really cool.
1:05:27 I wrote about that and the article went bananas.
1:05:30 What happened as a result of that article going bananas?
1:05:32 Like what dominoes did that tip over?
1:05:35 That article is the first, I think, long form ish.
1:05:37 It was mixing design.
1:05:39 It was mixing the web.
1:05:44 And when you say mixing design, that means you had multimedia components or a mixture of
1:05:46 photographs and texts.
1:05:47 What do you mean by that?
1:05:52 There was a lot of designers on the web, like Zeldman, Jason Santamaria, Liz Danzico, working
1:05:59 in the early, mid 2000s, late 2000s, like refining the CSS spec and like showing, you know, CSS
1:06:01 ZenGuard and showing what you can do with design and stuff like that.
1:06:06 But it was always, you know, there was blogs and stuff, but there weren’t really articles
1:06:09 that were like long form designed in the same way you do for like a magazine.
1:06:15 There was a guy in Tokyo who I was sharing a studio with, Oliver Reichenstein, who was
1:06:16 running this thing called Information Architects.
1:06:18 And he was doing it.
1:06:19 And again, this is like the power of archetypes.
1:06:24 I would sit next to Oliver and watch him work on these mega articles about typography or
1:06:25 whatever and design these beautiful pages.
1:06:28 And I was like, oh, that’s how the work is done.
1:06:29 This is how long it takes.
1:06:30 This is how much you have to refine.
1:06:36 So I took that archetype of Oliver, who was generous enough to give me studio space in his
1:06:36 studio.
1:06:40 I applied it to this walk and to this camera review.
1:06:44 This guide too, he was like, there’s this love that I wanted to give this thing because,
1:06:48 you know, we came down from the mountain, the guide, his name is Home, Home, H-O-M.
1:06:51 We come down and we’re both, we’re saying goodbye.
1:06:52 And it’s like such an emotional goodbye.
1:06:53 We don’t want to say goodbye.
1:06:56 He goes, die, you know, older brother.
1:07:01 He goes, like a month before we met, my older brother died in a motorcycle accident.
1:07:05 And I’ve not had any happiness since then.
1:07:09 And meeting you, it was like meeting him coming back.
1:07:12 And we’re both just like sobbing, like, oh my God, I love you.
1:07:20 And so I came out of that Nepal experience, believing in magic and believing in that kind
1:07:24 of love and being able to like generate it on my own, not having to have that person.
1:07:29 Again, ratcheting up the sense of like self-value and like, I can produce these kinds of experience
1:07:30 on my own.
1:07:32 And I wanted to give that to the article.
1:07:36 And so I just worked on it for weeks and weeks and weeks, which is like, it was a long
1:07:36 time.
1:07:37 It wasn’t that big of an article.
1:07:38 It was refining.
1:07:42 I remember hilariously, I was in New York for part of this.
1:07:45 I was in New York City and a friend was like, hey, do you want some Adderall?
1:07:46 I was like, I’m working on this thing.
1:07:47 And they’re like, you want some Adderall?
1:07:48 And I’m like, yeah, sure.
1:07:49 Like, I’ll try some, give you some Adderall.
1:07:52 So I remember it’s like, I’m in Harlem.
1:07:53 I’m at my friend’s apartment in Harlem.
1:07:56 Like, it’s like 11 o’clock at night.
1:07:58 I had never taken Adderall before.
1:07:59 I was like, okay, I’ll try it.
1:07:59 I take it.
1:08:01 You take it at 11.
1:08:02 I take it at 11.
1:08:07 And I’m just like, I’m like writing this like camera review, eating carrots and stuff.
1:08:08 They had like a bag of carrots.
1:08:11 I’m like eating carrots, like a rabbit, writing this camera review.
1:08:14 I remember we were in Harlem and it was like a, it was almost like a basement apartment.
1:08:17 I’m looking out, there’s like people’s feet walking out outside the window.
1:08:18 And I’m like, ah, I got to write this review.
1:08:19 I got to write this review.
1:08:22 This is like Stephen King back in the cocaine sprint days.
1:08:27 So I committed to this thing and it came out and it just got picked up everywhere.
1:08:30 And it, you know, it turns out there’s a reason why there was all these camera review sites
1:08:33 because I was smart enough to put affiliate links on it.
1:08:37 And basically in a month it generated like, I don’t know, $20,000 in revenue.
1:08:38 It was just insane.
1:08:38 Holy shit.
1:08:40 In affiliate fees.
1:08:43 For me, back in 2009.
1:08:44 Yeah, that’s wild.
1:08:46 We were selling like millions of dollars with these cameras.
1:08:50 And I had always lived because of the sense of scarcity.
1:08:53 I had always lived pathologically below my means.
1:08:57 My cost of living, one of the reasons I stayed in Tokyo throughout my twenties was my cost of
1:08:58 living was so low.
1:09:03 I could live in the center of this incredible city and I needed to make a thousand dollars
1:09:06 a month that would cover my rent, all my food and like entertainment.
1:09:11 Which is so unexpected for a lot of people listening, right?
1:09:15 Because when we were growing up, it was like, oh, Tokyo is the most expensive city in the world,
1:09:15 right?
1:09:18 As a kid growing up on Long Island, like that was what you heard.
1:09:19 For sure.
1:09:24 And like, if you want to buy a hundred square meter apartment in Ginza, yeah, it was a lot
1:09:24 of money.
1:09:25 Sure.
1:09:25 Right.
1:09:28 That is the interesting thing about Tokyo is that there are options.
1:09:33 You don’t have to live far in the outskirts and every neighborhood still to this day, there
1:09:34 are affordable options.
1:09:35 Yes, it’s small or whatever.
1:09:37 Sometimes they don’t have baths.
1:09:38 You have to use the public bath, things like that.
1:09:41 But there are options, which is what is so powerful about this city.
1:09:46 And again, we can talk about what I felt here that kept me here subconsciously about kind
1:09:52 of just being supported by society and having those options to live in this place and to
1:09:55 get the benefits of being in a big city and only needing to make a thousand dollars a month.
1:09:58 So anyway, getting $20,000 was like, oh, great.
1:10:01 There’s like two years of rent, two years of living.
1:10:03 And I got that, you know, in a month doing this thing.
1:10:07 And it taught me there’s a financial sustainability to this.
1:10:11 If I commit to these things, I try to transmute these experiences, these kind of personally
1:10:14 transcendent experiences into something that I give to other people.
1:10:17 There’s a response to that.
1:10:18 It resonates.
1:10:19 So that was exciting.
1:10:23 Again, these slow, like you could just hear this creaking, this ratcheting up of like this
1:10:27 meter, this weird old meter of like self-worth, like, oh, I have value.
1:10:30 I don’t have to operate on such a scarcity mindset.
1:10:31 And I did that.
1:10:37 And then that led, like a month after that, the iPad came out and I had been doing all
1:10:38 of this book design.
1:10:40 I’d been winning awards as a book designer.
1:10:46 When I was 24, I was asked to be a judge in the art director’s club in New York City.
1:10:48 I thought it was a joke email.
1:10:50 It was one of the Winterhouse people.
1:10:53 Again, talk about these like people picking you out.
1:10:55 Remind me, Winterhouse, this is.
1:11:01 Winterhouse was this just incredible early, late 90s or 2000s design studio.
1:11:06 And one of the directors there was one of the people, board of directors for the Art Directors
1:11:07 Club.
1:11:09 And he had just been watching my work online.
1:11:10 I was doing these kind of experiments.
1:11:14 We were putting out these books and he’s like, oh, this kid is doing interesting stuff.
1:11:15 He should come and be a judge.
1:11:20 You know, I had these things that were happening that were sort of signals that were hard for
1:11:21 me to believe in.
1:11:22 I always, this is a fluke.
1:11:23 This is a fluke.
1:11:24 I’m not valuable.
1:11:25 This happened accidentally.
1:11:29 And then I’d go to the Art Directors Club and I’d meet all the people there and I’d be
1:11:31 like, oh my God, I’m not supposed to be here.
1:11:33 It’s just this incredible, infinite imposter syndrome.
1:11:38 Anyway, but there’s a slow ratcheting up and the iPad comes out.
1:11:40 And then I was like, okay, I’ve been doing these books.
1:11:42 I’ve been doing a lot of digital work.
1:11:46 I’m like, I can write about the future of books on the iPad.
1:11:49 And I wrote, again, committed to this article.
1:11:52 And I wrote this thing called Books in the Age of the iPad.
1:11:56 I hit publish here in Japan at night.
1:11:57 I went to bed and I woke up.
1:11:59 The New York Times had written about it.
1:12:02 I had like hundreds of emails in my inbox.
1:12:03 It really changed my life.
1:12:10 It was just suddenly I went from being this invisible person to being this voice about books
1:12:12 and digital media and where things were going.
1:12:17 I went to South by Southwest like a month later and it was just insane.
1:12:19 Everyone I wanted to meet, wanted to meet.
1:12:23 All of these heroes, these design heroes, these design figures.
1:12:25 It’s good timing a week later, right?
1:12:26 I mean, that’s incredible timing.
1:12:29 It was like a month later, but it was just like the energy, yeah.
1:12:33 But the half-life of that article was still alive and well, right?
1:12:37 Question, how much time did you put into that particular piece?
1:12:39 Did you pour over it?
1:12:40 Yeah.
1:12:44 Well, I remember writing and rewriting the intro like 50 times.
1:12:52 The reason I’m asking is that it strikes me, and this is a hugely leading question slash
1:13:00 commentary going into a question, but the fact that your camera review and your experience
1:13:09 climbing Annapurna was rewarded after so much effort sort of along the lines of, I guess it
1:13:12 was Oliver, who put so much work into a creative project.
1:13:16 And you said earlier with Sharker, like you didn’t really know how to work yet.
1:13:24 The fact that you were rewarded after putting so much into it is such a blessing in a sense,
1:13:24 right?
1:13:28 Because when I think of the work that you do, it’s like quality, quality, quality.
