Live and Die in L A with Neil Strauss #570

Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance.

You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's cool fact of the day is that a healthy relationship starts with we. You're like, dave, that's not a cool fact of the day. That's some sort of new generation, whatever, platitude. But I'm talking about research that really grew our body of evidence saying that the pronouns that you use can actually predict good relationship outcomes. This is research by UC Riverside psychologist Megan Robbins, who emphasized the power of first person personal pronouns like we and us in relationships. So if you say we, it's an indicator of interdependence, meaning that partners affect each other's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. And if you shift from that self oriented I to the relationship oriented we, it makes a difference. Robbins and her team looked at 30 studies of 5,300 participants to say that couples who say we and us are the ones who have better relationships. About half the people that they said were married, they looked at relationship outcomes, relationship behaviors, mental health, physical health, and other health behaviors in all five of those categories across all contexts and almost perfectly equal for men and women. Apparently, we is greater than I. Or to put it the other way, there is no I in we. Speaking of relationships and things like that, when I wrote Game Changers, a book that summarizes the wisdom and knowledge of almost 500 people who've done something noteworthy enough to come on Bulletproof Radio in their careers and in their lives, the research showed that there's three big categories that people pay attention to, and they focus on being happier, they focus on being smarter, and they focus on being faster. And the power of relationships came out in Several of the 46 Laws of High performers. If you haven't had a chance to read Game Changers, it will save you 500 hours of podcast listening time to read this book. It is the highest ROI of all the books. There you want the nuggets, the wisdom, and not podcast transcripts boiled down. I'm talking actual analysis of data to tell you what the people who do the biggest things pay attention to what they value the most so you can reorganize your priorities. Read Game Changers and if you'd be so kind, leave a review. And I say that because we're going to be talking about writing books and about being an author, because I have one of my favorite authors who's an inspirational guy and, well, sometimes Branded is a bit of a dirtbag, but it's totally not true. I know him. He's smiling right now. And someone who's been on the show before and is actually featured in Game Changers, none other than Neil Strauss. Neil, you've actually.

I've never been called a dirtbag to my. At least to my face before.

Well, I mean, it's just what we say when you're not in the room. And I thought, no, I'm.

Oh, by the way, quick note on your fun fact of the day, which is when people say. Because I have an issue with this, but maybe you don't. People say, when a male says, who's in? A couple says, we're pregnant. Does that ever strike you? I mean, according to your fun fact, your fact, that's a good thing. But to me, I always think, like, no, she's pregnant, dude. You're just going to be cheering it on. She's going. But couples say that. It always rubs me the wrong way.

I think when a woman says it, it feels a little bit different. When a guy says it, I'm kind of like, are you sure it's yours? But that's just. No, I'm kidding. I don't actually think that. But it is kind of weird. It's like, maybe our family is pregnant or whatever. We're expecting a baby. It feels good.

But we're expecting a baby. But she's pregnant.

I don't think I ever said we're pregnant. I was always like, lana's pregnant. And I'm really happy about that. And the reason I was joking.

We're really happy about that, by the way.

Exactly. Now, the reason I was jokingly saying you were a dirtbag is because you're well known, because you wrote the game and you immersed yourself in this pickup artist community. And so there are people who read your book, which is pretty shocking and a fantastic read, which makes sense because if you look at what you've done as a writer and a journalist, you've had just fantastic careers. You know how to tell a story like few people do. And you read that, you're going, oh, my God, this pickup artist community is pretty profoundly disturbed. And you could have sort of been branded as that. But you came out. We've talked about this in your other two interviews on the show, but you sort of came out of that after a while and you said, you know, I'm going to write the truth. Which was sort of the opposite of that. So for people who didn't hear those other two interviews, who don't know your backstory before you got into your new project, we're going to Talk about your new podcast. Tell me about immersing yourself in the game.

Sure. Yeah. It's interesting. I think a lot of people who say that the game's like an interesting phenomena separate from me. You can't control what happens with a book after you write it. And it's sort of become like. It has become like a symbol of all that's disgusting about just whatever that male kind of culture. But even when I wrote it, and again, I don't know what it is because I haven't read it since I wrote it. I never read a book once it's published because I might want to change something.

I know, I'm the same way.

Yeah. And because it's so old, I'm sure there are appalling things in there I've written, but the intention when I wrote the book was like, it wasn't like a pro. Rah, rah, rah. This culture, this is what you do. I definitely. It was like a journey into and out of the darkness of this sort of manipulative, predatory world and begins, you know, so it's funny, but what people think the book is, is different than what I intended. It is what it actually is. I don't know.

