Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: What I'm writing I write for myself. It's almost like reading.
Speaker 2: You kind of have an idea of the story, but
Speaker 2: the sentences surprise you and say You're getting to read
Speaker 2: what you're writing in real time. It's a magical experience.
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to this episode of Math
Speaker 3: and Magic. Today we're going to chat with a man who,
Speaker 3: in his heart is a creative, but he also has
Speaker 3: the mind and instincts of an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur in the
Speaker 3: purest sense, he has figured out how to do something
Speaker 3: he loves, make money from it, and still have control.
Speaker 3: He's the author of the wildly successful Silo series, which
Speaker 3: is one of the top series on Apple TV Plus,
Speaker 3: and from a business perspective, he is one of the
Speaker 3: pioneers and most successful examples of self publishing. He's Hugh Howie.
Speaker 3: He grew up in North Carolina and he's also been
Speaker 3: an adventurer. Attended college but never finished because he kept
Speaker 3: being lured to the sea. He worked as a bookstore clerk,
Speaker 3: computer repair person, roofing, but his real passion led him
Speaker 3: to be a boat captain and then a writer. We're
Speaker 3: going to dig into all the improbable twist and turns
Speaker 3: it took. He was a great friend, nice and kind
Speaker 3: everyone he meets, and is a true adventurer. Hugh, Welcome,
Speaker 3: Hey Bob.
Speaker 2: Thanks, So what's the best introduction I've ever had?
Speaker 3: Okay, well listen. Before we get to the meaty stuff,
Speaker 3: I want to start off with a feature we do
Speaker 3: called you in sixty seconds. Ready?
Speaker 2: Ready?
Speaker 3: You prefer cats or dogs?
Speaker 2: Dogs?
Speaker 3: Early Riser? Night out? Oh?
Speaker 2: Early Riser?
Speaker 3: West Coast or East Coast, East Coast, New York City
Speaker 3: or North Carolina, New York City City or Country Country.
Speaker 3: Surprisingly coke or pepsi?
Speaker 2: Oh, coke? Let it be close?
Speaker 3: Books or movies?
Speaker 2: Books?
Speaker 3: Cook or eat out?
Speaker 2: Eat out?
Speaker 3: It's about feel a little harder. All time favorite music artist,
Speaker 3: just for.
Speaker 2: The length of time and the number of hits them
Speaker 2: out to go with the Beatles. First job a cook
Speaker 2: in an Alpeck Steakhouse. Favorite TV show recently it was adolescence.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, good one. Childhood hero by mom? What did
Speaker 3: you want to be when you were growing up?
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a writer.
Speaker 3: Favorite sport to watch basketball, Favorite.
Speaker 2: Movie probably Shaw Shake redyption.
Speaker 3: Secret talent probably billiards.
Speaker 2: People are surprised, but I can run the table almost anybody.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's jump in.
Speaker 2: Hey, that's fun. You could really get to know someone
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 3: Exactly sixty seconds and we're done. Okay, I got to
Speaker 3: start with the obvious. Silo, huge, huge hit on Apple.
Speaker 3: Let's dissect it. It all started with the trilogy, wrote,
Speaker 3: but start by describing even how you built that trilogy,
Speaker 3: and also for people who haven't watched it or read it,
Speaker 3: what it's about in your words, and then let's talk
Speaker 3: about how it happened.
Speaker 2: Silo is about the last ten thousand people on Earth.
Speaker 2: They live in this underground silo, almost like a missile silo,
Speaker 2: and they've been there for so many generations they've forgotten
Speaker 2: how they got there or why they're there. And it's
Speaker 2: a bit of a mystery as a new sheriff starts
Speaker 2: to unravel the kind of the dark secret behind the silo.
Speaker 2: And it started with a short story I wrote while
Speaker 2: I was working in a bookstore in North Carolina, and
Speaker 2: at the time I didn't think it would be a
Speaker 2: commercial success. I wrote it as a bit of cathartic writing.
Speaker 2: I was dealing with the loss of dog, and so
Speaker 2: I wrote just a really dark story that I thought
Speaker 2: no one would want to read, and it was only
Speaker 2: about fifty pages long, and I put it online for
Speaker 2: ninety nine cents, and within a month it was out
Speaker 2: selling the six novels that I've written at the time.
Speaker 2: And pretty soon that short story was making me enough
Speaker 2: money that I could quit my day job and just
Speaker 2: work on writing the follow up stories, and those collected
Speaker 2: became the novel Wool, which all self published, became a
Speaker 2: New York Times bestselling novel, and got a film deal
Speaker 2: with Ridley Scott and Agent and all the other improbable
Speaker 2: things that are not supposed to happen.
Speaker 3: So we're going to come to that, but I want
Speaker 3: to go back a little bit into this. Where did
Speaker 3: the idea or silo come from.