1:13:33 There is like a Giro Dreams of Sushi aspect to it, but it could have cut a different way,
1:13:33 right?
1:13:40 I mean, like you could have done something that was done kind of fast and cheap and dirty and
1:13:43 holy shit, your life would be very different potentially, you know?
1:13:50 I mean, part of what I was doing, you know, I listened to the Brandon Sanderson interview,
1:13:52 and I mean, that’s an incredible interview.
1:13:56 Just talk about tenacity, like infinite, infinite tenacity.
1:13:56 What?
1:13:59 Like six, writing six, seven books before you go to the market to even try to sell them.
1:14:00 Oh my God.
1:14:00 It’s crazy.
1:14:02 Didn’t even try, right?
1:14:03 It’s crazy.
1:14:05 Because he heard that your first five books are garbage.
1:14:08 He’s like, okay, so I just won’t even try to sell them.
1:14:09 It’s totally bananas.
1:14:17 I mean, my tenacity was plowed into creating a lifestyle where I could always say no to
1:14:19 things that I didn’t want to do.
1:14:23 And I knew I could, there would always be another creative or fine art project that I could commit
1:14:25 myself to and could do so uncompromisingly.
1:14:27 When did you decide that?
1:14:30 Was that after raising your prices and you’re like, oh, okay, wait a second.
1:14:32 No, when I was like 13.
1:14:33 Oh, you late?
1:14:34 Oh, really?
1:14:38 Well, because like I grew up in an environment where we didn’t have an abundance.
1:14:42 It’s not like I was like, you know, we were going on these crazy vacations and like had
1:14:46 a yacht and like, you know, it was like we had six houses and like 15 cars and I was driving
1:14:46 around.
1:14:50 It was like, there was, I wasn’t coming from this place of incredible abundance and then
1:14:51 like having to sacrifice.
1:14:54 All through my life, I had been sort of trained aesthetically.
1:14:56 Right, right.
1:15:01 You were like an accidental monk in training, like you said, pathologically living below your
1:15:02 means.
1:15:06 And then as soon as I kind of felt I had that one summer where I entered at the bigger
1:15:07 company that paid me really well.
1:15:09 And I was like, okay, this doesn’t work for me.
1:15:13 This totally does not jive with my soul.
1:15:17 And so when I got to Tokyo and I realized, oh, wow, rent is this cheap.
1:15:18 Cost of living is this cheap.
1:15:23 It just felt like it was like a wormhole in reality where I could live in the biggest, most
1:15:24 incredible city in the world.
1:15:30 And I could pay so little and I could focus uncompromisingly again, uncompromisingly on
1:15:30 creative work.
1:15:32 And it was like, I was doing programming experiments.
1:15:37 I was working on those books that paid decently well, but not, I was literally making $15,000
1:15:39 a year, 23, 24, 25.
1:15:44 And I would kind of supplement that by like doing some CSS for ASICs or something.
1:15:48 But the point was always to be able to do the book work, to be able to do the experiments
1:15:51 on the web digitally to do that stuff.
1:15:57 And so, you know, all of my twenties, I’d cultivated that asceticism and I knew that I’d
1:16:00 done plenty of things that didn’t explode like those articles did.
1:16:03 And so I was like, oh, I’ll just keep, you know, I was just going to keep doing it.
1:16:04 I don’t know.
1:16:07 I was just going to keep doing those things because there was so much inherent value to
1:16:08 me doing them.
1:16:12 I felt so, I felt so drawn to it and the process of learning to do them better, watching Oliver,
1:16:16 then learning from other people, meeting folks like Rob Guillampietro, who’s an incredible
1:16:20 designer and design thinker, Frank Camaro, who’s an incredible designer and design thinker,
1:16:24 Liz Danzico, who I mentioned earlier, who’s an incredible designer and just amazing human,
1:16:27 meeting these people and watching them work and getting close to them.
1:16:32 And then just realizing how much value there was in feeling that and just being happy with
1:16:33 the ride.
1:16:37 The fact that these articles did well and took off, it was bonus.
1:16:38 It was deserved.
1:16:41 So we’re going to bounce around chronologically for a second.
1:16:50 What are your main creative focuses now, or just in the last handful of years?
1:16:52 Making books.
1:16:52 That’s it.
1:16:53 Writing books.
1:16:53 Okay.
1:16:54 Why?
1:16:55 Why?
1:16:56 Because a lot of people listening, right?
1:16:57 They’ll say, wait, books?
1:16:58 I thought books are kind of dead.
1:17:00 Like you just talked about the iPad.
1:17:02 What kind of books are we talking about?
1:17:03 So why books?
1:17:08 So look, books have always been the focus since I was eight, nine years old.
1:17:11 It’s like, I’ve just always been drawn to them as objects.
1:17:12 It’s always been there.
1:17:19 Everything else has been a kind of side quest in support of the books, in support of building
1:17:25 up self-worth, in support of building up a financial foundation, in support of becoming
1:17:25 independent, all of that.
1:17:30 And I mean, there’s a reason why I left college and I didn’t go back to Silicon Valley.
1:17:31 I didn’t go to Silicon Valley.
1:17:34 And I immediately helped start this independent publisher.
1:17:39 I felt so drawn to the power of these objects and the immutability of them.
1:17:44 And even in the face of like the rise of the internet, that still, to me, felt like there
1:17:46 was so much value there and that value wasn’t going to disappear.
1:17:47 Got it.
1:17:51 And just for clarity, because you’re implying it, but these are physical books.
1:17:55 These are physical, beautiful artifacts that people can interact with.
1:17:59 And the whole thesis of that iPad piece too was like, look, don’t make throwaway books,
1:18:03 make incredible physical books, make beautiful physical books that lean into all of the qualities
1:18:05 that make physical things amazing.
1:18:09 You know, the books that I’m producing, the books that I make, you know, it’s like cloth
1:18:10 bound.
1:18:15 How do you do cloth bound with silk screen, you know, with beautiful papers that open, you
1:18:19 know, full bleed, just every page, every spread is a lay flat spread.
1:18:23 You know, it’s like, how do you lean into this stuff, these qualities that can’t be replicated
1:18:23 elsewhere.
1:18:29 And, you know, I’ve just been lucky in the sense that they’re still valuable and people
1:18:30 are still really into books.
1:18:32 Like we didn’t, we didn’t entirely throw them away.
1:18:38 And the digital stuff kind of ended up being a red herring and it never really went where
1:18:42 we thought it would go in part because of monopolies, in part because of Amazon over controlling
1:18:45 the market, in part because there just isn’t that much money to be made in digital books.
1:18:48 And so the investment side of things really isn’t there.
1:18:54 Like you almost need like a Rockefeller who’d just be obsessed with digital books and they
1:18:56 would fund it, you know, to great personal loss.
1:19:00 You know, it’s like they always say, how do you make a good fortune, start with a great
1:19:01 fortune and found a publishing company?
1:19:02 Yeah.
1:19:03 Or a restaurant.
1:19:04 Yeah.
1:19:04 It’s the same.
1:19:06 These are profitable things.
1:19:08 So all the money in tech kind of goes to other places.
1:19:11 So anyway, the digital book thing kind of puttered out.
1:19:16 You must have liked, just as a quick side note, you must have, I imagine, enjoyed the
1:19:23 Brandon Sanderson segment when he talked about the leather bound books and the beautiful collector’s
1:19:26 edition because who in publishing would have spotted it?
1:19:31 I should say, in fairness, the larger publishers, say, in New York, they wouldn’t have.
1:19:32 They’re not incentivized.
1:19:33 They haven’t done it.
1:19:36 And then he creates these collector’s editions with tons of artwork.
1:19:41 I have one on my shelf right back there, sells them for 200 bucks a pop.
1:19:44 And lo and behold, boom, like immediately sold out.
1:19:44 Right.
1:19:45 Yep.
1:19:48 Not only sold out, but sold a lot of them.
1:19:49 Yeah.
1:19:49 A lot.
1:19:50 A lot.
1:19:51 Tens of thousands.
1:19:51 Yeah.
1:19:52 Just bananas.
1:19:54 No, I mean, that story is, is interesting.
1:19:59 You know, and so all of my adult life, certainly books have been a huge part of it and I’ve been
1:19:59 making them.
1:20:04 I’ve been working with printers, obsessing about paper and inks and, you know, design margins and
1:20:08 all this stuff, reading Robert Bringhurst’s elements of typographic style over and over
1:20:08 and over and over.
1:20:10 It’s so dog-eared, my copy of it.
1:20:12 And so, you know, this is not like a new thing.
1:20:13 It wasn’t like a couple of years ago.
1:20:13 I was like, oh, books.
1:20:14 Hmm.
1:20:14 Yes.
1:20:15 Let me do that.
1:20:16 It’s just always been there.
1:20:17 Always been there.
1:20:29 It was really in about 2013, 2014 when I started doing the big walks and the big walks gave me
1:20:32 purpose to being in Japan because I was kind of flailing.
1:20:33 I was like, why am I here?
1:20:34 What am I doing?
1:20:41 And then the big walks were so, for me, transformative, exciting, fun that I thought, okay, I need to
1:20:47 start giving these things form in much the same way doing Annapurna, coming back, writing that
1:20:49 article, giving that shape digitally.
1:20:52 But those containers, they’re still up on my website.
1:20:56 You know, those articles are still up there from 15, you know, 16, 17 years ago.
1:20:59 And, you know, the design, the container was always really important.
1:21:04 And I was like, okay, these walks are becoming more and more profound for me personally.
1:21:06 How can I give them shape?
1:21:08 So let’s, we’re going to double click on the walks.
1:21:11 I hate to interrupt, but I’m going to do it because I don’t want to gloss over something
1:21:17 you said, which is, I guess around, if I’m remembering what you said 15 seconds ago,
1:21:22 2013 or so, you were flailing a bit in Japan, wondering why you were there.
1:21:29 Was that always somewhere in the back of your mind or your thinking, why am I here in Japan?
1:21:32 And if not, how did that surface?
