The Art and Obsession of Writing with Rich Cohen

The Daily Stoic

Ryan Holiday and Rich Cohen explore the intersection of ambition, introspection, and the writing craft through discussions of historical figures like Sam Zemuri and Thomas

Key takeaways

• Rich Cohen argues that historical figures like Sam Zemuri often lacked introspection but still believed they were doing right, making them vulnerable to shifting moral standards over time.
• The hosts discuss how modern algorithms create a 'permanent record' of fleeting interests, contrasting it with the necessary human ability to forget and evolve.

Main topics

• Historical judgment and introspection
• The craft of writing and editing

Notable quotes

"Most of the people in the past thought that they were doing the right thing."

Conclusion

The episode offers a grounded reflection on how ambition, memory, and

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) They say that every day your business is late to AI, you fall two days behind. One of the things we've been talking about at our staff meetings at Daily Stoic is how can we use AI to maximize efficiency? And how can we make sure that it's buying us time to do the things that only humans can do? We want to improve our workflow so we can be more human, more connected, better at what we do. And if you're not having these conversations with your team, I hate to say it, but you are already late. And if you are lost when it comes to how AI can help you, well, there's NetSuite Next. You probably know NetSuite. It's the AI-powered business management suite that securely connects all your data. And it's a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into a single source of truth, trusted by over 43,000 customers. And NetSuite Next is the next huge leap in how business gets done because AI is built into everything you do. It automatically surfaces custom insights throughout your day. AI agents work alongside to help you solve problems and handle routine work. And anytime you have a question, you just ask, just like having a conversation with a colleague. NetSuite is customized for a wide variety of industries, so it supports the way your business truly works. Whether that company earns millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, it's time for NetSuite Next. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite.ai. slash stoic. It's built for every industry, ready for every boardroom, netsuite.ai Speaker 1 (1:30) slash stoic. One of the reasons people think that they're not introspective people in the past is because it's hard to accept the reality of somebody that's not alive right now. It's just very hard to make them anything but kind of a character in your mind and not real. Most of the people in the past thought that they were doing the right thing. Yes. So in order to judge them, it's not just that you're having more information and everything. You have to believe that you are doing the right thing right now. Speaker 2 (1:56) Rich is one of my favorite writers, so I was honored to have him on the show. He has just brought to life things that I didn't know about, things that I didn't know I wanted. He had this book called Tough Jews that I love. His father is fascinating, who he wrote a book about called The Adventures of Herbie Cohen, who wrote that book about negotiation. He wrote a book about youth hockey. He wrote a book about the Rolling Stones. He wrote a book about the Jewish resistance in World War II. He created this show. with Martin Scorsese in Mick Jagger called Vinyl on HBO. That's also incredible. I guess what I'm saying is this is one of my favorite authors. I've gotten so many stories from his books. I've learned so much from his books. And I just loved this conversation. We dove into history and memory and writing and parenting and sports and grief. Great conversation. I think you're really going to like it. Let's get into it. Speaker 2 (2:49) So I was thinking about a conversation you and I had like 10 years ago when I was working on Obstacle. I just read The Fish That Ate the Whale. But we were talking about Zemuri, who is a fascinating figure. And you said something that I've been thinking about, which is like you thought that he thought he would be Speaker 1 (3:06) appreciated by future generations. Speaker 2 (3:10) Yeah. Like they all thought history would judge them kindly or the future would be grateful to them. And of course, the exact opposite is true. How Speaker 1 (3:21) do you think about that? I think that the people that try to stretch themselves and go further than their time warrants or that it's typical for their time, then get blamed a lot of times because they're the ones we remember. Speaker 2 (3:34) Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:34) So out of the millions and millions and millions and millions of people that lived in the past, there's only a couple of names that survived. Right. And a lot of times, you know, you'll find people that get blamed for even their very awkward reaching across lines that people haven't reached across. They left a record and they get blamed for their prejudices and for being stuck