#312 Mark Twain
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In the very last paragraph, h of mark twins adventures of huck berthine hok reckons that its time to light out for the territory ahead of the rest. It's a decision hawks creator already had made a quarter of a century earlier. He wasn't even mark train then, but his hawk might have said that I, no matter with the civil war spreading across his native missouri, twenty five old Samuel client, suddenly out of work as a mississippi riverboat pilot, gladly accept to his brother's offer to join them in the nevada territory, far from the battlefields of the war.

A stagecoach journey across the gray planes and over the rocky mums was just the beginning of a nearly six year long audley that took Samuel Clements from missouri to hawaii with stop hovers in original city in the vata and sanford cisco, by the time I was over, he would find himself reborn as mark train, america's best loved and most influential writer. The trouble, as he famously promised, had begun. This book shed new light on this crucial, but still largely period in Martins life.

IT tells the story of a Young genius finding his voice in the ramshackle mining camps, the boom towns and newspaper offices of the wild's west. IT is a winding journey of self discovery filled with high adventure and low comedy. As train dodges, indians and gun fighters receives marriage advice from burden.

Young burns down a mountain with a frying pan, nearly avoids fighting a door hikes across the floor of an active volcano, becomes one of the first White men to try the ancient hawaii sport of surfing and write his first great literary success. IT is a fascinating, inspiring account of how an unemployed riverboat pilot, a failed prospector, a neil fight newspaper reporter, reinvented himself as america's most famous and beloved writer. That's an exit from the book.

And when we talk you about today, which is lighting up for the territory, how Samuel Clements headed west and became mark train, IT was written by roy Morris junior. I want to tell you how I stumbled upon this book few months ago. I'm travelling with my wife, uh, down the coastal california where have somewhere between sana barber and los Angeles and I stumbled into this uh little coffee shop across street from the coffee shop, uh, I saw is a use bookstore.

So of course I had to go over there. IT was a tiny one room use bookstore that only sold books for cash. And IT is I was looking through the bribery section, of course, and that is where I found this book, and they somehow agreed to sell to me for the soccer Price of two dollars.

I want to job right into the introduction because I think the author is a fantastic jobs of talking about the importance of the place and time in which we grow up. And in Martin's case, he's growing up in missouri on the western bank of the missive I river, and he says he knew all about the concept of lighting out for the territory. As a Young boy, he regularly watched the steamboats who were offloading travel, warn passengers whose dreams involve making a new start of things in the west that already legended region were a man with a past, could successfully reinvent himself.

That last sentence is incredible. And IT is also a reoccurring theme in human nature. This idea that we have, we have an innate desire to escape a place right, with the hope of escaping and changing who we are.

And so many the people heading west or they're going for the goldrush, they're going they're literally moving their physical location to pursue greater economic opportunity. That is a main, main theme in Martins life. I want to go back to the ending of the introduction because I think this writing is incredible.

And another thing that just going to because the book ends is nearly perfect. Biography of marmara in because the book ends when he becomes marraine. He's around thirty years old when the book ends.

So as before turning his sights, s westword, the restless train spent the Better part of a decade wonnerful the great cities of the east in midwest. He worked as a journeyman printer before becoming a pilot on the mississippi river. Like cockburn fin.

He learned early on to light out at the first time of trouble. And when the civil war erupted, he already has one foot out the door. Had he stayed on.

This is, this is a great way. So when to tell you, I know before I read this paragraph to you, this is a great way to think about power law people. Power law people is on the most incredible ideas once you know, because then you see IT everywhere.

It's a quote for my friends, sam hinky, that he said on his episode of investing the best. He says, people are really a parallel and the best ones change everything. And so agree with to think about parallel people is their absence leaves a void that no one else can fill.

And we're going to see that here with mark train. So it's like, okay, well, civil war ups and that's what what causes us as the impetus, like the motivation for Martine, get the hell out of area. He did not want to fight in the war, and he he actually gets conscripted into the war, temporarily tly on both sides.

And this is why I was important than he made the decision, had he stayed on train, might have got himself killed. The gilla war in missouri was particularly nasty, but his death would not have linked in the life of the confederacy of the union by a single day. IT would, however, have reduced the literary inherited ance of the united states by an inaccurate amount that is a hell of a sentence.

IT would, however, have reduced the literary inheritances of the united states by an inaccurate amount that is a description of a power law person. And so one of the most surprising things that I learned from reading this book is the fact that when he was a Young man, if you would have asked marchin at that time Samuel lim what his life's work was going to be, he went to, said writer. He did not think that becoming a writer in a humorous and a public letter was going to be his lifework, something he's known for hundreds of years or hundred and fifty years after his death.

He thought his dream job. He thought he was going to be a steamboat pilot. He was going to pilot a steamboat up and down the mississippi, a river that was his dream job.

And so there's a bunch er of reoccurring teams that you're going to see throughout the spoke. One of them is the fact that you can reinvent yourself anything you want if things are not going well in your life, like in trains. Life is just stumbles from one thing here to the next, until he does fine his life's work.

You can keep to trying on different professions, different geographic locations, until you find one that suits. And another recurrent theme is this idea from Steve jaws, where you cannot connect the dots looking backwards. IT comes from his stanford commencement address, where he's talking about the fact that he was taking all these classes after he dropped out of college and he wasn't going.

He didn't know at the time. He just learning new skills and he didn't know he's going to use those skills. You'd come in handy later on in his career.

Apple, so he says that was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But he was very, very clear looking back, ten, ten years later. You cannot connect the dots looking for, you can only connect them looking backwards.

So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something. And you got destiny, life, carma.

whatever. This approach has never let me down. You are going to see, wait to, we get to the end of the book, mark twins destine is exactly that, what Steve jobs said.

