1174: Brad Meltzer | The Life-Changing Magic of Empathy and Kindness

1174: Brad Meltzer | The Life-Changing Magic of Empathy and Kindness

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Jordan Harbinger: Coming up next on The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Brad Meltzer: [00:00:00] You are the magician now to do actual magic takes you. You are the one that matters. It takes time and intentionality. Things don't just appear and disappear by themselves. You are the magician. That's it. You are the one abracadabra. That's it. That's what we put at the end of the book.

Jordan Harbinger: Welcome to the show, I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional drug trafficker, arms dealer, former cult member, or Russian chess grandmaster.

And hey, if you're new to the show. Or you wanna tell your friends about the show? I suggest our episode Starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and Geopolitics, [00:01:00] disinformation, China, North Korea, crime, and Cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app To get started today on the show, my friend Brad Meltzer, one of the best selling authors anywhere. He also creates TV shows, political thrillers, legal thrillers, conspiracy fiction that many of us know and love. He's also a comic book writer for both DC and Marvel, a children's book author, and perhaps most importantly, possibly my baldest friend.

Our conversation here is really informal, uh, especially compared to some of my more traditional interviews. Owing to preexisting rapport between him and I, of course we talk creativity, careers, magic, parenting, empathy. Even the JFK assassination, I couldn't resist something he's done a lot of very deep research on in the very recent past.

There's something here for everyone. I think Brad is a great conversationalist, to say the least, and I think you'll agree. Here we go with Brad Meltzer.

So this has been a long time coming man. We've been friends for a minute here [00:02:00] and I'll say interviews like this are both very easy and very difficult to prep because I have to spend all this time figuring out what the audience cares about and how to separate kind of like my personal experience with somebody, which is not always easy, you know?

And especially if you read a bunch of stuff from somebody, you're like, okay, I can't just ask questions that are on page 132 of this one book that the audience hasn't read. 'cause it's just gonna be two in the weeds. So it's, it's both easy 'cause it flows out and then you'd spend the rest of the prep time removing things that aren't gonna make any sense without context.

Brad Meltzer: Basically, you're screwed, is what you're saying. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm gonna squander most of the opportunity not even scratching the surface of your written work, because I love the commencement speech that you gave at our alma mater here, the University of Michigan. And I'd love to talk about that. It became your book Make Magic, which will link in the show notes.

Now your publicist is happy and we can talk about whatever we want. So how did this happen? Tom Brady obviously was too expensive. What else? The truth

Brad Meltzer: was, is you gotta get nominated for it. Okay. And I went to Michigan. You went to Michigan, right? We, and they asked me to do it. And when I went to go do it, there are 70,000 people in the stadium.

I'm focused on [00:03:00] one 'cause my son was graduating that day and he was in the 14th row and I could see him. And when I told him that I was gonna be the speaker at Michigan for his commencement, he was like, why'd they pick you? He said, Tom Brady. Why didn't they get him? Yeah. And then he said, I'll never forget, he said, it's like a 13th seed winning March Madness.

Crosstalk: Mm, very. And I was

Brad Meltzer: like, you know what? Deep cut. I'm proud to be the 13th seed on behalf of all of those who are from the 13th seed. It was just the kind of speech of a lifetime. You gotta get nominated to do it. And I got nominated and it was one of those life changing things. 'cause when I was done giving it, all I cared about again was one review, which was my kid.

And he loved it. To my surprise. 'cause nothing I really do. Usually he reads my books and I'll be like, dad, this one's actually good. And I'm like, actually, what about the rest? That's what you, yeah, well what's wrong with the rest? But all these people started asking me for the content of the speech. They were like, give me the text of that speech.

They tracked down my sister, who has an unlisted phone number and they found her number and said, I, I was in a stadium today. I saw your brother. You don't know me, but I want the text of that speech. 'cause it [00:04:00] inspired me so much. And I've been doing this, you know, 25 years. No one's ever asked me for the text of anything I've ever said.

Wow. And I think the Michigan, you know, Legion and, and just, you know, people I think are starving for inspiration right now. And so that was a bit of magic for

Jordan Harbinger: me. Your son probably thought, okay, this is gonna be good because he might embarrass himself and it'll be worth it. Like I'm kind of trying to get hundred percent his mindset being there with his friends.

Yeah,

Brad Meltzer: him and his friends got there early and I think they literally like either he's gonna fail and we're gonna have the best like, yeah, look at dad be a dope or, and I think he was hoping for it to be great. And you know, the speech was about magic and obviously real magic doesn't exist, but there are things we can't explain.

And when you talk to magicians, there are only four types of magic tricks. You put aside illusions. In escapes, there's only four types of tricks. One, you make something appear, two, you make something disappear. Three is you take two things, you make 'em switch places. And the fourth magic trick is take one thing and you turn it into something else.

The hardest trick of all transformation, and I went through each one and we can talk [00:05:00] about, you know, what you make appear and what you make disappear. Sure. It was the third magic trick. That I said, you know, I was making two things switch places. And I said, here, let's talk about empathy, because that's what empathy is, right?

It's switching places with someone else and putting yourself in their shoes. I see. And I, I told this story that I've never told before, Jordan. Even my wife was like, I never heard that story. And it was that when I was 13 years old, my dad lost his job, lost everything, and we had nothing left. He had no money and we had to move in with my grandparents in Florida.

So we moved to Florida just 'cause it was a free place to live. He had $1,200 to his name, couldn't even afford the security deposit. And it was six of us, my mom, my dad, my sister, myself, and my two grandparents in a one bedroom apartment. Oh man. And it was a disaster. It was sleeping on the floor, it was bad.

And not just for like a, a weekend or a week, it was a months. And everyone in the building was trying to get us evicted because they're like, you can't have six people in a one bedroom apartment. And everyone was trying to get us kicked out. And this one neighbor across the hall from my grandmother, she [00:06:00] saw what was happening to us and she said, here's what we're gonna do.

I'm gonna move out for a couple months. You're gonna take my apartment so your family can have some peace so we won't be evicted. It was the nicest thing to this day anyone's ever done for me and my family. Yeah. And I remember her name as Mercy, but as a kid I always heard it as mercy. And make no mistake, mercy and empathy is what she was showing us.

And today, cruelty and venom and harshly judging those we disagree with has become sport in our culture. Yeah. But cruelty and venom aren't signs of strength. They're signs of weakness and petty insecurity. What takes strength is being kind and showing empathy. And I said those words as part of the speech and you, you've done enough talking, you know, when like a good joke your hope is gonna hit, or when you think they're gonna laugh.

Mm-hmm. In an audience. I didn't know it was a brand new story, never told it before. And the audience just reacted in a way that 70,000 people, I felt that energy coming off them. And I was like, what was that? And I think as a culture, we're just starving. For kindness right now, we're starving for [00:07:00] empathy and it, and I don't say that proudly, I say it's sad to me and I think make magic as a concept.

You know, the book is all the magic tricks and it's just a book of inspiration. You can just put on your desk and you need it. It's like $10. I mean, it's just a beautiful little book. And we said, I. We wanna give people a little bit of magic and, and teach them how to be magicians these days.

Jordan Harbinger: Why do you think people are so starving for kindness?

I mean, obviously because of the lack of kindness, but what, this might be just too far out of field, but what do you think has caused that? Because I remember when I was younger, people being, and this could just be, you know, one of those cognitive biases of, of time passing, but I do remember people being nicer.

Maybe September 11th helped with that or something, but it was like the year 2000 through the year 2010 or 15 or so, people were just nicer. I lived in New York too. It's not exactly known for people being super friendly and I thought I had that experience.

Brad Meltzer: No, a hundred percent. Listen, when, when you were, I remember I was in DC for nine 11.

I remember if you saw anybody wearing a uniform, and I'm not talking about just soldiers, but I'm talking about [00:08:00] the fire department or police officer, you'd be like, thank you ma'am. Mm-hmm. Thank you, sir. You'd thank people, shake their hands and not that we need a disaster to be kind. We certainly were in that.

I think what's happened is. I don't wanna blame everything on social media. I mean, some of it is obviously, you know, yeah. You can look around and just see when leaders are just screaming at you every day. Social media is designed for one thing. It's designed to make us celebrate it, or at least the loudest people.

So people who write in all caps and triple explanation points, their stuff rises to the top right. I am tired of people writing in all caps and triple exclamation points. The most sophisticated and smartest people I know are those who know. There's always more to learn. But I think what social media does is it, it allows people to give opinions really quickly.

We become a culture of opinion, and we've lost the ability to actually take action. We think that like, you know, I retweeted something, I've solved the problem. You haven't done anything. You haven't done anything. And I think what we've lost in that social media vacuum is that ability just to actually realize that everyone out there, even that miserable person who writes that, you know, on my social [00:09:00] media, every once in a while there'll be someone who will just be like, write some snarky comment to me.

Crosstalk: Mm-hmm.