Speaker 2: There's a few different ideas that kind of merge into one.
Speaker 2: I was working at a university bookstore at the time
Speaker 2: that smartphones started taking hold of our attention, and I
Speaker 2: noticed the kids, who I was a generation apart from,
Speaker 2: coming through the bookstore. Their view of the world more
Speaker 2: and more was coming through screens. It's this little window
Speaker 2: into a world that's not quite real We want to
Speaker 2: see things that are more titillating or shocking or scary
Speaker 2: or funny, and so we get an unclear picture of
Speaker 2: the world. At the same time, I've always been in
Speaker 2: in a philosophy. When I was looking at Plato's allegory
Speaker 2: of the cave, where we don't see the true forms
Speaker 2: of things, we see shadows on the wall cast by
Speaker 2: fire that's behind us. Let's just started thinking that maybe
Speaker 2: these screens are the new cave allegory. The other thing
Speaker 2: is I had sailed to Cuba a few years prior
Speaker 2: on a friend's boat that I was working on, and
Speaker 2: what I found in Cuba was very different than what
Speaker 2: I'd been told would be there. And this is related
Speaker 2: to the other point that in order to understand the world,
Speaker 2: you really have to go out and see it and
Speaker 2: experience it. And so the silo is kind of born
Speaker 2: in the idea that these people, with a limited view
Speaker 2: of the world through this singular screen on the top
Speaker 2: level would have to piece together what the world's like.
Speaker 2: And if they were shown bad news all the time,
Speaker 2: would they lose the courage to go out and see
Speaker 2: the world for themselves. And so the hero of our
Speaker 2: story is someone who's courageous and to think that the
Speaker 2: outside world might be better than we're led to believe.
Speaker 3: So where did you hit on the idea of it
Speaker 3: being a silo.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that's just being a kid of the eighties,
Speaker 2: Like I grew up terrified. We used to do fallout drills,
Speaker 2: like you'd hide under your desk, which I guess somehow
Speaker 2: this desk were armored enough to keep us safe from
Speaker 2: a nuclear blast. The thing that I was drilled into
Speaker 2: at a very young and impressionable age was that at
Speaker 2: any moment, Russia is going to drop bombs on us.
Speaker 2: And all the movies you have to have a bad
Speaker 2: guy in film, and back then there was always the Russians,
Speaker 2: and of course we had missiles aimed at them, So
Speaker 2: missile silos were kind of a big deal to my
Speaker 2: childhood and other popular culture. There was a video game
Speaker 2: when I was a kid called GoldenEye, a Nintendo sixty
Speaker 2: four game, and one of the game levels takes place
Speaker 2: inside of a missile silo at the spiral staircase. And
Speaker 2: that's why stories have a lot of the same flavors.
Speaker 2: We're not just inspired by each other, but we grew
Speaker 2: up through experience in the same kind of events.
Speaker 3: So very dystopian. Is that tied in any way to
Speaker 3: your love of the sea and being out there in
Speaker 3: sort of solitary moments nothing but you in the water.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent and the wave they're linked is probably
Speaker 2: not obvious. But when we look at all the disaster
Speaker 2: films of the end of the world stuff that we
Speaker 2: see in fiction today, people think that this is because
Speaker 2: folks are losing hope or something, and that's not the case.
Speaker 2: Our primary story engine for millennia has been the survival story.
Speaker 2: If you look at Sir Dauwaine and the Green Knight
Speaker 2: or the Iliad of the Odyssey, you have these stories
Speaker 2: where someone is away from their friends and family and
Speaker 2: technology and civilization and they're trying to survive. So the
Speaker 2: precursor to these stories would have been Lost in the
Speaker 2: wood stories, which we have so many legends and fairy
Speaker 2: tales that show us where those stories came from, because
Speaker 2: when we were tribal, the woods were the scary place
Speaker 2: and there were things in there that would eat you.
Speaker 2: If you look at the story progression of the years,
Speaker 2: like we went to sea and now you had lots
Speaker 2: of seafaring tales, you had castaway stories, deserted island stories.
Speaker 2: We started writing Westerns as we pushed beyond civilization into
Speaker 2: the West. Once we kind of covered the globe, we
Speaker 2: started writing about being lost in space, and so you
Speaker 2: can see that we're telling the same story, which is like,
Speaker 2: how would we survive without our people, without our tribe,
Speaker 2: without our tools, and apocalypse stories are the only way
Speaker 2: to really tell that without rewriting history. We have to
Speaker 2: imagine a future in which our tribe is gone, our
Speaker 2: civilization's gone, our tools are set back, and how do
Speaker 2: we survive in a fraud and liminal space. Being at
Speaker 2: sea made me think of like deserted island stories. But
Speaker 2: when you're writing science fiction, you're telling the same thing.
