Personal Growth, Dating & Psychedelics | TUCKER MAX | Modern Wisdom Podcast 136

Especially men. That's what a midlife crisis, I think is for dudes, is they realize that they've made a bunch of bad choices or choices they don't like, and they're stuck and they don't know how to get out. But they won't ask themselves the hard question, they won't look at the things that they haven't done, the responsibility they haven't taken in their life. They won't make any hard decisions, and so they're stuck. Dude, it sucks, man, when you get there. But the only way to avoid that is to constantly look at yourself and do your work. And your- by work I mean emotional work. "Am I being the best person I can? Am I being honest with myself?" And if you're constantly, honestly asking yourself these questions, you can't help but grow. You're gonna grow, that's just how it works, and then you change, and then, you know, you become, hopefully, a better and better and better version of, of yourself. Not always the same, though. I'm never gonna be as, quote, "cool" as I was when I was 29, right? Uh, in certain ways, but, like, I'm way better in almost every other way.

(wave crashes) I'm joined by Tucker Max. Tucker, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Pleasure to have you on, man. Um, I was saying earlier, I posted out that I was gonna have you on the show and my, my DMs have just been on fire all day. Uh, originally we were just gonna talk about Scribe Media and we're gonna go into the nuances of book writing and stuff like that. We're gonna get into that. But, um, I think there's, there's some other bits that I'd love to get into first. So to kind of set the scene for people who might not fully know your backstory, how'd you get to where you are now? Head of Scribe Media, best-selling author, but sort of how'd you get there?

Right. So, I mean, th- it's a long backstory. So I'll hit the highlights and then you can kind of dive into whatever you want.

Cool.

Uh, let me, uh, so, um, let's see. I went to undergrad, University of Chicago, uh, law school at Duke, um, and then, uh, got fired from being a lawyer in three weeks. My dad fired me from the family business in six months.

(laughs)

Then didn't really know what to do. Uh, found my way into write... I was writing emails to my friends that they thought were hilarious. And through a long series of sort of stuff, I ended up, uh, putting my stuff up on a website, my stories, they blew up, got a ton of attention, um, you know, MTV, a girl sued me. It was all the sort of normal s- uh, controversy. And then, um, so I ended up writing a book, became I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, which, uh, the New York Times said invented a liter- literary genre called fratire. And it's sold, you know, a million and a half copies now or more, uh, worldwide. Translated into whatever it is, 30 or 40 languages, something. Um, and then, uh, wrote two more books. Um, well first there was a movie made about that, uh, book about my life. Uh, and then there... Two more books, Assholes Finish First and Hilarity Ensues. Sorry, and Sloppy Seconds. Three more books. Those have, all told, have sold, I don't know, three and a half, four million-ish. And, um, uh, then (clears throat) did a few other things. Um, the big thing was start Scribe. Like I said, a bunch of people asking me how do I write and publish a book. And so, uh, I started a company that helps people do that. And it's five years later and, you know, we did David Goggins' book, which is huge, and Tiffany Haddish and a bunch of others. And so, uh, here we are.