Brad Meltzer: And I'll always write them back privately, or they'll write to me as an email and say, I hated that book, or, I love this book, but I hated this one. Or whatever they write. I always write back to 'em and say, listen, thank you for reading the book. Sorry you didn't like it, but appreciate you giving a chance.

And Jordan, 99% of people will write me back immediately and go, I'm so sorry. I didn't even realize you were a person. And I've seen that so many times. I think that's the answer to your question is we've stopped treating each other as people. And so when we treat, you know, social media, we've treated as if we're communicating with people.

But social media is just, as someone said, it's so brilliant, is just like the wall in a stall, in a bathroom stall, writing on the wall, in the bathroom stall, that you don't put great thoughts up there. You just put out like whatever quick garbage you can put out. If you would give credence to something written on the wall in the stall, you're a fool.

Right? And why give credence to what you see online? But we

Jordan Harbinger: do. And I think it's just messed us up. I think you're right. I'm curious how writing a speech for a [00:10:00] specific audience like graduates differs from your other writing projects. 'cause you write kids books, historical books, you know, the fiction stuff.

But writing a speech is a totally different thing. I, I wonder if it's intimidating or if you're just chomping at the bit for something different.

Brad Meltzer: The first speech I ever wrote actually was, uh, for this guy who hired me at AmeriCorps America's National Service program, like Peace Corps for the United States.

It was this guy, Eli Siegel brought me in and he wanted, the first speech he ever gave me was the University of Michigan. He was given the commencement address at the law school. Oh. And I wrote my heart out and, you know, put everything into it. And I eventually got asked to do the commencement address at the law school too.

And I went back and read the speech. 'cause I was like, what did I do when I was 24 years old? Like, what did I write then first, where I am now? At the very end of the speech, it said this, it said one day one of you will be up here giving that speech and whoever that lucky person is, you'll be just that lucky.

And I was like, [00:11:00] oh crap, I'm the person. I was like speaking to myself 20 years later. That's pretty cool. Which was crazy. And, and then I got to write, my second speech was to write for President Clinton when he took office that wanted to know about AmeriCorps. And so we had to write a speech for the White House.

They asked you for the speech. And I wrote my heart into that speech. I like researched old speeches, looked at Teddy Roosevelt and president's like Lincoln that I admire. And when you write for the president, you throw yourself into it. And back then to really date myself, the president's speech would come by a fax the next morning.

It would fax you all of his language. And I raced in like seven in the morning. 'cause I knew that's when they came to see what words that I wrote came out of the president's mouth. Oh wow. And Jordan, not a single word or verb or adjective was the same. Like they had trashed the whole thing. But to answer your question for my speeches, I think they're no different than when I write my books.

They're just more personal. When I'm writing myself to you, there's a part of the speech that I wrote, a story that I never get to tell, and this is for the magistrate. It's about [00:12:00] making stuff disappear. And I was like, I, I struggle with that. I was like, what do I make disappear everyone? Like, make your fear disappear, make these other, and I didn't, I couldn't think of anything and my wife finally said, stop trying to write a good speech and this will reveal my process more than anything.

And she said, just write your best advice for your kid. Yeah, nice. And I was like, oh, that's great advice. So I went and told this story, is that I said, this is true. When I was in high school, I used to work scooping ice cream at a Haagen-Dazs in the mall. That's such a high school job too. So everyone, anyone scoops ice cream, right?

Yeah. And Haagen-Dazs in particular, like 50 people were like, I worked at Haagen-Dazs. Yeah. This one woman comes up and starts snapping her fingers at me. She's screaming at me. She says, I want you to serve me right now. Ah. I said, ma'am, I'll be right with you. I'm helping another customer. She goes, no, you need to serve me now.

I said to her, ma'am, I'm not serving you. Take your business elsewhere. Yeah, she, I'll never forget, she screamed in my face, you're gonna be working at this miserable ice cream store for the rest of your miserable life. And I said to her very calmly, I said, ma'am, if I am working here for the rest of my miserable life, you're still [00:13:00] never getting any ice cream.

Right? And I used to laugh at that story being like, that woman never bothered me. But because of my wife, I had to admit and realize myself. It totally bothered me. Of course. Yeah. That woman haunt. I carry that woman with me for 20 years because my dad struggled financially. And I thought, I'm gonna have that life.

I'm gonna struggle too. I told that story. I said, don't make your fear disappear. Use your fear. Harness it. That woman was like rocket fuel to me. She drove me. She, you know, fueled me. I said, don't vanquish your critics. Prove them wrong. It wasn't me going, oh, how do I write a speech for us writing a book? I was just like, that's just the best advice I have for my kid is like, vanquish your critics and prove them wrong.

Jordan Harbinger: You're right. Proving somebody wrong requires you to really go through all the steps to actually achieve something, as long as it's something you actually wanna do. I suppose you could get caught in that trap too, but it seems like a good way to harness this because you're right, that woman lived rent free in your head for quite a while.

She's probably been dead for decades. I mean, anybody that miserable doesn't have a, it

Brad Meltzer: still bothered me. Yeah. The thing is, if you look [00:14:00] at the social science behind it, when it comes to people telling you and criticizing you. Mm-hmm. Telling you you can't do it, this is what the social science says. 'cause I looked it up.

I was like, I wanna know if it's just my experience or something bigger. And here's what social science says. If someone tells you you're not good at something, as long as you don't think, as long as they're not someone you respect. It will actually be better for you. 'cause you will try to prove them wrong.

If it's a mentor or someone you believe in and they say you're not good at it, it crushes you. Right. It's why people on a football team, like the Michigan football team, right? The moment everyone says that team count 'em out. Oh my gosh. That's why we win. Yeah. Because you're like, this it, let's go. Mm-hmm.

And that's what that woman was. She was that woman who, I didn't respect her. I didn't know her, I didn't think anything of her. So when she told me no, it just became the thing that lifted me up. And I think to me, the social science behind this stuff is what we have to look at. Like for empathy as an example, I looked up the social science behind empathy.

You know, we were talking about how do you have more empathy? Here's the secret, empathy is malleable. So if you wanna have more empathy, you just have to [00:15:00] wanna have more empathy. And I know it sounds crazy, but think of your freshman year of college. It's when you made the most amount of friends. Why?

Because you were open to making the most amount of friends. You decided I'm gonna do it. The problem is what we do right now is when we see bad news or we see something that bothers us on our feet, we shut down. The news is so bad we shut down. Oh, that's another bad thing on my feet. I'm gonna shut it down.

Don't shut down. If you think to yourself, I want to actually be helpful. I want to actually be out there for other people, people will come into your life. It is just the social science of it. It's amazing.

Jordan Harbinger: I've thought about this a lot because when you're in college, you really take that for granted. I remember sitting in my dorm in South Quad in University of Michigan, and the first week or so you'll get a knock on your door every 10 minutes because all these people who get how to be social and popular are knocking on every door of the entire dorm, maybe even all the dorms, and they're introducing themselves to everyone, and they're like, Hey, my name's Jenny.

I'm on the swim team. I grew up in Ohio. And you're just like, okay, cool. And then [00:16:00] you see that person for four years and you're like, I know that person. And they probably have 10,000 friends. And I just remember thinking, I should have done that, but I was just too shy and too lazy. And I remember going to eat and guys would be like, Hey, I'm in 4 26.

Why don't you stop by sometime? And if you did, you became friends with them for like four straight years or for the rest of your life. And if you didn't, you just never talk to them again. It's one of those opportunities that's so artificial in our lives and so fleeting. So anybody who's in a position to take advantage of that, I, I really think you really should.

And that, and there's all kinds of people listening to this who are like, yep, didn't do that. What do I do now? And I, I'll, I've got some questions about that that I think we can get to later. But you're right, these sort of pivotal moments in our lives, we almost don't recognize them until it's too late, unfortunately.

Brad Meltzer: Yeah. And listen, those pivotal moments are, you know, I didn't even think we were gonna go into it, but like the first magic trick in the book is what you make appear. And this is exactly what you just said. You have to make the best version of you appear. We're all chameleons. We act one way with our parents.

We act one way with our friends. But there's those people that you're [00:17:00] just your pure, honest, true self with those people who love you, no matter what you say, who you are, they got you. And you gotta surround yourself with those people. But the way to do that, it's amazing, is you have to listen and find those people who love you for your true self.

Mm-hmm. And I could tell you when, when I started writing my first book, got 24 rejection letters. There were only 20 publishers, and I got 24 rejection letters, which means some people wrote me twice to make sure I got the point.

Jordan Harbinger: He, we are not sure if you opened it because we didn't hear from you. So we just wanna make double sure that you're not gonna try to We sent a second one.

Yeah. That's funny. But

Brad Meltzer: my girlfriend at the time, she was like, yeah, you can do this. You're gonna, you're a writer, you're gonna write another book. She didn't laugh, right? She didn't say, you can't do it. She said, you can. And that's why I married her, by the way. But there's a, a Michigan Social Scientist, it's called a Reflected Best Self Portrait.