Speaker 2: Orth it just becomes the deserted island.
Speaker 3: So you started with fifty pages, how did it go
Speaker 3: from fifty pages to wall to the trilogy?
Speaker 2: Because of Amazon reader reviews. I was working on a
Speaker 2: different novel when the short story blew up. And one
Speaker 2: of the advantages of self publishing is you can hit
Speaker 2: refresh on your Amazon Kendall dashboard and sees sales in
Speaker 2: real time. Someone buys a book, and I had refreshed
Speaker 2: the sale pops up. In traditional publishing, it might take
Speaker 2: six months to a year to find out that something
Speaker 2: is happening. So I'm sitting at the bookstore thinking about
Speaker 2: the novel that I should be writing, and I noticed
Speaker 2: the sales picking up on the short story. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't get a lot of reviews. You can sell
Speaker 2: a thousand books and only get like maybe one or
Speaker 2: two reviews. It's just not something everybody does. But reviews
Speaker 2: started popping up on this book at an alarming clip.
Speaker 2: They were all five stars. The only thing negative people
Speaker 2: had to say it was that it was too short
Speaker 2: what happens next? And so I'm reading this feedback. I've
Speaker 2: never had an audience clamoring for a sequel for me
Speaker 2: other than my sister and my mom, you know, wanting
Speaker 2: to the next book. And I started thinking, well, a
Speaker 2: bit of a spoiler, but it's only fifty pages in.
Speaker 2: So here you go. At the end of that short story,
Speaker 2: all the main characters are dead, or they appear dead anyway,
Speaker 2: and so you're like, Okay, you want more in this world,
Speaker 2: but everyone that I set up you to care about
Speaker 2: is off the page now. So I had this really
Speaker 2: fun challenge and a unique situation where people were asking
Speaker 2: for more story and there's really no more story to write.
Speaker 2: I hadn't planned anymore, so I had to sit down
Speaker 2: and figure out, Okay, who's the bigger story going to
Speaker 2: be about? And I came up with Juliete Nichols, who
Speaker 2: is easily become the most beloved character I've written over
Speaker 2: twenty novels and stories. So once I had this character,
Speaker 2: I could plot out, Okay, it's going to take five
Speaker 2: stories to tell this in a novel, and I serialized that.
Speaker 2: I released them as I was writing them, and within
Speaker 2: two or three months, these five stories were all at
Speaker 2: the top of the science fiction bestseller lists on the Amazon.
Speaker 2: I credit it to these initial readers who were asking
Speaker 2: me to write more, giving me positive feedback, and that
Speaker 2: reinforcement gave me the courage to plow forward.
Speaker 3: When you're writing, do you think about who that reader is?
Speaker 3: And I know you've met a lot of the readers.
Speaker 3: Are they who you imagine they would be?
Speaker 2: No to both. When I'm writing, I write for myself.
Speaker 2: It's almost like reading. You kind of have an idea
Speaker 2: of the story, but the sentences surprise you and say
Speaker 2: you're getting to read what you're writing in real time.
Speaker 2: It's a magical experience. Once you've started playing around with
Speaker 2: fiction writing, all of a sudden, characters will do or
Speaker 2: say things that you didn't plan on, or you'll come
Speaker 2: up with a joke in the moment that makes you laugh.
Speaker 2: So you're creating and consuming in this little feedback loop.
Speaker 2: It's just delightful. So I concentrate on myself as the
Speaker 2: reader when I'm writing. When I think about what readers expect,
Speaker 2: I usually use that as a tool against them. You know,
Speaker 2: they want this to happen, so I'm going to give
Speaker 2: that to them. They expect this to happen, so I'm
Speaker 2: going to tease them that something else might happen, or
Speaker 2: send the story in a different direction. Like having a
Speaker 2: feedback from your audience allows you to subvert what they
Speaker 2: think the story might do. So I found that very valuable.
Speaker 2: But I try not to write with the thought that
Speaker 2: a million people might read this, because that's paralyzing.
Speaker 3: Let's talk a little bit about the self publishing aspect.
Speaker 3: Let's start of the business. I mean, you've had just
Speaker 3: a wild success with self publishing. Tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about what the publishing business look like when you
Speaker 3: started all this and what self publishing was and how
Speaker 3: you figured it out.
Speaker 2: Self publishing was very different. When I started writing, I
Speaker 2: was told by everybody that if I self published, it
Speaker 2: would be the end of my career. Prior to the
Speaker 2: rise of kindle and print on demand, an amazing paperback
Speaker 2: technology where you can print a book the moment it's ordered,
Speaker 2: it's printed and shipped out the same day, so you
Speaker 2: don't have a warehouse. You don't have you not sell
Speaker 2: them out of your garage or the trunk of your car.