in their time. I think that Zimuri. Speaker 1 (3:58) basically entered, if you think about it, there was a football game going on and he entered the game. He didn't really think about the rules of the game, if the game was moral, immoral. He just was trying to compete in the game. Speaker 2 (4:07) The Speaker 1 (4:07) irony is that he started his own company that competed with United Fruit and was a much better company, a more moral, a cleaner company. But because of his success, he was ultimately forced to merge with United Fruit. And then he took on the legacy. of this other company, which really wasn't his legacy. And that company itself has its own interesting past, which is more complicated. Everywhere you look, it's more complicated than you think. But Speaker 2 (4:31) have you seen that clip? You know who Marc Andreessen is, the venture capitalist? It's a clip. He's on a podcast and they're talking about introspection. Have you seen this? The guy's like, you know, I've read all these biographies. None of the figures were introspective in any way. And Marc Andreessen, obviously very successful. sort of larger than life figure goes, I'm not introspective at all. I don't, I never look inward. I never look back. I only look forward. And they're sort of, I think what they're trying to make the argument of, and it's not historically without basis, which is that like to be a great. success, to be a world mover, to do huge things, you can't get caught up in these niceties about thinking about other people, thinking about moral questions. I think they're trying to say that today's generation is too conscientious and Speaker 1 (5:19) deliberative and not sort of bold and swaggering and ambitious enough. I'm Speaker 2 (5:25) not sure that's true, but it's an interesting argument that someone like Zimuri falls right in the middle of because... He didn't strike me as a particularly introspective figure. Speaker 1 (5:34) Well, the thing about introspection is it leaves no evidence. Yes. You know what I mean? So you're judging based on what somebody did, not what they're thinking. Right. Which is a problem you always run into with nonfiction, which is I really don't really know what this person was thinking. There's no way to know. So you look for little hints of introspection. So the amount of charity Zimuri did, he set up this free school in South America. That shows a level of introspection. I think he saw himself one way. Yeah. You know, he was a member kind of of FDR's cabinet and all this stuff. And he saw himself as kind of with the good guys. And the values, he lived long enough that the values all changed. And all the things he did were suddenly judged not so good. So I think of him like a guy that's holding a hand of cards all night. And suddenly at dawn, all the cards change meaning. Suddenly the aces and the jacks are now like the twos and the threes. And the twos and the threes are like the aces and jacks. And it all turned around on him at the very end of his life. And it confused him. But one thing about. people today and they're this is what always drives me nuts which is Most of the people in the past thought that they were doing the right thing. Yes. So in order to judge them, it's not just that you're having more information and everything. You have to believe that you are doing the right thing right now. You have to believe that what you're doing, the things you're not even thinking of, won't be judged very harshly in 30 or 40 years by your grandkids. And the fact is, we don't, you try your best, but you don't really know how you're going to be judged. And it takes an incredible... lack of humility and a sense of certainty to judge people about their actions, a lot of people about their actions in the past who were born into a particular time, lived in that particular time. And if they're lucky and they lived a long time, you know, live long enough to see that. some of the things they thought were good were not going to look good in the long run. Do Speaker 2 (7:21) you really think they were always doing their best, though? Like, I was just reading this fascinating essay about Thomas Jefferson. And, you know, obviously, Thomas Jefferson says all this world shattering and changing ideas about how we're all created equal, and he condemns slavery, and he understands the sort of moral rot of it. But they're sort of looking at... some of the things that had been omitted from the history that actually was much more involved in running these slave plantations than people thought. And that the sort of big breakthrough for him, the pivot point and the change of his views, the essay is arguing, is when he starts to calculate the rate of return on the birth of new slaves. And that this becomes sudden. It's like the Upton Sinclair thing. It becomes very hard to understand something that your salary depends on you not understanding. It's like he basically goes, he thinks slavery is this dying institution, this financially sort of inefficient industry. But then he starts to realize, oh, I'm making like a 4 % return a year just on the birth of new slaves. And that it's this calculation that ultimately