And the idea is that when someone tells you that you can be a great version of yourself, you'll become that version [00:18:00] of yourself. You'll literally see the best version. And you think of it with someone who is the first person who told you you were good at something. That first person who like you, lock on that.

Those people who see you in that South quad dorm, when they come and say like, Hey, I'm on the swim team. Nice to meet you. That kindness they're seeing, they're radiating something at you that you do not forget. So I wasn't one of those people who had, you know, was going around shaking hands with everyone.

I was like, that's not my style. But boy, when I got it from a teacher or from that girlfriend, I was like, I want to be that person they see me as. Yeah, wow. And you gotta make that

Jordan Harbinger: version of you appear. That's really good. It also, it seems like one of the best things you can do for somebody else is reflect their best version of them onto them.

Not just accept it for yourself, but if you see somebody who maybe doesn't believe they can do something or live a certain type of life. There's a couple of people I know that are trying to move away from Russia where there's no opportunity and they're like, it's just too hard, you know? It's just too hard.

I don't know any other languages and I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I have my family here. And I've just said, when I was your age, I packed up and [00:19:00] moved to this place and I learned Spanish or whatever. And they're like, wow. And one of them is, is moving. And I just, one of the things that he said was, well, if other people can do it, and you told me that you did it.

I, I feel like maybe it's possible.

Brad Meltzer: That's it. And listen, you're, you're being, you know, every great magician has an assistant, right? But the key is, is like you need to be that assistant for your friends when they wanna be the magician. You have to reflect that to other people. You can't just be the one taking it from everyone.

And I love the fact that, like my college roommate who wanted to be a cartoonist, I was always, I wasn't 'cause I was a good person, but I was like, you're gonna be a cartoonist. 'cause why? 'cause we was my best friend there. The whole reason I became a writer is, um, my ninth grade English teacher is a woman named Sheila Spicer.

She was this amazing black woman who loved Prince and would play Prince all the time for us English class. But what she said to me, she changed my life with three words. She said, you can write. And I was like, well, everyone can write. And she said, no, no. You know what you're doing. She had to put me in an honors class.

I had some conflict. She said, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna sit in the corner for the entire year, ignore everything I do on the [00:20:00] blackboard, ignore everything, homework assignment I give, you're gonna do the honors work. And thank me later and a decade later, my very first book was published and I went to her classroom with it.

I knocked on the door. She said, can I help you? I said, my name is Brad Meltzer. I wrote this book and it's for you. And she starts crying. And I said, why are you crying? And she said, because I was gonna retire this year. She said, 'cause I didn't think I was having an impact anymore. Wow. And I said, are you kidding me?

I said, you have 30 students. We have one teacher. But that woman saw that thing in me again. I carried that around with me for a decade. 'cause that's why I was a writer. Like, here's the first person who said, you can do this. Yeah. And man, I'll never forget that. So when I see people who are doing their thing, I'm like, I was just talking to 'em about writing.

And I said, they said they got three rejection letters last week. I said, I don't care. I got 24. Keep going. Those are easy words for me. Yeah. But I hope that it can carry that in it, you know? I see 'em, man.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wow. She must have been really, really happy and also way to ruin that class. For sure. [00:21:00]

Brad Meltzer: Yeah, a hundred percent was they were like done one awesome class.

We're doing nothing today.

Jordan Harbinger: So did she end up retiring? I feel like you ruined her. Her early retirement. So

Brad Meltzer: she lasted 13 years after I went back to thank her. Wow. So I highly encourage anyone listening, lemme tell you this, think of the person who told you you were good at something for the first time.

Think of someone who like raised you up after you're done listening to this podcast, go thank them. You will not believe what comes from it. You will not believe. So I went back, she lasted 13 years after I went to say thank you to her. And they told me, I got a phone call that says she's finally retiring.

And I was like, okay, well, they said, you wanna surprise her? I said, absolutely. Yeah. The woman changed my life. I'm gonna be at her surprise party, her retirement party. So I go to the thing, it's a Friday night, it's late in the day. All she's gotta do is accept the little crystal award they give her. Say, I hated half of you, I love half of you.

And have a nice life. Right? Like that's all she's gotta do. And she doesn't know I'm there. I'm literally hiding behind a pillar so she can't see me. She gets up in front of everyone on this Friday afternoon and says, listen, for [00:22:00] those of you who have said that kids have changed, that teaching is harder.

That it's much harder than it used to be. It's not them, it's you. You're giving up. Do not give up on these kids. Do not give up on these kids. She gives a rallying cry like the end of Braveheart. Like, I mean, it was just like a Rocky movie. It was cra. I was like, I wanted to pull a sword and sign up to be a teacher right there.

And I'm like, right. And I was so nervous. 'cause I'm like, what if I go into this moment and she's not as good as I remember Right? Then I risk the whole memory. She was better than I ever remembered. And, and she, 13 years later, after my thank you, she finally retired. She still gets a free book. Every book I publish, she gets for free.

I send it to her house. She must

Jordan Harbinger: love that. That must be like Christmas unwrapping, like something like this that you told the kid could write Now. I hope so. Now, Brad, Mel, hope she

Brad Meltzer: surprised me at one event. They didn't tell me she was there and she, one of my early events, they were like, I was telling them Ms.

They were like, talk about Ms. Spicer. And I was like, how do you even know about Ms. Spicer? So I tell the story and they're like, well, what if she's here right now? And I went like, and I literally cursed into the microphone. I felt really bad. And she came out and she ran and hugged me and it was like, [00:23:00] it was the greatest book Signing of all time.

Yeah. Is like, there's that person from ninth grade. The very first person who ever told me I can write, and you know, again, go say thank you. You will not believe what comes from it. I promise you that. And by the way, if they're dead, the person who inspired you find their kid. Because when my parents died, I can tell you that people would call me and tell me, Hey, I remember this about your dad.

And on those days, I get the greatest thing that I ever will get that year, which is a new story about my dead parents. And that's a gift. So don't let that hold you back.

Jordan Harbinger: Alright folks, time to support our sponsor. So my producer Gabriel can feed his crippling heroin addiction. We'll be right back.

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Jordan Harbinger: If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators every [00:26:00] single week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like, and trust. I'm teaching you how to build the same thing for yourself. I know you're not booking for a podcast probably, but look, this course is about improving your relationship skills as a whole, building a circle around you that can help you in your career.

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Alright, now back to Brad Meltzer. It is funny on my to-do list is calling my middle school foreign language teacher who was also the football coach. He taught French, which I didn't love, but I started to realize languages were [00:27:00] something I could maybe do and then, and he taught Spanish and I was not good at either of them, but I was good at football, which is shocking to most people, I'm sure.

But I was the strongest kid in middle school. Which is hilarious to think about. Now, by

Brad Meltzer: the way, the strongest kid in middle school, you've just conjured for everyone listening has, that's like saying the kid who used to drive their bike over like a little bike ramp to jump something, right? Like there's always the most dangerous kid.

There's the craziest kid. Yeah. There's the strongest kid. Like those are iconic moments. Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: The strongest kid in middle school. And then you get to high school and you realize that it's not even close. 'cause everybody grew foot, right? 'cause the summer there're grown

Brad Meltzer: men there. Yes.

Jordan Harbinger: There are those full grown men there.

So yeah. And I remember he was our football coach, so he spoke really frankly, even when we were in class and he said something like, you know what, you're kind of dumb, but you're not stupid. Because I was always doing dumb things, you know, like dumb kid things. And you go, you know, that was dumb, but you're not stupid.

And remember being like, oh, because you know, in middle school you don't really know if you're dumb or stupid or smart or anything. Like you don't really necessarily know anything about who you are at that [00:28:00] point. I also remember when I left middle school, we graduated in eighth grade and we're walking out the door on the last day and all the teachers are saying goodbye.

And you're, they're shaking your hand. I was like, peak doing dumb shit at this point in my life. Like, I'm gonna do this and hang out with the, I didn't shoplift, but like my friends were doing that, or like they were doing vandalism and I didn't do that stuff, but I did other dumb stuff, especially in school, like order pizza for everyone from a payphone and like just getting in trouble with like big time stuff.

And I remember he looked at me very concerned and he goes, take care of yourself, man. And I was like, the concern in his voice was so alarming. But by the

Brad Meltzer: way, that is the, that's the parental equivalent of like, I'm not mad, I'm disappointed. Yes. Like that is a much worse weapon. Like I remember my buddy Howie Robinson made wrist in peace.

We took his car for a joy ride in high school. We were like, whatever. He's asleep every, it was the first party someone threw where everyone was drinking and so everyone was passed out. So the people who hadn't weren't drunk at the time, the kid that was the driver, I came up with a great idea [00:29:00] that said, let's go do donuts in the mall parking lot.