Speaker 2: So prior to two thousand and nine, self publishing was
Speaker 2: often called vanity publishing. You paid someone a lot of
Speaker 2: money to create cover art at it and produce a book,
Speaker 2: and they made money. The chances of you ever selling
Speaker 2: enough books to pay that debt off is nil. Almost
Speaker 2: when I started writing, the kindle and print on demand
Speaker 2: came around, and all of a sudden, it was actually
Speaker 2: free to publish, Like it costs nothing to make a
Speaker 2: book available as an ebook, and even a print on
Speaker 2: demand physical book, even an audiobook can be done with
Speaker 2: no cost, and that had never happened before. So I
Speaker 2: published my first book with a small press, but they
Speaker 2: were using self publishing tools to publish, and I realized
Speaker 2: this tools are available to me as well.
Speaker 3: You mean you went to them, you thought they were
Speaker 3: a regular publisher, But what they were really doing was
Speaker 3: just self publishing exactly.
Speaker 2: And that's what most small presses do, and there's no
Speaker 2: scandal there. They are providing a service. Like not everyone
Speaker 2: wants to learn how to paginate a book. Trede cover Art,
Speaker 2: do all their own editing, marketing, all that stuff. Some
Speaker 2: people just want to write a book and hand it
Speaker 2: to someone and let them keep most of the money.
Speaker 2: But while they were publishing, I thought the interior layout
Speaker 2: wasn't quite up to par. And I'd been a bookseller
Speaker 2: for years, an avid reader since I was a little kid,
Speaker 2: and so I just love the craft of books. And
Speaker 2: while they were paginating the book, I would get the
Speaker 2: pages back and say, man, I think I would spend
Speaker 2: more time on it than they will, and I'll do better.
Speaker 2: So I got a copy of end Design, which is
Speaker 2: the industry standard for laying out books, and started learning
Speaker 2: how to use it. And when I sent them an
Speaker 2: interior file, they were like, yeah, we'll use your because
Speaker 2: it was so much better. They gave me some cover
Speaker 2: art that was just like stock art that you buy
Speaker 2: off a five dollars kind of immager website with some
Speaker 2: texts on the front. It just looks so self published,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I can dabble in photoshop and
Speaker 2: come up with something on my own. And the cover
Speaker 2: art that I came up with they liked more, so
Speaker 2: I was like, man, I can actually do all the
Speaker 2: things that they're doing. So when they send me the
Speaker 2: contract for the second book, I said, actually, I'm going
Speaker 2: to self publish it, and I would love to buy
Speaker 2: the rights back to my first book. And I had
Speaker 2: a great relationship with them, so they allowed it to happen.
Speaker 2: But I got kind of a hurt email from my
Speaker 2: editor who said this would be the biggest mistake I
Speaker 2: ever made. And that was the general consensus. To get
Speaker 2: to your original question, what was the state of self
Speaker 2: publishing at the time. I was hounded out of writing
Speaker 2: forums for suggesting that self publishing might be viable with
Speaker 2: these new tools. Everyone told me I was crazy, but
Speaker 2: it just sense to me. I wasn't trying to get rich,
Speaker 2: but I thought if I sell ten copies, it'd be
Speaker 2: great to make one hundred bucks instead of ten bucks,
Speaker 2: and pretty soon that's what I was doing. Like I
Speaker 2: was making enough every month to pay a power bill
Speaker 2: or something, which not every hobby. You know, most hobbies
Speaker 2: cost money. This was a hobby that had money flowing
Speaker 2: in and it just grew.
Speaker 3: So you started with a publisher, then you went self publishing. Today,
Speaker 3: I know you also have publishers. How does that work
Speaker 3: with yourself publishing?
Speaker 2: I never thought I would go with a publisher because
Speaker 2: by the time I was making enough money to live
Speaker 2: off my writing, they couldn't offer me more than what
Speaker 2: I was making. And every time they made an offer
Speaker 2: it was something that I might have accepted six months before.
Speaker 2: So they were always lagging. As my sales were increasing,
Speaker 2: their offers were coming in too low. So I remember
Speaker 2: when I got a fifty thousand dollars offer for one book.
Speaker 2: At that time, I was like, I was making that
Speaker 2: in a month on my own sales, and I was like,
Speaker 2: you're going to take lifetime rights for a book that
Speaker 2: earned that much last month, And none of that made
Speaker 2: sense to me. And there was worldwide rights and all
Speaker 2: the ebook and all the print and audio and everything,
Speaker 2: And then six months later someone would offer me six figures,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, that's what it made last month. And
Speaker 2: then we got to where publishers were offered me seven figures,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I've already made that. And these
Speaker 2: were all incredible deals and I would have jumped at
Speaker 2: had they come six months earlier. So that was kind
Speaker 2: of my advantage. I knew what I was making before
Speaker 2: they knew the potential of this series.