You're an investigative journalist. I mean, you've written, you've won big awards, New York Times for a decade. You've written for Rolling Stone on Elon Musk and Tom Cruise. So you're sort of the big deal as a journalist, Very, very successful. And so.

But it's interesting because our culture is so obsessed with sex that if you do something about sex, it just eclipses everything because we're so, we have, we're so tied in knots around the concept of sex and sexuality.

I was kind of blown away because your first book, Neil, it was called Emergency, which is. I don't know if that was your first book, but the first book I read anyway, it was this fantastic story spanning probably five or ten years of how you learn to become self sufficient. It inspired me to do the urban escape and invasion kidnapper training where they teach you how to pick locks and what to do if you're locked in the trunk of a car and all this stuff. And like you lived all this stuff and then you write the story immersed in it, and then you did the same thing for this world of pickup artists. But you did get branded as sort of this kind of low moral sort of thing because you immersed yourself in it to write about it. But what blows me away is then you come back with the truth and now you're so focused on this level of rigor, on relationships and on not being good at picking up women, but on actually becoming in a healthy relationship with them. And that arc is outside of your storytelling. That's actually what you did as a human being, that you immersed yourself in these different things and then you told the story. And I think that you completely changed the perception of yourself as a human being by doing that, which is something few people get to do.

Right. And it wasn't the goal. I think it was the goal that went to minute. The goal, like, if I like my goal with the game was I was just lonely. I wanted to know, what am I doing wrong? Why don't women like me? That really was the goal with Emergency. It was like, I'm scared the world's going to hell and you can't trust the system to protect you. What am I going to do in dealing with that fear? And the truth was, why don't my relationships work out? Why do they always end in disaster? How can I fix that? So to me, it started with a question. And once I found an answer, it became a book versus. Oh, I'm trying to. A lot of people don't, you know, when they come up to me and ask questions, I'm sure you too. They're like, they want to get an idea that makes money or an idea that's successful. But if you start with something you just really want to do, whether it succeeds or not, you win if you do it.

Yeah. Because you got to do it, which is the thing.

Right.

I'm like that with this whole anti aging thing that I've been doing for 20 years. It's what I like.

Exactly. Exactly. Winning is living like you win. Like a book, it doesn't matter. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing is, like, people. I'm sure a lot of people listening too. Maybe this is cliched advice, but it really is true. Whenever someone has a question, it's like, what would you do anyway if you didn't get paid for it? What would you do anyway if it wasn't successful and feel like it was an accomplishment? Like, if you ask yourself that question, there's no losing.

Yeah.

It's the Joseph Campbell quote. Oh, go ahead.

It is a Joseph. There's a Joseph Campbell quote about it. But it's. It's not really.

It's not the Follow youw Bliss one. It's the. It's the. It's the. It's. Sorry I cut you off, but it's the. It's this one's not as popular. I think it's more important than the Follow youl Bliss quote. It's like the insecure way is really the secure way. The thing that seems not safe is safe, but the secure way, like, I'm doing this for money, is really insecure because if you lose the money or you don't make the money, you have nothing.

The experience can't be taken away, but the money can.

Exactly.

I certainly learned that one when I lost a maiden. Lost $6 million before I was 28. Like, yep, I wasn't a lot happier with that money, but it sure was more convenient. And if I'd have spent that money on experiences, I probably would have been able to tell stories at least as interesting as Emergency.

Right? Exactly, Exactly.

But it's a bit scary. And I look at Game changers as what I would have liked to have known when I was 20. If someone had just told me, like, this is what the people get to where you want to get. This is what they pay attention to. This is what they care about. It would have saved me a lot of, like, tilting at the wrong windmills sort of thing. But that. I'm always scared of that advice, you know, do what you love. Because I know some people in their 20s and what they really love is, you know, nude figure skating or, you know, doodling on the beach or getting really, really high. And, like, it's got to be somewhat useful.

Well, here it doesn't have to be useful, but here's an important distinction. It isn't, like, live by the pleasure principle. It's. And again, like, those kids who play video games are now like, huge esports guys. Right. You don't. Or. And women, like, they're people who are. There's a lot of money in the cannabis world. And the. And the fair point. So. So the. So. But the point is people think that. But there's an important distinction, which is people think. We're saying you have to love it all the time. And as you and I know, and I remember when you're opening the Bullet, the cafes and things were. The first one was an opening or when I was writing the Truth. It's. It's not. It is. If you're doing what you love, you are miserable during three quarters of it. But you do it because it's worth.

It in the end, writing a book.

And you do it. You do it because it's worth the misery, not because you're never going to be miserable.