I don't know why that was a good idea. Yeah. But that seemed like a good idea. As we're racing around the mall, like we're going full speed. I'm like, we're not gonna make this turn. It's rain, pouring rain. Oh God. And I'm like, we're not gonna make this upcoming term. We're going too fast. And Howie had a, um, he was the first one that had, I'll never forget a digital dashboard, like the digital speedometer, which is so obvious now, like from back to the future.

Yeah. It looked like back to the Future. And so it, so it always read zero, so you couldn't tell how fast you were going. But I could tell, I'm like, we're going too fast for this turn. And like my friend Doug was driving, he's like, no, we're fine. I'm like, we're going too fast. And this kid's Smitty, 'cause every group needs a Smitty.

Leans forward, it's three o'clock in the morning, goes take it. The car man. As we go around the turn the wheels slide, it just locks on on the water and we just start like astro planing and we hit the curb. We smash the curb, we get out of the car. We start now heading to a ditch that is a canal. I'm like, we're gonna go in this canal and die.

And [00:30:00] the car stops right before the canal. We get out, we're like, okay, the car's fine. It just has a little dent. We're okay. No way. Okay, so now we repair the broke, the flat tires that are in the front. Sure. Because the tire's blue and we just think we're gonna tell everyone that they bumped into the car and that's it.

And the car comes back and there's $2,000 worth of damage. And how his mom says, tell me the real truth of what happened. No one backed into that car. The whole chassis of the car broke, shattered. The car was six inches lower than you even realized, right? You dummies got into like a clown car. And the point of the story is, I go to my father and now I need money.

'cause we can't, we gotta pay for this. We have to take responsibility. I said, dad, I, I don't have $500, the divided between the four of us. And my dad said to me, I'll never forget. It's like your coach said. I did far dumber things when I was your age. Just don't tell your mother. Just, and that was it. Tell your mother and that was it.

Great was, and if, if he would've screamed at me, I would've been like, whatever old man. But the fact he was just like, you're not stupid, but you're dumb. Like, man, that hit me right in the chest.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But [00:31:00] I listened actually to, uh, to this guy. And it's funny 'cause I, I never really thought about any of that stuff until I was older.

Now I'm 45, right? So this is like more than 30 years ago kind of stuff, which is why I'm sure he is retired now. But, uh, yeah, he was in pretty good shape as a football coach back then. He was an old guy to us, but he was probably like 35. Oh, he's younger than you are now. Definitely guaranteed

Brad Meltzer: younger than you are now.

A

Jordan Harbinger: hundred percent. He was probably, or you might have even not, not even been 35 at that point, right? Right. Like probably he was probably like 27 years old. And you were like, old man. I was like, this guy has whiskers. I mean, come on people. Yeah. It's That's so funny. It's so funny. Yeah. And now that I think about it, none of those male teachers were married and stuff.

They were probably too young. They were probably too young.

Brad Meltzer: Yeah. No, we had, we had a teacher who was like, he was 22, he graduated from UNCI remember. And I think he turned 23 when he was with us. Even we knew, we were like, you're a little young, aren't you? You know that, but anything above that is old. Yeah.

It's

Jordan Harbinger: a quick dividing line. Yeah. It's funny. So I, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call my middle [00:32:00] school, which still exists. Gotta call them. You've gotta track 'em down. Yeah. I think it'd be a lot of fun. It'd be a hell of a lot of fun. Tell me about this Hall of Mirrors analogy where you see all versions of yourself.

I love this in the book.

Brad Meltzer: Yeah. This is the fourth magic trick. So make magic the fourth ma. So you, you make yourself appear is is the best version of yourself. Make what you make. Disappear is your fear. You harness your fear. The third magic trick is you, you switch place and find empathy. But the fourth magic trick is, uh, taking one thing and turn it into something else, which is transformation.

The hardest one. And to me, when I was little growing up, I loved the hall of mirrors. Some people love the hall of mirrors 'cause like they love seeing kids like smack into the mirror. I loved it because I had hair back then and it was glorious first of all. But also I loved that in the hall of mirrors.

You know, you can like turn your head just slightly and all those versions of you would appear. I thought that was just the coolest thing ever. And to me what we do, especially as you get older, is you start seeing the world like you're always right about things. And when you do that, then the world becomes [00:33:00] hard and brittle and it gets static.

What's far more important is to always be changing, always be evolving. Don't write in pen, write in pencil, and be unafraid to use the eraser again. The smartest people in the room are the ones who know. There's always more to learn. I. And for me, I think that the only immutable fact is you should never be immutable.

That's the key. And as long as you're doing that, like right now, you know, when you graduate college, well think about when you were in South Quad those days, those early college days, you are open to the whole world. But as we get older, we just don't do that and things calcify. And so I think the way to truly transform is to never stop transforming.

Never think you know it all. Never think you have all the answers. You gotta always see yourself in the hall of mirrors. Endless possibilities,

Jordan Harbinger: man. You're the king of metaphors, dude. You should consider being a writer. But that metaphor is really good. I I, I love that. I mean, there's so much, I, maybe I'm going through a midlife crisis or something, because all this stuff seems to really hit, and I don't know, [00:34:00] maybe when you hear this from a commencement speech in college, you're like, okay, fine.

But then when you're 45, you're like, oh my gosh, it hits hard. A lot of people write to me. In fact, somebody just wrote in earlier this morning and said something along the lines of, I worked so hard during my school years to get into college. Then I worked so hard in college to get a good job. Then I worked a ton to get solid in my career.

Now, I'm, I forget how old this guy was, it was like 30 or 35. Some people at write in with very similar things, or 40 whatever, and they feel like they haven't really lived their life for themselves in many ways. Right. They were like, I'm got, I didn't party and I didn't go after girls and I didn't go do the things that I wanted to do 'cause I needed to get all these other things done.

And they're kind of going through, that's midlife crisis, man. That's it. It's a midlife crisis. Yeah.

Brad Meltzer: That's set up. You just painted of, you know, I was in high school and if I work here, I'll get a good college. If I work in college, I get a good job. I get a good job for our lives. For so much of our lives.

We think that life is an escalator, right? You're gonna do that thing and then you're gonna move up the escalator and get a little higher and then you drew up and get a little higher, get a better [00:35:00] job, get, you know, go to college, get a good this, get the good house, get the good thing. It's all bullshit.

Life is not an escalator. Life is a trapeze and sometimes you have to leap. It's not a meritocracy just because you do those things, that may be the path to get you into a good college. That may be the path to get you your first job. But after you do that, there is no escalator anymore. The escalator ISS gone.

I believe this to my core. This is the advice I give to my son. It's what's in make magic. It's what the whole thing is, is that you are the magician now to do actual magic takes you. You are the one that matters. It takes time and intentionality. Things don't just appear and disappear by themselves doing magic, and this is the important part to remember is not even something you do for yourself.

It's a gift you give other people. If I can give you one gift to that person who wrote in, you are the magician. That's it. You are the one. Abracadabra. That's it. That's what we put at the end of the book. And to me, the only people who see magic are the ones who look for it. If you keep just looking for like the [00:36:00] new job or the new pellet or the new thing, that's not happiness, that's not joy.

That's if the sentence starts, if I just got XI will be happy. That's not happiness. That is not happiness in any way. That's just another thing you're gonna try to acquire. What the happiness is, is finding that best version of you. What the happiness is, is is putting your fears away and putting your critics away.

What's happiness is showing some kindness and empathy. What's happiness is evolving and moving forward and always changing. That's all you gotta achieve, and that's the advice I give my son. It's the advice I give him because it's the advice I need. I need.

Jordan Harbinger: There's something to this, right, because. The acquisition of things and experiences is not gonna make you happy.

I mean, you're, most people are constantly chasing happiness, but you're right, it's more about, I wish I could tell these guys in real time, if you're 31 or 35, or however old this person was, and you have a good job and you've achieved a bunch of stuff, and the, the thing you're missing out on is having lived your youth, which you still have, by the way, if you're 31, 35, whatever, how old this guy was, you have [00:37:00] already proved most of your critics wrong by that point, right?

Like all the teachers that thought like, oh, this guy, they're wrong because you have a good job and you have a good career. All those people who thought, oh, you weren't gonna be able to make anything of yourself. All these people who thought you weren't gonna make it this far, I mean, they're all wrong.

It's actually perfect positioning. At age 45, I'm starting to think that you have this feeling that you didn't do enough in your youth. You probably have that feeling no matter what, unless maybe there's some people that have only lived their whole lives for themselves, where they're like 45 no kids.

They live 20 years abroad, bumming around Southeast Asia. But then they, they have other regrets, like the fact that they have no money and no home and uh, you know, their circle of friends is sort of ever changing and they've got no, no place that's really home for them. I mean, that maybe those people have other regrets at that point, I'm not sure.

But I think it's just something that happens when you're this age. This is totally off your beat, but why do you think this happens to people at age 40, 35, 40, whatever it is? What is going on in our lives where this happens?