Speaker 3: How do you do it today with the publishers.
Speaker 2: I got this amazing email one day from my agent,
Speaker 2: Kristin Nelson, and I was getting calls and emails from
Speaker 2: agents at the time because I had a book on
Speaker 2: the New York Times list that was not represented by anybody,
Speaker 2: and Kristen sent me an email then the subject said
Speaker 2: you probably don't need an agent, however, and I was like,
Speaker 2: this is different from all the other agents were all
Speaker 2: calling me and saying like, okay, first thing you should
Speaker 2: know is I want to take fifteen percent. And I'm like, wait,
Speaker 2: who is this? What's happening? But Kristin was like, you
Speaker 2: probably don't even need an agent. She is so so
Speaker 2: savvy and she understood what was happening even before I did.
Speaker 2: About the industry. She said, you should just keep doing
Speaker 2: what you're doing in the US. But I can take
Speaker 2: this book overseas and get you deals that you're not
Speaker 2: even thinking about. And I can get you a co
Speaker 2: agent to help in Asia, one in Europe, one in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: and we'll work our butts off to you know, bring
Speaker 2: this story to more people, and you get most of
Speaker 2: the money for all the work we do. And that
Speaker 2: was the second best decision ever made in my life,
Speaker 2: was signing with Kristen. We started getting really interesting offers
Speaker 2: from publishers by saying no to everything else. So after
Speaker 2: saying no to a seven figure deal, Simon and Schuster
Speaker 2: came in gave us what we had wanted, which was
Speaker 2: a print only deal for a limited term of license,
Speaker 2: so they could do the print book for five years,
Speaker 2: and after that we get all rights back, which had
Speaker 2: never been done before. And it hasn't been duplicated much since, unfortunately.
Speaker 2: And I've done three or four deals now on the
Speaker 2: same series of books, and I keep getting the rights back.
Speaker 2: If this is the way it should be done, the
Speaker 2: way it's done overseas. All my foreign deals have limited
Speaker 2: terms of license, and so you can reevaluate how the
Speaker 2: book is doing and what it's worth, and make decisions
Speaker 2: down the road that makes sense for both parties.
Speaker 3: I want to close out the sil of piece a
Speaker 3: little bit. How close is the TV series to your books?
Speaker 3: How true?
Speaker 2: Pretty close? In the modern world of adaptations, like this
Speaker 2: is about as good as it gets. It's so much
Speaker 2: better than what I imagined because I'm just one one
Speaker 2: person who's slightly creative. When we built the show with
Speaker 2: two hundred people who were massively creative. So we have
Speaker 2: someone who's just thinking about fabrics, and someone who's just
Speaker 2: thinking about pat and someone designing furniture and doing signage,
Speaker 2: and an architect, Like it's so addedive. Having that many
Speaker 2: creative people come together with a common goal is much
Speaker 2: better than me just putting some words on a page.
Speaker 3: More of math and magic right after this quick break,
Speaker 3: Welcome back to math and Magic. Let's hear more from
Speaker 3: my conversation with you, Howie. Let's go back in time.
Speaker 3: You were a child of the seventies, eighties, a little
Speaker 3: bit of the nineties. You were born in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Can you paint the picture of those times in your childhood,
Speaker 3: what it felt like, what you were exposed to what
Speaker 3: influenced you.
Speaker 2: I grew up in the country. My dad was a
Speaker 2: third generation farmer corn and soweetpean and wheat before I
Speaker 2: was born, some tobacco and cotton, and we had just
Speaker 2: a massive amount of acreage and were upper middle class.
Speaker 2: But I never really felt like it, Like we lived
Speaker 2: at one hundred and fifty year old house and you
Speaker 2: worked for what you had. My mom was a school teacher,
Speaker 2: actually had her for math when I was in high school.
Speaker 2: My parents divorced when I was eight. My mom raised
Speaker 2: three kids pretty much on her own, with stepdads along
Speaker 2: the way at times for its three jobs to make
Speaker 2: everything work out for us. And I feel like I
Speaker 2: had a great childhood, Like I just was skateboarding all
Speaker 2: the time and listened to amazing music. The eighties and
Speaker 2: nineties were epic times to be into tunes.
Speaker 3: Were you a good student?
Speaker 2: I got good grades. I was a pain in the butt,
Speaker 2: you know. I was a voracious reader, and I was reading,
Speaker 2: like under my desk in school. I would cut class
Speaker 2: to go send the library and read books, and not
Speaker 2: just novels, but I would like read, you know, physics books.
