The Books That Changed Our Lives, (Part One) | Big Leap EP#69

I wouldn't be here without a little book that I encountered in the year of 1969.

To me, books were so magical, and the thought of being an author and being able to write a book seemed impossible. Reading the book, it was as vivid to my imagination as a movie.

If you pay attention carefully, you can see that you're being showered with blessings constantly and you're missing most of them because of not paying attention.

I remember reading the book laughing so hard I'd pee my pants and my abs would hurt for like a week from laughing so hard.

Hi, this is Gay Hendricks welcoming you to another episode of our Big Leap podcast. Today we're focusing on books that have changed our lives. I have a bunch of them and my buddy Mike does. And Mike, take it away.

All right, well, I'll tell you what. First of all, I'm super excited about this because you and I tear through seven books each, actually, with some bonus books, a couple I've never heard of before that I bought while we were recording this. We always record our intro. Second, so without further ado, here are the books that changed our lives and shaped us.

All right, Gay. So here we are doing something that both of us are big fans of. You as a, I don't know, 50 time best selling author at this point, I've written my share. In fact, I've got two books coming, coming out soon. But the books that shaped us and what we're going to do is just go back and forth with the number one, number two books. We've each got six or seven. And what are one of the biggest books that shaped you and why?

Yeah, this is really exciting stuff for me because I think. Was it Brian Tracy who said your life is defined by the people you meet and the books you read?

Yes, I love that.

Yeah, yeah, I love that too, because, you know, like, if you say, like, where would you be without reading or where would you be without meeting.

You know, that it defines your life. Well, I decided at an early age I wanted to be a writer. And I didn't end up knowing. I mean, I didn't know at the time because I didn't know about the field of psychology or spirituality or entrepreneurship or all the things that I write books about now. But I just knew that there was something magical about putting words down on paper and reading words. You know, you could capsulate a whole universe inside a book. And it's, you know, a tremendous way to soak up knowledge. One of the most efficient ways ever. And so, yeah.

Shall I go first or Would you like to?

Yeah, go first because I'm going to just give you a little counterpoint while you prepare. Because what you just said.

To me, books were so magical and the thought of being an author and being able to write a book seemed impossible. And then I can remember the first time I met an author, I was like, I literally thought of them as a movie star. And then, you know, when I started getting deep into reading, personal development beyond, you know, sci fi and that kind of thing.

I wound up meeting Vivian, my now wife, in Greece and she had written a book. And I was like, I wanted to just bow. And then of course I got introduced to Ariel Ford and Debbie Ford and that whole group and they were all authors and again, it felt like their fame oozed off them. And this is also back in the time when being an author, being a best selling author meant you went on really big long tours on the road, visiting bookstores and selling books and signing them and city to city and town to town. And I remember, you know, Wayne Dyer telling his story about working out of his little Volkswagen Beetle, selling books. And there's something.

Really romantic about the notion of being an author as well that I don't want to ignore as we go through our list of authors and talk a little bit about not just the book, but the person behind them. So who's your number one?

Well, first I got to tell you that my girlfriend and I, this has been my pre Katie days when I wrote my first book, we piled a bunch of books, like a box of 50 books in the back of my VW bus and set off on book tour. And no matter where we would go, no matter what dinky little radio station or newspaper or whatever, we would stop and do an interview with Wayne Dyer would have already been there with his box of books. And so he paved the way for out there. Last time I did one of those tours, I did something like 19 cities in 21 days. And I don't miss that at all. I love the Zoom era. This is just perfect for me because I can do virtual book signings where I'm talking to a room full of people on Zoom and then I sign a bunch of book plates and send them up. That goes in everybody's stickers. It works out great.