Brad Meltzer: I think it's just the life cycle, right? The, I had this fascinating conversation with the dean [00:38:00] of, uh, of the graduate school.

'cause I was asking a similar question to them and they said, think of your high school reunion. Think of your college reunion, whatever. They said, all reunions, this is what we see. 'cause I have to manage these reunions every year, the five and 10 year reunion. Everyone's there to impress everybody else.

Look what I got. Here's my hot wife, here's my hot husband, here's a picture of our house. Like here's the stuff we got. And then they say at the 20 and the 25 year reunion, people have been through some crap, right? You don't get to your 25 year reunion without like having some major loss in your life, whatever it might be.

It may be a parent's sick, it may be a parent's dead, but you've been through some stuff and then you get to like the 35, 40 year reunion and you're like, you know what? I'm chill now. 'cause I realized all of that stuff I was worried about in those previous unions doesn't matter. And he said at the 50 year reunion, they're just happy to be there 'cause so few people are there.

And I was like, this dean just dropped some knowledge on me. I firmly believe to my core that in life you make the same mistakes over and [00:39:00] over and it's like whatever you believe in God, Buddha, all whatever you believe in is just checking to see are you ever gonna learn from it? You're gonna make the same mistakes over and over in life.

And it's, we're just waiting to see do you learn from it? And I think for a while, we get caught up in the, you know, again, we're gonna acquire, acquire, acquire, and then we, you know, say like, no, I, I'm not fulfilled with that, so it must be that I haven't acquired enough. And then you finally get to the point where you're like, it doesn't matter.

That's not what happiness is. And I think we have to get to that point as a culture where we stop looking. You know? And I, I think in many ways, like you and I were talking offline about JFK. Like JFK was like the first celebrity president, and every president's famous. But JFK was the first one who like had the beautiful wife and the beautiful life and the multiple houses.

And he was rich and he was famous in that Hollywood famous way. And I think as a culture, the way we've gone since the sixties is we've been trying to kind of like cosplay. That role. And for some people it's like the Reagans, for some [00:40:00] people it's the Obamas. For some people it's the Trumps, right? It's like that famous thing.

But they're all just cosplaying. JFK. And the reason is 'cause Camelot and that perfect life, it's not real. It's totally shiny on the outside, but it's not at all real. It's fake inside. It's a sign of maturity to finally realize what really matters, and it's never the thing, right? It's never the thing ever.

I remember I spent a lot of time being like, if I can just get this, I'm then i'll, and it never made me happy. What made me happy was like when I was true to myself, when I was honest. If you look at my early interviews, I'm just like, there's no honest answers. I'm just like trying to hold on to what I got.

Now I'm like, no. I was scared. I was terrified. I didn't know if the book was gonna work. The second book failed. I'm not afraid. I'll show you all the stuff that's bad. My 24 rejection list, I'll hold them all out for you to see. And all those stories I've told you today are all things I would've never said in the beginning.

'cause I'm like, did they make me look weak? And I realize now that those are the best things that ever happened to me. 'cause they made me who I am.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you ever fear irrelevance, not just as a creator author, but [00:41:00] just as like a, A human? I think that's where the midlife crisis comes from, from so many people.

Right? They think like, oh my gosh, it's all downhill from here. I'm gonna die soon. Even if they're like 30 years old and it's not true. I think a lot of it comes from that fear. Like there's just, there's no round two. No,

Brad Meltzer: that's a profound question. Not to get all nihilist about it, but no one's gonna remember anybody.

Jordan Harbinger: That's for sure. True.

Brad Meltzer: I tell my kids, president Carter just passed away, and they're like, who's President Carter,

Jordan Harbinger: right?

Brad Meltzer: Who's President? Reagan? Like anything that I love. The most famous person when you were a kid will be forgotten. The most famous person in the culture right now will be forgotten. It's like mentioning in a 1920s film star.

It's not that long ago, but they're gone. We sweep it clean and the, and what you have to realize is the only thing to me that matters, and the only relevance that matters is how you make people feel. Your opinion. Doesn't matter what you do matters. Like what your emotion is, is whatever you can feel, whatever you want.

But when you do that kind thing for someone [00:42:00] else, like for Ms. Spicer, her impact on me is forever. And we know like you have an impact on your family and you can have an impact on your friend, but you don't even realize the impact you have on your community. You don't, you, Jordan, don't realize how many people right now, they know your name.

You'll never know their name. You'll never know who they are, but something they heard on your show will absolutely, they're carrying with them. As that good piece of advice, that golden rule of advice that they hold in their heart. You don't know who they are, but they're gonna carry with them for 30 years.

And you have to realize that's a hell of an accomplishment. And that means that everyone out there listening, there's someone that you've affected or that you are kind to, or hopefully are going to be kind to that they're gonna carry that around with them. That is to me, the far bigger legacy than the look what I got.

Jordan Harbinger: I think it's tough 'cause a lot of people are worried about the tangibles instead of the intangibles, but you're right, it's kind of that intangible stuff that makes you feel complete.

Brad Meltzer: I come from a family where money was, I knew you don't answer the door at the end of the month because my sister would say that's when the rent was due [00:43:00] and we didn't have it.

I knew you didn't pick up the phone at the end of the month. 'cause that's when the bill collectors called. It's not intangible. Right. It's not unimportant.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Brad Meltzer: That is important shit that, you know, I remember dealing and worrying about the safety of our family and can we afford that and all those things.

But I can tell you my parents never, ever, to the day they died, ever got out of money issues. Eventually they also realized that like us as their kids and the kindness and the things that they gave us were the most quote unquote valuable things they ever were gonna have in their life. It was never gonna be about the money they would ever, never gonna require.

No matter how much I would give them or help them or do anything, they would blow it. It just wasn't their thing. But eventually, even my dad had to make peace with like, you know what? I raised a kid with the right values, and maybe that's the thing that I should have been realizing was the real gift. I do think though, the core of it is you gotta love yourself for who you are and not be focused on what you don't have.

And I struggle with that myself. Like it took me a long time to love myself just for who I was and not trying to [00:44:00] be someone else. My lesson that I used to do over and over in life was I would always be chasing these things I couldn't have. Right. I'd be like, oh, I want to be in that group that doesn't, oh, they don't want me.

Oh, I'm gonna try and get in there. Or I wanna, I wanna be liked by that well-known person. I'm like, I don't care anymore. Yeah. Like now, when I get invited to all these things, I'm like, I don't want to go. That's a night away from being with my kids. I

Jordan Harbinger: can relate, man. Yeah. People will say, you're leaving money on the table.

And I go, good. I wanna leave money on the table. 'cause that means I'm spending more time playing Legos on the table.

Brad Meltzer: Yeah, dude. I mean, I could, there's a Lego 1966 Lego Batmobile and Lego. Uh. Space thing that's right. Beyond where this camera is. And my son and I building the Lego Death star in my kitchen, like those hours are far more priceless to me than anything.

Yeah. And they cost me $30 a Walmart, not the Lego death star. That sucker was expensive. The

Jordan Harbinger: Lego Death star was not $30 a Walmart. No, that was $380. Lemme

Brad Meltzer: tell by tell you, lemme tell you the best Lego death star story is my son wanted the Lego Death Star when he was really little. And I'm like, yeah, everyone wants a Lego Death star.

You're not [00:45:00] getting a Lego death star. Right. That's like a $300 set. And I said, you save for it and you could buy the Lego Death Star, I'll buy you the smallest set. But you have to save for that. I wanna teach him the value of money. So the kid saves for three years. Mm-hmm. For the Lego Death Star. And he finally gives every birthday, every holiday gift, he just puts it in the bank.

He has this little Darth Vader piggy bank and he puts it in the Darth Vader head. He finally is like, dad, I got the $300 or $400 for the Lego Death Star in the three years that it took him to save for the Lego Death Star. The Lego Death Star actually was retired more. I was gonna say it's a retired product.

You're not, it was retired product. You're

Jordan Harbinger: gonna believe how much this thing costs.

Brad Meltzer: Oh, I know. Because a year later I had, right as it retired, I had to buy it on eBay for a hundred dollars more than the asking price was, which I didn't pass on to my son. That was on me. So now here's the best part is like I'm in Houston, Texas.

I win the auction, so I have to pay for now $400 for it. And I see that the username for the eBay guy is like Houston Lego guy. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, Houston, I'm in Houston and it's like $50 to ship. I'm like, are you by this hotel? He is like, oh, I live right by that [00:46:00] hotel. I'll drop it off at your hotel. So he drops the Lego Death star at my hotel.

I don't realize how big a box it's, it is gigantic. And I have to fly home with a full Lego death star. Yeah. And if I can give you one piece of advice of everything that I've said here today, I highly recommend flying with a Allego death star because everyone is nice to you. TSA is like, oh, write this way.