Speaker 2: And I would walk around with a mirk manual or
Speaker 2: a Grave's anatomy, and just like study bones and stuff,
Speaker 2: it's not something to brag about. I realize now, like
Speaker 2: being a little bit ahead doesn't help you because we're
Speaker 2: all in the same place now. I don't know anything
Speaker 2: more than anybody else. We all catch up with each other.
Speaker 2: But if you're like two years ahead in school, it
Speaker 2: just makes you disruptive to the other kids. It makes
Speaker 2: you bored. And so I don't see myself as a
Speaker 2: good student.
Speaker 3: Were you athletic I was?
Speaker 2: I played soccer, ran track, ran cross country. If I
Speaker 2: saw a ball in the air, I ran over to
Speaker 2: introduce myself. If I go to the beach to this
Speaker 2: day and I see a frizevi or football, or if
Speaker 2: I see a basketball like, I want to join in.
Speaker 4: So where did Bali come from? Where did Bali come from?
Speaker 4: Bally came from chess. I was playing chess in Charleston
Speaker 4: where I went to college, and one of my favorite
Speaker 4: opponents would come in and just kick my butt and
Speaker 4: he would sometimes sit and do the splits while we're playing,
Speaker 4: and I was like, what is going on? And he
Speaker 4: was playing on his lunch break and he was the
Speaker 4: principal dancer at Charleston Ballet Theater and he was stretching.
Speaker 4: He was sore from doing ballet all morning, and we
Speaker 4: became best friends, and I started learning ballet just by
Speaker 4: hanging out.
Speaker 2: During bar class. Years later, when I was working on yachts,
Speaker 2: they came down to Miami and performed The Nutcracker at
Speaker 2: the Jackie Gleason Theater and the girl who plays the
Speaker 2: maid was sick, and so my friend Scott was like,
Speaker 2: Hugh knows enough he could jump in there play the butler.
Speaker 2: So next thing I know, I'm like putting on a
Speaker 2: dance bell, which is basically a jockstrap slash g string
Speaker 2: for men, and dance tights and learning the moves like
Speaker 2: right before the curtain opened.
Speaker 3: And it's always great at a late night party to
Speaker 3: pull out a ballet move and impresses people. So the
Speaker 3: sailing has been such an important part of your life?
Speaker 3: Where'd that come from?
Speaker 2: Hugely important. When I was a kid, there was a
Speaker 2: family beach house in North Carolina that everyone in the
Speaker 2: family shared. We had of like two weeks every summer,
Speaker 2: and the first thing I would do when I would
Speaker 2: get out there, and I think I was probably eight
Speaker 2: or nine years old. When I started doing this is
Speaker 2: to drag this sunfish sailboat down to the sound behind
Speaker 2: the house. And these are small boats. Even one of
Speaker 2: us could pick this up with one hand, you know.
Speaker 2: But at the time I was pulling the Titanic down
Speaker 2: to the shore side. And when I pushed offshore and
Speaker 2: had this boat to myself and I could go wherever
Speaker 2: I wanted, I was instantly hooked. I started thinking about
Speaker 2: sailing around the world by the time I was like ten.
Speaker 2: By the time I went to college and purposely picked
Speaker 2: up place that was by the water, I bought a
Speaker 2: boat to live on, twenty seven foot sloop, and I
Speaker 2: became my home while I was in school. By the
Speaker 2: time I finished my junior year, I decided to just
Speaker 2: drop out and go sail around the world and not
Speaker 2: finish college. And that's set my life off in a
Speaker 2: very strange direction.
Speaker 3: So that's that sort of ties into life philosophy. The
Speaker 3: hard rock cas they had, they may still have it.
Speaker 3: The slogan there was love all, Serve all. When I
Speaker 3: think of you, I sometimes think of that slogan. How
Speaker 3: do you view this journey of life? I think most
Speaker 3: of our mutual friends would describe you as this super nice,
Speaker 3: always there for you, interested in you person. How does
Speaker 3: this fit into the philosophy? What is that a part of.