1:21:35 Like, why did that become an element?
1:21:39 As an adoptive person, I think my entire life is defined by that flailing.
1:21:45 You just don’t feel like you belong anywhere.
1:21:46 Got it.
1:21:50 So it could have just as easily been in fill in the blank city in the U.S.
1:21:52 It was just, ah, what am I doing here?
1:21:57 It could have been anywhere, but obviously like Asia, living in a country where you are obviously
1:22:05 the minority and where you can never become accepted as a true citizen, where you’re forever
1:22:09 going to be an immigrant, you’re never, ever going to be integrated is a weird choice.
1:22:13 And I mean, it comes from, again, it just comes from all this scarcity, trauma, self-worth,
1:22:13 like all this stuff.
1:22:19 Like for me, I think being adopted, the narrative I concocted in my head was that I was thrown
1:22:19 away.
1:22:22 I had very few facts about who my birth mother was.
1:22:23 I knew she was 13.
1:22:26 I just assumed it had been terrible circumstances.
1:22:28 So I was born from a certain kind of violence.
1:22:34 In the adoption paper that we had, it said the father, there had been a car accident and then
1:22:37 he got in a fight at it and was murdered at the scene of the car accident.
1:22:40 So I was like, okay, there’s just violence everywhere.
1:22:42 So I’m kind of thrown away.
1:22:49 So my Genesis story that I concocted was one of just pain and kind of like, you don’t belong
1:22:49 here.
1:22:55 And so I think part of what was great about Japan was that as soon as I landed, I felt a
1:22:55 few things.
1:22:58 One was society was taking care of people.
1:23:03 I was walking past so many people every day in the street who were so much better taken
1:23:05 care of than where I came from.
1:23:05 I immediately felt that.
1:23:07 And I was like, okay, this is interesting.
1:23:11 And across like all socioeconomic kind of strata, it wasn’t like, oh, everyone here is super
1:23:12 rich.
1:23:15 It was like, no, I like get these people, but everyone is kind of being taken care of in a
1:23:16 way that like I felt subconsciously.
1:23:21 And because I will never be able to integrate fully, they can never throw me away.
1:23:24 And I think as an adoptive person that.
1:23:26 Yeah, there’s a safety in it.
1:23:30 There’s a huge safety of being in a place that can never throw you away because you’re
1:23:31 never going to be part of the thing.
1:23:36 I mean, it’s a really sad way of framing it, but that is a hundred percent.
1:23:38 I think what for me made me feel comfortable here.
1:23:41 I think that will actually resonate with a lot of people because there are plenty of people
1:23:48 who have their hearts broken or they feel like they’ve been hurt in some particular way.
1:23:52 So they push falling in love away, right?
1:23:55 It’s like, if you never fall in love, it’s hard to have your heart broken.
1:23:57 So therefore, right.
1:23:58 It’s all connected.
1:23:58 It’s all connected.
1:23:59 Yeah.
1:23:59 It’s all the same thing.
1:24:04 And so the entire time I’ve been here, the plan wasn’t like, oh, I’m going to stay here
1:24:04 forever.
1:24:06 It was always, oh, there’s an interesting opportunity.
1:24:07 I’m doing this publishing thing.
1:24:08 It’s kind of going well.
1:24:09 I’m having fun.
1:24:10 Cost of living is so low.
1:24:12 I can be uncompromising about what I’m doing.
1:24:14 I was very lucky.
1:24:16 I was going to New York quite a bit because of the publishing stuff.
1:24:18 And so I didn’t feel trapped here.
1:24:23 I think a lot of expats or a lot of immigrants to Japan in particular developed this kind
1:24:27 of anger or frustration connected with it, you know, because you can never be fully integrated.
1:24:29 You can never be part of this place.
1:24:35 And yet a lot of people are just here as English teachers or headhunters and their, I think,
1:24:39 options for personal growth are severely limited, but then they get to a certain age where
1:24:44 they can no longer go back home and they can no longer kind of reintegrate back from where
1:24:46 they came from or they don’t have the skill set or they’re too old to go back.
1:24:48 And they develop this kind of anger and this frustration.
1:24:54 I was very lucky in that I was always engaging on kind of an international level with people.
1:24:57 And I was able to go to like these publishing conferences because of the publishing company
1:24:58 that I was part of.
1:25:00 And I was able to kind of do, you know, art directors club stuff.
1:25:03 And I was able to give little talks at universities about the books I was designing.
1:25:08 I always felt like I had a tether to the greater world and I was able to use Japan as this incredible
1:25:13 tool to uncompromisingly work on the work I wanted to do and to build up this asceticism,
1:25:14 the sense of asceticism.
1:25:18 But, you know, I went to Silicon Valley because at the end of my twenties, as I developed the sense
1:25:21 of self-worth, I ran out of people that I wanted to collaborate with here.
1:25:24 And I just wanted to work on a bigger scale with people that were thinking bigger.
1:25:30 And Japan and Tokyo for all of its megalopolis-ness is a very provincial place.
1:25:32 It does not think internationally.
1:25:38 And if you want to kind of work on projects that are bigger and be around archetypes of people
1:25:39 that are just thinking bigger, you kind of have to leave.
1:25:43 So that was why I went to Silicon Valley and it was dovetailing with all those articles.
1:25:47 And I developed this kind of a little bit of online celebrity and mystique.
1:25:52 And that allowed me to join Flipboard as employee number like eight or nine, super early.
1:25:56 And just learn, you know, Mike McHugh is this incredible guy.
1:25:58 What was Flipboard for people who don’t know?
1:25:59 Yeah, I know.
1:26:00 It’s so long ago now.
1:26:07 The iPad came out, Flipboard came out six months later, and it was the most beautifully designed
1:26:09 social media magazine.
1:26:12 It was a very big deal at the time.
1:26:16 It was very, very buzz heavy, right?
1:26:18 I mean, this is something people were talking about.
1:26:23 It was the first app that needed a waiting list because the servers couldn’t handle people.
1:26:25 It was the first waiting list app.
1:26:28 It was like you’d give it your Twitter feed and it would create a magazine out of all the
1:26:29 articles.
1:26:30 And it was just pages flipped.
1:26:31 Marcos Westkamp designed.
1:26:32 It was just gorgeous.
1:26:33 It was beautiful.
1:26:38 It epitomized like there was the Berg group in London doing like future studies about what
1:26:39 books could be.
1:26:44 There was a push pop press people, Mike Mattis, doing experiments around digital design on the
1:26:45 iPad.
1:26:46 All these beautiful design experiments.
1:26:51 And Flipboard was kind of part of that milieu of folks that were experimenting, right?
1:26:52 And it was like, great.
1:26:56 Yeah, this is like totally my wheelhouse of like digital publishing, book design, beautiful
1:26:56 design.
1:27:02 And I get to hang out with people who are the top, top, top of their class.
1:27:06 Just incredible pulsing humans, like generous and brilliant.
1:27:08 I mean, I moved out there.
1:27:13 I moved out to a house two blocks from Steve Jobs, old Palo Alto.
1:27:16 I had two roommates, these two guys, Stanford D school grads.
1:27:17 We just graduated.
1:27:18 They were 24.
1:27:20 I was 30.
1:27:22 I just turned 30 when I moved out there.
1:27:23 D school is the design school.
1:27:25 Design school at Stanford.
1:27:29 These guys were such incredible people.
1:27:35 I moved out there and I had gone from, I hadn’t realized what a dearth of hugs I had had in my
1:27:36 life.
1:27:38 Sorry, you mean in Japan?
1:27:41 I had had no hugs.
1:27:42 Hug withdrawal.
1:27:42 Yeah.
1:27:48 I got to this house in Palo Alto and it was just, these two guys, we had no furniture.
1:27:51 Our refrigerator just had like hummus and kombucha in it.
1:27:53 No one knew how to cook anything.
1:27:56 And I was sleeping on a yoga mat for the first like two months.
1:27:58 And then it’s a Tommy mat in this little background.
1:27:59 Yoga mat.
1:28:01 What a youthful back you have.
1:28:02 So resilient.
1:28:04 Just pure asceticism the whole way.
1:28:09 And that house, living in that house with Enrique Allen and Ben Henretig, these two guys,
1:28:10 and feeling their love.
1:28:14 And these are two people who came from incredible families, full of love and brilliance.
1:28:16 That was life-changing to me.
1:28:19 I met up with Liz Danzig a couple months after I moved in there.
1:28:22 We went to have pizza in New Haven at Sally’s, I think, a pizza.
1:28:30 And Liz, after dinner, she took my shoulders and she just says, Craig, you are a different
1:28:30 human.
1:28:33 Because we had known each other since I was about 26.
1:28:34 And I was 30.
1:28:36 And I moved into this house.
1:28:39 And it was like a sponge.
1:28:44 I was so ready to accept this love of people and to work with these incredible people.
1:28:47 And just, again, believe in that.
1:28:48 Self-worth ratcheting up.
1:28:54 But the entire time I was at Flipboard, every weekend, I was getting paid $30,000 a month.
1:28:56 $25,000.
1:28:56 Nice.
1:28:57 Two years of Japan.
1:29:03 No, I mean, again, the rent in Palo Alto was $1,000 a month for me, for my share of the house.
1:29:04 I didn’t have a car.
1:29:05 I just walked to the office.
1:29:06 I was spending no money.
1:29:08 I was like, this is great.
1:29:10 I’m just going to bank all of this.
1:29:12 This is like pure future freedom.
1:29:13 That’s all I saw it as.
1:29:18 I was like, and I told Mike McHugh, the CEO, I was like, Mike, look, I’m not out here to
1:29:19 work at this company forever.
1:29:24 I’m so hungry to do X, Y, and Z, all these things I want to work on, all these things I
1:29:24 want to do.
1:29:29 And being out there and being close to everyone, every weekend, I would book a hotel in San Francisco
1:29:32 and I’d go up there and I’d lock myself in the hotel room from Friday night.
1:29:34 I’d do a late checkout on Sunday.
