Grape Therapy: Bachelorette Recap with Bennett Jordan

Transcript

This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger Show on the Choose Yourself Network. Today on the James Altiger Show. We're all allowed to deserve more or to want more in our lives. And to believe it's possible. Well, that's how it started. I was so unhappy on my law job, and I had no idea what to do. I'd never taken a writing cla*s. I'd never written anything, ever. I wasn't even a big reader. But one night, after I came home from the law job, I was so unhappy. I just started to write stories about my childhood, and there were 3 or 4 stories I wrote in a row that all had this exuberance in them. Memories of times that I was exuberant and free. And as I wrote, I thought, God, this is the first time I felt happy in a long time writing. And I would look up at the clock after I finished these stories, and 4 hours had passed. And it it seemed like 20 minutes. I took this Kierkegaardian leap of faith into the abyss and quit my law job, which was paying me well into 6 figures, to take a $23,000 a year job doing data entry. What the hell were you thinking? I am here with Robert Kerson. First off, welcome. Thank you so much. Great to be here. Thanks for flying in from Chicago just for this podcast and no other reason at all. You've been on the podcast before. This is your 2nd time on? 2nd time. And your brother's been on, I think, 3 times. So it's 5 times for the Carson family. And, you were on when you wrote the book Pirate Hunters, which I really love. We're gonna talk about your new book, Rocket Men, which is, the subtitle is The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon, which was fascinating on so many levels. We'll get to that in a little bit. I all and, you know, I also wanna talk about a couple other things before then. First off, I I highly recommend people either listen to the podcast we did about Pirate Hunters and also read Pirate Hunters because I felt and I I don't even think you realize until we spoke about it on the podcast that there was these parallels these parallels between your life, the lives of the pirate hunters you were writing about, and then the lives of the actual pirates. Like, you had there was, like, this trifecta of parallelism between all your lives in in the kind of this this quest for doing something outside the normal life, trying to figure out how to reach your your peak potential, and go and go for the glory as as both the pirates did, the pirate hunters did, and you did. That's so true, James. And I'm so grateful to you for appreciating that because, sometimes that was lost on me as well. But when I was writing that book, I discovered exactly what you were saying, that I was writing in certain ways about myself, that I had begun life in a very kind of conservative way. I went, to a proper college, and then I went, off to Harvard Law School, which is the most conservative thing you could have really done. You went to Harvard Law School and then ended up just, quote, unquote, writing articles for Esquire and Rolling Stone before writing your best selling books? It wasn't even that. I I took this Kierkegaardian leap of faith into the abyss and quit my law job, which was paying me well into 6 figures to take, 32 no. It was $23,000 a year job at the Chicago Sun Times doing data entry. And so Oh, wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. We gotta we gotta unpack several things. Kierkegaardian, leap of faith, just just define that. Kierkegaard believed, that sometimes a person, despite all, that reality appeared to be, had to have a kind of faith where he took this leap into the abyss. So one of the examples he gave was that a poor man who had nothing to eat, no place, no shelter, no nothing, could walk home in the dark and cold and rain and be freezing and know that he was not going to eat when he got home and yet still believe he was due a beautiful warm meal in a warm by a warm fireplace. And if he came to actually believe that, that was a transcendent kind of thing for a human being. And Kierkegaard argued that you should aim for that kind of thing. I understand. So is that almost like a weird philosophical version of the new age law of attraction? I don't know if it is, but this is, this is something that I remember reading when I was a philosophy major in college and being struck by this, that, there was something to believing in the impossible, but really believing it. Not, in a crazy way, but genuine faith. So so it's almost like combats the like someone who grows up poor or, let's say, goes to all the traditional schools in Harvard Law School and works for a law firm, can they both can believe the same thing, which is I don't really deserve, in one case, the warm meal. I don't really deserve to be a best selling author. I'm a lawyer. Who am I to think I could be a best selling author about pirates or astronauts or whatever? And, I think what maybe what I almost I almost sound pseudo intellectual saying the word Kierkegaard. But what what you're just saying there is almost, like, with this leap of faith, is is this idea that we all deserve more in our lives. We all are allowed not that we deserve more. We're all allowed to deserve more or to want more in our lives. And to believe it's possible. I don't know how what like, for instance, you and I are never gonna be professional NBA players, which is kind of the cliche example for white Jewish people to say. Yes. But, so when where where is the line where we're not allowed to believe it's possible? Well, maybe we won't become, NBA stars, given our history and genetics. But we might find something that makes us as happy as being an NBA star. And that might be the idea that if we can't get to the NBA, maybe we get somewhere else that would make us equally happy. And I think that's possible if you have the requisite belief and faith. So I I always believe this is true that whatever your childhood interest was, the interest ages into adulthood. So for instance, let's say when you were 8 years old, 9 years old, you wanted to be an NBA basketball player. I'm just we're getting going with this example. I don't know if you did or not. Or you wanted to be a Major League Baseball player. So now you've aged, and the interest has aged along with it. It's still there inside of you. You never real If you were passionate about something for an entire year of childhood, that passion is still buried somewhere inside of you. You feel it in your body. Don't know. What what was it that you were passionate about when you were 8 or 9? I wanted to be I wanted to be a Major League Baseball player. Okay. So so so so seeing how it ages, I think, is a useful exercise for any adult. So for instance and and and I'm speaking to you as someone who did make that leap into the abyss. And we'll talk later about what job you left to go for what job, but you basically made a sacrifice at a very young age when you had the whole world open in front of you, and you you took a risk. But how does an intro obviously, you're not gonna be a Major League Baseball player, but there's several things you can do, and and we can brainstorm together. One is you could write books about Major League Baseball players. You could do a podcast with just Major League Baseball players or or owners. You could write a book about the owners. You could become an owner. Right. Now you might not be rich. So some people could say, how can you become an owner, you know, if you don't have a $1,000,000,000? Well, you could put together you can use your connections to put together a group of owners and be the head of the syndicate that works it out with the head of the baseball commission or whatever and buys a team. You could buy a minor league team. You could, do statistics, in a different way from from the money ball sort of statistics that have been done in the past, and come up with a unique way of providing a valuable service to a coaching team or a scouting team of a baseball team. So there are other way are there other ways that the interest can age? Yeah. I think it's absolutely right. Exactly how you describe it. People who continue to believe and to connect with that passion from early on in their childhoods even, often, at least in my experience, tend to be the happiest people I come across. And those who, resign themselves to a prison of a job or a work or even a relationship that seems like it should be right or proper on its surface, but doesn't speak to those things that go way back into their early days are often the unhappiest people I come across. And that was very instructive to me when I was making the the biggest decisions I had to make in my life. You know, it's it's it's interesting because I feel over the past few years, I've become I was I was happy before. I've had times of misery and great misery, mostly because I was pursuing the the the things that normally strangle people, like how do I pay the