I'm in the late stages of my Next book after Game Changers. Because if you're going to write a book every 12 to 18 months, you're always writing. And that last six weeks of going through everything that you've written and compiled and rewriting it, I usually don't get enough sleep and it takes something out of you. But then when you're done, you're like, okay, now I really understand what I just wrote about. And I'm guessing you must have a similar process. Like when the deadline's near, you're sort of all in. But it's not always fun.

No, it's tough. I say, never again. I'm never doing this again. I'll read it and I'll say, this is horrible. Why do I waste my time? You go through so many different emotions, but you get it to that place where you're happy with it and it's all worth it. Like you just work at it like nothing. You've worked at it before. You go through because you care about it so much. It's like parenting, right? It's not always. Parenting is not always the greatest, most fulfilling, rewarding thing, but it's worth it.

You wrote something right at the start of the year. You wrote, sometimes your passion isn't fun. Sometimes it's grueling, soul searing, self doubting, time consuming work. But stick with it and don't give it up because it's worth it in the end. And then you say a few more things and you say, when experts tell you that you should just do the fun things and they tell you to look at something else when it's not fun anymore, those are the experts who start looking for a new passion and you say these words, but sometimes it's just work. Stay out of your head and do the heavy lifting. Stick with it, get better at your craft because it's worth it. It's funny that you posted that at the beginning of the year we started talking about it and realized, oh wait, I've actually got this in my prep notes for our inter.

Oh, that's funny.

It was already there.

Much better said. That's why I'm a writer. That was much better said.

So I'm going to ask you this as someone who's been successful. I mean, when I say successful, I talked a little bit about your journalism stuff, but you've also written Marilyn Manson's book. And who's the large comedian you worked with?

Oh, Kevin Hart.

Kevin Hart, pretty much.

And I did one called the Dirt, so I guess which is coming out on Netflix. But I just Realized this one called the dirt. So I guess that is dirt bagging the dirt.

There you go.

Yeah.

And so you've. You've just done this over and over. So I'm going to ask you, as an acknowledged expert in sticking with it, even if it's hard, as someone who's done it over and over and over in your life, why do so many people go off track when they're working on finding their passion, their purpose, and why don't you? So kind of two questions, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I think, yeah, there are two reasons why people go off track. One is, one is they can't find the starting point, and the other is they're afraid of the ending point. So we can cover both really quickly. Well, I think the people who can't find their starting point buy into the myth of I have to figure this thing out, and it has to be the right thing. It has to be the perfect thing. And they get stuck. They're like, well, I don't want to waste all this time doing it. They get stuck in analysis paralysis. And I know so many people like that. Not realizing that you walk yourself into your passion. Where you start is not where you end up, but you just start doing something. So my advice for the people who can't start and are trying to. If you locked someone in a room for five years and said, figure out your passion, they're not going to leave knowing their passion. You have to do something. So my advice is like, do something you kind of enjoy and don't hate. Just start there and then just be open to the flow of where it takes you. Like, I've seen, you know, even my own journey, and I'm sure your journey, you just start doing something and slowly, if you're just staying aware. I think awareness is so important and just paying attention to the responses you're getting, how you're feeling about things. The course of life drifts you to where you should be going, and you find it. But if you don't start, you never get anywhere. So that's one. And it doesn't have to be the thing that'll lead you to the thing. And there's no time wasted if it leads you there. That's one. Two is, I know so many people who start something, they're passionate about it. You're like, they're going to do great. And then halfway or three quarters or even nine tenths of the way through, they get super passionate about something else, and they never finish that thing. And I think that it's because Fear of success or fear of failure. Right. They're like, if I do this and it fails, what does that mean about me? What does that say about me? Or there's the undeservedness for success and they'd rather live in the illusion that they're a genius than put something out of the world, not have it, get the ideal feedback they want and then have their whole ego self crushed.

It makes a lot of sense because that whole fear of having your ego crushed, people don't necessarily label it that way. You do it because you've studied personal development and we've sat in cars and chatted over dinner and all, and you've done some heavy duty digging, like I have too, where you get to that point you actually know it's your ego. But for someone who hasn't necessarily realized, oh, that feeling of I really hate this, I really want to die, I want to hit that person, that that's actually your ego.

That's your shadow. That's the side of yourself you don't like. Right. When you see someone you instantly don't like, right away you're looking in the mirror and that's the side of yourself you're afraid that you're presenting. It's so true. I love the psychology stuff. And we can go down that rabbit hole. The stuff we're talking about, the fear of failure, it's implanted early on. So I know a lot of people who are like the prince or the princess in their family could do no wrong. Then they're out in the real world and they don't want to do something in case it's wrong. So they can live in that illusion of being still the hero. Or people who are so heavily criticized that their inner critic is always on and beating themselves up.