And so I wanted jump to wear a in the book, the fact that he is a riverboat ilog, the great line, demarcation and marches. Life is going to be the civil war, as anybody that was living in amErica at the time, civil wars, the great line of demarcation in their life. And so this is where it's going to open up opportunities that one mark train was not looking for, and two, he couldn't have possible be predicted.

The civil war had rendered the pilots profession too confused and dangerous. why? Because boats were taking fire. They are shooting at the boats from both sides. So imagine your mark train. You're just try to deliver goods and people up on the and on one side of the river you're got you're getting shot up by the confederate army and on the other side, the river, you're getting shot up by the union army.

Anybody with a brain is not going to stay in a situation like that, right? So he says he could never see what new courses life would take, but he could grass that his days as a river able pilot, which he called the only unfettered and entirely independent human being, lived on the earth. We're over.

And so that's another way to get to know. A mark train is an incredible, restless person. He is one that refuses to be handed or controlled in anyway.

He is always going to optimize for freedom. And so that quote tells you why he was so drawn to being a riverboat pilot. The only unfathered an entirely independent human being that lived and later is an old man when he's writing about dispute his life.

He said that he fully expected to follow the river the rest of my days and die at the wheel when my mission was ended. And then, as Abraham lincoln would say eloquently, few years later the war came. And so this is maximum that I read an autobiography time.

I think it's fta tic. As opportunity is a strange beast, IT frequently appears after a loss. So the fact that he loses what he thought was his life's work is going to be one of the most important events in his life, because IT actually finds his shoes life work, his true life's work. In fact, after the war, he's given the choice.

You want to go back to being a reverb pilot, or do you want to continue, right, you know, being more twin, writing books, doing public lectures, and he chooses to to to be more twin to not go back to what he thought at that time when he was a Younger man, what his life's work was going to be. We're not. But at the time he was terrified.

He is absolutely terrified. And so we see that here he pays the floor, obsessed with the fear that he might be arrested by government agents and forced to act as a pilot on a government gunboat, while a man stood by with a pistol ready to shoot him if he showed the least sign of a false move. That right there is the fear that train runs from.

That is the fear that that pushes him west on this auto sy, where he actually transforms from samual comments. Into my twin. Now why is is that like a legia here course? I was because before the transcontinental tal railroads, the way to move goods and people was the river system.

And so both sides and you you'll see this way on the confederates and the union both try to conscript Clements into the army to make him do this because client had valuable knowledge of the river IT was tie year printing ship to become a riverworld pilot because there are so many ways to the run ground or to not be able to navigate the river successful. So he had the specific knowledge in his mind. Through years of experience, I was very valuable to both sides in the war.

Another surprising thing I learned is that in another life, mark train would be a cocaine deal. Even from a Young age, he is a very racist reader. And he winds up reading about this little known plant called the coca plant.

So says same considered going to south amErica and opening up a trade. And coca, a wonderous and still little known plant whose energy enhancing qualities he had read about, he goes so far, he gets on a boat and starts traveling to south america. The woods by cocaine arn boarded a steamboat and resumed his journey to south america.

By the time of both doctor moralise. Twelve days later, his career plans had changed dramatically. Why had they changed dramatically? Because something else you can see over over again now in the life of our train. But almost everybody, the uni city is the importance of mentoring, usually older, wiser people that taken interest and are trying to help you succeed.

He is mentally, the person is going to teach him the most valuable skills, ls said, and the best job he ever had is disguising captain horris bigbang later in life, train is gone to write an entire book called life on the mississippi. About this time in his life, he looked back at some the best time ever had, so says IT was the mississippi river itself that he fell most deeply in love with. And he would remember that attachment with undergraded missing eyes, affection for the rest of his life, bixby, by was a good if idiocy, credit teacher and comments quickly became his prized pupil.

And so this just can be an incredible thought and incredible writing, obvious from train. Uh, he this idea I talked about earlier, the fact that he had the skill set in his mind, like, why was that so valuable? So says, there was a lot to learn.

Bixby e's empire stretch from neural insane Lewis, twelve hundred miles on the lower mississippi, each mile minister by ever shifting currents, riptides shallows, sandbars quick sand, floating island's, sunk in rocks, sunk in trees, sunk in boats, loose Debra ze, in the ever present dangers of collision with other boats, ship board fires and boiler explosions. This is how my train describe this. I loved.

I thought I down. This just incredible. He learned gradually. He learned how to be a pilot. The fit.

This is now mark train writing them in his life. right? Beautiful writing here. The face of the water in time became a wonderful book, a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most chairs secrets as clearly as if IT utter them with a voice.

After two years of a pressure ship, after two years of learning the river, he becomes a fully licensed steamboat pilot. Looking back, he said that was the the greatest achievement. The single proud as a moment of his life was learning how to this successful.

Y, that's incredible because he's writing on as a much older man in this gives an indication why he thought he was just going to do this forever. Your true pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the river and his pride and his occupation ent surpasses the pride of kings. And so why would train believe that this was going to be his life's work? This is what I mentioned early, because he's working in the technology industry of his deck.

IT was the gold age of steamboating before roads are planted. The river as the nation's chief conduit of goods and people. River boat pilots were lords of all.

They survive. And they had a princely salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month. That is a lot of money.

So at this time, train on his salary. Now, at least traveling in all the time is complete freedom. He's like the master of his own domain, but he can afford to live well.

So he spent his money on, like eating oysters and shrimp and mushrooms, and he drinks brand and fine orleans restaurants ons. He people send money home to his always impoverish mother. And so for the very first time in his life, he is making money, he has freedom, he has a job, he loves, he feels, he has purpose.

And then the civil war breaks out. And he says the riverside pilot understood that for the foreseeable future, the most glorious part of his life was over. And surely there, after his worst nimmer happens, he's actually into war.