mortgage? How do I provide security for my family? Now, those things are very important. But if you just pursue life to get those things, you won't be happy. Because by themselves, they're not they're I was never passionate, at 8 years old, about paying the mortgage. Right. I didn't even know what a mortgage was. Right. And I don't know Latin, but I'm assuming mort means death, and I don't know what gauge means. So do you know? No. Because everything after death is meaningless to me. See. Jay, do you know? Mortgage? Can you look it up on Google or something? Can someone look it up on Google? Because I've mentioned this before, and I forget what it means. And so so you're right. And then I get to do this podcast, and I get to talk to people like you who have researched lives and and and then wrote about them in such a, a beautiful and almost literary way. I would say literary, but I say almost because people view view literary as fiction. Cage means pledge in French. So pledge to your death? Yeah. Yeah. So that's what a mortgage is. So much fun. Everybody wants to have a mortgage, a pledge to their death. So, you know, I get to talk to people like you who have figured out how to change the channel. You know, let's say you're listening to a channel of music on the radio you don't like, but you're too lazy to get up and change the channel. You've changed the channel. So many people who have come on this podcast have changed the channel. So, okay, you're you graduated Harvard Law School. You must have been so happy to get into Harvard Law School. You must have been met so many smart, brilliant people. You had great network of connections. Right. I mean, I'm I'm sure the people you graduated with are Supreme Court justices, politicians, CEOs of companies, heads of law firms making 1,000,000 of years by this point. What what law firm did you end up working at? I went, first to a, law firm when I graduated called Alzheimer and Gray, a blue chip law firm in downtown Chicago. No longer exists, but it was one of those fancy law firms that was paying money that was unthinkable to me 3 years before when I got to law school. You were, like, 25 years old? Yeah. About 25, 26 years old. And this was 20 years ago or so? Even more, I'm embarrassed to say. I graduated law school in 1990. So it was 27 about 27 years ago. 28 years. So so so what you say, 6 figures. What was what were you making? I was probably making a 150,000. So which probably, with inflation, maybe would be like 300 now? I don't know. 250 now? It was so much more, James, than I had ever And a 25 year old would make. Yeah. Because months earlier, I was debating whether I could get pepperoni on my pizza or not when I ordered it. Well, when I was 25 years old, I did have a full time job, and I was making I'll tell you the exact amount. It was 27,800. Uh-huh. And they gave me after I was there a year, they gave me an inflation based increase in my salary. So I think I was making 27,880. And that was my Right. My increase in my raise in salary. And so so you're making 6 figures. What, I mean, I obviously can guess, but what the hell were you thinking, and what was everybody around you thinking when you left that job? Clearly, a 25 year old making that was on his way to making 1,000,000 a year. I'm just gonna ask your son, Nate. Wait. Your dad was making that when he was 25. He could be making 5,000,000 a year right now. Do you think he made the right decision to start writing books? I don't know about that one. He doesn't know, so you're gonna have to convince us in this podcast. So so what were you thinking when you when you made the jump to 1 tenth the price? Well, there was nothing really to think about because I was taking all that money, and I was so miserable on the on the job, James. It was profoundly depressing for me. Why were you doing? You know, I was doing big firm, big corporate and real estate transactional deals, and I just could not give a damn about corporate corporation a's interest versus corporation b's interest. That just didn't matter to me. And and it was astonishing to me that I could just as easily have been on the other side arguing against my client. Right. Because lawyers, really, it's almost like it's almost like the client is the religion, and they pay you to believe in their religion. So if, like, the religion came to if it did if the opposite religion came to you and paid you the $600 an hour, that they were paying the law firm, you would have to believe in that religion if the opposing side came to you. That's all it was. And worse than that, I I may have been able to get past that for a short time, but even worse than that, the work itself was so stultifying. You know, every I had to be dotted, every t crossed. And, of course, that's who you want as your attorney. You want someone who, is obsessed with detail, but I wasn't. My brain didn't work that way. So clients would yell at you? They would yell at not just clients, but my bosses. I remember one guy said I I gave him a memo, and he wrote in giant red letters. I told you to write about California law, not like a Californian, which meant, I was writing in a creative style rather than in this rigid corporate style. And I just thought I'm actually in hell here. I'm I'm going to be suffering the worst life a person can have if I stay here. You know, it's funny. I don't mean to bring up my own personal story, but I had a very similar experience in, I guess, it was 1991. I was working for a company, 4 Systems, which made some kind of advanced networking chip. And I was supposed to write their, technical manual, the how to manual, which is always very dry and boring. And, I I had a very similar experience. The boss called me into his office and said, we hired you because you said you were a writer, because I always wanted to be a writer. And he said he's he literally said, don't you take any pride at all in your work? And I was just so humiliated. Like, because, you know, a young guy just didn't know what to do. And I did take pride in my work, but I couldn't write a technical manual. Wow. That that was exactly my experience. And imagine if someone told you the rest of your life is going to be some kind of glorified version of writing technical manuals. That's what the experience was like to me in law. And so I was in a very, very bad place. And I thought this is the next 50 years of my life where I dreaded going to work every day. And the sound of the clicking clock on 60 minutes, you know, how you hear that sound when it when it fades in, that meant disaster for me because that meant Monday morning was just around the corner. And I thought I can't live dreading, every morning for the rest of my life. So in a way, taking this leap was sort of easy for me because I was suffering so badly that I just couldn't contemplate, any future in that world. But, you know, a lot of young people and, again, you were 25. A lot of young people wouldn't think, oh, is the next 50 years of my life gonna be like this? Because, a, 25 year olds think they're immortal, and there's no reason for them not to feel that way. Death is so far away statistically that it's inconceivable to think that way. So So you could say to yourself, okay. Well, I'll do this for 5 years. I'll save up a, a few $100,000, and then I'll pursue my dream. I'll move to Bali where there's no it's real cheap to live, and I'll write 5 books and and be a huge superstar because I'm very smart. So why didn't you think like that? Which, by the way, probably many people did think like. I think they did, and they're still there to this day, by the way. At the law firm. At the law firm. Because they trap you. Trap. You start to get the house, and then the mortgage, and then You make a pledge to the death, and then you're there to the death. And that's how it worked for a lot of people. Part of the reason I didn't do that is because I saw the senior partners there, all of whom told me in one form or another, yeah, I had a plan to get out of here, and they never got out. And they were very wealthy and very miserable. And I didn't How do you know they were miserable? They told me. And even if they didn't tell you, you could see it in how they treated other people sometimes, in how they walked around, just their body posture. They weren't, thrilled with life. They were, distracted enough with their salaries but not thrilled with life. And when I would talk to other people and and, you know, confide in them that, hey, I might wanna get out of here, it was astonishing to me how many others said, yeah, I'm planning that too. And some of them had been there for a month. Some had been there for 20 years. But so many had, confessed that, yeah, I would love to get out of here too, even the most successful ones. And that that kind of convinced me that this is not a place even for 5 years. I thought 5 years was meaningful, and I didn't want to waste it building up a, you know, a war chest of any