It's kind of funny. I have never at least consciously praised my kids for being smart because I don't want them to get that entitled thing. What I do is I tell them, you worked really hard, you did a great job, and that's what earns the praise, is the working really hard and all present for winning. You worked hard and you saw results. Great. You did it, you earned it. Versus it was an intrinsic thing that happened. And I'm hoping that's one of the ways I can prevent my kids from falling too heavily into that trap that I think all humans fall into.

Yeah, because you self identify as smart, then you're afraid to be wrong, yet you only learn by being wrong.

Exactly. Let's not take any risks ever again, because I'M too smart to take risks.

That's not gonna lead to happiness. It's the saddest thing to see someone who can't admit when they are wrong because they're like, there's no growth and there's no point in having a real discussion with them. It's really tragic. I was gonna write a book at one point. I wrote like four chapters called the Power of Low. I'll probably do it. So don't take this idea for all the. Bill, not you. For the. It's fine. You guys can take it anyway. But it's called. We called the Power of Low Self esteem. It's all about how not thinking you're good enough and thinking you're wrong propels you to do more. And I studied Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa. Martin Luther King told his congregation, I don't think dreams come true. And Mother Teresa in her journals, wrestled with her faith in God and whether she believed he existed or not. So what I realized is people think that these kind of cultural icons. And again, I've interviewed the people of our time, just got it all together and supreme confidence. What they don't realize is you just have to be 51% confident versus 49% insecure. Right. It just needs to be a little bit. You just have to have a little bit. Enough just to get yourself over the finish line.

Yeah. The running from failure versus moving towards success is a very different mindset. And you sound like. So your book emergency is such a long period of time in your life. At least it sounds like it is from when you started, when you finished it. It sounds like you actually went from a lot more of a place of moving away from fear. At least when you started this thing, you're like, I want to feel safe. And here I am, this intellectual New Yorker, and I realized I couldn't take care of myself. So go hang out with some Hell's Angels and kill a goat and all the other crazy stuff you did. And you actually decided. So instead of running away from your fears, that you're going to turn around and actually face your fears and become good at the things you're afraid of. Would you advise people listening to the show today to go out and do the same thing?

100%, I think, like, because your brain, if it's scared of something and it realizes there's nothing there, starts to rewire itself. You know, you expose yourself enough to this thing and it starts to sort of be like, oh, that's okay. It's interesting. I'm fascinated, fascinated by how beliefs get implanted and reinforced, right? So if somebody maybe is abandoned by a parent and they think, well, I'm unlovable, then they get into a relationship with a belief I'm unlovable, and maybe someone really loves them, and they say, oh, you know, I don't think you really love me. Oh, prove it. Oh, who's that calling you? The person eventually gets frustrated, annoyed, and leaves them. And they say, oh, see, that proves I'm unlovable. And so we just keep reinforcing this belief. So for some people, it's really facing the fear that you are lovable, just believing you are. Sometimes the fear is actually an awesome thing.

I had two big buttons because I was obese for a lot of my life. And I also was really afraid of being alone. I'd rather be in a bad relationship than be alone. And of course, I didn't know that either of these were really operating on me. They were subconscious. So when I finally became aware of them, I said, all right, I'm going to go spend four days fasting in a cave with no one around for 10 miles. So I had an energy worker friend drop me off in the middle of nowhere with some water and a sleeping bag and a lighter at a cave that had been used spiritually for a long period of time.

So.

I did that. And, man, I tell you, being starving and completely alone, those are two of my biggest buttons. I'll just push them all the way down and hold them there for four days and see what happens.

And.

And net. Net I didn't die. And so my nervous system learned, okay, maybe those are tolerable things. And it does cause changes in your synapses. It has to.

It does. And to tweak what you said earlier, it's like, we think we're facing our fears, but we're really facing is discomfort and we're facing anxieties. And two things I was thinking of saying. One is, one thing I've kind of realized more recently is, is that we go through a lot of pain to avoid pain. Like, the fear of being alone, like, hurt you more than actually being alone did. Or people the fear of feeling sad or depressed, you know, people turn to drugs. Being a heroin addict is more painful than just dealing, you know, feeling your feelings. So I realized, like, willingness to tolerate discomfort and the willingness to tolerate uncertainty will get you so far in life. And some people who need certainty, who need comfort, just become controlled by their fears and anxieties.