There is a, there is a river boat that pulls up on to the side of the river. They see, train and two other people setting there. IT is the front part of the union army, and they actually capture, I go, now you're on our side.

Their commanding officer approached three able body miseria ans demanded to know their identities and brush ly inform that they were now to be drafted into the union army. IT was clemens. Worst nights are spring suddenly to life.

So they taken to the headquarters. Twin actually escapes, and that is another weird ring, a theme in his life. He's constantly on the run. In fact, later on, he said he has a silicious line where he says, I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating.

And so this is when his journalist and his transformation into marrin begins, because his brother actually gets a job working for the government of the newly created nevada territory. And so train goes with him to get away from the civil war. If you've ever seen the show that wood, the towns were trains going to spend the next few years of his life look a lot like that.

And so the big problem here is the way that they have to get west is by traveling by stagecoach. Now this isn't thing. I've, i've like the slave affair with the american west.

I read a bunch of history books on IT, I kind of fanatic about IT, because i've lived on the east coastal al life. I feel almost like I was born in the wrong place. I like the western sense of like adventure.

But anyway, there is your travelling. Just imagine you're in your chinese. I think it's like twenty five when this is happening, right? You're in your in ice is eighteen sixties amErica and you're traveling west by stagecoach. There's several ways that mark train could have died on this trip and the author is is a fantastic job of listing those. So at this point, you have to worry about hostel indian caller decently.

Tuberculosis, smallpox, measles, mumps, rocky man spotted fever, scurvy, accidental drownings, accidental shootings, wagon mishap s false lightning strikes, tornatore s world wind, blizz, quick sand, wild animal tax, snake bites, starvation, exhaustion, exposure and sometimes share melancholy. To enjoy such a trip, a man must be able to endure heat like a salamander, mud and water like a mosque at just like a told, and labor like a jackass. IT is a hardship without glory to be sick without a home to die and be buried like a dog.

And the crazy thing about all that right is that, go west, Young man, that line was a rally cry for an entire generation, maybe two generations of Young men to head west, risk all of this for opportunity, a Better life. And so train is going to meet all kinds of interesting and crazy characters over the next six years, as there in the stage, coach heading west. One thing that he wanted to see with this new technology of their day, this new service, is called the pony express.

So the pony express was actually like a genius, a invention of, like a wild entrepreneur. The phone express was intended to answer the national demand for swifter, more dependable, coast to coast mail service. So at this time is only two ways for male to reach the west coast rate.

You have the sink, call the oxbow route, which would take essentially three weeks overland. If you wanted to say, say what? Want to send a message from new york city to tempt to go, they could get that.

They could take that route IT would be three weeks, right? For little less money, you you could send IT on a land and sea road, which takes six weeks. And so this is entrepreneur ssem.

And so is I go gay well, that my two competitor? Or are six weeks or three weeks, how can I figure out how to cut that down to make IT faster? Because I know people pay premium for speed.

That is always the case. So he says he proposed to out the time to thirteen days by means of an inner locking real system of horsebacke ders dashing cross country, a breakthrough speed. Each writer would covered between seventy five, one hundred miles on his run with staffs to change horses every dozen miles.

The male was Carried in a special designed pouch, which fit over the subtle and could be transferred from one horse to another in a matter of seconds, almost like a pitt stop and like f one. Now, right now, this is why i'm reading, is still because one train they like there's there's like a lw, like a legally lw over these crazy Young men that are just dashing across the country. I break next speeds.

This is hilarious. apparently. Russell, also a gifted copywriter, Russell replaced an add for potential rides and leading newspapers throughout the west.

The ad itself became legended. Here's the ad. Wanted Young, skinny worry fellows, not over eighteen must be expert writers willing to risk death. Daily orphans preferred.

What an ad? What do you think? The response to us, hundreds of adventure seeking Young men, quickly responded. And this gives you an insight into the kind of people ever would respond to such an add.

This guide name hasn't IT was all in a day's work for hasn't, who once wrote one hundred and twenty miles in the utah territory with his job broken by an indian ero and ARM shattered by a bullet. I'm going to to stay focus on my train, but I highly recommend picking up this book in reading IT. IT was really fun.

I bought the obvious ly physical book in that little bookstore, but I also then went and bought. I wanted to support the authors. I bought the kindle version as well.

But I do want to pull out, because are just all these crazy characters and crazy stories in the book is really fun read. But what was facing is I want to pull out some of the people that mark train actually interactively. So he's going to want of having coffee.

He meets us going on this trip. This guy name slate as the last thing, right? And this guy was nuts. He's involved in all kinds of crimes. He's killing a lot of people um and he gets into a door with this guy in benny so benny ones of finding slade, uh at the time slade somehow was unarmed and bendy shoot slade several times with a shocker but then he made the fatal mistake of not finishing slade off when he had the chance. Slay then recovers, goes in six revenues, shoots and make sure that benny is dead.

Then he cuts off bennies ear and he wears IT and so the stories in the book where slate is going around and like showing off this trinket, this dead man's ear, and showing its like the local children in the town and a train waits a meeting and having coffee would slate another guy that he wants a meeting is bridon yang. He is the leader of the search of liberty. And the moment at this time and train rights about this meeting that he has with brick m.

Young. This is hilarious. IT is likely fictional, but IT is hilarious. So he says to accommodate all seventy two of his wives, said twin, the morning leader had constructed a ninety six foot wide bed for them to sleep in, but the sound of their combining snoring proved defining.

Take my word for IT Young told train, ten or eleven wives, all unique, never go over and train. For his part, indorse polygamy, at least for the moments this is, he is funny seeing the poor, ungainly, empathetically, homely women throning the seats of salt streets of solid city. Train judge that the man who marries one of them has done an active charity, which entitles into the kindness applause of mankind.