They're like, put it in first class. Everyone wants to be your friend 'cause you're holding the entire Lego death star in a box that is the size of a small human. Oh my God. So I highly recommend traveling with a Lego death star was the greatest trip I ever took.

Jordan Harbinger: I gotta tell you, I'm looking at this and there's a lot of 'em that are used and some of them are like a thousand dollars.

Brad Meltzer: Oh yeah. No, because now, well now they made a new Lego death star. Right. There's a new version you can buy, but people now of course want the old one because it's gone.

Jordan Harbinger: Lego Death Star 2025. Let's see. Let's see what we got.

Brad Meltzer: You can find the 2025. The 2024 I think it is. Version. You can find that the old one.

Good luck.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This is still like $1,200. $1,200 for the new one? No, the new one is like [00:47:00] $3,400 on some of these websites.

Brad Meltzer: Oh my gosh. When we were building it, the very first version was, it was a Lego death star. So it was perfectly round. There were nothing to brace it. So if you're a kid and you're playing with your Lego death star, you wanna play.

And so we, we have built half of it and he's playing with it even though it's half built. My wife and I are watching a movie 'cause we put in a couple hours building and all of a sudden we hear this scream that is only the sound that a young child makes when his Lego death star top. And we are a crash that is like a thousand Lego pieces, right?

And I went in and my son was hysterical, crying. It was like the real death star, which just was, boom. It was shattered to nothing. And I said to him, we, we can rebuild it. Like, he couldn't even speak. He was just like, no, we, no. And I'm like, listen, we just gotta do it. And I pull this like one hunk, I'm like, let's just start going from here.

And I start going and maybe 10, 15 minutes in, he finally is like, here Dad, here's this piece. And I do believe that moment is the metaphor of any gift I gave my kid is the, here's the disaster. I know it's bad. But [00:48:00] like it's a brick at a time, man. It's the only way out. It's a brick at a time.

Jordan Harbinger: There's a lot of lessons in building Legos with people who are under the age of 10 for sure.

Or under the age of 50 or under the age of 50. Exactly.

Brad Meltzer: Take it.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, unlike Brad Meltzer, I have to purchase my children's love, and I can't do that unless you support the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb. A while back, Jen and I decided to become Airbnb hosts, not just guests, but full on hosts and hosting actually ended up being a really cool, surprisingly meaningful experience.

We actually designed our home in the Silicon Valley Bay area with a separate guest suite and private entrance, and that idea came from staying in so many great Airbnbs ourselves and thinking, Hey, we could do this too, maybe do it even better. And we didn't go over the top with it, but we made it comfy and added thoughtful little touches, stuff we'd want if we were staying there.

Like little snacks, couple bottles of water, sometimes even sample products from our show sponsors, which is kind of funny. We, we also left a local guide [00:49:00] with our favorite coffee shops noodle spots, hidden Gem Pizza Place, you know, stuff you're not gonna find on a TripAdvisor or whatever. One of the best parts of hosting is honestly the people.

We've had amazing guests over the years. One woman came from China on a long-term contract job. She was so sweet, super respectful. Later, even helped us track down some stuff we wanted from China was so kind of a cool global connection there. If you've ever thought about hosting, I say try it. Find out more at airbnb.com/host.

This episode is also sponsored by Nord, VPN. I'm online a lot. I mean, who isn't nowadays my digital life could be an open buffet if I'm not careful. That's why Jen and I have been using Nord VPN for a long time now. It's like a digital invisibility cloak. Whether I'm checking my bank account on airport wifi.

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It is that important that you support those who support the show. Thank you so much. Now, for the rest of my conversation with Brad Meltzer, [00:52:00] you've seen a lot of success, man. I'm wondering how you define success Now. I know it's a cliche question, but you've kind of solved the money problem. I mean, I don't have your bank balance in front of me, but it, I assume if you can afford the Lego Death Star, you're doing all right.

I mean, pretty much if to

Brad Meltzer: me, if you can afford the Lego Death Star, you're done. Yeah. But success for me, you know, it's funny. I think in the beginning I definitely was, you know, the money thing was my measure of just 'cause I just wanted to get out of the struggle that my family was in, right? I will say very quickly, I owe it to the wise soul who bought my first book.

My agent, Jill, may she rest in peace. She just passed away two years ago, but she built in me that idea of like, I remember when my first book came out, I went to Amazon. Amazon had just started. I was in Seattle for a book event and Amazon said to me, listen, we have this thing on Amazon where you can write a review of a product after you use it.

It was all new to us. And they said, you know, you're not, you don't sell the most books here, but you have more reviews than anybody.

Jordan Harbinger: I was like, thank thanks for rubbing that in. Thanks Bezos. I didn't need to know that. I knew that already.

Brad Meltzer: Right. And And they handed me again, just to show you the time. [00:53:00] They handed me a file folder of printed out reviews that was like this thick.

Oh wow. And it was because I was like 24 years old, 27 years old. So all my readers were in their twenties. So we were the first adapters of like the new technology. Right. Yeah. And if you looked at the reviews of what I did and my very first book, this wasn't the book that got 24 rejection letters. This was the second book I read.

That first book never got published. It sits on my shelf behind me. But what you saw is the first person would say like, this is the best book I've ever read. Then someone would say, this is the worst book in creation. And then it would say, I'm the greatest writer of literature and this is no that I'm singlehandedly reporting the downfall of literature.

And my agent said to me, the worst thing you could ever be is when you put something out and everyone goes like that. They don't care. Fine. Yeah. But if you are eliciting anger. Love you are touching something deep in there. And it's my way of saying that's how I've kind of seen success. And I don't talk about the reviews, but for me is like, if I think it's good, those people that said it was the best were totally wrong.

[00:54:00] Those people that said it was the worst, I, I give it equally as silly. Like neither of them are right. But what mattered at the end is, am I proud of that product? And that's, I truly think how I measure success. I spent a long time trying to, you know, chase that thing, but I never got caught up in the best serial list.

I never, that never mattered to me. And how many weeks or how many books I sold, if you asked, said to me, now how many, I'm like, I couldn't tell you. I don't care. 'cause if I, if I learned that then, and it's a big number, then I'm become a jerk off. I'm just obnoxious. And at the worst I worry that it's not big enough, then I become crazy over it.

I don't wanna be either of those things. So. The one thing for me is do I love what I'm doing and that's successful? It's my wife's advice to me writing the speech. It's like, don't get caught up in the other stuff. Yeah, just do the best you can. And I know it sounds almost cliche, but if you love it, it shows on the page and if you don't, it shows on the page.

And I, I do believe that.

Jordan Harbinger: Was there a moment in your career where you think, okay, I'm making it, or I've made it because the first book didn't do well? The second book, I mean, was that where you're like, okay, I can actually do this.

Brad Meltzer: The first book [00:55:00] came out the gate and did well, the second book, like Bottomed Out.

So I had like this graph that was like this. And the third book I remember was coming out, you know, after the second book came out. I was devastated. My publisher shut down. I thought this is the end I, this is where it's all gonna go away. Like your book sold so poorly that the bad that were shutting out, the whole raid, the whole company, I mean truly, they terrible got bought out and they were shutting down the imprint.

Wow. It was crazy. And I remember thinking like, I'm done. This is the end of my career. Yeah. I called my mother, my mother who never went to college and was dyslexic and only read at that point in her life, two books. My two books. That's all she ever read. And I called my mother panicking, I'll never forget it.

And my mother said to me, I'd love you if you are a garbage man. And she wasn't taking a crack at garbage, man. God clearly not. My uncle was a garbage man. But what she was saying was, I love you no matter what you got. And I'll never forget the very first time, this is a decade later, the very first time we ever hit the number one spot on the bests list, I called my mom and my wife knew, 'cause they called her first to track me down.[00:56:00]

And I called my mom to tell her, and she starts sobbing. And because she's crying, I'm getting emotional. And I say, I'm worried that she's driving. I don't know where she is. I'm like, are you driving? I don't want you to crash the car crying. I said, where are you? And she said, I'm at Marshall's. And I'm like, of course my mom's at Marshall's.

Like, we're the best spot and the best seller is my mom's still trying to buy like two for one irregular socks. Right? And it was like, and that moment was the greatest lesson for me, which is like, don't ever think this stuff should ever change you. Never stop being who you are at Kora. I mean, I don't have many skills, but I do think I'm, my love of history has made me not forget where I came from and never think that any of those other nonsense stuff mattered.

Like I'm more excited by my son liking my commencement address. The fact that like people started sharing it all across the internet saying this was the greatest thing since whatever. Yeah. I care less about that, but my son being like, dad, you did right. I was like, I'll take [00:57:00] that any day.

Jordan Harbinger: It's funny, my, I was talking to my producer and I was like, yeah, years.

I don't do X, Y, Z on the show. 'cause years from now, when my kids hear it, they're gonna think this. And my producer goes, it is so funny that you think your kids are gonna listen to this podcast in 20 years. Oh, that is

Brad Meltzer: a hundred percent true. I mean, my kid finally read one of my books and I was terrified.