1:29:39 Every weekend, I would go up there and I would just write new essays about digital books and
1:29:40 publishing.
1:29:41 I couldn’t compromise.
1:29:47 That part of me felt so, that writing part of me, the literary part of me, I could not
1:29:47 compromise.
1:29:52 That paycheck, one of the three most addictive substances, carbohydrates, heroin, and paychecks,
1:29:53 right?
1:29:54 That’s what they say, right?
1:29:58 It’s like, and you feel it getting $30,000 a month.
1:30:02 You feel that changing the programming, changing your chemistry.
1:30:06 And I had spent all of my 20s building up this asceticism and building up this ability
1:30:07 to be uncompromising.
1:30:09 And I didn’t want that to be broken.
1:30:12 And so I forced myself to just keep writing militantly.
1:30:16 And by the end of, I spent 15 months at Flipboard.
1:30:20 And towards the end of it, Liz was like, hey, you should apply for a writing fellowship.
1:30:23 All the writing was connecting me to amazing people.
1:30:26 I connected to Kevin Kelly because I was writing these essays.
1:30:27 And I was giving a talk in New York City.
1:30:30 Kevin Kelly is going to be a callback for later.
1:30:31 He’s going to be a callback.
1:30:35 And I was on stage giving a talk with the New York Times people about the New York Times
1:30:35 app.
1:30:36 And I was talking about digital publishing.
1:30:39 And I got this email when I got off stage.
1:30:41 And it was from this guy, Kevin Kelly, I’d never heard of.
1:30:42 And I was like, who’s this guy, Kevin?
1:30:45 Again, I just didn’t have, no one was teaching me about these things.
1:30:46 I did not have a background.
1:30:52 I didn’t, Silicon Valley, as much as like I admired it and wanted to be out there, I
1:30:53 didn’t know the history of it.
1:30:55 I showed it to someone.
1:30:55 I was like, do you know this guy?
1:30:57 And the person was like, you don’t know Kevin Kelly?
1:30:59 He’s like, yeah, you should be with Kevin Kelly.
1:31:00 And I met up with Kevin.
1:31:03 And he was like, I like the way you think about publishing.
1:31:04 Tell me about some tools.
1:31:06 And I was like, who is this guy?
1:31:08 It’s a good Kevin impersonation.
1:31:13 Do you want to give just like two lines on Kevin, just for people who have not heard my
1:31:14 multiple interviews with him?
1:31:15 Yeah.
1:31:18 I mean, he’s like the sage of the Valley, right?
1:31:19 He’s just.
1:31:22 Yeah, he’s got a big white Amish beard, built his own house.
1:31:23 Amish beard, tiny guy.
1:31:25 Tiny guy.
1:31:26 Co-founder of Wired.
1:31:27 Exactly.
1:31:29 It goes on and on and on.
1:31:35 He, along with Stuart Brand, are sort of like the Forrest Gumps of Silicon Valley, who’ve just
1:31:36 been there for everything.
1:31:37 Yeah.
1:31:39 And so I’m following my nose.
1:31:41 I’m like out here, I’m in the mix.
1:31:42 I’m with these incredible people.
1:31:45 I’m holding my own for the most part, but I keep writing.
1:31:49 And the thing I notice is like the more I do the writing, the more it opens doors, the
1:31:53 more it connects me to even more people who are the kinds of archetypes I want to be in
1:31:53 my life.
1:31:56 And like meeting Kevin was just a clear example of that.
1:31:58 And I met Kevin probably eight months after I joined.
1:32:04 And he’s like, come up to my house, let’s do a walk in Pacifica and just talk.
1:32:05 And I was just like, oh my God, I went up there.
1:32:06 I did that walk with him.
1:32:09 And I was like, this is what writing does.
1:32:15 Everything that’s happening in my life that is blowing my mind, that’s connecting to me
1:32:18 to people who I wish I had known when I was a teenager, who I wish I had in my life when
1:32:19 I was a kid.
1:32:21 It’s all happening because of writing.
1:32:24 And so I applied for this writing fellowship at McDowell.
1:32:26 I was like, where should I apply, Liz?
1:32:27 And she’s like, McDowell.
1:32:28 And I was like, okay, great.
1:32:29 I’ve never heard of McDowell.
1:32:31 This is the oldest writing residency in America.
1:32:35 One of the oldest in the world of like these kind of formal writing residency places.
1:32:37 It’s the hardest to get into.
1:32:38 I didn’t know any of this when I applied.
1:32:40 I apply on a whim.
1:32:44 I get in, which I’m still not sure how I got in.
1:32:46 It was pure luck that I got in.
1:32:50 And I use that as my baby, baby continue though.
1:32:52 It feels like luck.
1:32:56 And I use that as my way of being able to get out of the company.
1:32:58 I didn’t know that was the way out.
1:32:59 Okay, here we go.
1:33:03 Because, you know, these things become like family and you feel terrible leaving them.
1:33:04 And it upset a lot of people.
1:33:05 I was one of the first people to leave.
1:33:07 And I was like, Liz, it’s not you.
1:33:08 It’s me.
1:33:09 I need to do these other things.
1:33:12 Wait, Liz was upset after recommending it to you?
1:33:13 No, no, no.
1:33:13 Liz wasn’t.
1:33:14 Everyone at the company was.
1:33:16 Liz wasn’t at the company.
1:33:17 I was like, wait a second, Liz.
1:33:18 That seems unfair.
1:33:18 No, no, no, no.
1:33:19 Okay, got it.
1:33:20 Liz was in New York.
1:33:23 Liz was founding the interaction design program at the School for Visual Arts.
1:33:23 I see.
1:33:26 Okay, I was trying to put it together because you said New Haven Pizza.
1:33:30 I was like, is New Haven a neighborhood outside of where I think it is?
1:33:30 Okay, got it.
1:33:31 No, no.
1:33:33 But the Flipboard people were super upset.
1:33:37 And so that’s one of the difficult things is these aren’t easy conversations to have,
1:33:37 to leave these things.
1:33:41 I remember being like, okay, this is a great excuse.
1:33:43 This is the most prestigious writing residency in America.
1:33:48 And I need to go do this and I’m going to use it as a break, but it’s like a forever break.
1:33:50 And I did that and I went out there.
1:33:52 And again, connecting me to these archetypes, I’m out there.
1:33:56 I get to this place and I’m just surrounded by Booker Award winners.
1:33:58 Where is the writing residency?
1:33:59 New Hampshire.
1:34:00 New Hampshire.
1:34:00 Okay.
1:34:01 Up in New Hampshire.
1:34:03 And you basically get a cabin.
1:34:07 You’re out there from anywhere from a month to two months.
1:34:10 They cook all of your meals.
1:34:13 They deliver you lunch in a picnic basket to your cabin.
1:34:18 A lot of the cabins have grand pianos and fireplaces.
1:34:20 And it’s just this ideal.
1:34:28 And you’re surrounded by the best composers and poets, artists, novelists, nonfiction writers.
1:34:33 And I went out there and I met a few people, one of whom was this woman, Lynn Tillman.
1:34:41 And from day one, it was just being so hungry and so ready and so accepting of being able to be around these people.
1:34:43 I was just soaking it in.
1:34:47 And one of the first books Lynn recommended to me was Dennis Johnson, Train Dreams.
1:34:49 I’ve since gone on to read that book.
1:34:50 It’s a novella.
1:34:53 I’ve read that book probably 15, 20 times.
1:34:54 I’ve mapped it out.
1:34:57 There’s very few books I’ve actually sketched out.
1:34:58 Why so impactful?
1:34:59 Why so interesting?
1:35:08 The language, the poetry of it, the story, the conciseness of it, the economy of the language.
1:35:10 I mean, Dennis Johnson’s first and foremost a poet.
1:35:11 He does novels as well.
1:35:13 There’s a lot of people that fall into this category that I love.
1:35:15 Like Dennis Johnson’s a big one.
1:35:17 Ocean Vong is a more contemporary one.
1:35:18 Ocean Vong.
1:35:18 Oh, yeah.
1:35:23 Mega poet who then catapulted into novel, autofiction land.
1:35:27 Michael Andange, he’s first and foremost a poet.
1:35:30 You read things like Coming Through Slaughter, and this is like a book of poetry.
1:35:33 in a form of novel slash historical fiction.
1:35:35 I mean, it’s just incredible.
1:35:37 These are the things that spoke to me.
1:35:43 I have to just selfishly hijack for a second here to recommend a book that I always hesitate
1:35:48 to recommend because it fails for 9 out of 10 people, maybe 99 out of 100 people.
1:35:56 And I failed reading it three times before I finally crossed the Rubicon, which is this scene
1:35:57 in the book where there’s a talking fish.
1:35:58 That’s all I’ll say.
1:35:59 You got to get to the talking fish.
1:36:02 But John Crowley, also a poet.
1:36:05 Little Big is the name of the book.
1:36:07 It checks the boxes that you’re talking about.
1:36:10 So just a recommendation.
1:36:11 Little Big by John Crowley.
1:36:14 He takes a lot of time.
1:36:18 There’s a lot of foreplay before you get the momentum needed, but I will recommend that one
1:36:19 as well.
1:36:21 So you’re there, train dreams.
1:36:22 You’re getting your picnic baskets.
1:36:29 I want to bookmark that to just ask the hotel rooms, booking the hotel rooms in San Francisco
1:36:32 from, what was it, Friday to Sunday.
1:36:34 Was that something you came up with on your own?
1:36:36 Was that a recommendation from someone else?
1:36:40 I’m very curious because I’ve done this before only a few times.
1:36:44 I was inspired by Maya Angelou, who used to do this all the time for writing.
1:36:49 Even though she had space at her house to write, she would go to a hotel and she would do this.
1:36:52 How did that come about and why did you need to do that?
1:36:57 I suppose maybe better than a yoga mat in a crowded apartment, but what’s the backstory?
1:36:59 It’s a classic trope, right?
1:37:03 I mean, the writer locked in the hotel room by the editor until he finishes the manuscript.