kind. And and so you let so when you actually made the decision to leave, and you and you announced you were quitting for a 23 1 tenth the salary. I don't know if I could have done that. One tenth the salary. Did people think you were just insane? Like, why didn't you try writing on the side, like, at night? Well, that's actually how it started. I was so unhappy on my law job, and I had no idea what to do. By the way, I'd never taken a writing cla*s. I'd never written anything ever. I I barely read. I wasn't even even a big reader. I certainly never, took a workshop or anything like that. But one night after I came home from, the law job, I was so unhappy. I just started to write stories about my childhood. And there were things there were 3 or 4 stories I wrote in a row that all had this exuberance in them, memories of times that I was exuberant and free. And I didn't mean it that way, but that's what came out of me. And as I wrote that, I thought, god, this is the first time I felt happy in a long time writing. And I would look up at the clock after I finished these stories, and 4 hours had passed or 5 hours, and it did seemed like 20 minutes. And at work, it was just the opposite. Someone would give me an assignment, and I'd slave over it and say, oh, jeez. I just put in 4 hours, and it'd been 25 minutes. So so you physically felt this in your body, like, this is happiness. And had had you remembered other times when you had felt that happy? It had been a long time because I certainly wasn't that happy in law school. Law school was the preamble to this misery. And I I knew, even in law school, that this was not a good idea. But I did give it a chance, as as you were saying. I did give it a shot. You know, I thought I shouldn't pay a $100 in 3 years of my life and not give this thing a try in the real world, but I knew what it was gonna be like because that's what law school was like. And, by the way, the people in law school who liked it the most, were the people I liked the least. So those guys who love the attention to detail and dotting the i's and crossing the t's, I couldn't stand them personally for the most part. So so so, again, I wanna I wanna just make a parallel, and I don't I don't usually do this. But I do remember thinking to myself when I was in graduate school, you know, I I was very passionate about computer science, which is what I went to graduate school for. But then when I looked at the professors or other people in the field or people who were where I thought I aspired to be, I didn't admire any of them. I don't know if they were miserable or not. I don't, you know, they I think they were happy actually, but I didn't because they were still doing what they were passionate about, but I didn't admire them personally. And and then when I did look into writing and start writing and I started meeting other writers, I really admire them. They seem to be living unique lives and and to be happy, and to have interesting friends, and I wanted to be their friends. And then the only way to get status in that community to be their friends was I also began writing because I love doing that, and and and I loved reading and just combining all these things. But I would write always because computer computer programming is different than, law. Law, you have to put in the hours. With computer programming, I left graduate school, took a job, and I programmed the thing I had to program, and then that was it. Then I could just write the rest of the time. So I didn't have to actually work very hard, which was the good thing. So I did that for a long time while I began sort of learned my skills writing. Well, I'm fascinated to hear you talk about, watching to see if you admired the people who were there, because that's that's absolutely key. But I never thought of it that way, but that's dead on accurate. That's right. And I remember having the same kind of feeling. And so so you left, you you you you started writing. You said, this is making me happy. You, at some point it must have been a hard decision. Like, did you talk to your parents, your bosses, your friends? I didn't really have to talk to anybody because I was so miserable. There was it felt like there was no alternative. And my parents were incredibly supportive of it. Were you married at the time? I was not married at the time. I had a girlfriend who is now my wife, who is also incredibly supportive of this. That is really key. So key. I can't tell you. And, you know, I had sought out a job in Major League Baseball at the time too because that was what rang a bell for me from early on in my childhood days. And I was actually, a very, very kind, beautiful guy named Mike Vak, the son of Bill Vak. I wrote him a letter out of the blue. And, Bill Vek was the owner of the White Sox and the Cleveland Indians before that. And, Mike Vek was a minor league baseball executive and a wonderful guy, very creative genius in promotion like his father was. And I wrote him a letter out of the blue saying I'm very, very, lonely and, depressed in my job. I've dreamed of getting into baseball. And he arranged to have an interview with the Lansing Lugnuts. It was a fledgling, single a baseball team in Lansing, Michigan. Single a is the best of the minor leagues? The the lowest of the minor leagues. Oh. Or one of the lowest. B the highest? No. They go up to triple a. And then after triple a, you you matriculate to the to the majors. And how many all together, how many minor league teams are there? Oh, almost countless. I mean, if you go to all the divisions in their independent leagues, that are all over the place. So if you add them all up, there's 100, I imagine. And this team, were they, like, kind of, a scout a scout related team for a bigger major league team? Yeah. I believe at the time, I could be wrong about this, but I believe they were affiliated with the Oakland A's. And so a a good player, a scout would come in and say, I have an eye on this guy. And then he'd move up to double a and then triple a, or would he go straight to the Oakland A's? No. Sometimes you, if you're good enough, you could I I doubt that you move straight from single a to the majors, but often I think they move from double a to the majors. But there are great players in triple a that go to the majors, and sometimes the major leagues will send players down to triple a or double a to rehab or even to get their their swing back. That must be awful. That must feel awful for the player. It is. I I imagine it really is. But this I had I ended up getting a job offer from the Lansing Lugnuts, and it was something like $18,000 a year. And I had to sell billboard space on the outfield wall and sell season tickets and do everything, even help with the the lawn care on the field. And it was a thrilling opportunity for me. But at the same time, I had sent out writing samples. Just just these things I had written in my kitchen in in misery, you know, dreading the next day of work. And I got a job offer from, a guy named Bill Ade, who was the sports editor at the Chicago Sun Times. He had no writing job for me, but he, allowed me to come in and take high school football and, sports scores. And that led to a data entry job offer. So I had to decide between data entry and the Lansing Lugnuts, and it was the most thrilling, decision I ever had to make in my life, even though I was gonna take, like, a 90% or more pay cut. So even though I didn't know at all when we discussed what were your childhood passions and discussed aging it, but what you did was you did age the passion with yourself and saw what it meant for you at the age of 25, 26, and that's what you did. Absolutely. And even going into the sports you know, going to the sports department, it was all about sports and speaking to what I knew and what moved me. Because because when I entered the sports department, I ended up taking that job in data entry in the sports department. Nobody had to explain to me what the team nicknames were or why a baseball team moved up a half a game in the standings if it won rather than a full game. I knew that stuff already. And I even knew the people who were around me in the in the sports department because I'd been reading them since I was a kid. So it was thrilling to me, and I've easily forgot about all the money I wasn't making. Because what was I spending that money on, James? I was spending it on a BMW. I was spending it on incredibly, complex stereo. So in other words, you're you you you you were starting making 1 tenth the salary. Yeah. But your lifestyle probably didn't change that much. You still had a car. I still had a car. So you still drove to work. Right. It might not have been a BMW, but it might have been a whatever. Right. And you still had a stereo. It might not have been the most high end stereo. You still had a bed. Right. Right? You still had an apartment. It might not have been a 5 bedroom apartment. Maybe it was a studio. Right. But