Like I've been interviewed in the, you know, reviewing the New York Times entertainment. We like People Magazine, vanity Fair, you name it. But I was more terrified of this 17-year-old reading my book. Yeah. Than any harsh reviewer of all time. I remember watching him and he, and he finally said to me, he's like, he noticed like, whatever I use, like the name of our dog, or I'll use the name of our street, or I'll use the name of our, you know, aunt or so, and he's like, all you do is take from our lives and you put it in there.

I'm like, no crap. Yes. Everything I do is channeled through you. Like, what do you think I'm doing? You could see that. He was like, why do I care about your crap? Like it was such a great humbling and no, and you know what? It shouldn't be another way. No kid should be impressed with their parenting. I wasn't with mine.

I don't want my kids to be impressed with [00:58:00] anything I do.

Jordan Harbinger: I guess I don't need my kids to be impressed, but it would be, it would be nice to know that they thought that this wasn't terrible. But then again, why do I care? Yeah.

Brad Meltzer: I've gotten a couple hints here and there. Yeah. The commencement was the first time my daughter and my daughter's ruthless.

First time I think she ever said anything I did wasn't a bust. She goes, let me read it. When she, she wanted to read it, I was like, oh, she's, she's listening now. She was studying it and I got that one little thing in 19 years and I loved it, but I learned more from my kids than they ever will learn from me.

I firmly believe that.

Jordan Harbinger: Looking ahead, hopefully far ahead, what do you want your legacy to be? Both as a writer and as a person, you know, what do you hope people take away from maybe your body of work years from now? Like you said, nobody's gonna remember us in a hundred years. My friends have told me that too, when I'm like, oh, I gotta work on this show.

They're like, no man, no one's, no one's gonna care in a hundred years. That's true. But what do you want people to take away maybe in the next few after you retire? How's that?

Brad Meltzer: I can tell you this. Uh, you know, our kids' books that we do. I love writing my [00:59:00] thrillers and I love writing the nonfiction adult stuff we do.

But I love these kids' books that we do because they're my core belief, and this is what I hope people remember me about, remember about me, is it, my core belief is, I, I don't care where you went to school. I don't care how much money you made. That is nonsense to me. I believe in regular people and their ability to affect change this world.

I believe ordinary people change the world. And that idea runs through everything I do, not by, because it's a, you know, some kind of like thing. For me, it's just who I am. And I hope if you take anything from my work or even this interview, is that you realize that anything I say is, is, doesn't matter. But I hope it unlocks something to tell you that anyone we've talked about, whether it's JFK, the highest person in the office to me is, is the same as the garbage man my mom was talking about.

We're all scared, we're all nervous. Anyone I've talked about has moments where they're terrified, where they think they can't go on and they do one Lego piece at a time. And my goal in life is not I'm gonna sell in most books or I'm gonna, but it's [01:00:00] to just remind people of their power and remind people that your impact is far bigger than you think it is.

Here's the best way I could say it. This is a decade ago. I'm in an airport bathroom. There's a janitor who's cleaning up in the bathroom. Worst job, one of the worst of, as far as I'm concerned, on the planet. And this guy at the urinal next to me, as we're leaving wash our hands, he walks past the janitor and says, thanks for keeping it clean.

And I just thought to myself, that's the nicest thing you can say to the janitor in the airport, classy move. And for a decade, maybe two decades now, I have been saying, in every public bathroom I go into, I say to every single janitor, thank you for keeping it clean. And that stranger who I don't know, I have no idea who they were, I couldn't tell you anything about them, had as much impact on me as the frigging president of the United States.

More impact on me in my actual actions. And that's what I feel. If I can just put a little bit of that [01:01:00] out in the universe. If you take nothing from this interview, it's like you go in the next time you see a janor and say, thanks for keeping it clean. My work's done, man, that's it. World's a little bit of hair fractional better.

That to me is the great success. That's what I hope to unlock.

Jordan Harbinger: These little powers of kindness, you know, calling your old teacher. I think everybody should do that. Thanking the janor. I love that kind of thing. I know we've got a few minutes left. I'm curious about this JFK stuff. It's sort of trending lately.

My YouTube team's like asking about JFK. It's gonna be amazing. You spent a long time digging into history's biggest secrets. I mean, it's kind of one of the things that you do in your, in a lot of your books. What is something about the JFK assassination that maybe still doesn't sit right with you? 'cause you've, I assume you went through that trove of documents.

Brad Meltzer: Yeah, no, I'm, listen, I'm on the board of the National Archives Foundation. I was like on there all the time being like, when are they out? I want them, let's see them. Listen, I wrote a book called the JFK Conspiracy about a secret plot to kill JFK three years before Oswald. Wow. It's a crazy story. There's a, um, it's a Sunday morning in Palm Beach, Florida, and JFK [01:02:00] comes out of his house on his way to church.

And what he doesn't know is that across the street there's a disgruntled postal worker named Richard Pavlik, who has a car full with seven sticks of dynamite. And he's followed JFK to Florida 'cause he thinks his security is weakest there, which he's right about. And as JFK's leaving the house, all this guy has to do, his assassin, has to do is wait for JFK to get right to the end of the block and then hit the little trigger mechanism and boom, go the dynamite.

And what saves JFK's life that day? I won't ruin the, I just ruined chapter one of the JFK Conspiracy, that's chapter one. But when we were researching the book, I of course became obsessed with what happened three years later with Lee Harvey Oswald. And we tell the whole story and we end the book, the JFK Conspiracy with the actual assassination.

And my obsession with it is still, and, and even after everything that's come out and I've obviously been still pouring through documents, there are good questions that still need to be answered. And this is what I was hoping was in there is like, what is Lee Harvey Oswald, who's a Marine, no longer a Marine, but is a Marine [01:03:00] doing in Russia at the height of the Cold War?

And you're telling me nobody knows about that. That seems cre. Like how does Jack Ruby get past an entire police station full of cops to pull that trigger? Those are fair questions to ask. Right? The kooky questions of like, I'll tell you what I feel on the kooky. This is, this is perfect. Like, so you wanna know who killed JFK?

Here's what, here's who killed JFK. If you look in the sixties when JFK is actually killed, who do we initially blame it on? We blamed it on, it was the height of the Cold War. Great enemies at the time. We blamed it on the Russians. We blamed it on the Cubans. If you look in the seventies, the. As Watergate happens and we start mistrusting the government and, and have less trust for the government.

Who killed JFK? It was an inside job. Mm-hmm. CIA did it. LBJ did it. Sure. If you look in the eighties as the Godfather movies peak, who killed JFK? It's the mob. The maa. Yeah. Okay. So if you wanna know who killed JFK, it's whoever, decade by decade, whoever America's most afraid of at that moment in time. And the reason is, is because that's what all conspiracies are.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:00] I see.

Brad Meltzer: They're mirrors of your fears. And so you show me your favorite conspiracy and I'll show you not only who you are, but what you're afraid of.

Jordan Harbinger: So now I'm waiting for

Brad Meltzer: it to be China killed. JFK Mao did it right. And, and by the way, and now it's ufo. Now they're like, I was gonna say aliens alien and all that stuff.

Alien. It's all, it's all Now if you look JFK and aliens, that is the number one thing right now. Why? Because we're seeing all these drone attacks. Yeah. So it's just a fascinating thing to me. But I think there are good questions to be asked, but I think it's so revealing. JFK is like this. He's the perfect metaphor.

I looked actually when I was researching the book, this is so perfect to everything we've been talking about. I love you for this. You know, he used to call JFK's Eric Camelot, named after King Arthur, the perfect place in the JFK conspiracy book. We show JFK's marriage, we show you how he cheats on his wife.

We show you what a bad husband he is, and also what a good, amazing World War II hero he is, and how great he is it on locking idealism. But as I'm reading through, you know, when his wife goes into labor, she's hemorrhaging. He's nowhere to be found. He's on a plane to [01:05:00] Florida. Like my wife would kill me if I was on a plane when she's like giving birth.

Yeah. And I kept thinking to myself, why do they call this Camelot? Where's Camelot come from? And then I discovered this, is that the word Camelot is never used with JFK until after he dies. It's after his actual assassination that Jackie Kennedy grants one interview she did Life magazine. She invites the reporter to his house and tells him this exclusive story.

She says that when JFK was still alive. Back in the White House and they were trying to go to bed at night when he couldn't fall asleep. She would put on a record of one of his favorite songs from a play about a place called Camelot. And we forget that Jackie originally, the start of her career, was an actual reporter.

She was a member of the press. She was hounded by the press. But make no mistake, she was a master of the press. She's the one who put that word Camelot into the lexicon. She's the one who first wrote it in there writing JFK's legacy before anyone else could. And that's why we call it Camelot today. She's the mastermind [01:06:00] behind it all.