gets in the way of him doing what, say, Washington is able to do. So I don't know if it's true that everyone was always doing their best. Well, you're talking about Speaker 1 (8:28) slavery, which is... I just mean generally. There's some things that are universal and they're always evil. Slavery, I would think, would be one of them. I think what's interesting about Thomas Jefferson was I think he was really introspective and he was a genius. Yeah. And he was smart enough to know that what he was doing was not defensible and would not be defended after his death. He understood all that. And he wasn't willing to pay the price. So he was hoping that they were on a downward slope where it would slowly fade away. Would solve itself. Right. And that would allow him to escape and live his life the way he wanted to live and the way he wanted to live it. Almost, you know, for his own sanity, maybe it would have been better to be a little stupider than he was. But he's sort of, you know, stupid people have the advantage of that. So I think that, you know, he's a really unique case because he sort of made America what America is. And built into that is the fact that he knew that he was engaged in something, an evil. Speaker 2 (9:15) Yeah, it is funny that the argument that they weren't introspective, because actually when you really dig into the lives of the people, you find that they were quite introspective. There's all sorts of things that we sort of assume were cut and dried, but actually they went back and forth on, they tortured themselves about. And then... Also, it seems like a silly argument to me because like when I look at the flaws of those people, when I look at the most indefensible or the most egregious things they did, I see that as part and parcel of whatever that not that trait of not being introspective was. It's like if they could have thought a little bit more, it probably would have been better. I Speaker 1 (9:57) mean, I think one of the reasons people think that they're not introspective people in the past is because it's hard to accept the reality of somebody that's not alive right now. Very hard to make them anything but kind of a character in your mind and not real. Yeah. And what I meant by, you know, right now, I assume that Jefferson was involved in very evil behavior and knew it. Yeah. And I think that the same is true today. Sure. You just don't know what, you know, it's not whatever it is that people are kind of letting themselves off the hook now. Yeah. by sort of relegating it all to the past. Like now we have it figured out and now we got our heads on right. I just think that you run into this problem where... It's very hard to understand what people were thinking in the past and what was going on. But I do think that people are basically the same. Yeah. And there might be some outliers. So I wrote this book, Murder in the Dollhouse, about this guy, Fotis Dulos, who killed his wife. I think that I came across him. I didn't understand him at all. Like he was an outlier, like a murderer. But mostly like 99 % of people are basically the same. If you put them in the same situation, they behave the same way that the other people in that situation did. Speaker 2 (11:07) Yeah. Speaker 1 (11:08) And as a writer, I think my whole premise is based on that, which is if I kind of feel something, most other people are going to feel the same way. If they were in my shoes, they'd feel the same way. And if I was in their shoes, I'd feel the same way. And that's also true with people like Sam Zimuri. Even though he was incredibly talented, ambitious, smart, had a lot of energy, did all these things, he still, at the end of the day, wanted to do the right thing. And he still felt at some level that he wasn't doing the right thing. which is why he tried to make it right by a charity and everything else he did. And those things are appreciated. I mean, people are still benefiting from them. And I assume that with Thomas Jefferson, at some level, he was operating the same way. Speaker 2 (11:46) Yeah. I mean, that's what is so remarkable about philosophy and art and music is how they manage to capture emotional states or human experiences. that reach across centuries or generations and you're like, oh, I feel the exact same way. Because the fundamental problems Speaker 1 (12:04) haven't changed. They're still Speaker 2 (12:06) the same Speaker 1 (12:06) problems. Yeah. Still the same fears, still the same hopes. People have not changed. Speaker 2 (12:10) Right. Not in 2000 years, maybe in 10,000 or 20,000. But even you look at cave paintings and you're like, there's something sort of fundamentally expressive Speaker 1 (12:20) about that. Speaker 2 (12:20) What this does is it gives Speaker 1 (12:20) you like a degree of humility. Yeah. Which is, it's like Ecclesiastes. Yeah. That's my Stoics, you know, which is all these problems that you have now people have had not once before, but innumerable times before until it disappears until the event horizon, you know, and what you're dealing with has been dealt with and will be forgotten and will be dealt with again and again and again. Yeah. Speaker 