you still lived, and your girlfriend was supportive. So it's not like you were out there, you know, doing whatever. And, you were doing what you love doing without your lifestyle changing at all. Right. And I didn't wake up at 3 in the morning in a cold sweat, and that was a huge bonus. And what would I have paid to avoid that cold sweat at 3 in the morning? I paid about 90% of my lost salary for it. I kinda have this theory, that pay is basically not to buy your services, but pay is basically to buy your discomfort. So, for professionals. So, I could pay you a lot, and I'm I'm paying you to be extremely uncomfortable. Or I could pay you a little, and you won't be so uncomfortable. And, that's kind of the economics of money. So when people kind of go for higher and higher salaries, what they're really offering is not their services, but, they're saying I'm offering to be more and more uncomfortable. Right. I agree with that completely. And so and so what happened then? And you you submitted stuff to Higher Up magazine. Like, now you're at this launching pad. You're at the Chicago Sun Times. Yeah. And I was doing data entry for a long time, but, Bill Adey, the sports editor, said to me, I'm gonna give you a chance to write here and there. Maybe some writer will blow a deadline one day or come in drunk and won't be, you know, suitable for for publication. And I'll turn to you, and I'll give you one chance or maybe I'll give you 2 chances. And if you do well, I may give you another chance. But he pointed over this vast, sports department. He said, you see that guy? That's how he started. You see that guy? That's how he started in data entry. And these were names that I knew growing up. So it was like this incredible offer that, if you don't blow it and you come in here and you can work on deadline that was very important to the Sun Times because they that's how they competed against the tribune, which was a bigger paper. They got things in faster. He said, if you can deal with that kind of pressure, I'll turn to you. And if you don't blow it, I'll turn to you again. And that's how you might become a writer. And that's how it started. But still, if I were you, I would be thinking to myself, well, why don't I pitch him new types of columns? Or so then I can create my own writing gig. Or why why didn't you start thinking right away of, I don't know, a book about the minor league or a book about, you know, the economics or legal aspects of baseball because you're combining your your different skills. Or or I assume then you start pitching stories to other, magazines or something. Like, I'm always thinking, like, how can you? Every place is just the launching pad to the next place. So what what were you what was your what were your launching pad to? That was my thought process. I had a million ideas. I had notebooks filled with ideas. And I've discovered very early that ideas were the currency in the newspaper, and I would later discover also in magazines and books that ideas are everything. It is the gold. Mhmm. But you couldn't get out in front of your skis so easily in the sun times. Everybody had a position. It was a union newspaper. And so, it didn't matter how many good ideas you had. You kind of had to wait till the cracks in the window opened, and then you had to really leap through. And that's what I tried to do. And soon enough, I had a sports radio and TV column that ran once a week. And then I got, what's a TV column? You know, it was it covered the business of sports radio and TV. Oh, okay. So I would interview broadcasters or cover who was going to be the next Cubs announcer, that kind of thing. And I did a good job, and I didn't dare mess it up. And I saw some other people around me, were kind of giving me openings. And I took them, and I didn't mess it up. And that just led one thing to the other. And soon enough, I became, I had about a year and a half stint as the rock music critic at the Sun Times because that that opened up, and I said I could do it. And I was just I know from your brother, Ken. He's super into music. He was a a rock musician in his younger days. He is the best, and he played in some legendary bands. I mean, great. That that still to this day are considered some of the best. Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. Pop bands that came through Chicago. Yeah. But we you know, to to be able to go to concerts, and they would tell you, you know, we have, 5th row tickets for you tonight to review, Santana or something. I said, well, I've been listening to Santana ever since I've been dreaming of being a Major League Baseball player, so this is perfect. And I just couldn't believe that I got paid to go to concerts and and write reviews. And they said, well, aren't you nervous that you have to write the review tonight and get it in where the tribune has a whole day for the guy to think about it? I said, are you kidding me? I was in Harvard Law School. They call on you and abuse you for 45 minutes straight. Go to a concert and write on deadline. I'll do it. And that's how it started. And I, you know, I just learned to write on the job because I'd never written a word before that. And so so, I know, eventually, this led to writing books, but first you started writing for Rolling Stone, Esquire. You you eventually expanded nationally. Yes. I had a lot of ideas. My first magazine story ever was for Esquire about a high school teacher I had who I had a very, dark and lonely experience in high school. Ken and I went to the same high school, in a kind of a fancy suburb of Chicago. And when I arrived, I just arrived there a few days before high school started. It was a very lonely experience and very isolating, and the kids were not, friendly or welcoming. And it was pretty hellish for me for most of my days in high school, but there was this one high school teacher who was very kind and seemed to have had his own share of loneliness and isolation in life. And he befriended me and others like me who were really adrift at a school like that, which was incredibly judgmental and punishing if you were different in any kind of way. And that teacher ended up, doing some very terrible things, unspeakable things, and was arrested and taken away during my junior year. So that became the subject of my first magazine piece ever, and Esquire ran it. And it it's called my favorite teacher, and it became a finalist for the National Magazine Award. Wow. And that was my first experience writing long form kind of journalism. And that gave me the confidence that I could do this again, that it wasn't just a one off thing, but that I had the ability and maybe a a voice that I could use to keep going. And so so I imagine once you once you achieve that status as both the name brand recognition of Esquire, plus a potential national magazine award winner or nominee, that probably opened up a lot of doors. You could probably, at that point, start pitching ideas to anybody. Might not accept them, but you were at least the door was open to pitch. -Exactly. -And then you could just keep on Like you say, ideas are currency. You just keep on coming with ideas. That will make you money. That makes you money. I was stunned to realize that if you had good ideas, you could go so far, almost limitlessly far in the business. Did you ever consider, like, going out the Hollywood direction and pitching ideas that way? I didn't pitch ideas, but, my first two books, sold were were picked optioned in Hollywood. And after, several screenwriters professional screenwriters took shots at writing the screenplays that didn't work out for one reason or another, I was given the chance to write the screenplay. So I had, like, a 3 year break in my, book writing career to try my hand at screenplays. Which one? For Pirate Hunters? No. For my first book called Shadow Divers. Yeah. And that, I think, had 3 screenwriters, major screenwriters, take a shot at it before I did. How did they Like, what did they mess up? It's hard for me to say because I read them, and they were great. I thought they were great. But just the production company said, not for us. Right. Not for us. There's something missing. They couldn't get somebody to attach to the cast. Or I think that might have been part of it. But I I do recall them saying there's some some essence of the book that they're not quite getting that you got in the book. And they finally gave me a shot at it. I had no clue what I was doing, but I learned fast enough. I just read a lot of great screenplays and some books and, and took my shot. But they didn't end up making those, but these these are still in development. By the way, this book Rocketman, I was thinking as, as I was reading it, you should you know, it remind me I mean, it's I don't wanna say it's derivative of because it's totally not. But it reminds me a little bit of, Apollo 13, obviously. So have you considered I mean, I don't know if you've already sold the