I love that detail. And to me it's, it's like everything we've said, we can chase all the superficial nonsense. Gimme the car, gimme the house, gimme the money, gimme the things. But it's all like, Camelot, again, super shiny on the outside, but none of it exists and none of it matters. What matters are the more personal things that you bring to your family, to your friends, to your community, to your strangers and people you're never even gonna meet.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, I have so many questions about this and so little, it's a tangent, but also almost like a guilty pleasure. 'cause I don't really dive into these conspiracy things, but I, there's so many documents you've said. I think in other interviews, not everything is being made public and we, I know that, right?

They're still redacted stuff even though they're de class. If I, what do you think they're keeping from us with this?

Brad Meltzer: The only thing that was remaining was the last 1%. That was it. Everything else was out okay. 99% was out and, and what we're finding, even as we read through it, the sad part is they redacted everything, but they redacted, even people that are alive there, social security numbers.

So like people whose, you know, information is now put out there and that's obviously shouldn't be out there. But what I'm looking for, and again, it's, there's still, I forget, it's like [01:07:00] 800,000 pages. So it's gonna take a while for us to read through everything. Here's what was redacted and what, what we're waiting and, and what we're waiting through right now.

Basically, the kind of methods that our intelligence services used to use, and when I say methods, I don't mean just like putting things on the bottom of a bus bench and how we used to do that, but I'm talking about like who was secretly working for us that no one knew was working for us. I can tell you that a guy who used to work in a very big acronym agency once told me about this great enemy of the United States.

If I told you his name, you absolutely know who it is. This very, very famous dictator. And no one knew that his family was secretly helping us and giving us information. He was a great enemy of the United States, but he was actually secretly helping us because he had family that was sick with cancer and America was secretly helping his family, and that was a role he played.

And we don't want that stuff coming out. The reason it's been hidden is because it was helpful to us to not reveal that he was secretly helping us. So we're seeing that come out. And you know what you're also seeing, and this is the other part, it's just embarrassing crap we did as [01:08:00] a country and you can see it, some of it's come out.

We've seen some things of like what we were doing in Cuba to destabilize Cuba. And again, not that we shouldn't have been working to like, you know, where we're working with Castro. Like there were obviously things in in his, we were working on that were for the right result. But stuff that you were like, dude, that's a little fishy right now.

Yeah, but we were doing it back then. 'cause that's what the government did back then. And what, what we're waiting for is not, here's the mastermind moment where we unleashed Oswald on the planet that's not there. It's the embarrassing stuff that like gave us no results, what we did to another country and we were kind of the a-holes in the story, right?

Yeah. That if you don't know who the a-hole is in the story, it's you. There are moments where we were doing stuff that didn't give us what we wanted and we probably wreck some lives in that. And that stuff's coming out too. Yeah. Wow. We can say that's bad, but that's America. That's the world. That's what being human is.

We're not, you know, it's like JFK himself or myself, like, again, not at the JFK level, but like we're all amazing and we're terrified and we're cowards and we're brave, and we're [01:09:00] weak and we're strong and it just depends when you catch us. Sometimes we're all those things in the same day. Sometimes we're all those things in a couple minutes.

And that's not a bad thing. It just means you're alive. Man.

Jordan Harbinger: This is probably anti-climactic, but I don't care. Who do you think did it? Is it as simple as Oswald was a communist and so he went for it because the CIA thing, it's like, I don't know. None of this stuff ever really sat well with me.

Brad Meltzer: Yeah. And listen you again, I always, it always has to pass the test of, can a group of people keep a secret?

Right? And the answer is, a few people can keep a secret. Giant operations cannot be kept secret. No. It goes back to deep throat. Right? Deep Throat in Watergate was the secret source that gave Woodward and Bernstein Watergate. And they said, we're not gonna reveal who Deep Throat is until he's dead. That was what the blood oath they took like would never tell anyone who it is.

Woodward and Bernstein. And the head of the Washington Post had to keep it secret and they kept it secret. And then guess what happened? A guy named Mark felt on his deathbed right as annuities who was dying, said, I'm Deep Throat. It was me. He couldn't keep his [01:10:00] own secret 'cause he was dying and he was like, I gotta tell everybody, man, it's a crazy, I want, I want people to know it was me.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Brad Meltzer: So that's always the test. So do I. I think that Oswald was the shooter a hundred percent. You know, if you watch the movie JFK, it'll tell you that since Oswald, no one has ever been able to recreate the shot that killed JFK. And that to me used to be very convincing evidence. I was like, if no Marine can recreate that shot, Oswald had to have another shooter.

Here's the problem. That information was completely wrong. There were totally people, plenty of people made that shot after Oswald did. A marine buddy of mine said to me that he could make that shot today. That in fact, on the training course of what you need to be a Marchman, you have to basically make a shot that's a similar distance.

But why did Oliver Stone put that misinformation in JFK? Because he said he wanted to offset all the other misinformation that's out there about JFK. Yeah. And millions of people relied on that. So I think Oswald took the shot as to who was helping him. That's the answer I still want to know. Did was someone in Russia helping him?

Was [01:11:00] someone here give him the money or the thing? We don't know the motive, but you know, he took the shot.

Jordan Harbinger: I love putting stuff like this to bed because the conspiracies to me are always so ridiculous. I mean, this show is about critical thinking and things like that, so conspiracies are often just totally ridiculous.

Although some turn out to be true lab leak theory with COVID, for example. I don't know. It's not proven proven, but it's like, eh, that probably happened.

Brad Meltzer: Listen, I don't believe in conspiracies. I believe in trying to find the truth. Yeah. Like I will be the first one to say, I don't know if anyone else were, I want to know if I wanna know as much as anyone else.

Did someone else work with Oswald? But right now there's just no proof of it. And to say he didn't take the shot, that to me is where you're missing key facts. Like he took the shot. The question is, is motive opportunity? Who funded that trip to Russia when he was there? Or did he just 'cause he was a lunatic?

There are only four people who have successfully killed US Presidents. I've studied them. And when you talk to the Secret Service about them, I said to them, what do they have in common? They said, people who try to kill the president. Fall into two categories. They're hunters and there's howler, and [01:12:00] a howler makes a lot of noise, says, I'm coming to kill you.

I hate you. I hate you. I'm coming to kill you. They make a lot of noise, but they rarely take action. A hunter is very different. A hunter doesn't make any noise. They just come and they take the shot. And if you look at the four men who have successfully killed US presidents, all four of them were hunters.

And Lee Harvey Oswald was a hunter, didn't say a word. That to me is what I'm far more interested in is like the things that are actual facts and the things that match up critically. Not just, you know, we all have an idea, we can all make up whatever we want, but that doesn't get us anywhere. Just, you know, spouting off.

Like show me the actual proof and show me, you know, the things that, back it up.

Jordan Harbinger: Brad Meltzer, thank you so much, man. This was fun. Long overdue. I'm glad we did it. So good. Love you brother. You're about to hear a preview with James Patterson and what would make the best selling author walk away at the top of his game.

JHS Clip: It's rare that I don't write. What I discovered was that I loved doing it and then I started writing stories and I just loved it. I didn't know whether I was any good, but I loved doing it. And I would [01:13:00] just write, write, write, write, write. So when the first book came out, Thomas Berryman number gave Little Brown a blurb and he said that I'm quite sure that James Patterson wrote a million words before he started this book.

It was a great compliment, and then I decided I'd try novel. I'm really happy with the way that turned out. One of the things you always like to do at the end of the chapter is they must turn that next page. That's a strength. The weaknesses, I sometimes don't go as deep as I should. Here's the secret. Hit 'em in the face with a cream pie and while you have their attention, say something smart.

That's it. No cream pie. They didn't even notice it, so forget about it. You're just talking to yourself. And if you don't say something smart, once you get their attention, it's irrelevant. You surprise people, which I think is important for my kind of book. We need heroes. And one of the things about the military, and it's very true in this book, in American heroes, but also walking my combat boots, the military [01:14:00] is about we, not me.

And one of the things I think we need to get back to a bit more is we, and it is hard to come by now, duty, honor, sacrifice. It just has to be more we rather than just me.

Jordan Harbinger: To hear more as James Patterson reveals the moment that changed his life and the unconventional process that's helped him sell over 400 million books.

Check out episode 1100 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. I just love talking to that guy. Really interesting, sweet, good human, all things. Brad Meltzer will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

They make it possible. Folks, also our newsletter, it is always kicking around me and Gabe love writing this thing. You guys hit reply. We love engaging with you. The idea behind it, it's called wee bit wiser. It's to give you something specific, something practical, something that you can apply right outta the box.

Psychology relationships, something from the show in under two [01:15:00] minutes. It's not a long read and if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a really good companion to the show. Jordanharbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Don't forget about Six Minute Networking as well over at sixminutenetworking.com.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram, or connect with me on LinkedIn. This show, it's created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogrty, Tadas Sidlauskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends.

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