And Winston Churchill said it, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And it's true that a lot of the human suffering is you worry more about the surgery than it actually hurt during the surgery. And you see it, you see it in a two year old, they have a splinter and they're just losing their shit. Come on. It's a splinter. We're just going to pull it out. But you can see the pain. 10 minutes of screaming for half a second of a little twinge. It seems like that replicates into adults, but it becomes invisible to us.

But here's the difference. And I did a story for Rolling Stone on fear and how it controls us. And I met with a scientist named Joseph Ledoux. He's the guy who discovered the amygdala, which most people have misunderstood his research and say that's your emotional center of your brain. It's not. So when you hear self help people or scientists saying amygdala this little almonds, sourcing emotions, it's actually not. What he figured out is that fear and anxiety are totally different. And we give things a lot of power by calling them fear when they're not. So fear is just a survival thing. If you're out and you see whatever a rattlesnake or that's, you know, then your amygdala kicks in and your body has certain, you know, autonomic responses and you're feeling fear. Anxiety happens in a different part of the brain. Stria terminalis, I think is the name. I'm not sure, but it's a different part entirely. And anxiety is just a future projection. That thing, if I go walking in the forest, I could see a snake and it could bite me. That's just anxiety. So you can recognize that anxiety is just a made up future projection. You can let go of it. And giving it fear gives it so much power because it becomes about survival. One related note, because I'm fascinated by fear, because you look at the culture right now, so much is fear responses. And I was trying to figure out why does fear control us so much. And I talked to a guy you had on your show, I think Andrew Huberman.

Oh yeah, I love Andrew.

Yeah. And he was saying how the brain is wired not for happiness, it's wired for survival. Right. Like me being happier is not going to me, but I got to look for the threats and find what the threats are. I can ignore that sweet innocuous animal like the. But that saber toothed tiger, whatever I got to pay attention to. So we're wired for fear first. So we just over respond to these fears. And anxieties, but we're not in that world anymore.

It's something that they don't teach you in high school, they don't teach it to you in university. And it's something a lot of people die with never having understood. But the role of podcasts like this and a lot of the books and just a lot of people working on the personal development side, including you, is to like, like, let's just own this as humans and get over it so we can do something more interesting than being afraid all the time.

It's so true. It's like, it's so sad. And all the things like they've studied fear so much and all the, you know, nobody looks statistically about what to be afraid of. There's something called probability neglect. Do you know what that is?

No.

So probability neglect is we don't look at the probability that something might happen. We look for what makes the greatest visual impact. So we're more worried about plane crashes than smoking or whatever, car crashes. We're more worried about, you know, terrorism than hospital borne infections. Right. Because hospital borne infections, that even though it's way deadlier if we wanted to, if I would vote for the president who was talking about how can we deal with hospital borne infections, how can we deal with, you know, you know, unhealthy eating, obesity, how can we deal with smoking, how can we deal with. These are the things that are the hugest killers, but they're not in the papers. Yeah, but, but the probability neglect. So much fear about this ridiculous stuff that will most likely never happen to us.

It all comes down to that feedback loop. If it has immediate feedback, you really pay attention to it. But if it hits you in five years, it doesn't matter even if it's almost certain.

I mean, here's the deal. If you're listening to this and you're texting and driving, you have no right to be afraid of anything anybody else is doing in the world.

I mean, that is a rational, true statement, which makes me happy.

Right.

Well, you have an unusual mind which has led you to be in addition to a written word storyteller and having your little cameo appearance on Curb youb Enthusiasm. Yeah, true. You had your podcast with Gabby Reese called the Truth Barrel where you were taking interesting people and putting them in a really hot sauna until they told you the truth. So you're oral storytelling is really good. And you've got a new podcast. We've talked about it a couple times and it's bothering me because I said, hey, Neil, why don't you come on, share some of your wisdom and talk about your new podcast that I'm really excited about. And every time I talk to you about it, you change the name of the podcast. So far, I've heard Gonzo, which is name like, for God's sake, that's a terrible name. Don't do that. I've heard To Live and Die in Los Angeles. I've heard Lost Angeles. And you had one other one, didn't you?

Oh, yeah. Sins of SoCal.

Sins of SoCal. Or SOS. All right, so tell listeners what your new podcast is about, and then let's talk about.

Let's talk about titling.

As authors, we title things, and this is valid for you listening, even if you're not an author. Just our thought process here is going to be important for how you present anything you do. First off, what is it? So everyone can think about why you're naming it.