And the man that very sixty of them has done a did of open handed generosity. So supply that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence. So IT is factual, that marked in met bricht Young, his account is largely believed to be fictional.

So finally, uh, after I think it's like a weaker eighteen days, something like that, they want of getting to where they are going. They're setting up shop in helping the governor of the newly formed about the territories. So they going to set up place called cursin city.

The day they get there, there's a gun fight and a windstorm. And so that's just a Normal day in a va capital cars. And city, interesting enough, was actually named for the explore a Christopher kit carson N.

I read a book of called blood and thunder. If you're looking for great audio book, uh, about the west kick cousin is the main character of the book blood and done. It's a fascine read.

And so cursin cities, one of these like boom towns, it's very close. So I think it's twelve miles away from the richest silver strike in american history. This thing called the calm stock load when they say the richest silver strike in american history IT back in the eighteen hundreds.

I think maybe starting eighteen sixty over the next thirty years, that mine is going to make four hundred million dollars. So they're setting up shop right next. This is volcano of money and there's this is mad fever to get rich quick er or get rich as fast as possible that you know as a main thing through out entire book.

In fact, merchant speculates many, many times he's going to have so many failed businesses and failed occupations before he he realized as, hey, I should just he gets his first break and I tell you how how that happens then he goes fully into being a writer and public lecture. But I do just want to pull out another character that is around the training at this time. So this is guiding jack Harris.

Jack Harris robed so many stagecoaches that wells fargo gave him a job, so he's stop rubbing them and he didn't stop. And it's just fast. Anything about world's fargo's obviously still exist today.

I think he did like eighty billion dollars in revenue last year. But you know, in eighteen sixties, in american west, they're just getting rob left and right. And so he says the company began putting live rattlesnakes in its strong boxes to deter highway men such as jack Harris from robbing them.

IT also formed its own private police force, which Operated under the model whales. Fargo, never forget. So chain holder brothers, assistant to the governor of the vat territory, and the vata lawmakers are were wild.

They were beating the shit out of each other with firewood. When I fell. Legislator john winters took issue with him. Van broke and chAllenged him to a do with pistol.

Instead, winners grabbed a piece of firewood and proceeded to beat the distinguish member over the head with IT knocking van broken to the floor and dumping on with his boots. And then train observes that when they're not busy beating the ship out of each other, they're busy just stealing a ton of money. There's a fantastic line from one of my hair books, which is written by will in erie dance, called the lessons of history.

I think about a lot time, he says, in every age, men have been dishonest and governments have been corrupt. Trains version of that is the government of my country. Snobs, honest simplicity, but funders, artistic villainy.

And I think I might have developed into a very capable pick pocket if I had remained in public service. So train is gonna a series of jobs. He wants to get rich because is that i'm going to get rich.

Well, i'm going to get rich. And goal, i'm going to rich inside. He wants to a speculate in lumber. He just trying to make a fast book. I mean, is a human nature right?

Most people just want to make a lot of money, and they want to do the least amount work possible. And so when he hears of opportunities, he's always willing to quit his job and then travel for opportunity. So then he's, at this point, the story, he's traveling to this new boom town.

But he has this terrible idea, right train, expected to find masses of solar lying above the ground and glittering in the sun on the mountain summits. But when he gets there, he realizes that successful silver mining involve months of digging, drilling, boring and lasting. The purest veins were usually the deepest.

That is a great line that applies to so many of things. The pest veins were usually the deepest. There's no in hell that train is going to do that kind of work.

So he quits in disgust. okay. So when I got to this section, there's an excEllent book that I covered a long time ago.

I should reread IT. It's called the big rich. IT is about the second oil boom in texas history. IT is episode one forty nine.

The book is amazing, but there's a line in the book that i've never forgotten, I think, is a metaphor for for life, not just for oil. And IT says the trouble with this business is that everybody expects to fund oil on the surface. If IT was up near the top, IT wouldn't be any trick to IT.

You've got a draw deep for oil as a very similar thought behind the line in this book. This is the pious veins were usually the deepest. And so one problem of human nature that we all get caught up in what everybody else is doing, and that's why these these bubbles in birth over over again.

And so the same things happening here, like nobody wants to actually dig and do the actual mining. What we want to do is we want to trade paper. You want to buy shares in largely non existing minds.

And so the buying and shares of buying and selling this paper, these shares in these minds, the entire camp, the entire region that train ism is doing engaging the same practice. And so trains like, oh, that's a genius. I can make a ton of money and I have to do any work.

He says. The trick is not to mind the silver ourselves by the sweat of our own browse and the labor of our hands, but to sell the ledges, the paper to the doll slaves a toil and let them do the mining. And here's the problem, that train is, is taking his, the money he saved up to his own labor, and then speculating, what do things can happen.

This is very similar to investing in startups, right? Train owned several shares in a buch of minds. IT did not take him long to realize that most, if not all, were utterly worthless.

There's multiple times, way too. I am going to blow your mind with something in a little bit. But there's multiple times in this book where he is deeply, deeply depressed. I think this is the first step to becoming more train.

This idea of like this cannot be my life is a very powerful motivator, says train was tired of being a minor, swearing that he would never look upon his mom's face or get married until i'm rich, until I am a rich man. He was forced to take stock of his present situation. I had gained a livelihood in various locations, he said, but I had not dazed anybody with my successes.

And so by this point he had tried on, you know, ten different occupations. He is a failure. There's nothing into this in his life. There's a multiple times and book like there is if you pause mark twin's life like you're watching this, right? You possible there is nothing in his life so far that is good.

Need you to believe that he's going to be one of the, you know, greatest and most beloved writers in american history, right? So at this point, what is he doing in cycle? What to hold? I do.