2 (12:43) Yeah. And maybe the only thing we can do is practice a little introspection and try to share some of those lessons. I mean, some of the things are ones you can only learn from experience. But I think often you look at the sort of larger than life lives and you sort of go, okay, like at that level, if it doesn't solve it, you know, at that level, if it doesn't fill the hole or... you know, make them feel secure or good. Like, why am I thinking that if I just accomplish enough or achieve enough or make my mark like deep enough, it'll do it for me. Speaker 1 (13:21) Right. Because that's why sports are a good model. Have you ever played sports, which is you don't play sports thinking you're going to change the game. You're going to change the rules of the game. You're going to solve the game and there will be no more reason to play a game anymore. You're just thinking of that particular game and your particular teammates and that you want to do as well as you can. Mostly your first. motivation is not to make a fool of yourself and to prove that you belong in the game, you know? And then if you get ambitious, you want to be good at the game. Speaker 2 (13:47) And Speaker 1 (13:47) that's basically what we got. Because you know what I feel like? My father just turned 93. You're making me think of my father. And he gave this, I taped it. He gave a little, he must have prepared it. But he said this thing. He said that he sees his kids and his grandkids as ambassadors he sends into the future. Past his death. Speaker 2 (14:07) Yeah. Speaker 1 (14:07) And I think that there's something that's the best you can do. I mean, that was, he doesn't really, he's 93. He hasn't said a lot of things that I haven't heard before, you know, but I hadn't heard him say that before. And it was, uh, it's inspiring to think like you do what you, what you can do, what is in your power to do. You try to do the best you can and don't really worry about. Speaker 2 (14:26) Well, there's like different levels of that sort of multi-generational impact that people try to have. And then there's this for people trying to sort of bend the world to their will, trying to, you know, sort of make their dent in the universe. The irony is how often those people like neglect the ambassadors that they're sending to the future that live at home. Yeah. Well, Speaker 1 (14:45) they don't maybe don't think of them that way. Right. Right. You know, I mean, it's like I once wanted to write a book just about little brothers, a little because I'm a little brother. Yeah. And when you're a little brother, you have humility usually. I mean, you can become very angry, I guess, but little brothers, because when you arrive, it's already happening. The game is underway, you know, and so much of what your personality becomes depends on your birth order. So when you're a little brother, you have to figure out, or a little sister, I guess, the youngest sibling, you have to figure out how to fit in an existing paradigm. It gives you like a lot of humility and realizes that you're not inventing new tools. You're working with tools that are already there. Speaker 2 (15:21) I thought about a line from one of your books two weeks ago. It's my son's like second to last lacrosse game. Yeah, that great scene in Pee Wee's where you like go up to the coach and you're like, hey, Speaker 1 (15:30) my son needs more Speaker 2 (15:31) playing time or what's going on. And the coach is like, hey, let me ask you a question. Is he having fun? And then you're like, yeah. And he's like. then what the fuck do you care? Right. You know? And my, my son had like basically played like 40 seconds in this whole game. Right. I was going to go up to him and be like, it's okay. Like it's cool. And like, before I could even say anything to like console him, he's like, Hey, can I do lacrosse again next year? And I was like, I mean, sure. Like I thought you were going to be upset. And like, you didn't even know. I don't think, I don't think it computed for him that it wasn't good. Like that it didn't go well. And then, so you just think about like, that is our. Our sort of ambassador of the future is like our children, obviously, but then it's also these little lessons, hard one or otherwise, and we're either paying them forward in books or in art or in conversations. That is the, we don't learn a lot and we don't change, but like there are little things here or there. Speaker 1 (16:27) Well, to me, the big lesson for peewees was, so I've seen crazy sports parents. I judge them harshly. I make fun of them. I mock them. And I don't like them. And then when my kid showed a little bit of talent for hockey, I became one of them immediately, instantly. And I couldn't, it was like a possession. It was like a kind of rabies of the soul. That's the big, which is when it's your kid, it's so deep. And when your kid does something well, there's nothing like it, man. It's like nothing. So it's the point is that just because you understand these things doesn't mean you won't spare. yourself or others while going through them. And only later do you gain a little bit of perspective only because it's