1:37:04 It’s just the classic trope.
1:37:08 And I was living in Palo Alto and I was like, I want to explore the city a little more.
1:37:14 So I’d kind of write all day and then I’d go walk around at night, which maybe in San Francisco
1:37:16 isn’t the smartest thing to do, but that was my strategy.
1:37:18 It just, again, felt intuitive.
1:37:21 Like, okay, it removes me from the scene.
1:37:23 All my friends in California were in the bay.
1:37:26 And so I could go to San Francisco.
1:37:26 I didn’t know anyone.
1:37:29 I could just be up there and there was a mystery to it.
1:37:32 And I’d be in kind of like, I’d stay at like the Four Seasons, you know, and it would just
1:37:35 kind of, there’d be this like, you know, cause I was making all this insane money.
1:37:38 I was like, okay, I can spend three, $400 on a hotel room.
1:37:38 Sure.
1:37:39 Let’s go.
1:37:40 This will be my treat.
1:37:45 And I’d be in these kind of opulent, bizarre, kind of like very non-ascetic spaces, but the
1:37:47 city would be out there and I’d just be working.
1:37:52 And then I’d go walk in, you know, downtown kind of walking North beach at night.
1:37:52 Jesus.
1:37:53 Going into.
1:37:53 I am legend.
1:37:56 Going into weird.
1:38:00 Little bars, you know, I still, I would still have like a whiskey every now and then.
1:38:03 And it would just kind of like to be able to go out and be in the mix and be mysterious
1:38:04 and kind of be on.
1:38:05 Yeah.
1:38:05 I don’t know.
1:38:06 It all fed into being able to do the work.
1:38:07 Wow.
1:38:07 Dig it.
1:38:08 Okay.
1:38:10 So then flash forward.
1:38:11 Yeah.
1:38:15 One hell of a memento like montage that I’m painting here.
1:38:20 Now fireplace, New Hampshire picnic baskets.
1:38:22 What does that do for you?
1:38:26 Like what does that fellow, and by the way, they’re going to hate me for this, but every
1:38:29 time you say McDowell, I think of McDowell’s from coming to America.
1:38:30 Sure.
1:38:30 Sure.
1:38:31 Oh yeah.
1:38:32 The golden arches.
1:38:33 We’ve got the golden them.
1:38:36 But what does that do for you being a part of that?
1:38:40 I mean, the biggest part was being around people who were doing quote unquote serious
1:38:45 art and feeling like you had been selected to hang with them.
1:38:48 And so the structure of it’s really great because basically you don’t talk to anyone
1:38:52 from the moment you wake up until dinner and then dinner, you have to have, you’re forced
1:38:55 to kind of eat with everyone, which is great because it’s like at the end of the day, you
1:39:00 know, there’s kind of like a tether to reality out there outside of your book or your composition
1:39:01 or whatever.
1:39:04 We would have dinner and then we’d have very fierce ping pong competitions.
1:39:08 But, you know, I, which would get sometimes almost like violent.
1:39:12 Like there definitely were some friendships that were like broken up because of creative
1:39:13 angst.
1:39:19 It’s like nowhere to go, but ping pong, there’s very little like sexual activity as far as I
1:39:22 could ascertain, but like there was a lot of ping pong, like sort of repression, like coming
1:39:24 up with any of these things.
1:39:30 It’s like being in a room with people doing great work, committing to great work and hearing
1:39:33 them talk about it, hearing, talk about what they’d worked on that day, what they were struggling
1:39:35 through again, it just set these archetypes.
1:39:40 I mean, it just, that deficit I felt when I left and I got to school was just a deficit
1:39:43 of archetypes, a deficit of templates of how to live and how to be in the world.
1:39:50 And like each of these things, you know, from when I was age, basically 29, 30, 31, connecting
1:39:54 with Kevin Kelly, being asked to give these talks, you know, going in the art director’s
1:39:59 club is this weird little coda when I was 24, going to McDowell, hanging out with these
1:40:03 people who are winning these incredible awards and working on great, really, truly great
1:40:03 work.
1:40:05 They were giving readings, you know, at night.
1:40:08 And I was just like, oh my God, I can’t believe I’m here with these people, like reading
1:40:09 this level of work.
1:40:14 And it just feeds into that sense of, oh, maybe there’s value here and maybe I have something
1:40:14 to bring to the table.
1:40:16 That was the biggest takeaway.
1:40:20 So I’ve got a couple of thoughts I’ll throw out for you, Craig.
1:40:24 Number one is I suggest we just do two recordings.
1:40:26 We’re not going to cram everything into this conversation.
1:40:27 There’s no fucking way.
1:40:27 Okay.
1:40:29 And I don’t think we should try.
1:40:32 I think we should just do two episodes so we can put them out very close together, maybe
1:40:33 back to back.
1:40:35 That’s my suggestion.
1:40:38 Because we have so much to talk about and there’s no reason to rush it.
1:40:39 There’s just zero reason.
1:40:40 If you’re open to it.
1:40:41 Sure.
1:40:41 Yeah.
1:40:42 That would be the first recommendation.
1:40:50 And I think we get to, I mean, the huge walks are such a huge chapter and such an important
1:40:50 chapter.
1:40:53 And I think people will benefit from that so much.
1:40:54 I think we get there.
1:41:00 We will talk about the new book before we wrap, but we’re already at one hour, 45 minutes.
1:41:03 So if you’re cool with it, I’d just say we do two.
1:41:04 And maybe we record tomorrow.
1:41:06 Maybe we record the day after and just…
1:41:07 Perfect.
1:41:08 Let’s do that.
1:41:09 I think that’s what we do.
1:41:09 Love it.
1:41:10 Love it.
1:41:12 And because people are going to want more.
1:41:17 And trust me, folks, if you’re listening, you want the round two and you want to continue
1:41:17 listening.
1:41:22 But I want to ask you for the…
1:41:24 I don’t know what label to apply here.
1:41:27 For the creatives or aspiring creatives listening.
1:41:35 And on some level, maybe I will put aside, and this is not to denigrate anyone who self-identifies
1:41:41 this way, but content creators, because I think that can turn into like a shrimp farming exercise
1:41:42 is where volume is the game.
1:41:46 And I want to maybe just put that aside for a moment.
1:41:53 But for people who are drawn to some art form, some medium, could be photography, could be
1:41:55 writing, could be fill in the blank.
1:41:57 You didn’t have an archetype.
1:41:59 Let’s say you’re teaching a class.
1:42:00 Now you’re the archetype.
1:42:01 You’re up in front.
1:42:02 You’re the sharka.
1:42:06 Maybe you’re not as brutal, but you’re up there.
1:42:15 What are the types of things that you would teach or focus on or assign as exercises or
1:42:17 readings or anything else?
1:42:20 What might be some of the ingredients in that class?
1:42:25 All of the work that I’m most proud of and the work I’d say that is the first real work
1:42:31 of mine that I feel like is truly me finding my groove, hitting my stride, has all happened
1:42:33 in the last six years.
1:42:36 And it’s all connected with walking.
1:42:40 So if I was running a class, we’d be doing a lot of walks.
1:42:48 Walking, I’d say all of this, meeting these archetypes, going to McDowell, working in Silicon
1:42:53 Valley, getting all these hugs from Enrique and Ben, all of this was leading up to allow
1:42:55 me to lean into the walking in the way that I did.
1:43:02 And it was in the walk that I kind of found how to truly commit to the work.
1:43:05 I know this sounds very woo-woo and weird.
1:43:08 No, it’s not because I actually know more of the story.
1:43:11 So yeah, people will get it when they get it.
1:43:11 Yeah.
1:43:11 Yeah.
1:43:12 All right.
1:43:13 Lots of walking.
1:43:15 Lots of walking.
1:43:19 I mean, honestly, a big part of, I think for most young people today is just getting offline,
1:43:25 like just block the internet using like freedom, apps like freedom, turn your smartphone off.
1:43:27 Don’t sleep with your smartphone in your bedroom.
1:43:29 I mean, these are very easy things, but like most people don’t do them.
1:43:31 I haven’t slept with a smartphone in my room.
1:43:34 I haven’t slept with a phone in my room ever in my life.
1:43:36 I’ve never had the phone in my room.
1:43:38 Sometimes, you know, I lived in such small apartments.
1:43:43 I just put it in like the kitchen, like on the stove, because that was the only other unit
1:43:45 of my house that was not my bedroom.
1:43:50 And it blows my mind that so many people have the smartphone in the room, just having it on
1:43:50 the table.
1:43:55 So like when I am in serious writing mode, when I need my deadline, I need to get stuff done.
1:44:01 I have the phone in such a place that I will not look at it or touch it or engage with it
1:44:02 until at least after lunch.
1:44:04 That is the soonest I’ll touch it.
1:44:09 And I feel palpably the chemicals in my mind shift as soon as I look at it, as soon as I
1:44:12 touch it, as soon as I acknowledge it as an option.
1:44:17 And I feel that those chemicals that get activated, the dopamine, whatever casino, those chemicals
1:44:24 are 100%, 100% destructive of the creative impulse that allows people like Dennis Johnson to
1:44:29 produce Train Dreams or to do that kind of deep poetic work, they’re at odds.
1:44:32 And I think the thing you’re talking about like content creators, there’s a certain kind of
1:44:34 ephemerality there.
1:44:38 And like the work that I’m trying to do, and I think the work that speaks to me is not ephemeral.
1:44:39 It’s immutable.
1:44:41 It’s sort of out there.
1:44:42 It’s the thing you keep coming back to.
1:44:44 There’s nothing I like more than rereading books.
1:44:49 I mean, it’s sort of like bad, I reread so many books, and I just keep coming back to
1:44:50 them over and over and over again.
1:44:55 And that to me is kind of the greatest gift of art, is to be able to rewatch things, to
1:44:55 reread things.
1:45:01 And when’s the last time you rewatched a YouTube short or something like that?
1:45:02 You’re like, oh yeah, let’s go back, whatever.