option, the rights to this, but have you considered writing the screenplay for this? Well, it has been optioned. Yeah. And it's, it is a terrific Who optioned it? Company called Makeready, which is a phenomenal new company. And, they've been absolutely terrific. I'm thrilled. Do do you know I mean, I don't you don't have to say it, but I'm just curious. So this is a great nonfiction book that comes out by a well known writer. What does it option for? Like, roughly, is it a 6 figure amount, a 5 figure amount? Well, I don't wanna get into that. It's, the you know, you really make the money, I think, when they make the Right. So they there's a back end where they Yeah. They make the movie, and they owe you a huge amount more. And then I assume I don't know how these deals are structured. If it does a certain amount or wins an award, you get more money. I think so. I think so. But it's always been to me, the thrill of seeing something made would eclipse any kind of monetary compensation. Because I have this dream of going out to LA. Because in the contracts, they say we'll send you 4 first class tickets. So I have this dream that I'll arrive, and it'll be the premiere of Shadow Divers. And all my friends will have come with me, and there'll be a red carpet. And then on the giant screen, it'll say based on the book by Robert Curson. That, to me, is worth way more than any of the the money they could pay. And, I mean, is there any way you can get your hands on the screenplays just so you can get a screenplay writing credit? Because then that opens the door, obviously, to being involved in other screenplays. That would be fun. I hadn't thought of that. Like, maybe you can say, hey. When they when they present the screenplay to you, you just say, hey. I love the screenplay. Let me just punch up the dialogue a little bit because I talk to all these people. I know what they all talk like. And there's some things here just to make it a little more realistic. Then boom. You get your screenplay credit. Now you can go out and get, like, a tonne of screenplay jobs. Would you you'd get a screenplay credit for that? Yeah. Yeah. If you're if you're writing dialogue for this, you'd get a screenplay credit. Cool. So that's what you should do. I'm just making it your advice. That's a great idea. Because I think I bet you this one, even more than Shadow Divers and Pirate Hunters, is the most accessible to, let's say, the 300,000,000 Americans and beyond, to watch this as a movie. Because, again, people will come out of the theater saying, they'll compare it immediately to Apollo 13. They have to. But they're also gonna come out of this saying, wow. I didn't know that, and this was every bit as riveting as Apollo 13. Apollo 13 has that moment where, of course, you don't know if they're gonna die or not. Right. But Apollo 8, you made you structured this book so that I'm sitting there reading, and even though, obviously, I know the end of the story because it's history, I don't know if they're gonna live or die while I'm reading if I'm just focusing on reading the book. I there's a lot of reasons why I didn't know this. There were a lot of ways they could have died. Oh, countless ways. Like, you even kind of presented at one point, and then you explained yourself. It's almost like a 5050 that they might have died. And I actually, reading it based on what you were saying, I bet you the odds weren't this bad. But just the way you presented the story, it looked to me like they were probably gonna die, or they should have died. It was unbelievable risk that they took and NASA took doing this. They were the first time any man has or woman, basically anybody, has flown to the moon and back. Right. And they orbited the moon. I didn't know that it was such a big deal that they orbited the moon. Like, you explained that that was a huge that's, like, doubling the risk right there. They're they're riding on a rocket that previous that the only previous test didn't work. And then they had and all the things they were coming in at such a speed because they're coming from the moon. All the things like the heat shield, none of these things have been really properly tested. The only thing was Apollo 1 that had essentially blown up on the ground. That's right. This was the first time mankind had ever left Earth. The first kind time mankind ever arrived at the moon, and they did it in this compressed schedule. 4 months, they had to do this where a normal, mission would take 18 12 to 18 months. And the idea was really to beat the Russians to the moon. I didn't know the Russians had planned a lunar flight even. I thought the Russians had kinda just the way it's presented in history now is that it was just kind of a fait accompli that Neil Armstrong was gonna land on the moon and get there by the end of the sixties, fulfilling this kind of extreme manifest destiny that belongs to America and America alone. I didn't even know the Russians were in the running. And that you make it seem like it's day by day the Russians could have beaten us to the moon. It came down to a matter of hours, basically, to the moon. Did they just give up once America was all set to launch? Once Apollo 8 went, they drew back their plans for manned orbit around the moon. And, of course, they never landed there. But from 1957, when the, Soviets launched Sputnik, the first world's first satellite. The Soviets had a lead and a huge lead in the space race over the United States. And it was a great panic. For for a day or 2, people in America were thrilled with the idea of Sputnik. It was the coolest thing ever. You could actually go out and look at it above. If you had binoculars, you could hear it beeping on the radio. The Soviets gave us radio, frequencies to tune in on shortwave radios. But I guess it was a reminder that at any point, they could send up a bomb that could be constantly rotating the Earth. Exactly right. If you could put up a satellite, and you know and you could tell us exactly where it is at any moment, that satellite could then drop a bomb later on. And it was terrifying to the United States, not just for its military implications, but who the hell were the Soviets, and how were they so far ahead of us technologically? This was a country that could hardly build a car. And yet they had done something technologically that was beyond anything the world had ever seen, and we were nowhere close. We were nowhere close? No. Even though we had Werner Von Braun, building rockets for us, like, why couldn't he just build a rocket a little faster and throw it up in space than have it explode? And then at least we got to space. Well, he had, you know, he had been, key in designing a Nazi rocket. So we had rocket technology. But the idea of getting a satellite into orbit properly, we were behind in that. And the Soviets not just put Sputnik up, then they put a dog up named Laika, which, by the way, they allowed to die in orbit, which was a a cruel thing and which stunned us even more that this was our enemy and that's the kind of heart they had. I this reminds me of, somebody sent me a video recently. It was the video was done by Alain de Botton, the philosopher, and it was called, Machiavellian Ethics for Nice People. So, basically, the idea is a nice person has nice intentions. So we so you can argue the US had nice intentions. We weren't gonna let a dog die in space. But if you have nice actions and nice intentions, you'll have zero effectiveness. So sometimes you have to take the actions of the more Machiavellian, opponent, let's say, in this case, Russia, in order to have a to be effective. So Russia was extremely effective in getting using their, kind of, at that time, sense of ethics to, achieve these goals in space much faster than us. Yes. And they viewed it as an existential imperative, that this was how the world was going to be won and fought, that that, battles were going to be fought in space, probably with soldiers who existed in space. And you had to dominate space in order to see it through for the rest of time. And so it was a the space race was an existential proposition for us. And they also were the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin -That's right. -Who orbited. -He orbited. As opposed to Alan Shepard, our first astronaut who came later, who didn't orbit. Right. He went up and down, which was a ticker tape parade worthy event. It was incredible. But as always, to that point, the the Soviets were ahead. So they had a man in orbit in their first launch, and we got a guy up and down, which was great, but we were still way behind. By the way, Alan Shepard also the first man to play golf on the surface of the moon. Right. But, how did we so so okay. So so moving moving a little further ahead, I know with the Gemini program, we had I guess it was Ed White, and who was the first man to do a space watch. That's right. Yeah. And who did the Russians beat us at that? I don't think