My number one, I'm going to start with the smallest book first. There's a book that's about 80 pages long written by a gentleman named Thaddeus Golas, who only wrote one really big book and it's called the Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. And he wrote it back in the 60s, but if you read it today, it's just as fresh as anything else you'd ever read. And it's got some big points that changed my life. But the main one that he makes is that everything in the universe is equal, and the universe is our relationships with each other, all of those entities, and that each one is alive, and each one determines its own destiny. Then the other big point he makes is that love really is the ultimate way to resolve certain things that are unresolvable any other way in your life. Like to come to terms with the deepest old, wounded parts of you. You have to do that with love. You have to approach it with an open heart rather than trying to censor it in any way. And so I learned that point from Thaddeus Golas, and I really want to honor him. He's passed on now. He was quite a character. I never got to meet him in person. I talked to him on the phone several times before he passed away, but he was an irascible chap. They often say, if you really admire an authority, go out of your way not to meet them.

In our field, though, it's probably a little bit different because you do meet a lot of authors that are tremendously authentic, really, people that are alive with their message.

Yeah, well. And. And I also think that there is, you know, the one thing you can say about the Internet is it's forced authors to live different lifestyles, because I know.

A few. Vivian worked with a lot of very, very famous authors. And, you know, there were. There was one.

Who. Let's just say he was a molester, you know, like. And someone who's very, very well respected. Not Deepak Chopra, for the record, just to get that out of the way. And he was just known as being a womanizer, and he would have gotten me toed hugely, you know, And. And. And also the number of very, very famous authors who are just.

You know, they're alcoholics and not. They were not the same person on TV and when you'd meet them as in real life. And that's the nice way of putting it. So I. I think there's that. And. And, yeah, you got to be careful on who you put on a pedestal. For sure. For sure. So that was a great story. So I got one for you. I'm going to give you the one that really shaped my brain at the right time in my life. It was ninth grade, and I can remember I was in high school when.

John Lennon was shot. And I can remember my humanities teacher walked in and he said an era just died when John Lennon died. And I did not understand that at the time. But this humanities teacher, his name is Mr. Chris. Theme is the guy who introduced us and we read banned books that was humanities. And one of. And that included like 1984 by Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, a lot of negative utopias. But also he introduced us to Kur Vonnegut. Yes, I love Kurt. He's a guy I would have loved to have met in. In real life. And in fact, John Stewart interviewed him on the John Stewart show at one point very.

Right before he passed. And Kurt had this great brain, his. This ability to storytell and look at life and look at anything through a completely different lens. And the brain book that changed my sense of humor is Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. And one of the funniest scenes in that. So it had all kinds of funny.

Sayings in it. One of them is Go take a flying at a rolling donut. It was an insult. I thought that was so funny. But the other one is they go on and they talk about the origin of the word beaver. And of course he. The way he did it is he had these little sketches in the book. One of them, of course, was a beaver, you know, kind of like a little cartoon beaver. And the other one was a woman's private parts, but it was just basically a squiggle representing a furry vagina. And the origin of the word came from workers in the. Many years ago. And they'd be on.

Working on staircases, going up in buildings. And the code word if a woman wasn't wearing underpants when they. When they were climbing upstairs was they'd shout beaver. And that was supposedly the word. But anyway, there were all these little funny stories that I remember reading the book and laughing so hard I'd pee my pants and I'd smell like pee the rest of the day and my stomach would hurt. You know, like if you've got, like, if you've ever done tons and tons of ab crunches, that's the way my abs would hurt for like a week from laughing so hard. And I just started reading all of Kurt Vonnegut story stories and it was, to me, it was life changing and game changing. So that. That's my number one.

Yeah. I haven't visited Kurt in a long time, but I devoured all of his stuff back in the day. I'd like to go back and reread some of those because the Humor in them is really timeless. Yes.

Yeah.

Another one of my books.

Was. Well, I discovered Alan Watts when I was back in the 1970s. And it was a great way to learn a lot about spirituality and Zen Buddhism and all the things that, you know, he was a fantastic, eloquent talker, and he knew about everything like that. And so I particularly loved his autobiography called In My Own Way, and the double meaning of the title. You know, it was a beautiful way to look at his life because you could see how he got in his own way as well as how he lived his own way to the max. And.