Okay, so I was saying earlier that I just start with curiosity. I'm not trying to write a book about anything. I just have a problem I'm trying to solve. One day I live in Malibu, and someone went missing in Malibu, and nothing was happening. And Ingrid, my wife, had just had a child and she was struggling. Just. She left her job. She wasn't doing anything, I swear. This is getting to what the podcast is about. And she read about this missing person and started offering help to the family. And next thing I know, myself, Ingrid and two neighbors. This guy, Mike Einziger, who plays an incubus, and his wife, Anne Marie, who's a amazing violinist, plays with Hans Zimmer. People who are not crime fighters, let's say. Suddenly you said, how can we help? And next thing, we found ourselves, like, swept up into the investigation. And I started to learn a lot. Just the same with emergencies, same with the truth, same with the game. I started to learn how the system works, especially when people go missing. And consequently, it led to a couple other things, like just helping families when this happens. Because if you go to the LA Police website, it says if someone goes missing, first thing they say is, don't worry about it. They'll probably show up. And then the second thing is, if they don't show up, come to us. But recognize we have tens of thousands of cases every year, there's probably not much we can do. You should get a private investigator.

Wow.

And then it says, if you can't afford a private investigator, go to the Salvation Army. That's literally what it says on the website.

The Salvation Army.

Yeah. So it really says, like, we're overloaded. We don't have a lot of people working. Missing is kind of a vague area. It's not like there's a body. We don't even know what. We can't even prove there's a crime. So good luck. And so, consequently, I've just been. Literally the four of us, and just been helping families, raising rewards locally, getting press conferences together, getting the press there because they don't know what to do.

Do you guys have, like, tights and capes and stuff like that?

We should. Right.

I'm sorry. There's a team of four crime fighters. The Bloodhound Gang. Is that more.

Yeah, yeah. It's very Scooby Doo. Right. But it's interesting because, first of all, no one's prepared for that kind of thing. And then let's say there's a learning curve to what do you do when someone goes missing? By the time you've learned it, 30, 45, 60 days have passed, all the security camera footage expired. You know, phone pings are harder to get. It's really tough. I really was thinking of, like, starting a maybe nonprofit foundation where people can get help within 24 hours versus having to wait all this time just to make sure that they're really gone. And it's. So. So anyway, so the podcast. So you're asking about the podcast, and it was just one of the most insane stories about a missing person that I got swept up into and ended up sort of. I don't even know how to describe it.

Well, it sounds like you describe it in the show. So your show is sort of a serial story about what happened in this Malibu missing persons case.

Right. And I guess this isn't right until it comes out. So I'll say it was about a missing actress who went missing, and the private investigator called me and said, hey, here's what we're looking at. Here's what we got. Can you help? And next thing I knew, like, we were literally I was parked outside the home of the person who we thought did it. Not the home, the place he was hiding out, like, alone, in terms of confronting him because no one else was going to do it. It was really intense. I got death threats, everything.

You confronted him.

You'll have to listen to crazy story. There's so many things I can't. It's weird when you're doing one of these things because you can't give it away.

I would predict that you did because I. Because I know you somewhat, and because I've read emergency, and that's something you would do. But also there's gotta be some amazing twists in there.

There's some crazy twist. And the other interesting thing about it is a lot of things are like, here's a cold case, an old case we're looking into. This is all really going on. And it, you know, you really get answers at the end and answer. It's like there's a point where we knew a piece of information before the police or the public or the journalists did. And we had to hold off, not the police, but the entire media, so that we could kind of get. Find out what happened to this person. It's very intense. And I think the other part is, you know, you want to do good. And when we give advice, we're doing this abstract good. But here is like, if you can help friends and a family who's suffering have some answers, some closure, some justice, you really know you're, you know, you're making a difference, and it's the worst thing you can. My mom always said the worst thing someone could ever experience is to lose their own child. So you're helping people in what could possibly be the worst point of their life.

Speaking of uncertainty, talk about giving back in a major way.

And the last point is that in this day and age, a citizen can have better resources than the police have and can do more. And I think there's. It might be an opportunity or a place in the future where citizens can really get together and really do a service for keeping neighborhoods and communities safe.

It's an important thing, and it's one of those things. Who would have thought? And the number of people are going to need it is relatively low, but the impact on their life is just immeasurable. Even just one or two people, where.

You make the difference, helping. When I did emergency, I was in EMT for a while and. But being there for. To go back to parenting, what creates the love a child has for a parent? It's not the parent who's always with that child, the parent who the child has the most fun with. It's when the child's in the most pain. What parent is there for them when they're in their worst moments, that's where the love bond happens. And same with people. Who are you going to be there for in the worst moments of their life? Right. Whether it's their emotional lows, in this case, they're living a nightmare in a horror story. It's like someone having support in their lowest time is what brings us together. As a community or a species, I love it.