1:45:04 There’s like goofy things that you’ll rewatch.
1:45:10 But this relationship over decades you can have with an object, with a story, I think is really
1:45:10 powerful.
1:45:12 And to me, that’s always been the thing.
1:45:17 Besides Train Dreams, what books have you reread a lot?
1:45:20 Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
1:45:23 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek?
1:45:25 Creek, yes.
1:45:25 Okay.
1:45:29 And it’s really frustrating because this is, I think, the first book she published.
1:45:31 She was in her 20s when she wrote this.
1:45:33 She went to live in this cabin.
1:45:34 I think I see where this is going.
1:45:39 She went to live in this cabin near Tinker Creek.
1:45:47 And she just wrote the most beautiful, poetic, sort of diary, nonfiction, narrative, nonfiction
1:45:49 description of what it was like being out there.
1:45:54 You know, and it’s like, her book is, I don’t believe in mental blocks or like writer’s block
1:45:55 or anything like that.
1:45:58 If I wake up in the morning, make a nice cup of coffee.
1:46:00 My phone is out of sight.
1:46:01 I’m not thinking about any of that crap.
1:46:02 I’m not looking at notifications.
1:46:04 Make this nice cup of coffee.
1:46:07 I’m smelling these beautiful Ethiopian beans.
1:46:11 If I sit down, if I’m like, oh, I don’t really feel like writing or I don’t feel like the
1:46:13 juices, I pick up Annie Dillard.
1:46:15 I literally flip to any page.
1:46:16 I read two paragraphs.
1:46:20 I can’t stop myself from running over and starting writing.
1:46:24 It activates something in my brain so strongly, so immediately.
1:46:25 I love it.
1:46:27 I mean, like, I’ve never met her.
1:46:31 I would love to buy her a beautiful steak dinner, if that’s the sort of thing she’s,
1:46:33 I don’t eat steak, but maybe she does.
1:46:34 I feel like that’s the thing you’re supposed to buy people.
1:46:36 I’d love to buy her an amazing dinner.
1:46:42 I feel she is, her book, her writing, her voice, her way of looking at the world, her
1:46:46 way of showing me what’s possible in terms of like creativity of prose, of looking at the
1:46:49 most mundane thing and making it so beautiful and quirky and weird.
1:46:54 The opening scene of a cat with blood on its paws, walking over the blanket and her waking
1:46:57 up to find that, you know, it’s like little sort of flower petals.
1:47:00 It’s like just all of it, finding that beauty.
1:47:04 That is so infused how I try to engage with the world when I’m out on my big walks.
1:47:05 I love it.
1:47:11 And my, my thing now is I try to find first editions of these books and then I go through
1:47:13 and I try to mark them up again.
1:47:17 I love, there’s nothing I love greater than marking up a first edition because I think
1:47:19 that’s the greatest honor you can give to a book.
1:47:21 Like this idea of being precious with it.
1:47:22 Like, what am I going to do?
1:47:26 Like hold on to this stupid thing for 30 years and sell it and like give my stepdaughter like
1:47:28 200 bucks that I got for this first edition.
1:47:33 So she can buy like a bowl of ramen or something, which is like 200 bucks in 30 years.
1:47:34 It’s like, no, like what?
1:47:37 Like mark up the books, my books.
1:47:41 Like if you buy my books, please write in them, dog ear them, like use them.
1:47:45 That’s, that is the greatest part of like them as objects is like kind of putting your imprint
1:47:49 on it and then coming back to it year after year, decade after decade, coming back to these
1:47:50 things.
1:47:52 So anyway, Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
1:47:53 So moving.
1:47:56 Lynn Tillman, one of the people I met at McDowell, any of her stuff.
1:48:01 She has a great book that just came out called Thrilled to Death, which if you’re going to start
1:48:03 anywhere with Lynn, she’s so funny.
1:48:06 She is so no bullshit.
1:48:08 I love her so much.
1:48:10 Like just as a human, I love her voice.
1:48:12 You can look up how old she is on Wikipedia.
1:48:13 She’s in her seventies.
1:48:17 She’s been in the same East village apartment for like 40 years.
1:48:21 She is this like institution of the New York literary community.
1:48:24 And you just feel her pulsing with that New York voice.
1:48:26 And it’s so funny and incredible.
1:48:29 And this Thrilled to Death is a collection of her short stories over her entire career.
1:48:30 And it’s amazing.
1:48:31 It’s amazing.
1:48:32 Stuff like that.
1:48:36 Other contemporary writers, Sam Anderson, who writes for the New York Times Magazine.
1:48:39 Sam Anderson is amazing.
1:48:42 He also, his favorite book is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
1:48:45 He has the most generous, hilarious voice.
1:48:50 He just wrote this incredible narrative nonfiction piece for the magazine about the legend of Leatherman,
1:48:52 who is this guy who roamed.
1:48:59 He walked this circle in Connecticut in the 1800s and he wore a suit of leather and he became folklore
1:49:05 of like all these towns and like people would like give him like bread and like give him coffee.
1:49:11 And like, he got so sick, he couldn’t chew things and he would like dip everything in coffee and he’d eat cakes by dipping him in coffee.
1:49:14 I’ve known Sam for like six or seven years.
1:49:16 Again, we connected because of writing.
1:49:23 Again, like literally everyone in my life that I love, that I want to hug, that I’ll die for, that I want to protect with all of my life force.
1:49:26 It’s all connected to writing, all of it, every single thing.
1:49:27 It’s like shocking.
1:49:28 So it’s easy.
1:49:30 You know, you asked early, why books?
1:49:32 You know, like an hour ago, you asked me, why am I doing books?
1:49:42 And it’s like, it is just undeniable that a fullness of life that I find is found through the writing and who that connects me with and the adventures it brings me on.
1:49:55 Well, let’s talk about your own writing and specifically, let’s talk briefly about things become other things and then we’ll not try to cram too much into this.
1:49:56 I mean, we’ve covered a hell of a lot of ground.
1:49:57 We’re already at two hours.
1:49:59 So let’s talk.
1:50:00 You don’t have to be sorry.
1:50:03 I mean, this is what I want when you’re like, well, I’ll truncate this.
1:50:04 I’m like, don’t truncate it.
1:50:06 This is not TikTok.
1:50:07 This is long form.
1:50:16 So I want to encourage my listeners to engage with long form, because if you’re playing the short game, even as a consumer, you are training yourself.
1:50:22 You are being trained, maybe is a better way to put it, to become something that I’m not sure you want to become.
1:50:24 So things become other things.
1:50:29 Tell me and tell us about things become other things.
1:50:33 It’s my forthcoming book coming out with Random House.
1:50:36 So this is a huge leap for me.
1:50:38 I’ve always been fiercely independent.
1:50:49 I produce my own books that are kind of fine art editions that sell for a hundred bucks a copy that are printed and bound in Japan, like I showed earlier, silkscreen, foil stamps, stuff like that.
1:50:52 But I was working on this story for this book.
1:50:59 And this book is about a walk I did during COVID on the key peninsula of Japan, which I’ve been to many, many, many, many times.
1:51:01 And this is the peninsula south of Kyoto.
1:51:07 So if you look at Honshu, I describe it in the book as the dangling penis of Japan, this peninsula.
1:51:14 So Honshu, for people who don’t know, do you want to just lay out the main islands of Japan so people know where we are?
1:51:16 So you have Hokkaido up at the top.
1:51:20 Then you have Honshu, which is the big banana with the little dangly penis, which is the peninsula.
1:51:25 You’ve got next to the penis, you’ve got Shikoku, which is where the 88 temples pilgrimage is.
1:51:30 And then next to that, you’ve got Kyushu, which is kind of the bottom part of Japan.
1:51:33 And then far away, you’ve got Okinawa.
1:51:36 But the key peninsula is south of Kyoto, south of Osaka.
1:51:41 It’s Miei and Wakayama in Nara, southern part of Nara prefectures.
1:51:45 And I’ve been going there for about 12 years, 13 years.
1:51:48 And I’d say that most of my walks have taken place there.
1:51:50 I’ve walked thousands of kilometers of the peninsula.
1:51:54 And probably my most profound walk happened during COVID, the height of COVID.
1:51:58 It was 2021, Japan was still locked down.
1:52:00 We still didn’t know where this was going.
1:52:04 Vaccines, I think, had not even arrived here yet.
1:52:07 May of 2021, we didn’t have vaccines in Japan yet.
1:52:09 They came in July, July, August.
1:52:11 I was like, well, I’m going to go on a big walk.
1:52:12 It’s like, I’m being careful.
1:52:13 I’m tested.
1:52:15 I’m not going to spread anything.
1:52:18 I went on this walk and I did, it was about 600 kilometers.
1:52:20 It took about a month.
1:52:22 And I was writing.
1:52:25 And we can talk about my walking and writing practice.
1:52:28 I have this whole ascetic practice connected with how I walk and how I write.
1:52:34 But this walk in particular, I was writing every day, two, three, 4,000 words, photographing
1:52:35 every day.
1:52:36 And I was thinking about life.
1:52:44 And one of the things I started to reflect on, partially because in this COVID moment, where
1:52:47 I think for a lot of folks, it was this moment of reflection.
1:52:48 Everything slowed down.
1:52:49 Everything stopped.
1:52:53 And it was the first time as an adult, I went back to my childhood.
1:52:56 I thought back to this childhood friendship I had.
1:53:00 As I was walking the peninsula, I’d see little kids every now and there aren’t that many kids
1:53:02 left in Japan, certainly not on the peninsula.
1:53:06 And I’d see little kids every now and then coming back from school at the end of the day.
1:53:12 And it started me thinking about this friendship I had with this kid, Brian, when I was in elementary
1:53:12 school.
1:53:13 He was my best friend.
1:53:15 He was the closest thing to a brother I had.
1:53:19 And we grew up side by side in elementary school.
1:53:23 And I happened to test a little bit better than he did.
1:53:26 And it kind of put me on this different track.