So it was inspirational to me, too, because it came along at a time when I was trying to figure out how I really wanted to spend my time. I was a university professor, but I was getting disenchanted with having to kind of work for the man, so to speak, because they have all sorts of rules and regulations about what the students have to do and the papers they've got to write and everything like that. And I was the kind of rebel. Part of me was chafing at all those rules. And Alan Watts, he kind of came along, and I never saw him in person, but I knew he taught seminars where people would pay to come in and listen to the seminar. And that was radical. I thought, wow, that's interesting. What could I talk about that would be of that much interest? And I came up with some things, and I just started doing that and running my own groups and things like that. And in the not too distant future, I really was at the place where I didn't really need to work for the university. Fortunately, Oprah struck along those times, too. And we kind of went overnight from working with 10 couples in our living room to working with 10 million on Oprah. And so the. That book, though, In My Own Way, really showed me a lot about how I could proceed in my own way and make a successful life where I made my own rules, just as long as they didn't interfere with anybody else's rules, then I was free to do what I wanted to do. And so that was insightful for me when I started my career back in the 70s.

That's great. Well, I don't know if I've told you this before. Do you know what rules are?

Gay.

Tell me.

They're for other people. They're for other people.

Well, you know, Bob Dylan said, if you're going to live outside the law, you have to be absolutely honest. And that's the way I like to live my life. I like to be Impeccably, in a state of integrity by my own definition. And that way I don't usually run afoul of other people's rules if I stick to my own.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. That's good. All right, here's my next one. And this was. It's kind of a weird one because.

I used to read a lot of fiction, and then I went on a.

Fiction fast for pro for decades, because I just got into how to, how to, how to, how to. But early on, 1977 is when Star wars came out. And for me, it changed my life. I mean, I really, really connected with it. And like a lot of people who just went Star wars crazy, it activated, and it made science fiction very, very different. Like Star Trek, I think, was very, very different. But Star wars mainstreamed it, and it activated the imaginations of people, much like the Beatles and Elvis did with music. And when you go back and you listen to or talk to many, many filmmakers, it was like, star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars. That's what made them want to become filmmakers. But one of the things that happened, though, is at the same time, there's a guy named Ellen Dean Foster who wrote the first fan fiction Star wars book based on the characters called Splinter of the Mind's Eye. And because I was such a Star wars fan, I probably read the book 20 times, saw the movie 10 or 20. But, you know, as a Star wars fan, you couldn't get enough. You couldn't get enough. So this is the first book out, and I actually read this book more than I read the original one, because reading the book felt like, you know, it was as vivid to my imagination as a movie. And the movie in my mind was better than watching the original Star wars in the theater. And that's why I chose it, because.

It just felt like a combination of fantasy and sci fi all at once. And I just get a warm feeling thinking about it, even though, I mean, I was probably, what, 11 years old at the time? 12, maybe. 12, 13. Yeah, 11. 12, 13, I guess. And so I like going back, and when we decided to do this episode, I was like, what are some books that made me feel something really interesting and unique that I haven't felt in a long time? And that's one that popped into my head.

I have one that I'm really happy to recommend that. Every time I recommend it to somebody, they say, wow, that sounds interesting. I've never heard of that. It's called Pronoia, the Antidote to Paranoia. And it's by a gentleman named Rob Bresney. And Rob Bresney is a famous astrologer. He writes an astrology column called Free Will Astrology.

He's one of the best writers I have ever read. I don't even believe in astrology, but I subscribe to his column because it's just such brilliant writing each time. And so I encourage everybody to take a look at it for themselves. But he has this big, thick book called Pronoia, and it's all about the subject, which has been dear to my heart all my life. I didn't know there was a concept called Pronoia, but I've always looked at the universe as the universe is falling all over itself to give me blessings. And if I just pay attention, it'll kind of show me where to go to optimize my life. And so that's basically the theme of Pronoia, too, how if you pay attention carefully, you can see that you're being showered with blessings constantly and you're missing most of them because of not paying attention. And so.

When I found that book, I was thrilled because it was on a subject that I was very resonant with. But also the quality of the writing is just stunning. So blessings to Rob Bresney for making a difficult subject really easy to read. Wow.