So that's going to be a powerful show because you're telling the story and you're talking about it. But Gonzo, why would you call that Gonzo? Oh my God, I got to say, that's the worst name ever. And for context, after we record this episode and, and people, when you're listening to this, you're listening to this a week or two after you record it. So Neil is minutes away from submitting this to his final publishing process to put it out there. And Neil, you've been agonizing over this name since the last time we talked a few weeks ago. And it keeps changing. So what is your thought process? As a very well respected writer, how the heck do you title an article or how do you title a book? Tell me your thought process there and then I'm going to use your own thought process on you about Gonzo, which.

Is the worst thing ever. Okay, so. And by the way, one other note that I'm loving about this is the storytelling element. I've always told stories through books, like we're saying, and telling stories through interview clips, through sound, through music, like it's really a composed story. So it's like a book. I'm really loving learning a new form of storytelling. I'm more excited about it than the next book. Like it's so amazing to do versus here. I get anxiety free flowing a conversation because I'm like, this is interesting the whole time, my head. The only goal when I write a book or I do the podcast is how can I make each moment interesting so you just can't put it down. Whereas here there's a surrender to, you know, someone's just eavesdropping on a conversation.

Right, Right.

So titling. Yeah, titling is an interesting thing, right? Because the title of whatever you're doing, whether it's a company, right, or the podcast or the book, the title's like the, like the lure that gets the fish hooked right on the. That gets the f hooked. And with this particular title, I knew the title from the beginning. It was always going to be Los Angeles. And then the producer I'm working with a company called Tenderfoot who are amazing. They did everything they did has been number one up and vanished, Atlanta monster, sworn every other. They've done three. They've all been number one. They're great. So I trust them. They know that world. They didn't love Los Angeles because they thought it was punny. Hard to remember you saying Los Angeles or Los Angeles. And then they texted somebody big up at itunes who had the same concerns. So it's that challenge of, do you go with what speaks to your heart, or do you listen to the feedback of people who maybe know better? So it doesn't have to be gonzo, though. But they like gonzo because they just thought it was cool. It was one word. They liked the gonzo reporting style, where, as you were saying earlier. Okay, let's start all over. Let's have a discussion about the title, which is knowing how I am as a writer or reporter, which is like, I'm dogged and I don't give up. And I go, like, all the way. All the way. They thought gonzo captured that. What would you call it?

If you've never heard of gonzo reporting, you're probably not alone, because gonzo reporting is this idea. No, I'm not claiming to be unbiased. It means I jumped right in with both feet and became kind of a part of the story and told you what it was about, which is exactly what you've done in all of your books. You're like, this is what it was like when I went and hung out with these white supremacist prepper people, knowing they might want to kill me because I'm Jewish, but I did it anyway because I wanted to. Okay, that's a story. You can't put that story down, Neil.

Right?

So I look at that, I'm like, okay, that's definitely gonzo. But what I do when I'm naming something, whether it's a product or my books or bulletproof or whatever it is, before you think of something, there's always a picture and a feeling with the picture. So you could go to Google and you could type Gonzo. In fact, I'm going to do that as we're speaking right now, and I'm going to tell you what comes up.

I know what you're going to do. I know what's going to come up.

I'm going to go to Images.

This whole podcast is Dave shaming me out of my podcast. Dino.

And by the way, so the first thing that comes up on Google, under the words, the cognitive thinking, it says, associated with a journalistic writing of exaggerated, subjective and fictionalized style, or maybe bizarre and crazy. Okay, so that's pretty good. But now I'm going to go to Images. Oh, my God, an entire screen of Muppets. There's nothing that is not a Muppet on this screen. And I've got it on a small font, too. So I've got 16 muppets. That's what people are going to imagine when they hear the word gonzo, which is why I don't think, unless you want to associate yourself with Muppetry, that that's.

Everyone loves Gonzo. But it's interesting. This dialogue Dave and I are having is like a dialogue that just. It's a great dialogue because all that feedback is important, and I love getting that feedback, because me respecting you and doing all the things you think like, that's huge. That's weighted so heavily in terms of not naming Gonzo, by the way. It could still be gonzo, but I still got my producer to contend with.

All right, well, let's play this back for your producer. Now, you gave me a little bit of anxiety because I'm like, God, I haven't actually Googled image search for Bulletproof, and I have no idea what's going to come up.

Oh, let's see it. Let's do it. Can you do it?

I just did. And I was like, maybe it's customized for me, but I could tell you that you see bulletproof radio, bulletproof diet, and bulletproof coffee all over the place, along with a couple. An action movie from 1996 with Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler. I can hang with Adam Sandler.