you mentioned that. I believe they I believe they did. Yeah. But Gemini was really and by the way, half the people say Gemini and half say Gemini, and nobody knows which is the correct I'm wrong with Gemini. That's all I've said. That's how I do it too. But when I interview You know, I've had, like, 4 astronauts in this podcast. Yeah. And have they have they mentioned Gemini? No. Because they were all space shuttle people. Well, Jim Lovell, who is one of the crew of Apollo 8, who lives not 20 minutes from me, says Gemini. But, I think the others say Gemini. But, but it could go either way. And Jim Lovell, he was in was he in that first, one with Ed White also? No. No. He was in another you you mentioned he was in another Gemini Yeah. Flight with, Borman. Yeah. He was in Gemini 7 with Frank Borman, and then Gemini 12 with Buzz Aldrin. That was the last of the Gemini flights. And then, of course, he was the commander on Apollo 13. So he's had an incredible career and nicest guy in the world. But, Gemini program really is where the United States overtook the Soviets, and that's where we leaped ahead. And Gemini was the bridge to get to Apollo. It was Why do you think we were able to leap ahead given the Soviets were so far ahead? Was it the fact that we had more money? And we certainly had let's say, you have 2 countries with equal drive, and it seemed at the time equal resources. It may or may not have been, but it seemed at the time equal resources. Why do you think we were able to leap ahead? Well, this is a bit out of my expertise. But I remember one expert explaining it to me this way, that the Soviets really valued these, space spectaculars, things that would really, impress the world and grab attention in headlines. And NASA wasn't as fixated on that as they were on making steps to get to the moon. Because in 1961, president Kennedy made this almost impossible promise to land man on the moon and bring him home safely by the end of the decade. When he made that promise, NASA really had no idea how to do that. They had to figure it out. And so they were very methodical and worked tirelessly to get to that goal. They weren't, as it was explained to me at least, as, preoccupied with these spectaculars, getting the first woman into space, the first spacewalk, things like that. And so, somehow, they just powered through, and Bio Gemini had really taken the lead. So so but but but where did they did they miss on the technology? Because starting from 1961, probably, you had people at NASA planning trajectories, planning what kind of rocket you would need, planning what kind of energy you would need, and what kind of training would be required, what kind of, command center you would need. Maybe the Soviets had had started that process, like, in 1965 instead of 1961. I'm just trying to guess, like, where did they where did they misfire in their in their intellectual understanding of what it would take? Well, I don't know that they did misfire. They had planned all those things as well. And, really, the idea was to get the first man to the moon. It wasn't even just to land the first man on the moon. It was just to get there. Because, previously, the world altitude record was just a 125 miles. That's the the farthest we'd ever traveled from our home planet. And then by Apollo 8, you mentioned I think you said 853 miles. 853 miles. Right. So you had to go 240,000 miles to get to the moon. So that's a huge difference. I can't even imagine like, back then, ascent I mean, there were computers, but, essentially, there were no computers. And I can't even imagine now trying to figure out how to get someone to the moon, because we haven't gotten to the moon in, like, 40 years or so. I can't imagine what they would do then. But but, again, Russia and the US were so close, like you say, almost within hours. Do you think Russia could have done it a year earlier if they had focused? I don't know if they could have done it a year earlier, but I think they could have beat Apollo 8 by about 3 2 to 3 weeks. The cosmonauts were ready to go. It was reported that they had gone to the launch pad in Kazakhstan, and that the rocket was sitting there waiting for them. And Russia didn't care if they died or not. They were willing to risk anything. They were pushing so hard. I mean, the to to get the first man to the moon. Think about what that means, James. That for almost our entire existence, if not our entire existence, humans have longed to for the moon. I mean, we we stare at it every night. We dream about it. It's it it affects everything. And here is the possibility to get one's countrymen there first. So this is the ultimate race. It's a race that'll never be duplicated again. And they are pushing hard. Maybe maybe Mars, but we don't long for Mars nearly like we long for the Moon. The Moon is our satellite. It's our companion, our constant companion. And, so to get there first was everything. And the Soviets could have done it. Their launch window, I think, was about 3 weeks earlier than ours, 2 to 3 weeks. And they could have done it. They were ready to go. The cosmonauts were there and longing to go. And the Russians had had or the Soviets at the time had had a bad result on one of their earlier test flights, a very recent test flight. And some of the Soviet Space Agency wanted to go, and some wanted to hold back one more flight. And the cosmonauts could not contemplate holding back when they could beat the Americans to the moon. But a decision was made. We're gonna hold back because we can't have a fatality here. And Right. Because I guess if they had a fatality on that one, they they had fatalities Yes. On another one earlier. Yes. But if they had a fatality on that one, I guess the view is the record wouldn't count. Because then we could always say, we could launch 2 weeks later, bring the guy back, and say, we're the first guy people who send someone to the moon and back. Right. And think of the risk. Maybe we'll get into this. But Apollo 8, to go when they were going to go, which was a launch date of December 21, 1968, they were going to get to the moon and orbit the moon on Christmas Eve and Christmas. And when the head of NASA heard about this crazy plan to do it in 4 months, and as you said, after the second only a second test of the Saturn 5 rocket, and the second test was a near disaster, to do that, the guy said, are you out of your mind to the people who came up with this plan for Apollo 8 in 4 months? And he and then he made a very, very powerful point. He said, if anything goes wrong up there, no one will ever think of the moon or of Christmas the same way again. No poets, no lovers, no anybody will look at Christmas or the moon the same again. And it was true. If you died rushing to the moon at Christmas, imagine what that would mean. And I'm trying to think, like, given that the test wasn't working but assume maybe the test didn't work, and they knew very clearly what was wrong. So, okay, put that aside for a second. You're still risking so much. I mean, I forget. Had an Apollo and Apollo had launched. Like, Apollo 7 had launched. Right? Apollo 7 had launched, but it had just been a low earth orbit mission. But at least they knew the rocket the the command module worked, you know, which is where the astronauts sit. They at least they knew the the second module worked, the the staging module. I forgot what it's called. Yes. But they did not use the same rocket. So the only rocket powerful enough to get a man to the moon was the Saturn 5. What did they use? A Saturn something? I can't no. It was not a Saturn rocket. I don't I can't remember the name of the What was the Gemini rocket? That was oh, I just was writing about this. I have I have to it's the name's escaping me now, but it's when you see it, it's a tiny dwarf of the Saturn 5. It's nowhere near as powerful or as tall. Saturn 5 rock was 363 feet tall, I think. Because you not only had to break Earth's atmosphere, you had to break go fast enough to break Earth's orbit. Right? Is that was that part of the issue for the size of the rocket? Yeah. You had to get out of Earth's orbit. So you needed, like, 24,000 miles an hour? Or Yeah. That wasn't the the reason they needed the power of the Saturn 5 was they were lifting a much heavier payload. The command module and the service module? Right. In the service module. I think they used a Titan 2 rocket for the Gemini program, if I'm not mistaken. Okay. But the Saturn 5 must have been not that like, I'm just I'm just I'm pretending to be the head of NASA. The Saturn 5 must have been not that conceptually different from the Gemini rockets, which worked over and over and over again. I think they were much different. Really? Yeah. It was a much different proposition. Was was Werner Von Braun? He was still making everything. Absolutely. Very much so. And we didn't care that he had made all the Nazi V twos and all that kind of stuff. Well, some people cared. Some people at NASA, considered him, you know, a dirty German and had a hard time with him, especially in the early days. But when it became clear that he was working for us and doing miraculous things Did he have to shift? Like, was he ever philosophically a Nazi, or was he just doing what he loved doing, which is making rockets? I think from what I read about him, he was just in love with rockets. I don't know. I should I can't even speak to his political leanings or how he felt. But I do remember reading that as a young kid, he was just into rockets. And when the, Nazi approached him, he viewed it as here's a, an organization that's gonna give me money to solve these problems. And it wasn't he didn't conceive it of it as a war machine, the rocket. So if you if you had been the head of NASA, what would you have decided? 