And one thing that I like about it, too, I'm just, you know, as we're talking about these books, I'm looking at the covers and checking out its sales and reviews and stuff. And Pronoia has a great book cover, really very interesting looking, so definitely check that out. And one of the things I'm doing is I'm putting links to all of the books in the show notes as well. So I'm doing that as we move ahead. All right, I've got my next one here.

And I. I don't remember exactly how old I was when I got turned on to this. And it was from. I think it was a teenager. And I met a really interesting guy that I had a strange, energetic attraction to, playing the original Space War video game. And I ended up having this really interesting conversation. This guy's a little bit older than me. He is a college kid, and we became friends and he told me about the teachings of Don Juan A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda. And I ended up going down the rabbit hole of studying Carlos Castaneda. And at the time, I didn't really understand.

What psychedelics were. And of course, even the notion of that was impossible because it certainly wasn't accessible to me at the time. And the way he wrote about.

You know, plant medicine didn't connect with me. But the spiritual worlds that were accessible to Don Juan and his.

You know, this. The guy who he's mentoring were so profound to me. It really shifted my consciousness. And it happened at a perfect time in my life when I was a teenager. And I think it's where I felt. I felt like I wasn't an alien anymore. It was like I was being reintroduced to feelings and ideas and thoughts that I had always had very naturally. And. But those that were.

Probably even.

They. They weren't allowed because I was raised a Catholic. And those things that had to do with spirituality, that wasn't Christianity, was evil. And to feel normalized by something I read, even though it was forbidden.

Made me feel less like an alien. And I think that was the beauty of that book.

I love those books, too, particularly Journey to Ixtlan. That was one of the most beautiful books I've ever read.

I'm going to reread all of them. Yeah, I am going to reread all of them just because of that. So fantastic. All right, what else you got?

He was very mysterious, too. He kept himself from the public world. He didn't appear on talk shows. He kind of went out of his way to create an air of mystery around him. And I remember talking to somebody who had met him, and I sort of said, what's he like? And the guy said, he's like a waiter.

You know, kind of an uninteresting guy.

Oh, that's funny.

Yeah. Yeah, I love those books, too. I also.

I wouldn't be here without a. A little book that I encountered in the year of 1969. And I looked it up to make sure it was still available, but it is, and it's called Yoga Youth and Reincarnation by Jess Stern. And when I discovered it, I didn't know anything about any of those subjects. And I was looking for a book of practice, something that would show me how to meditate. I lived up in the wilds of New Hampshire at the time, so it was. You know, there was no TM teacher up there or anything like that. In fact, it was probably before TM and all that got started. But this book was all full of yoga postures, meditation techniques, breathing techniques very carefully laid out, and I just started doing those in my little room up in New Hampshire in the middle of winter, and.

You know, opened me up to an entirely new area that. Where I learned I could actually make things happen through changing my mind. About things, you know, and manifesting things from out of thin air. And so that book pointed me in the right direction, even though I still. I don't know anything or explore reincarnation. But that just happened to be in the book title. What it really is is a whole book about different yoga and meditation techniques. Wow.

Yeah. Oh, that's. That's great. That's great. Yeah. Once again, it's a good gay alien story. Yeah, that's good. Okay, so next series I'm going to do. Even though this is one book, I'm going to do a series just because they all came at about the same time. So.

You know, little. Little small town, Mike goes up to big Minneapolis, starts an agency. And.

I had just. My wife had left me, came home one day, the locks were changed on the door. We were failing miserably. Both my partner and I were about $250,000 in debt.

And we weren't getting paid by these huge clients. You know, we had clients like 20th Century Fox and Sony and BMW, but just because they're big doesn't mean they pay on time. And we were really, really struggling. And I still hadn't really done deep work. And I saw a friend of mine go through a massive transformation. Quit drinking alcohol, wrote a book, became a bestseller, started speaking all over the world, all in a matter of six months. And he looked amazing. And he got like. He used to have really messed up teeth. He got dental work done, so he looked different. He lost a bunch of weight, quit drinking, quit eating meat. He became a vegan. I'm like, what the hell happened to you? And he goes, well, I got introduced to Tony Robbins, and I went through Mastery University, which is a whole bunch of classes. I'm like, even that bucktooth guy on tv. And he goes, yeah. So I went out and I immediately went out and bought Awaken the Giant within. Read it, poured over it, but I also bought his DVDs. And that led me on a journey, because once you go to a Tony Robbins event and you subscribe to.