I don't know what to do next. I'm a failure. Everything I try.

And yet we go back to that maxim opportunities. A strange beast, IT frequently appears after a loss. The answer came entirely out of the blue.

The business manager for the Virginian city territorial enterprises as a newspaper wrote to sam and legally to offer him a twenty five dollar week staff writer position on the newspaper for several weeks, simply as a lark train, had been sending humorous letters to the newspaper. And he was doing that not because he thought he was gonna job. And so what happens is he's sending all these funny, like little letters, they like IT.

When an opening rises on the paper staff, the guy managing the business manager for that immediately thinks of twin and offers in that job. This is the first step to him becoming mark twin. And again, he shows he's willing to travel to pursue economic activity.

Now, this is a very humble first shop. He, he's lucky, in the sense that is a very high quality newspaper. He's working for two Young founders, and he's going to find and find another friend in mental of sorts.

There is like two or three, maybe four times in the book where he meets ts, these really important people in the given advice and train. What do micro say? Successful people listen.

Those that don't listen don't last long, right? Train listens. And in any cases, he hears advice from.

Three, four people that he uses for the rest of his life for a multiple decade. S A single idea can change everything. He was merely at the newspaper, take his place as the paper is new local.

That's the the term of the job. Sentience, just like a copy editor, general Simon reporter, you just have to fill in any last night holes in the newspaper because the newspaper has to come out every day. And so IT says by sheer good luck, train had landed at A A spot at the best newspaper between saint Lewis and sanford cisco.

Under the energetic leadership of the new owners. You have twenty three year old editor and then the twenty one year old printing form. And now that's craze.

Because train is older than his bosses. These Young founders are also gifted at finding other talented people. That's important because his, what's gonna trains?

Closest friend at work is this guy that goes by the pen name, then the quill. The first bit of advice that he gives, train, train, is going to Carry for the rest of his career. And he was wise answer.

Sint, and this is what he says, get the facts first, then you can disturb them as much as you like. And so if you go and study a lot of trains, fiction, there is rooted in actual factual events that then he then distorts an exaggerates, right? I says, train would never be a particularly hard worker.

He later boosted. He later boosted that he made a fifty percent profit on his work for the enterprise because he was being paid six dollars a day and only doing three dollars a day worth of work. And so one of the founders of the newspaper is also going to give train a good piece of advice that twins gona apply to his fiction writing about a decade later.

And so we saying, listen, when you're writing for this newspaper, we don't say things like we IT is reported or IT is rumor or we understand. Instead, we get the facts and then we speak out and say, IT is so so. And this is the reason, otherwise people will not pick confidence in your news.

Unassailed able certainty is the thing that gives a newspaper the farmers and most valuable reputation. That is, the advice to train. The way I would think about this is people attracted to confidence, and they're repelled from new ones.

And IT is at this newspaper. This is why I said, this is like his first step to becoming a mark twin, because this is this job in Virginia city that he first used the pen name mark train. And even from day one on the job he does, something is really smart.

This is also another idea member. I can't stress the importance of the advice that Martine learns without his life, right? The fact that these mentor's, these contemporaries, these peers are constant trying to help him.

There's a lesson that he learned on the mississippi river that he used all his life. So go back to his river. Able mentor bixby. Bixby s point was that a pilot had to trust instincts.

And for the rest of his career, mark twin would trust his all the while inhabiting the parish border between safety and danger, laughter and tears, east and west. So this idea, trust your instincts. Ts is something he used his entire life.

And as you'll see, is why we know the name mark train to this day. So want to now combine two ideas. This idea where other people, his peers, as mentorians contemporary, are a very important to him.

They helped him think about and shape his own career. And then the idea came from the last episode, the James Cameron episode, and that episode, James Cameron had this idea, we're like, uh, he would let ideas simmer for decades. And I think he used the example of, like a the plane's indian indians, how they would use every single aspect of the buffalo down to, like, it's marrow.

He didn't let anything that he learned go to waste. We're going to see that here. The combination of two ideas here with my train, he's onna.

Learn about the the art to public speaking. But he has no use of IT yet. Something has to happen is like to give him use, which will get to, he's gonna wind up meeting the guy, uh, name.

He called themselves ultimate word. They wanna becoming friends and then train learns from this guy. So at the time in history, everybody knows optimist word.

A very few people know mark train now, you know, who does no more train automatic word. So it's interesting. Although close to the same ages, train war had four outstrip the Younger man on the national stage.

He had been economist for the clever in plane dealer. He had been editor of vanity fair magazine in new york. He had already publish his first book award was a favorite author, Abraham lincoln, who once interrupt ted, a cabinet meeting at the White house to read, allowed from one of words, humorous stories.

So they're gona trade turns, right? Each man at different points in history, ward and train, are going to become the most popular, humorous in amErica through writing and speaking. It's essentially mark train before a mark train. And so he sees in ward a new path that he's going to use in the perfect in the future. Uh, war is in town, in virginio city to give to have a show like these these spoken workshops.

Uh, he had a cloud crowd pleasing stick, which he took on the road to great profit IT involved outlandish ponds， head scratching, non secretes uh long pointless stories all delivered with a characteristic deadpan voice and innocent expression. And so ward had been reading mark trains post in the Virginia city newspaper and so he gets the town. And the first person who wants to meet you, I want to meet this guy, they come the wash giant was a time I to meet, train they, when he comes in town for a speaking engagement, they wind up just hitting IT off like the same person.

They went up getting strong and hanging out for a bunch. And so ward, invite him to the show. And that is so important, because this is like, this is very realized, like how I can do this to the whole point of the performance is train, immediately realized, was not so much what was being said as how IT was being said.