Oh, dude, it's amazing. No, same here. It's pretty amazing you took a word like bulletproof and ended up sort of owning that on Google because you'd think there's bulletproof glass. There's a lot of bulletproof things that are more bulletproof.

I thought I would just see Kevlar vest, to be perfectly honest. I was going to sort of make fun of myself, but. Okay, so my advice holds now. And so the idea, though, I'm sure if we type Lost Angeles, it isn't going to give us anything, but unless there's some sort of vampire movie.

Yeah, pretty amazing, actually.

There's a 2012 IMDb hit for it and a bunch of random pictures of la, but they're all about la, which is good because you're basically talking about Malibu as part of la. So I would like that.

And when I was going to name my book the Game, people said, don't call it the Game, because there's that Michael Douglas movie, so you have to take everything with a grade of. I just thought, well, it's the right title and I'll just own the game. But Gonzo may not be the right title.

All right, so we nailed that one. But, okay, now you're talking about sins of SoCal SoS, or you're talking about Lost Angeles or you're talking about To Live and Die in la. And we really are talking about living and dying and missing persons and being a detective and all that stuff. So as a creative, and I mean best in class creative, or at least one of the top guys in your class, whatever you want to call it, but world recognition, how do you know you're saying, like in your gut, how do you know which of those is the one that sticks? What's your process?

Yeah, it's different for me than for you in the sense that if you have partners. So if it's a book, I'm going to say a really important thing for everybody who works with other people the most if you're writing. I've talked to a lot of writers who they're like, I want to leave my publisher. They don't get it. And every writer argues with publishers over title and cover. Right. It's always a big thing. And it's different than naming your own company. Just want the best name. But here you have these partners who are investing a lot of time and money in you. And one important I love nonviolent communication. It's one of the most important things I've ever learned. And the big idea in it is you have to recognize that no two people have different needs. It's just that they have different conflicting strategies. So no two needs an ever in conflict. So if I want to call it Los Angeles and they want to call it Gonzo, we both actually would just want a great successful podcast. Right. They're my partners, so I'm not butting heads with them. They just have to think of putting our heads together and how what we have the same intention and how can I sort of join forces with them to create it. Great. And I think what I said, even if you're not titling something, it's important to recognize that if you're in a relationship, well, both people have a need to love and be loved. You know, if you're in a business, both you want to be successful or all five people or however many people there are, that your needs are the same and your strategies are even politically. There's everybody wants safety, everybody wants fairness. They just have different ideas for the strategies of what's going to create whatever safety, equality, freedom. And recognize that we have the same needs and we just conflict over the strategies. Helps you come together with people. So going to have to figure out how to get out the strategy lock.

It's one of the Most painful things that I go through. Not necessarily as creative or as painful as the end of the creative process where you're just cranking out the final edits and all. But that. Do I have the name right? Because if you name your podcast wrong, a third as many people may benefit from your art as well if you do it right. And we talked earlier about fear, like your fear of failure and all that stuff. Is fear a part of your naming process that you do to go through naming one of your books? Like, do you go through the here's the pain of naming it wrong, or are you more positive than that?

Oh, it's a good note. It's a good note. It's interesting. You were saying earlier. I think it is true. People are either, like, they either try to avoid failure or they embrace success, but either way, they still end up. You end up at the same place. Yeah, no, for me, I think it's more like I want to fit. It's like, you have a great personality. Someone can have a great personality, be really smart, but they wear really dirty clothes that are five sizes too big. It's going to be hard to get for people to talk to them and find that out. So, same thing. I have this beautiful personality of a work I've done. I want to find the clothes that fit so no one's turned off right away and they get to know it. So it's a fit thing.

Okay, that makes sense. You sort of know, all right.

Right. You know, like, with the Truth, it was going to be called, like, Game over for a while. It's going to be called the Game of Love. They want to exploit that. One day I just, all of a sudden the Truth came to me as a title and it just sounded right and it fit. And I thought, we're done.

I've had some good titles come to me. I wake up in the morning.

That's it.

So I don't want to get too.

Lost on this, but I want to say one thing. Can I say one point for creatives? Because I was giving some advice earlier today for creatives. I'll tell you, another big mistake that people make is that they. The title is a marketing discussion. It's not really a creative discussion. It's a marketing discussion. Right. So people make the mistake of procrastinating from doing the work by thinking about the marketing instead. So if you're writing a book or building a company or whatever you're doing, wait till you're done with the creative work before you focus on, like, the marketing. How are you going to promote it, what the title is going to be? That's just a late. That should come later. And it becomes a form of a very.