His tape collection, which was called Power Talk, it's the equivalent of podcasts today. But I got introduced to Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Neil Donald Walsh, Dale Carnegie. So the book that started all this really, really was Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within. But then that led to Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, Dale Carnegie, how to Make Friends and Influence People, Wayne Dyer, Manifest yout Destiny, Neale, Donald Walsh, the Conversations with God series, and all of Deepak Chilpr's work. And really, it was a connection with Deepak and Wayne Dyer very soon after. So going to a Tony Robbins event changed my life forever, and it got me in a position where I could sell. But then with that, I wound up going to Egypt and I. On a trip with Deepak and Wayne Dyer and a small group of very.

I'd say, spiritually connected people. And one of the people on the trip was Arielle Ford, who ultimately introduced you and me. So it all began with a book that ultimately led to me meeting you, meeting the person who introduced me to my wife, and really to everything that's happened up to. Up to now. So you can blame Tony and Deepak for you and I knowing each other.

Okay. Well, yeah, I. Well, first of all, I'm glad I know you, and I'm glad to know the path that brought you to me. I remember that book, Awakening the Giant Within. That was. I remember reading that. That was probably what, about 20 years ago, something like that, or longer than that.

Yeah, that's. I think that probably. I'll check the date on it, but it would have been for sure in the 90s.

Yeah.

I'll tell you in a second. But, yeah, let me see here. Well, 2007 is a date, but I know it was. That must have been a reprint because it goes back into the 90s, so it doesn't say. But.

Yeah, it doesn't have the original published date. Drat.

Yeah. Well, blessings to them for steering you in the right direction. One that comes up for me that I want to talk about last is it has a kind of peculiar title, but it is a very dear book to me, and I try to read it every year, especially the last chapter, which is one of the most amazing things I've ever read. It's a book called Meetings with Remarkable Men by George Gurdjieff, and that's spelled G U, R D J, I E F F Gurdjieff. And he was a spiritual seeker around the turn of the last century and then set up an esoteric mystery school in Moscow. But just then the Russian Revolution broke out and he had to take it and all his students to Berlin. And then that didn't work out. And so he ended up in France. And I think he made one trip to the United States back in around 1925. But. So this all goes back about 100 years. But he wrote this book, Meetings with Remarkable Men, about his Pilgrimage Around Asia, particularly Tibet and Egypt and Afghanistan and all of these places back where it was, you know, either walk on foot or ride a donkey or Something like that. And what impressed me about it was not just the amount of wisdom that he encountered along the way, but to see a person who was so dedicated to pursuing spiritual things that he went to incredible lengths to do that, you know, it was nothing for him to, you know, walk 30 or 40 miles a day, drawing, you know, pulling the donkey behind him and that kind of thing on his way to some esoteric monastery. And so it, it let me know, again, the power of, you know, how what we want to manifest in the world, because he later on then created a whole school of esoteric studies out of that work that he did around in those different monasteries. So I love that book, and it's also beautifully written, too. It's written in a very unusual, usual style, but once you get into it, you can't put it down.

Well, I, I, as you were talking about it, I looked it up, and it turns out there is a documentary also.

On, on Amazon, so I'll, I'll check that out. I'm gonna make, but it's remastered from 1979, and I don't know if.

I've seen it.

Yeah.

Oh, is it good?

Yeah, it's not like the book, but it has. Oh, it has one good thing in it.

Toward the end, in one of the monasteries, there's a group of monks that do this particular dance, meditation, and it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

The movie that I'm talking about is directed by Peter Brook. I don't know if that's the one.

Yes. And interestingly, it's included with Gaia, so a company that you have, actually, both of us have a little experience with.