Speaker 2: That's very flattering. I wish if this wasn't true, But
Speaker 2: I do think that a lot of our happiness is
Speaker 2: built in. It's hard to change, and I think I
Speaker 2: was born lucky with a happy demeanor. I've had really
Speaker 2: good people around me in my life. Whenever I'm around
Speaker 2: my friends, that's what I fell out the luckiest. That's
Speaker 2: not my writing success or financial success. It's like when
Speaker 2: I'm hanging out with the people that I get to
Speaker 2: be friends with, That's when I'm like, how did I
Speaker 2: win this lottery? And those two influences just to be
Speaker 2: born with a good attitude and be surrounded by great
Speaker 2: people and feeling so full all the time that the
Speaker 2: best thing that I could do is spill some of
Speaker 2: that out to other people. You know, when your cups
Speaker 2: full and there's more still coming in, it's got to
Speaker 2: go somewhere. And I've got to the point where my
Speaker 2: greatest joy is seeing like a friend succeed because you know,
Speaker 2: I've got what I had ever dreamed of in life,
Speaker 2: and you've known me since I've met my wife and
Speaker 2: fall in love. But that attitude, which has always been
Speaker 2: a part of me, has gone one hundred acts by
Speaker 2: finding my soulmate and someone who is the same in
Speaker 2: a lot of these ways. Sharing a life together is
Speaker 2: just like the biggest thrill.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about that for a minute, because I happen
Speaker 3: to know your future plan is. I hope this is
Speaker 3: okay to reveal. This is you're building a boat and
Speaker 3: then you and your wife are just going to sail
Speaker 3: around the world. Can you tell us about that.
Speaker 2: I've done this before. I built a boat ten years
Speaker 2: ago and took off. The only thing missing in my
Speaker 2: life then was the perfect sailing partner. And my wife,
Speaker 2: Shay is a huge adventurer. She's a pilot, she flies seaplane,
Speaker 2: she's a sailor. Adventure is her north star. As a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, we fell in love on a boat
Speaker 2: trip in the Arctic looking for polar bears, two weeks,
Speaker 2: sharing a little bunk and just thrive in that condition.
Speaker 2: And Shae was the one recently who was like, let's
Speaker 2: get a boat, Let's go do this again. So we
Speaker 2: moved to Florida to be by the boat shows, and
Speaker 2: look at more boats. We looked at dozens, and one
Speaker 2: day we stepped aboard a boat in Fort Lauderdale that
Speaker 2: we absolutely loved. So we ordered one, and it's being
Speaker 2: built now and we'll launch in July in France. We'll
Speaker 2: get aboard and start getting it ready for the South Pacific,
Speaker 2: the really remote lifestyle and take off. It wouldn't be
Speaker 2: for everybody, but it is for us.
Speaker 3: Let's jump before we end the episode. Let me get
Speaker 3: your views on a couple of things. With the constant
Speaker 3: connection over social living on these screens, do you worry
Speaker 3: that we're stunting the creativity and imaginations of the generations
Speaker 3: growing up with it.
Speaker 2: I think it'll be a mix of both.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: You think about the people who built stone hinge in
Speaker 2: the Pyramids and created early calendars and came up with
Speaker 2: mathematical insights. Like we're creative, smart people and have been
Speaker 2: for hundreds of thousands of years, even before we took
Speaker 2: the kind of form that we're in now. So our
Speaker 2: cleverness has always been there. The tools that you and
Speaker 2: I grew up with allowed us to unleash that creativity
Speaker 2: in new ways, like getting cameras, getting digital cameras, having
Speaker 2: access to a computer, being able to write and edit
Speaker 2: with a word processor instead of having to do a
Speaker 2: cuneiform tablet or on a scroll or long hand. So
Speaker 2: the technology that we grew up with, there was resistance
Speaker 2: to those things when they came around, Like was it
Speaker 2: really writing if you typed it on a typewriter? Was
Speaker 2: it really writing? It didn't a computer and you were
Speaker 2: just copying and pasting instead of rewriting. What do they
Speaker 2: do to your creativity to have these tools? So I
Speaker 2: do think there's extra creativity that comes from limitations, and
Speaker 2: I think that a lot of our creativity comes from
Speaker 2: quiet time where we're not consuming but just contemplating. But
Speaker 2: those were problems before the smartphone revolution and the Internet.
Speaker 2: I think what I worry more about is what we
Speaker 2: will do with that creativity. I think we're losing some
Speaker 2: of the best parts of our empathy and our compassion.
Speaker 2: I think people are getting a little too hardened in
Speaker 2: their ideas instead of changing their minds and becoming new
Speaker 2: people and upgrading themselves. So I don't think creativity will suffer,
Speaker 2: but I do think that we are suffering from our
Speaker 2: relationship with technology these days. I think we crave a
Speaker 2: simpler life, but it's not one that we know how
Speaker 2: to choose, because we tend to not make decisions like that.
Speaker 2: We just gobble whatever's in front of us, instead of
Speaker 2: asking ourselves, how's this going to impact me? And to
Speaker 2: what degrees should I accept and reject different tools and
Speaker 2: options atomy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you and I were sitting at a conference last
Speaker 3: week and someone put this chart up on the screen,
Speaker 3: and the chart showed how young people they had a
Speaker 3: couple like I think it was three variables like what
Speaker 3: do I feel like? That were sort of symptoms of depression.