IT was a master's level seminar on the art of comic delivery and train absorb IT, all with the focused intensity of a precocious child. And so I ve got to stop there, because that's another example. Everybody learns from somebody.

War gives him advice and that he uses. He gets his advice multiple times, and he uses for the rest, his life. And the way I would put IT is, like you don't sell out to the basic elements of your profession.

Whatever you're doing, do IT on the highest plane possible. Ward offered to bring train along on his tour of europe and encouraged his new fund, protos y, to write for more sophisticated eastern publications. This your way, too talented for what you do.

Wait, you wait. You're Better than this. And if you're gonna do the same profession, you might as well do.

IT at the highest plane possible is like I will hope in anyway, he said he promised the dash off convincing notes to his friends in new york on trains behalf. So this otto sy, that mark twins on in the west, last for five and half six years. Three of those years he's in nava, either in ursa city of Virginia city.

Eventually, I guess the point of I need to make here is that IT takes a while for him to actually apply this advice. He does understand that he should be trying to position himself with like more sophisticated eastern publications. And so one thing he does is he doesn't go back eh pp, but he moves out of like the boon types boomtowns of nevada and actually goes to so ago, which at the time is a lot more culture that is currently present and like the naval territory.

I do need to make the point though that this again is an inflection point. His life, he's changing lives again and is the main theme that, hey, constant, we vent to ourselves. He's still searching for his life's work.

He's got a bunch of few ideas. He's got good people around him, but he's still hasn't put IT all together. I do want to make the point that so far he's been just in nava alone, he'd been a politician, a super minor, a stock trader, a mill worker in a newspaper reporter.

And the reason I bring that your attention, because there is still nothing, nothing in the life of mark train that could lead you to predict that he's going to be go down in histories, one of the greatest american writers ever. So he goes to every cisco promise. He's in a Better city, but he still is now working.

And this begin. And he hate IT, and what he hates most about this, and this is really a good way to think about train, is like he's he's always seeking novelty and running away from monotone well being like a just a standard beat report in every cisco. He realizes, oh my god, i'm leaving the same day every day, which is little, little hell from our train.

Forty years later, train still shute's at the soul killing routine. Each day's evidence was substantially a duplicate of the day before the daily performance was killingly monotonous. And this, the testing of his job, this hating of his dated daily life, goes back to, this can be, my life is a very powerful motivator.

This deep hatred is going to lead to one the most surprising thing, the book. And to finding the path ford into actually embracing mark train is his identity. So first he he has to have a fight.

He's going to wind to getting either fired or quit from this job. And then he has a hilarious way to talk about this many years into the future. But IT starts with the fact that his editor refuses to print train story.

Train is all freedom, so he does not like to have constraints on him access into having everything he wrote, printed without question. Train stood. They one of having a meeting. They have a fight. Not a clear if he had quit or got fired, but was what was clear was that he was out of a job forty years later, it's still hurt.

And when news photos of the great safran ces school earthquake of one thousand six showed, uh, the newspapers building reduced to skeletal ruins train, explaining how wonderful are the ways of providence, he said he was an act of god that destroyed the newspaper building. So he was either willing to quit or get fired over principle. But that did not mean that I was easy.

This is one of the darkest periods of his entire life. Train sudenly found himself struggling for two months. My soul occupation was avoiding people.

During that time, I did not earn a penny. I became very adept at what he got, slinking, slinking away from people, hiding from people and bills. He can pay any with bills, he said.

I sung away from approaching faces that look familiar. I robbed my generous land, lady. I fell miner and lowlier, and more despicable than warmth. And this is where we get to the biggest holy shit moment of the book train clang, literally to his last time, afraid that complete pennyless ness might suggest suicide.

He noted suddenly in an otherwise serious discussion of marriage, that I am resolved on that, or suicide, meaning he wants to get married or he'll kill himself. He freed IT if I do not get out of debt in three months. IT is pistol or poison for one.

This is unbelievable. Several years after he remembered one despairing night when I put a pistol to my head, but wasn't men enough to pull the trigger, he put down the pistol and picked up the pen, as he would rather his life in good times in bad, mark train wrote. And this is what I mean, that opportunities, a strange beast, IT frequently appears after the loss, he goes from suicide, being almost completely broke down to his last dime or last penny, to having the opportunity that creates mark, train and IT comes from relationships.

Everything in the world runs on relationships to remember ward, right? Ward, the guy he met back in virgin city, the guy that gave him the the password offers to publish like a literary magazine or maybe like, I guess that would be like kind of the equipment you publish a piece like the new yorker today or something like that. And the train is a freeLance writer.

I guess the way to think about in those terms, he is going to write his first big hit. This is so important that goes back to what I started the conversation with, where still jobs completely, right? You cannot connect the dots looking forward. You have to, you can only connect them looking backwards if you're looking back at train's life. This is a major, major dot.

This is going to be his first viral hit, is going to be called the celebrated jumping frog of covers, counting or something that I need to talk for about, like this level progressive ation, the fact he struggled greatly, which with what is going to turn out to be his his first vivo hit, and then how IT connects to everything else and literally creates mark train. Train couldn't seem to get the jumping frog story written. He finished two drafts, and then he be in the third.

He just wouldn't come, he said. Then, one dismal afternoon, as I lay on my hotel bed, I determined to inform ward that I had nothing appropriate for his collection. A small voice began to make itself heard inside of him, a small voice began to make itself heard.

Try me, try me. Oh, please. Try me. Please do IT was the poor little jumping frog the one that old ben coon had described? He's talking about the guy over her, the story in the bar. I immediately he got up and roll out the tale. If IT hadn't been for the little fellows appropriation in in the strange fashion, I would have never written about him.