4 months to go, Saturn 5 very different. Maybe people are telling you, oh, that problem was nothing. Don't worry about it. But there's still the idea of, you know, every single second like, if the command module, which is where the astronauts were sitting, if they had opened up their thrusters a second or 2 earlier or later, they're just gonna miss the moon and drift out of the space forever, and nobody had ever done it before. And you'd have to you're not calculating these things with advanced computers. You're kinda doing it by pen and paper. What would you have decided? I think it was one of the boldest and most brilliant decisions, NASA ever took. Is it brilliant because the outcome worked, or was it a stupid decision? No. It was a brilliant decision if you believe, as they did, that they had to keep president Kennedy's deadline to help him to keep his promise to the country. Yeah. But but if the odds were kind of against you, and you messed up, and then you failed, and and then you're going to you have Vietnam going on. You have, you know, the the decade of Vietnam and and and LBJ. And now you have Nixon, who people were starting to realize was no good. It could have been a disastrous end to the sixties. It it could have been the most disastrous end, and it was terrible, terrible year, by the way. And that's a big part of the story of Apollo 8, that it came at the end of the one of the most fractious years in American history. The the country was divided against itself, in a way that we probably only see again now. Yeah. I mean, like look. Yeah. The assassination of Martin Luther King, assassination of RFK. You had a very weird election. Vietnam, you were getting the the the the pictures every day of Vietnamese killing themselves, and putting themselves on fire, and us doing things. You had the the whole problems with the Soviets, not just this, but, you know, the the mutual assured destruction. You know, it's it's ugly. Yeah, terrible. In Chicago, there were riots at the Democratic convention. And and so if this so if the odds were against this, was it even though it like, let's say there was a 10% chance this was gonna work, and he made the decision to do it, and it worked. So we got that 10%. Was it still a good decision, or is just the outcome good? That's what I'm really curious about. Well, I think the people at NASA, and including the astronauts, didn't believe it was a 10% chance. I thought they thought they were gonna make it. Why did they think that? I mean, you explain in the book, but I'm not convinced. I think they were extra hopeful. Well, you have to remember that NASA brought in very particular guys to be astronauts. By DNA, they were different from almost anyone else in the world. But it's not the astronauts doing really. It's it's the scientists kind of picking the trajectories, and when you should thrust, and how much you should thrust. There's you're talking about like a pinpoint 240,000 miles away that we have to orbit around. Right. We have to get in their orbit and then leave their orbit in such a way as to get into another pinpoint 240,000 miles away, which is the earth, and then a heat shield to last. This this you know, the more things that have to the more high stakes things that have to work perfectly in order for the the success to happen, the more likely chances of failure. That's that's absolutely true. And that's why many people at NASA and many astronauts consider Apollo 8 to be the single boldest, mission that the space agency has ever run. It it was risky. It was definitely risky. But those guys believed they had the figures down, the the calculations. They believed they fixed the problems in the Saturn 5 Rocket. Wernher von Braun said it's ready to go. And, they believed it. And I guess the trajectory is it just is what it is. Like, okay. At this time after liftoff, turn on this knob, and you're good. That's exactly right. And they knew it. They believed it. And like we said, you know, people always say, and it's true that, your iPhone now has more computing power than they used to send the Apollo missions to the moon. Not just more. A 1000000000 times more. Yeah. A 1000000000 times more. So but these guys knew it's like you said. There are universal laws in physics and trajectories, and they figured it out. And they were able to calculate. They For example, what they predicted that when Apollo 8 passed behind the moon, that would cause them to lose all radio signal. Right? Because the moon's blocking the Right. The radio signal. They predicted it down to the second. Here's when we think it's gonna happen. And when Apollo got behind the moon, within that second, the radio went out. And then but then it took, a few seconds when it got back around the moon, more than they thought. But maybe that was just the speed of light slowing things down? Well, they they had to tune some antennas, properly when they left the moon. There were some delays in that. But the as far as the calculations, the trajectories, the the fuel burns, everything, it just, took these staggering minds, and they figured it out. And so, you know, I before I read this book, I had never really thought about Apollo 8 before. I mean, you think about Apollo 11, which is, of course, Neil Armstrong, the first time man sets foot on the moon. You think about Apollo 13 because of the disaster, but they made it back alive, which is a miracle. Maybe you think about some of the later ones just because there was the rover the lunar rover and it's kinda some cool photographs. You never really think about Apollo 8, but it's, like, this book convinced me, wow. This is these are real explorers taking chances, doing things nobody in history has ever done, and it was scary. Now Apollo 11's also scary because the idea of a lunar module Right. Landing and coming back Yes. That's scary. But I there probably was a lot of ways for them to test that beforehand. This, they were kinda flying blind in order to make an artificial goal and in order to beat the Soviets. I say flying blind a little bit. Like you say, they prepared quite a bit, of course, but it was still scary. And and you the way you exhibited that scariness was interesting. These were astronauts. So they were kind of, to quote Tom Wolf, the right stuff. Like, they had that kind of brute force mentality. It is what it is. If it'll happen, what it happens? But their wives did not have that. And you told really lovely stories of kind of almost the romantic relationships of all three astronauts with their wives. And, by the way, once again, the parallel, you've been with your wife, girlfriend how long? Oh, it's about, 25 years now. How'd you meet her? She and I lived in the same, big apartment complex. And Ken, my brother, was borrowing my, gym pa*s. He didn't live there, but he liked to use So the gym worked out? Yeah. He worked out. Believe it or not, back then. Yes. And, and so he spotted this beautiful woman and struck up a conversation with her and thought, I think my brother would be really interested in her and asked if he could pass along her number. That's how. So I called her that night. She didn't seem that interested, but I persisted because I had a report on what she looked like in her bathing suit. So what could you know, how how bad could the date be? And, she finally agreed to go out with me, and we went to the Art Institute in Chicago on our first date. And she asked me, could I bring along could she bring along a book of poetry? Because we're gonna see exhibit of, Asian craft work, that was done by some poets. I thought, oh, god. That's that's the worst thing. I can't I can't sit through her reading poetry. But when we got there and she started reading, I fell in love with her. She just read so beautifully. I'm not a poetry person or anything, but she was phenomenal. And that's how that's how we met. And then how long did you know her before you got married? About a year and a half. It wasn't long. How long before you got engaged? Year? So so your story, again, I feel it doesn't quite parallel these astronauts, but the length of it as in terms of the fact that, you know, all 