not happening. And I assume if it happened again, I would act the same way again. I would try not to. But it was like a big check on me, which is what I was valuing, which was not what my kid was valuing. My kid was valuing the experience. A lot of these, even NHL players, when they're interviewed, they say their best moment in pro hockey was. Actually, there was a book about this guy, Derek Bugard, who played for the Rangers. A really good book. Forgetting the name of it. And he became a fighter in the NHL and he got CTE. And here's a tragic story. But in the book, he says that his favorite moment in all of hockey, playing in the NHL and everything, was just driving to the games with his father. Wow. That was it. Yeah. You know? And there was a really funny, this is sort of encapsulated, which is there was a really funny meme or whatever going around among kids, my kid's age, which is it showed you how kids view the game like it was. It was a kid tweeted basically when you've driven three hours to a hockey tournament and you suddenly realize you forgot your hockey bag and have to tell your father. Speaker 2 (18:02) Yeah. And Speaker 1 (18:04) that was actually retweeted by a bunch of guys in the NHL and stuff because everyone had that experience as having to buy all new equipment or something like that or borrow a bunch of equipment at the rink. But that's what they're thinking about. I Speaker 2 (18:15) think about that one all the time. that like is attributed to the Sandlot and it feels so true, but it's actually not in the movie, the Sandlot. It's like, it's quoting the movie. It's not real, but it's, it says like, you know, at some point there was the last time that you went outside with all your friends to play baseball and none of you realized it. And like, that's more what your kids are thinking about. Like, because they still like it. They're still having fun with it. They're, they're thinking about it as this thing they like to do. And our instinct is to sort of professionalize it or to. raise the stakes of it. Well, Speaker 1 (18:47) it's funny because the funnest I ever had playing sports was an adult league softball team that played just with my friends. No coaches. We won the championship and we got really bad. We won the championship. Then we went to college. Everybody came back, whatever they were, overweight, on drugs, not paying attention. And we went from a great team to a horrible team. And I got, everyone said I should make my father the coach. Okay. Because my father looks a lot like. Or looked a lot like Walter Matthau in the Bad News Bears here. So they called him, you know, butter maker, boiler maker. And my father took it super seriously and attempted to do all this. And we couldn't explain to him, this is a joke, man. Like, you've just made us like, you're having us run wind sprints. Speaker 2 (19:29) And Speaker 1 (19:30) you probably think of that Speaker 2 (19:31) memory as well. Like, it's probably time you enjoy getting to spend together. Speaker 1 (19:35) Oh, yeah. It's really, really, really funny. My friends all talk about it. He had us doing very advanced shifts. They now use computer models for it because he grew up with the Ted Williams shift, you know, and we're like, I'm not going to do it because I think it looks I'm not putting a shortstop in right field. He's like, why it'll work. I'm like, because it looks stupid and will be made fun of. That's another huge motivation in life, which is just not to get made fun of. So it's another great thing for me in a book is in the Tom Wolfe book, The Right Stuff. where he's got the astronauts sitting upside down in the capsule waiting for the blast off. And everybody's wondering what he's thinking. And all attention's focused on this guy. And they say what he's thinking is, I don't Speaker 2 (20:10) want Speaker 1 (20:10) to screw the pooch, man. Just don't let me fuck up. Dude, I just read this Speaker 2 (20:14) Tom Wolfe thing for the book I'm researching right now. He wrote this weird sort of very new journalism piece about these two aircraft carrier pilots flying over Vietnam. It's called like Nick and Charlie go jousting or something. It's Speaker 1 (20:27) so incredible. I think I've heard of it. I mean, I'm sort of a Tom Wolfe fanatic. It's weird that I've never read it. It must have been run in some like New York magazine. Yeah, some weird Speaker 2 (20:36) magazine that you never heard of. And there's some Speaker 1 (20:38) reason probably why he didn't anthologize it. I Speaker 2 (20:40) know, but it Speaker 1 (20:41) was really Speaker 2 (20:41) good. It was like exactly what I needed. But did you watch the Man in Full TV show? I watched part of it. Speaker 1 (20:46) Wow, that's so Speaker 2 (20:47) mad. Yeah. Speaker 1 (20:48) I Speaker 2 (20:48) was so mad. Yeah. Speaker 1 (20:50) Well, it's really hard because... The better the book is usually the worse the movie is going to be because so much of what makes a book good is the voice. Yeah. And there's no way to get the voice. So they try to other ways to get the voice and they can't figure out what's missing. It's why there's never been a good movie of