Yeah, right.

That's who owns it and distributes it.

Beautiful. Well, that's really worth seeing, I think. Although, again, if you read a book to me, I've got my own pictures of it in my head. And then if I go to the movie about it, sometimes it doesn't live up to what I was picturing in my head. And that's a great thing about movies like Star wars, because there's no way you can picture anything like that in your head before you go in there.

Yeah, definitely tricky. Definitely tricky. Okay, well, I'll do if that was your last one, unless you've got another one will pop up. I, I, I'll give you one that again, it, it's a spiritual book that really.

Changed my life when I read it, because it's a really unusually written book, but it's Be Here now by Ram Dass. Who I know you knew. And I never got to spend time with him and I had a chance. It was like. I also met Timothy Leary along the line and I was very not impressed with him. But I think I would have liked Ram Dass. No, it. Timothy was, by that time, he was a chain smoking.

Skinny. He basically survived on coffee and cigarettes and he bragged about it. And I thought, what an idiot, you know, and he was involved in some dumb company that looked like a stupid failure. And I was like, who is this idiot? You know, at the time, you know, I was thinking of this acid head moron. But on the other hand, Ram Dass, who also was dropping a lot of acid back then, I just had an enormous amount of respect for him. And clearly he practiced an enormous amount of clarity of thought and.

Knew how to transcend his ego while still being really authentic. And he didn't feel to me like an attention whore.

Absolutely, yeah. And I had the opportunity to spend time around him at several different stages of his life. And.

He was amazingly authentic in his speaking. And also he was willing to do the work, you know, he was willing to do the work on himself. And he had a humility to him that I don't think was part of Timothy Leary's DNA. You know, he's the guy that likes to have everybody looking at him all the time. And Ram Dass is a much quieter, easygoing sort of fellow. And I really learned a lot from him and valued his input into my life at different parts.

Yeah, yeah. What a great guy. What a great guy. All right, I'll give you, I'll give you one more because I. I just love this so much. And it was another game changer filled with hilarity. And I loved money, Python, all the movies, all the shows, again, it was one of those things that activated a part of me I didn't know existed. And it.

Gave me a sense of feeling, like there was a brotherhood in the weird. Yeah, right. But it was Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, just another one that would. I would pee myself laughing so hard because.

You know, it gave you the sense that aliens could come down and observe the absurdity of how we think and how we live and what we prioritize. And the way he did it with such clarity and elegance. It was poetic and funny. And then I really loved the PBS did, or it was BBC did a show that was like super low budget, almost like a Doctor who production of the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And I Remember watching it over and over again, just amazed at how, you know, it was the equivalent of cheap puppets made out of paper towels and toilet paper, but it just worked. And the imagination that went into it, it just went to show that imagination and hilarity.

Is better than production quality.

Yeah, you're talking about the one with Martin Freeman in it, right?

Is that. Is that. Yes, that sounds right. Let me double check. But. Because later on they made a movie version and it was just.

I still liked it, but it was not nearly as funny because of, you know, how the Brits just have this great way of being so dry and being so damned uncomfortable.

That's their specialty, isn't it, that sense of uncomfortable. And John Cleese, I've had the opportunity to spend some time around him in real life, and he often talks about this sense of embarrassment that Englishmen dread.

I love that description of it. And I'm happy to say also, I haven't met the other members of Python. I worship them. But John Cleese is one of the most wonderful fellows I've ever had the opportunity to spend time with. And just as funny in real life as he is on the stage.

Yeah, no, he. The guy just between mannerisms. Everything about him is delightful, and he's having a hell of a time in today's world just shredding political correctness and the stupidity of wokeness.

And he does it with just such elegance and charm and.

Wisdom.

Yes. I think Monty Python, in many ways, is the high watermark of Western civilization.

I totally agree.

I can't imagine anybody outdoing Monty Python at any time in the future history of the world. It was such a unique thing that came together.

You're right, you're right. Well, go ahead.