If you ever hear cormac carthy talk about the way he write, says he just comes out of him, the very someone to what Martin's saying is, just like I I tried, tried, fought against IT didn't come. I'm laying there about to give up, and then they just comes out of me, and I sit down and I write IT out. The importance of this story cannot be understated.

IT is his first viral headed, is going to sweep across all the newspapers and all the magazines all throughout the country, which is going to lead him to his next big break. When he and why, which? I'll get there a second.

What's fascinating about this is the viral nature of this story called him by surprise. He didn't even think he was that good. The only one not amused by the story, IT seemed, was the author himself to think that after writing many articles, a man might be excused for thinking they were tolerable, good.

So saying, I I wrote a budget, good stuff in the best. Those new york people should single out a willingness backwards sketched to compliment on like this was just something that was trying to make, uh, to write us, to make a living, to just survive. Didn't even take IT that seriously.

And yet this is one in which all the countries praising me for, and that is the first opportunity that opens up every single opportunity. After listen to this, gradually ly, and gradually trained, accepted his fate. He thought he had a call to literature of a low, low order.

That's what they call IT at the time. Be writing funny, literally, literature of a low order, humorous. IT is nothing to be proud of, he said.

But IT is my strongest suit from now on. He pledge he would turn my attention to seriously writing, to excite the laughter of god's creatures. IT is a poor, pitiful business, he wrote, the year is eighteen sixty five.

IT is a few weeks before trains, third birthday. So because I went viral, everybody knows who more twin is. Now he gets all this.

He gets the opportunity, and he gets to choose from. At the time, how I was not a state, IT was actually wisdom called a while. I was called the same with isolate back then.

And train has been wanted to go for a while. But it's OK. Well, how can I get there? And so who AI is gna change everything because he's the greatest scoop. He gets his greatest sculp in hawaii, which actually leads him to his public lecture career, which then leads into europe, which then leads into his his wife, that he's like the love of his life. But we're not there are.

So what he does, he approaches these newspaper wners, I think in secrets to, and is like this thing, if you will pay for the trip to why all spend, I think he decides he's going to spend a mount up there. I will write series like letters for the newspaper, you know, twenty, twenty five or thirty of these letters. He thinks he's going to go for a month, and he loved why so much? He wants spending four months there, and much later.

And older man, he's writing about this, this just beautiful memory, his life and he says, is the peaceful as restfulness sunni's bomb est dreams, having a refuge for are worn out and weary spirit the surface of the earth can offer. And so this is what I mean, how one opportunity and locks another opportunity, how opportunity tends to beget more opportunity. He winds up getting an opportunity.

This is something he couldn't plan outside of a true, but he winds up meeting the american diplomats that the hawaii, hawaii, the time his name is burning ham, and berlin han just wants to meet, train, because burlingham and berlin han sun is a fan of in of twins writing. In fact, they had memorized trains frog story and could repeat IT like on command. And so train, when is becoming friends and spending time with Brown ham? Why he's in hawaii? And then again, this is another that you have an older person, well connected person, trying to take an interest in more train called that calls maggi us.

And he gives advice that's going to sound very summer to advice that war gave train over back in Virginian city. And this is advice that trains going to use for the rest of life again. And it's this ideas like whatever you're doing doing on the highest plane possible do not give into the based or elements of your uh of your occupation and so he says a perturb alister ambassage berlin game gave the author a well meaning peace of advice to rect quote, from burning in here you have great ability.

I believe you have genius. What you need now is a refinement of association. See campaign ship among men of superior intellect and character. We're fine yourself and your work. Never affiliate with inferior, always climb.

IT was an administrate train, would take to heart and follow virtually to the letter for the next forty four years, shortly after they meet and become friends. right? There's this an incredible survival story that's that's going to this thing doesn't just go viral over the united states like twin's frog story, this goes viral over the entire year, entire earth rather.

And train is the one that gets the scoop. And he gets the scoop because the ambassador, right, the meeting ambassador, arranges for trained to be the first person to interview these people that survive this incredible shift. There was A A shreck boat, like a lifeboat that lands on the southern coast of a White LED by this gaining capt.

In ja mital. This is a famous, they had been at sea for forty three herring days, and they were just in a fifteen foot o which just ten days, or the food at the time their endings, was the single boat record in the world for people to survive the longest in a small boat. He says, with only ten days russians, the castaways were soon reduced to eating their boots, shoe laces, pieces of wood, strips of canvas, coton shirts and silk handkerchiefs.

Survivors were less than a day away from drawing straws to kill and eat the loser of the lottery, and in a matter I think of dare to train, writes up this story, set IT off and IT spreads like width all over the world. Wise import, because, again, opportunity and locks the next opportunity. What he realized is like, oh, wait, now I actually have something somewhat of an authority on.

I can start doing stage shows. He's going to take this, this story and add humans bits about IT. And he's like, now I have a plot like i'm going to use, i'm going to run wards playbook.

I'm going to be a public lecture starts out. We didn't thought that maybe just one city went so IT go so well that he went at touring a desert for the rest of his life in. The smart thing he does is he capitalizes on all the media attention right away.

So he says he has been seriously discussing a new venture, a public lecture on hawaii that would capitalize on his current status. And his current status, meaning on american, that just met four months on the same with irelands, and had stumbled into this unbelievable, a worldwide scoop of the grade of the greatest feet of enterance for any ship right victims at that time in history. And you see right things ago that that coin is an phenomenal marketer.

So he does two smart things here. One, to see the ground to get people to show up. He spent one hundred and fifty dollars to publish an ad in the newspapers advertising the show that he's doing.

And IT says the ad itself was a classic example of training wit. I'm going going to try to read this to you and hopefully make sense. If not, you might have to see IT.