3 you described, in some sense, meeting high school sweethearts or college sweethearts, and they met them their wives relatively young. Yes. And and those wives really stuck with them through hard times. Like and those hard times, yeah, going to the moon was a hard time because they thought their husbands were gonna maybe die. There was some chance. But also just months away in training camps or at war or whatever. And, you know, to some extent, a lot of this is a love story of how these couples survived such a traumatic thing for the sake of a unified goal. And, you know, again, another parallel, which I find with all the books and you, it's all about exploration. So, you know, the pirate hunters were exploring for buried treasure. The pirates were exploring, basically, all the coast of, you know, the Americas. Right. And and probably pirates made more discoveries that we never hear about than the actual explorers because they had to hide and Yes. Bury money. That's right. And also find pirate ships, and find regular ships to invade and build up a build up a skill set greater than the other ships That's right. That were the professional military ships. And, and it's the same here. This is the most extreme exploration is the the first I mean, prior to Apollo 8, the furthest man had gone was 853 miles past the Earth. Now they're going 240,000 miles away from the Earth. And it's all about exploration while you're doing your own exploration of, okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna jump past the normal path of college, Harvard Law School, White Shoe Law Firm, 6 figure salary, and I'm just gonna, like, do my passion. And and now it's led to, articles, awards, best selling books, movie rights, and now finally this book, which is an excellent book, Rocketman. It taught me so much about and I've loved since I was a kid, I've loved reading about, the exploits of these astronauts. And we've had several astronauts on the podcast, and their stories have always been riveting, not because they've been in outer space, but just because of all the trials they went through to get there. Yeah. You have to be it's a hard journey in every way. Not only getting accepted, not only getting doing the training, but then the problems you you face in space that there's very few tools at your disposal other than your wits to to survive. I'm just so impressed by all this. What's what's the next book on your agenda? Why don't you write about baseball? I would love to write There's no there's no exploration, though. I don't feel like it appeals to you. No. I I love the idea of exploration. It's, and I think it, you know, it speaks to something in our DNA as human beings, you know, the the desire to push past what we know. And I think that's why people have longed to reach the moon for so long. It's there, and yet it's always out of reach. So it speaks to the instinct. Maybe maybe kind of exploring, because it's sort of hidden a little bit the origins of all these private space companies. I mean, we know a lot about Elon Musk, and there's been a book by Ashley Vance about him. But between space, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, I forget the name of, Alec of Jeff Bezos 1 blue something. Naveen Jain has, and he's been on the podcast. He's he has a a a company that's trying to get, rockets to the moon. Maybe there's some story there. It's still about exploration, but in this private, nongovernment way. Right. There could be. And there's this aspirational fact that it's all funded by billionaires. Right. That's right. But part of the story is that people wanna know how it ends, and those stories haven't been finished yet, some of them at least. Although that was an incredible launch the other week, wasn't it? Of the Falcon Heavy? Yeah. Yeah. But look, it sort of like brings you back to 1968. Like, okay, it's a big heavy rocket just like in 1968. It was the first one in a long time launched like that. Yeah. I mean, we're kind of I don't wanna say we're behind where we were then because we have our use of space in in daily technology is is pervasive now. I mean, the the the Internet is basically broadcast Yes. Across outer space. And now our goals are set even though we don't go to the moon, our goals are set towards Mars, and there there's so many uses of these satellites that are that are operating on a minute by minute basis. But what's another exploration that you've considered? That's the the most difficult by far part of my job is to find a story that's worthy of a book and worthy of a person's time like that. So right now, I don't have a new book idea. I'm always looking. Well then well then, you've written 3 books that are bestsellers, and and have done well, and have lots of readers. But, you know, I sort of feel less people read books than ever, because of just the extreme, glut of media out there and and the lower attention spans and so on. And I'm not making a criticism of of either media or people. It's just the way things are going. Have you considered using this now as a launching pad to your next type of media that you would like to explore? I have thought about it, but I am so in love with, the feeling of writing a book. It's so satisfying when I'm doing it and researching it. You know, I got to fly with 2 of these astronauts, and they're tiny planes. And when we were, taking off, I heard such reverence, from flight control for Frank Borman, for example, when we took off from the Billings airport in Montana. And we're flying over the countryside, and I thought, this is what I did all this for. I am in the back seat of a 2 seat plane that's being piloted by the first man ever to reach the moon. And I get to live in his world for 3 years or so. And then I get to move on to another world. And the fun of it and just reading, every part of it was just so satisfying to me. Or getting to call him at 10:30 at night because I I didn't understand one thing he told me, And he explained something to me or or sends me a video showing how this, orbit worked or how a trajectory worked was so, thrilling for me and so satisfying that I just can't imagine doing something else. Maybe that's my lack of imagination, but I have so much fun doing these books that I think I'd be very happy to to do some more until I couldn't do them anymore. And, do you ever feel there's a time where people won't let you do them anymore? I mean, now you've had such success, probably, you have an open door to do books. But at some point, I feel with with the rise of all these different kinds of media, at some point, advances will go down. You'll be more and more reliant on the optioning movie rights, but maybe that will go down at some point. I don't know. Yeah. That's definitely a fear, and I know that my friends in newspapers have already experienced, a large measure of that kind of trajectory. I mean, look, Ken Ken Curson, your brother, was the editor in chief of the print New York Observer. And, of course, their website, They've shut down now the print, and the website has done so well. It's done observer.com does very well. You know, not that I don't think books will ever be completely digital. People still like the feel of paper books. I just see less people reading good books in general Well and talking about them. I hope that's not true. I have that faith, going back to faith again, that books are something eternal and that they belong to us in a certain way that's part of our evolution. I agree with that. I think you writing this book, for instance, as opposed to writing an article about the importance of Apollo 8, which comes and goes with wherever you wrote it, writing a book makes this an event. Yes. And and and it and it is a way for you to communicate to someone like me, for instance, the importance of something that even though I had studied the entire space program, all along, I had known it. I loved it reading about it when I was a kid. I never really understood the importance of this mission until you wrote this book and how important for history it was and how dangerous it was and how exciting it was. So I highly recommend the book, Rocket Men, and I'll just say the subtitle again. The daring odyssey of Apollo 8 and the astronauts who made man's first journey to the moon. And I also recommend, you know, Robert Kerson's other books, Shadow Divers and, now I'm forgetting it, Pirate Hunters, even though that was when we did the podcast about it. I love that one so much. I'm always gonna follow what's next with you because I know you're gonna figure out some interesting direction to explore next. And I feel exactly the same about you, James. That's why I'm such a huge fan and why it's such a privilege to be here. Well, thank thanks a lot, Robert. Thanks for coming on the show, and, don't don't wait 3 years to come on again. Right? Write a book a little faster next time. I would love to, and I'll be here. Alright. Excellent. Thank you. Thanks, Robert.