Speaker 3: And it was sort of stable until about twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: and then it just took a turn up into the
Speaker 3: right and has been continuing since. And as you know,
Speaker 3: you and I discussed there, it was the moment, not
Speaker 3: so much of social or the phone. It was the
Speaker 3: moment the algorithms took over and instead of seeing posts
Speaker 3: from my friend, I saw things the algorithm wanted me
Speaker 3: to see that may or may not have been good
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 2: I think you nail the analysis of that. We'll figure
Speaker 2: it out, and this will be a speed bump, but
Speaker 2: we tend to figure things out by steering from one
Speaker 2: ditch to the other instead of navigating down the road rationally.
Speaker 3: Before we end, I have to ask you one question.
Speaker 3: If you could go back in time, what advice would
Speaker 3: you have for your twenty one year old self?
Speaker 2: Oh, man, I know exactly the conversation I would have.
Speaker 2: I would tell my twenty one year old self that
Speaker 2: the person for me and whom I'm for is out
Speaker 2: there and we will meet and we will spend the
Speaker 2: best parts of our life together. And don't worry about
Speaker 2: that it's coming. Trust the process.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, Hugh. We end each episode because this is
Speaker 3: math and magic stories from the frontiers and marketing. And
Speaker 3: the idea of math and magic is it is the
Speaker 3: combination of the analytical, the math, and the creative the
Speaker 3: magic that really makes great businesses, great ideas, great marketing successes.
Speaker 3: Who would you say gets your shout out for being
Speaker 3: the best math person, the analytical person, and who gets
Speaker 3: it for being the most creative that's on the magic
Speaker 3: side of it.
Speaker 2: Paul de Rock would be my favorite mathematician of all time.
Speaker 2: Very strange brain, super literal, the kind of guy. If
Speaker 2: you ask him about the weather at dinner, it would
Speaker 2: literally leave the building and go check it out and
Speaker 2: come back and see what he's not there for the
Speaker 2: small talk, you know, an absolutely brilliant guy. But it
Speaker 2: predicted a lot of things that we would find later
Speaker 2: in theoretical physics and found it just in the math
Speaker 2: for magic, a literal magician. My favorite magician is David
Speaker 2: Kwang because he's a good friend and what he can
Speaker 2: do with language and crosswords in addition to magic is
Speaker 2: just amazing. But for creating magic, mutual friend of ours
Speaker 2: Michael Benneville his company, which they create experiences and bespoke
Speaker 2: little gifts and surprises. But the things that they come
Speaker 2: up with, to me are pure magic and the best way.
Speaker 2: It's like the technology of love. And so he's an
Speaker 2: inspiration to me for his solutions to unusual problems.
Speaker 3: But then it's a footnote. Michael Bennival designed most of
Speaker 3: the iHeart Media's office space, and I met him when
Speaker 3: he designed our camp burning Man. Yeah, it's creativity that
Speaker 3: runs with the real span. Hugh, you have been wildly
Speaker 3: successful building a life that works for you and allows
Speaker 3: you to be who you want to be and who
Speaker 3: you are. Congratulations through all your success. Congratulations bother me
Speaker 3: on silo every time I turn on the TV and
Speaker 3: I see it was number one, I go wow, go
Speaker 3: for it to you and thanks for sharing your stories
Speaker 3: and insights today.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Bob, It's a pleasure talking to
Speaker 2: you always.
Speaker 3: Here are a few things I picked up from my
Speaker 3: conversation with Hugh. One, it's possible to forge your own path.
Speaker 3: He realized that he was capable of doing a lot
Speaker 3: of the work traditionally handled by publishers. He decided to
Speaker 3: prove it even though few thought he could pull it off.
Speaker 3: Trusting Scott and having confidence in his own skills led
Speaker 3: him to disrupt an entire industry and find a great
Speaker 3: deal of success along the way. So for alliance could
Speaker 3: be risky, but sometimes it truly pays off. Two. Saying
Speaker 3: no can actually open doors. This goes against traditional wisdom
Speaker 3: to be a yes man and see what comes. Hugh
Speaker 3: said no to almost every offer that came his way
Speaker 3: from publishers. Knowing your worth can put the pressure on
Speaker 3: others to create more interesting deals and opportunities. Three, a
Speaker 3: common goal allows creativity to thrive. You may have broken
Speaker 3: barriers by remaining an independent publisher, but he doesn't deny
Speaker 3: the power of collaboration. Developing a show for Apple TV
Speaker 3: taught him that incredible things can happen when many minds
Speaker 3: come together. Once you find a team that's the right fifth,
Speaker 3: allowing people specialties to shine will elevate any project. I'm
Speaker 3: Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's episode.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Podcasts. The show is created and hosted
Speaker 1: by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenbloom for booking
Speaker 1: and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.
Speaker 1: The Math and Magic team is Jessica Crimechitch and Baheed Fraser.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etoor. Until
Speaker 1: next time,