But what he does is you have all these headlines. Most of the ad is is a Normal tax rate, but then you have five or six headlines all in cassocks and IT. Meanly draws your tension, but its funny what he does.

So in headlines IT would say, no more trains are gona speak. This is what's included and he says, a splendid orchestra, but under small printing goes, is in town. but.

IT has not been engaged. Capital letters a, then a ferocious wild beast will be on exhibit in the next book. Magnificent fireworks were in contemplation for the occasion, but the idea has been a beta grand torch.

Light procession may be expected. In fact, the public are privileged to expect whatever they please. So like trying to grab your tention, like you can see identity, wild bees, you can see fireworks.

Well, we don't have that, but we do have more train. And then he has a tag line from the very first add that he uses a bunch doors open at seven o'clock. The trouble will begin at eight. And so if you think about what's really happening here, the people that show up at the show is very so much to what you are doing right now.

No, that myself on all this is like this is just podcasting before podcasting and he says the middle decades of the thousand nine hundred centuries on explosion of travelling lecturer in it's an autodidact effort that cater to the hunger, those to those that are hunger for knowledge and a self educating populous. IT is what taking places no different than what you and I are doing right now. And when I got to the section, jeff bases pops mine.

One of my jeff has, you know, on a mAiling amazing quotes. But one of my favorite things, he said, i'm going to read this you about, you should be building your business around things that don't change. One human being talking to another is as old as a language that is never going to change.

And this suggests I very frequently get the question, what's going to change in the next ten years? And that's a very interesting question, the very common one. But I almost never get the question what's not going to change in the next ten years? And I submitted you that the second question is actually the more important of two because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time in our retail business.

We know that customers want low Prices, and I know that's going to be true ten years from now. They want fast delivery. They want vast selection. IT is impossible to imagine a future ten years now where customer comes up and says, jeff, I love amazon, I just wish the Prices were a little higher or I love amazon, I just wish you deliver a little more solely impossible.

And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into IT today will still be paying off dividends for our new customers ten years from now. When you this is a problem is amazing. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into IT.

And so another thing that he does, he's so nervous, he has complete like stage fright, he's completely terrified. What is about to do is he sees the audience. So who coin like? He has bunch of friends.

I think you are like to like maybe eight or ten different friends sitting all over the theater and he even knows where they are. So if he wants to deliver, like make sure the punch line hit, so they laugh like a look in the direction. If he makes ee contact, that means to laugh once one or two people laugh using an an audience, other people kind of pick IT up as well.

And so we see that the audience, the second thing that was whole areas right is now he is on tour, is that train would finish his show. And then he go out with the audience and get absolute hammer. He go out and get drunk after the show was over with people in the audits.

And so as he keeps traveling around doing more shows, more newspapers, pick IT up, more magazines. Talk started talking about IT. He gets, he started ting a lot of attention for his shows.

IT becomes very, very successful, like I said, something he does for the rest of life. But then, of course, as the grow to populate, or of anything, he starts getting a lot of critics trains. Response to criticism is hilarious.

He says everybody has a right to his opinion, even if he is an as they have the consolation of abusing me and I have the consolation of slapping my pocket and hearing the money giggle. So before you I end this conversation, let's go. Let's look back at what is taking place, right? Fine thinks he's going to be a cocaine dealer, travel down stone bles upon the best job.

And he thought he had have forever the mississip river b steamboat pilot. Then something completely out of, out of control, the civil overcomes, causes them to fleg go out west. And he has all these series of adventures, turns from Samuel client into mark train, meets a bunch of people along the way.

They give him fantastic c advice and change reproductive. His life experiences unbelievable highs. And at the very bottom we wants to.

He has a gun to his head, finds the best opportunity of his life, writes what he thinks is just a silly story. That story goes viral. That story creates all these other fans and people that love, train and want to help him. He turns that into a trip to hawaii, meets another one of his fans who happens to be very important entities who leads into the greatest journalistic s cop s of all time that leads into his lecture career, which further enhances his public profile, which leads him to this two and three week trip in europe, which is in turn going to lead to the source material for his first great publishing success in book form, which then in turn changes his life forever. Once again, trains restless nature served him well.

The subsequent twenty three weeks he spent turning the old world gave him both the inspiration and the raw material for the book the innocents abroad, his first great publishing success and the biggest selling book in the united states in the last seventeen years. Train also found a girl, or rather, he found the girl's brother, and then he found the girl. Her name was a libya Louis london.

And he was to be the love of his life. Had he not gone on that voyage, his career most likely would have heard that of his recently deceased drinking companion, ward, a one man show lived out in smoky lector alls CD hotel rooms in late night bars. Instead, much of the wonderment of his western friends, mark twin set out rehabilitating himself in the single minded interest of winning the girl train, told his friend that he was the most perfect gem of women kind that I ever saw my life.

And I will stand by that remark until I die again. Against all odds, he would prove as good as his word. The unlikely marriage of the hard knock humors from backwards missouri and the areas from upstate new ork work surprisingly well.

Train showed the previously shelter livy the world SHE in turn civilized him for the next thirty four years in good times and bad. The couple presented a unified front, a model marriage bliss, with three spirit daughters and innumerable cats. The contented author produced the remarkable stream of novels, short stories, essays and travel pieces that today stands as one of the great bodies of work in english literature.

The first booky completed after his marriage was roughing IT, a Sunny and expensive account of his cross country stagecoach trip with his brother a decade earlier, and his adventures in the raw and wild west. What an incredible ending to the story and illustration in one of Martins long held beliefs that you can live multiple lives that you can concern no matter what, you can constant reinvent t yourself. I highly recommend buying the book.

As I said earlier, I had both the heart cover version and the kindle sion. If you buy the book using the linux in the show now, you will be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is three hundred and twelve books down one thousand ago. And I talked again soon.