Yeah. Let me plug other two other things that came up into my mind. Eric Idle of Monty Python has written a great autobiography called A sort of Biography, and he's got a lot of wonderful things that have happened in his life that he talks about, but he's also hilariously funny. But the really funny one, Graham Chapman, before he passed away, wrote an autobiography called A Liar's Autobiography. And it is so funny that I went into pretty much hysterics one time on a plane. I bought it at the airport in London, and I was on my way back and I was really exhausted and I started reading it, and I don't know if. Have you ever been overcome with laughter where you couldn't stop, you know, and you embarrassed yourself because people were looking at you and everything? Well, that's the way this book had an effect on me. So check out that. If you want a wild read. Graham Chapman's.

I'm gonna. I'm buying it right now. And I have another one that's. It's a liar's philosophy. Is that right?

A liar's autobiography.

Autobiography. Okay. There we go.

Okay, good. I'm gonna buy it. It's been a while. There we go. I'm grabbing it. Written in 2014, so. Yeah, go ahead.

The Graham Chapman one are you talking about?

And I'm gonna drop in Eric Idle's book also.

This is great. And.

You know, one other one that I did the same thing. I'm gonna drop in one more because why the hell not?

So years ago, I had a speaking gig.

In.

Malaysia. And in Malaysia, you know, they've got a lot of rules there, so you gotta be very careful that you don't chew gum and leave it somewhere or, you know, like, they litter will put you in jail, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm out. We had just done our speaking gig, so I was off the hook. And I'm out drinking a couple beers with this guy who had known for a while, but he said, have you heard of a guy named Tucker Max? And I'm like, no, never heard of me. He wrote this book called I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. I'm like, no, never heard of it. And I just gotten the new Kindle. So he says, download it. I'm going to buy a six pack of beer, and I want to watch you read it. My first impression is, what kind of perverted crap is this, you weirdo? And he goes, no, no, no, no. You just got to trust me. I guarantee you. So anyway, I started reading that book and another. And it's another one of those things. I peed myself. I doubled over in laughter, and I had sore abs for two weeks after reading it. Now, full disclosure, if you're not familiar with Tucker Max and this book, it is not clean comedy and humor. It is. It opens up. The opening line is, I'm an.

Now, if you fast forward a little bit, Tucker is actually a good friend of mine. Now, I met him probably seven years ago, and, you know, he was very notorious. I mean, we're talking about jackass quality material here. But he's now married. He's got. Got three kids. Four kids. And I was just with his wife two days ago. I had dinner with her in Austin, and she's a delightful human being. And Tucker is a remarkably complex, fascinating man who's done the work. And if you'd read his book, you would not think that. So this is not for the faint of heart, but another one of those hilarious. Hilarious, unbelievably funny things that is not. Not rated PG at all. So there you go.

All right, well, we need more of that. Yeah. You know that I'm going to go back and read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe again.

To the galaxy. Yes.

That's Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah. Yeah. That's wonderful, inventive stuff.

And tell me one more time, what was the Eric Idle book?

It's called a sorta biography. S O R T. A biography.

Okay, okay. Sort of biography.

Sort of biography.

Great. All right, I will.

That just came out. Just came out a couple of years ago. I read it the first day it came out, though. I'm kind of a Monty Python fanatic, and so I read all their autobiographies and everything. I get my hold on hands on about them.

Okay, I will. I'm going to tear into that, too. So we've got a big, long list. So here's what I'd suggest we do because this was so much fun. Let's do a second episode because I've got another big, long list of other books worth tearing into, and I'm sure you do, too. How's that sound?

That sounds great. Because just as we've talked, suddenly I realized, oh, my God, I've left out, you know. So let's do another.

Okay, let's do it. So let's wrap up this episode, I think the. As usual, if you've enjoyed it, head on over to bigleappodcast.com. leave some feedback, leave it on itunes and share this episode with anyone you know who loves books, loves to laugh, loves to think. And.

The links to all the books are in the show notes so you can tear into that as well. The podcast on our website as well. So gay. What a blast. As usual. Love doing these with you.

Good. Until next time. Happy reading, everybody.

All right, see you.