1:53:28 We still had a gifted program back then.
1:53:28 I was lucky.
1:53:31 I was able to go into the gifted program because I tested a little better.
1:53:34 That exposed me to computers.
1:53:38 They had one Commodore 64 or something, and I used Logo Writer, and that got me thinking
1:53:38 about Brian.
1:53:44 It’s like, you see how these things kind of compound, these small chances, these small
1:53:45 lucks, these small opportunities.
1:53:47 And I got them, and Brian didn’t get them.
1:53:50 And by the end of high school, we were so separated.
1:53:55 My high school was called out during the first Trump administration by Betsy DeVos.
1:53:57 I think that was the secretary of education.
1:54:01 She called out my high school as one of the worst high schools in America, like on a national
1:54:02 speech.
1:54:09 And my friend Brian was going to the high school that bad kids went to that couldn’t
1:54:10 hang in my high school.
1:54:11 So it’s like, you can imagine where Brian was.
1:54:13 And we graduated high school.
1:54:16 And just a few weeks after he graduated, he was murdered.
1:54:27 And that murder, that loss, we basically stopped talking after middle school just because of,
1:54:31 you know, you get separated and then your friend groups change.
1:54:31 Yeah, you drift.
1:54:33 You don’t know how to bridge that gap.
1:54:36 You don’t have the emotional intelligence as a kid to think about that gap.
1:54:40 And I always thought at some point we would be able to reconnect.
1:54:51 And half of my childhood lived in half of my childhood was losing this brother and being adopted again.
1:54:53 Like, what does blood mean?
1:54:55 You know, how does family get created?
1:54:57 And he was absolutely as much of a brother as anyone.
1:55:05 And I tried to engage with our friendship, our brotherhood in short stories.
1:55:11 Actually, the first short story I ever had published was published when I was 18 at university in this national writing competition.
1:55:15 And it was a short story about me and Brian and some of our antics.
1:55:18 And so there was an impulse in me to write about him, but I didn’t know how to.
1:55:20 And I tried a couple more times in my early 20s.
1:55:21 It never worked.
1:55:24 And then on this walk, I started thinking back about him.
1:55:28 And it just, it was the right time.
1:55:31 And so I basically ended up doing this walk.
1:55:32 I wrote about this walk.
1:55:37 And Brian snuck into the narrative in a way that I did not expect.
1:55:43 So this book is about, it is this walk, but it’s also about our friendship, our childhood.
1:55:46 It’s about being failed by the systems.
1:55:48 Like, why were we cleaved apart?
1:55:50 Why, you know, we’re side by side in first grade.
1:55:58 How should two kids side by side end up in a position where I feel like I have to run away halfway around the world and he gets murdered?
1:56:02 And it’s like him getting murdered wasn’t, the crazy thing is that wasn’t a big shock.
1:56:05 When you saw kind of what was, you know, there were gangs.
1:56:12 We had a, the head of security, we had like security guards in my high school, you know, like people, you know, there was like, whatever.
1:56:13 We didn’t have metal detectors.
1:56:18 We weren’t quite at like Baltimore, the wire level of like intensity, but it was like serious.
1:56:20 You couldn’t wear certain colors because they were gang related.
1:56:27 You know, in the head of security, it turns out, uh, the FBI busted in one day and like tackled him, arrested him.
1:56:29 It turns out that he was a bank robber.
1:56:33 It’s like, it was just insane.
1:56:33 Right.
1:56:41 So, so like the book just meditates on the fact that like me and Wakayama are both working class in industry.
1:56:54 That have lost the industry have lost the workers have lost the jobs and yet there is a foundational social support network in place where the people aren’t falling as far as I saw people fall.
1:56:59 And certainly people aren’t getting murdered and certainly people aren’t, you know, joining gangs or whatever.
1:57:02 And certainly people aren’t dealing with opioid crises and things like that.
1:57:07 And so it’s a joyous memory of this friendship I had with Brian.
1:57:11 And it’s also like this elevation of all these wonderful characters I meet on the peninsula.
1:57:12 I love everyone I meet.
1:57:13 I’m talking to fishermen.
1:57:14 I’m talking to old farmers.
1:57:22 I’m talking to women, you know, who are running old cafes, Kisaten, you know, in the, in the countryside who are super surly and chain smoking.
1:57:27 And I’m like, you know, the first person who’s come in in days, you know, and they’re just like, sure, come on in.
1:57:30 I ain’t got no toast, but I got a lot of cigarettes and coffee for you, kid.
1:57:32 You know, that sort of thing.
1:57:34 And I just love all these people.
1:57:37 And it’s a book about elevating who they are, elevating this peninsula.
1:57:45 And the paths I’m walking are these thousand-year-old, 2,000-year-old pilgrimage routes and the history.
1:57:48 You know, I’m walking past stone markers that are 2,000 years old.
1:57:49 I’m walking past pilgrim graves.
1:57:56 I’m going to these, you know, the holiest shrines, these foundational myth shrines of Japan, Issei Jingu.
1:57:58 I’m walking, you know, down past Kumano.
1:58:04 I’m walking past the most holy rock, the foundational rock where the sun goddess was born from.
1:58:08 You know, it’s like, so this history of the country comes from this peninsula.
1:58:11 It’s so atavistic in so many ways.
1:58:15 And so it’s a book about celebrating that, celebrating the people who live there, celebrating the industry,
1:58:22 and celebrating this beautiful friendship I had with this kid, Brian, because no one is going to be able to remember him like I can.
1:58:25 And I feel like I had a duty to remember this guy.
1:58:27 When does the book come out?
1:58:30 It comes out May 6th.
1:58:36 The reason why it’s coming out with Random House is I just felt like this story deserved a bigger platform than I could give on my own.
1:58:43 And so I kind of went around and I was able to connect with an amazing editor who really got the book.
1:58:47 She, you know, helped me elevate it to a place that I couldn’t have gotten into on my own.
1:58:51 And I hope through Random House, they’re going to make a lot more books than I could make.
1:58:53 It’s going to cost a lot less than my books cost.
1:59:00 My goal is to really expand the ideas of, you know, my walking, my walking practice.
1:59:04 I write about my walking practice in this, but also just exposing this part of Japan.
1:59:14 Like you are not going to be able to go and engage with this part of Japan on your own unless you’ve lived here for a long time and could speak the language and can understand the dialects and get the history.
1:59:20 You’re not going to be able to show up and go to this place and kind of dig in it in the way that I’ve been able to in this book for you.
1:59:25 And so, you know, like whatever, William Gibson blurbed it for me.
1:59:29 And that was like the hand of God coming down and saying, yes, I approve of your work.
1:59:34 And, you know, it’s about this illuminating this part of Japan that you’re not going to have access to.
1:59:35 I’m proud of the book.
1:59:37 I’m proud of where we got it.
1:59:39 And I’m excited, so excited for people to read it.
1:59:41 And I want to engage with people about it.
1:59:43 Amazing.
1:59:43 All right.
1:59:47 So for people who don’t know William Gibson, who is William Gibson briefly?
1:59:56 I mean, he has a quote that people see in Silicon Valley quite a lot, which is pulled from Neuromancer, I believe, which is the future is already here.
1:59:57 It’s just unevenly distributed.
2:00:02 Something along those lines might be from that book, but legendary writer.
2:00:08 Basically, whatever, the progenitor of cyberpunk to a certain degree.
2:00:15 But also, he’s a guy who has seen, I think, the coolness of Japan before most of the world saw the coolness of Japan.
2:00:18 And he’s written great books that involve Japan, like Pattern Recognition.
2:00:19 It’s an incredible book.
2:00:21 I read it like once every couple of years.
2:00:22 It’s beautiful.
2:00:23 There’s a lot of poetry in it.
2:00:24 It’s a cool story.
2:00:30 And it captures this like quirky early 2000s Japan, which is really cool.
2:00:32 So anyway, so William Gibson, he’s a big deal.
2:00:34 Yeah, he’s a big deal.
2:00:35 It was pretty cool.
2:00:35 That’s so fun.
2:00:36 Yeah.
2:00:40 And for people who are listening, I checked on this.
2:00:42 So Things Become Other Things.
2:00:43 Beautiful cover.
2:00:46 I’m sure the writing is beautiful.
2:00:49 I encourage people to read everything they can of yours.
2:00:52 And it is available for pre-order.
2:00:54 So go pre-order the book.
2:00:56 You will not regret having this book.
2:00:58 I can say that with very, very high degree of confidence.
2:01:01 And I very rarely, maybe ever say something like that.
2:01:09 But having a number of your books behind me, maybe about a bookshelf behind the wall that
2:01:14 is behind me and having spent time with you, having watched you write, you glossed over
2:01:18 something that we’ll talk about in part two, but two to three to 4,000 words a day.
2:01:20 What the fucking hell?
2:01:24 After walking 30 kilometers.
2:01:26 Yeah, that is a lot of words.
2:01:28 You and Brandon Sanderson.
2:01:29 What am I going to do with you guys?
2:01:30 So we’ll talk about that.
2:01:38 Where else can people find you if they want to dip their toe into Modland and get a taste?
2:01:40 Craigmod.com.
2:01:41 Craigmod.com.
2:01:44 You know, in service for 23 years.
2:01:44 No, I think that don’t matter.
2:01:46 In service.
2:01:49 The big thing I do that’s enabled a lot.
2:01:52 And again, like to maintain this fierce independence.
2:01:57 And we can talk about the Random House deal in part two as well, because there’s some interesting
2:02:00 things about it that actually dovetails with what Brandon was talking about as well.
2:02:05 I have a membership program called Special Projects that have been running now for six years
2:02:06 since 2019.
2:02:10 And that combined with the walking.
2:02:14 And actually, that gave me the permission to start committing to these big walks.
2:02:17 So it’s like everything builds on everything else.
2:02:19 Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly.
2:02:22 And then you realize you’ve kind of created this pretty big ladder of stuff.
2:02:29 And so the membership program, if you join that, not to like shill, but the membership program
2:02:35 gives you access to all of the archives of all the writing I’ve done on my walks.
2:02:42 And 120 hours of videos where I run board meetings every six months, and I talk about what I’ve
2:02:46 done, the projects I’ve worked on, how they’ve gone, what we’re going to do in the next six
2:02:46 months.
2:02:48 And then I filled Q&As from the members.
2:02:50 And they’re incredible Q&A.
2:02:51 I’m so lucky.
2:02:52 My members are smart.
2:02:54 They ask great questions.
2:02:55 They’re creative.
2:02:56 They’re wonderful people.
2:02:58 And so you get kind of access to this huge archive.
2:03:04 And the whole reason I make everything I do in the membership program is me speaking to
2:03:09 myself when I was 20 and desperate and hungry and drinking myself into the pavement and wishing
2:03:13 I had an archetype, wishing I had some kind of flashlight to show me how to do the work
2:03:14 I want to do.
2:03:16 This is me wishing I could give this to myself back then.
2:03:18 And so it’s free for students.
2:03:20 If you’re a student, you just email me and say, I’m a student.
2:03:21 You get it for free.
2:03:25 I’m very loose about what constitutes a student.
2:03:27 If you think you’re a student, you’re probably a student.
2:03:29 Just email me and say, hey, I’m a student.
2:03:30 I believe you.
2:03:33 I’ve had people send me photos of their student IDs.
2:03:34 Don’t send me a photo of your student ID.
2:03:35 It’s free.
2:03:37 I’m happy to give you those memberships to give access to that stuff.
2:03:42 But what the membership allows me to do by keeping some of the stuff behind a curtain
2:03:46 is I can be a little more vulnerable than when I’m out in front of my big newsletters where
2:03:48 I send out to 50,000 people or 60,000 people or whatever.
2:03:53 When it’s a smaller group, I’m able to be more vulnerable, more honest, and the Q&As
2:03:54 and stuff like that feel a little more intimate.
2:03:59 I create a little bit of artificial scarcity, artificial friction to enable us to have a deeper
2:04:00 conversation, I hope.
2:04:03 And people can find that at craigmod.com as well?
2:04:05 craigmod.com slash membership.
2:04:07 That’s where people can find it all.
2:04:12 So we were going to discuss so many things, and we are going to discuss those things in round
2:04:12 two.
2:04:21 One of them is the membership community because you have very clear rules that also make it
2:04:28 vibrant and prevent it from becoming a monster you need to feed that consumes rather than enables
2:04:30 your creative life.
2:04:32 You’ve figured it out over time.
2:04:34 And we are going to talk about that.
2:04:36 There are so many things we’re going to talk about.
2:04:40 It was just foolish of me to think that we would be able to cover all of it in two hours.
2:04:41 Fucking ridiculous.
2:04:42 There’s no way.
2:04:45 So anyway, go ahead.
2:04:47 You were like, hey, let’s start with eight years old.
2:04:51 I knew there was, I don’t want to say a risk.
2:04:58 I knew there was a possibility, distinct possibility that that would take us afield, but we never
2:05:03 would have gotten to being possessed by demons if spirits.
2:05:12 I’ll be, I don’t want to smack talk whatever happened to end up in you when you were cradling
2:05:15 some invisible object asleep overseas.
2:05:17 But this is the fun of long form for me.
2:05:18 Yeah.
2:05:18 Right?
2:05:22 Because I don’t want to know exactly where it’s going.
2:05:25 So much of my life is regimented.
2:05:26 So much of it is planned.
2:05:33 There are so many times when I execute to spec and part of what I’m trying to inject
2:05:37 more in my life, whether it’s playing with fiction and just starting with a few characters
2:05:42 in a scenario and letting it rip or having conversations like this, especially with someone
2:05:47 I’ve spent time with, is ending up in unexpected corners.
2:05:49 There’s so much to that.
2:05:54 And it’s similar in a sense, I mean, this is perhaps not the best comparison, but when
2:06:00 you say all of the best things or so many of the beautiful relationships have all come
2:06:05 from your writing, part of that is not over planning, right?
2:06:12 You focus on the work, you create beauty and quality, and then you release it into the wild
2:06:13 and you see what happens.
2:06:14 It becomes theological.
2:06:15 It really is.
2:06:16 Yeah.
2:06:16 Yeah.
2:06:18 It’s totally faith-based.
2:06:25 I mean, I mean, what creative practice is and what great creative practice isn’t.
2:06:31 I mean, my favorite moment of a documentary about photographers is the Sally Mann documentary.
2:06:32 How do you spell that?
2:06:33 Sally Mann.
2:06:35 S-A-L-L-Y, Sally.
2:06:36 Huh?
2:06:41 And then a woman, M-A-N-N, I think, is her last name.
2:06:41 Got it.
2:06:45 And she, yes, if I say it fast, it sounds Salomon.
2:06:48 Sally, no, Sally Mann.
2:06:53 You know, she has all these gorgeous ethereal black and white photos of her family that
2:06:55 she took and she gained so much notoriety.
2:06:59 And anyway, there’s this documentary about her and in the middle of it, she’s working on
2:07:02 a new set of works and she’s getting rejected by galleries.
2:07:09 She has this total breakdown and you just go, oh my God, someone like Sally Mann at the peak
2:07:12 of her career can still have a breakdown.
2:07:14 Like it really is so theological.
2:07:17 This belief, you just have to believe and keep pushing and keep pushing.
2:07:21 And she, you know, she pushes through it and she creates some great work and whatever has
2:07:22 a great show and blah, blah, blah.
2:07:24 You have to cultivate that belief.
2:07:28 Having your cost of living be a thousand bucks a month for everything all in is an easy way
2:07:30 to help cultivate that belief.
2:07:33 It’s like you could be, you could be uncompromising about it.
2:07:34 Mm-hmm.
2:07:40 All right, Craig, we are going to very quickly record and release a round two.
2:07:44 Everybody who’s listening to this should tune in for that for sure.
2:07:45 My God.
2:07:49 I mean, honestly, in part because I’ll just give people a quick teaser.
2:07:54 With the exploratory bullets, and I ask all guests to send ideas for exploratory bullets,
2:07:59 we literally didn’t get to effectively any of them, right?
2:08:05 I mean, the huge walks, walking as a tool for focus, reclaiming attention, your rules for
2:08:11 walking, the art of slowness, your wild, strange celebrity in Japan around mid-sized cities
2:08:20 didn’t get to that, the Kevin Kelly saga continues, we did not get to that, the very wild, incredible
2:08:27 stories related to adoption, sort of adult chapters, all of that and more.
2:08:31 We’re going to cover tons and tons, and I promise everybody I won’t start at eight years
2:08:35 old, so we’ll stick to the script a little bit more.
2:08:41 Craig, at least for this conversation, anything else you would like to say?
2:08:47 Any comments or anywhere you’d like to point the people listening?
2:08:52 It’s difficult because it’s like the people who probably need to hear these things won’t
2:08:55 be listening to this podcast or maybe don’t even know this podcast exists.
2:08:59 So that’s often sometimes the difficulty in getting information to folks.
2:09:06 But I think the residencies, artist residencies, are one of the coolest things that we have.
2:09:12 And most people overlook them or think that the bar to entry is so insurmountable that like,
2:09:13 why should I even try?
2:09:17 Go out and there are huge lists.
2:09:21 And once you start to crack the code, once you start applying, and you should aim to get
2:09:22 rejected by a billion of them.
2:09:25 But once you get into one or two of them, you start to understand the code a little more.
2:09:29 And my God, they’re so much fun and so interesting.
2:09:34 And they are such a way to level up your practice, whatever your practice might be,
2:09:38 to be surrounded by people who are also committing themselves to it, working hard,
2:09:40 and providing unexpected archetypes.
2:09:45 I’ve had so many great friendships come out of, I’ve done McDowell, VCCA,
2:09:49 Tin House, Ragdale, as a few of them.
2:09:52 And all of them, I’ve come out with just amazing friendships.
2:09:54 And I’ve got a lot of great work done, too.
2:09:55 So please go investigate.
2:10:03 And if you’re a rich mother effer listening to this thing, donate to support these things.
2:10:07 I mean, these are incredible, incredible institutions that don’t require a lot of money
2:10:08 to have a huge impact.
2:10:12 And so being able to provide more scholarships and things like that, it’s pretty powerful.
2:10:13 Pretty powerful stuff.
2:10:14 Love it.
2:10:15 All right, everybody.
2:10:16 The end.
2:10:19 CraigMod, CraigMod.com.
2:10:20 You can find all things there.
2:10:23 And so nice to see you, bud.
2:10:24 You too.
2:10:24 It’s been a minute.
2:10:26 And we will…
2:10:26 See you tomorrow.
2:10:29 Yes, see you tomorrow.
2:10:33 And for people listening, of course, we’ll link to everything we discussed in this episode
2:10:36 of Tim.blog.podcast.
2:10:42 There will not be another person with the last name Mod, so you can search for CraigMod,
2:10:44 and he will pop right up, of course.
2:10:49 And until next time, which will be pretty soon, round two with Gregor, be just a bit kinder
2:10:53 than is necessary to others and to yourself.
2:10:57 We’ll talk more about cultivating a rational belief and faith in oneself in round two.
2:11:00 Until then, thanks for tuning in.
2:11:03 Hey guys, this is Tim again.
2:11:08 Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday.
2:11:12 Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before
2:11:13 the weekend?
2:11:18 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short
2:11:19 newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.
2:11:21 Easy to sign up.
2:11:21 Easy to cancel.
2:11:27 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve
2:11:31 found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.
2:11:33 It’s kind of like my diary of cool things.
2:11:38 It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos,
2:11:44 all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast
2:11:50 guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then
2:11:52 I share them with you.
2:11:57 So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head
2:11:59 off for the weekend, something to think about.
2:12:03 If you’d like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday.
2:12:06 Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday.
2:12:09 Drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one.
2:12:10 Thanks for listening.
2:12:13 This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep.
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