Make You a Millionaire! James Quandahl EP01: The Skill of Interviewing

Transcript

Don't let the mysteries of life scare you away. Instead, ask Altice. Here's James Altice. I've got Ben Misrick with me here today. Ben, how's it going? Great. Thanks so much for having me. Ben, you're, like, one of my heroes. I've read so many of your books from Bringing Down the House, which is about all the MIT kids who who scored at blackjack, and then there was the movie 21 about it. Then you did, much later there was a bunch of books in between, but you did The Accidental Billionaires about Facebook, which the movie, The Social Network was based on. You did Rigged, The Ugly Americans. I forget the title now, but that that one about poker, online poker, which I read, which was great. Straight Flush. Right? Straight Flush. That's right. That was an excellent book. By the way, whatever happened to those guys? Well, one of them is still a a fugitive living in Antigua. He can't get off the island, or he'll be arrested, and he faces 80 years in prison. And But but that's okay. Does he build, like, a huge palace there? Like, did he take a $100,000,000 off the table? You know, he claims he doesn't have that much money, but he does have a a very nice home. I I have no idea how much he really has. But, yeah, he's kind of in this gilded paradise age, basically. Yeah. So so you you you've written all these incredible nonfiction books, and they've had, you know, several of them have had movies based on them. You wrote fiction a little bit before bringing down the house, but now I suddenly realize you're writing fiction again. You just came out with q, which is about a guy fighting, against a severe infectious disease, sort of like Ebola times a million. Right. I mean, q is something that I actually have been working on for a long time, but it's basically, you know, about quarantine law and about what happens if a crazy Ebola type disease actually hit New York. So, you know, it is it is a thriller. It is fiction. It's based on a lot of real interviews and real facts, But, yeah, it's kind of this this topic sci fi kind of book. Have you have you sold the movie rights to it yet? You know, I actually did sell the movie rights originally, to, I believe it was Mark Cuban 2929 a while ago, but then it reverted back to me, so I actually have the rights again. Okay. Well, we'll talk after the podcast. I'm gonna buy the movie rights to to q. So That sounds good. I wanna I wanna talk a little bit about some of the nonfiction first, and then I wanna dive into Q because I I read Q. I have to say it's a page turner. Everybody should get it, and it also is pretty scary in that it it it it borders on realistic. Like, it's almost like, you know, mini nonfiction. Like, it could happen next year. So so I wanna talk about that in a second, but your nonfiction is very interesting because I feel like there's this common theme in that you basically just like I'm sure many people wanna be in your position writing all these great nonfiction books that then get made into movies, you write about all these situations. I call it almost envy non the envy genre. Like, all these people I can get incredibly jealous about, and they're getting they get into these really high stakes situations. And in some of the cases, things fall apart, and that's where the story arc is. And that's like a common theme in in almost all the nonfiction, would you say? Yeah. It is. I mean, I basically live vicariously through these characters. I wanna be them. I wish I could be most of them. And, yeah, I mean, I'm just, you know, I'm scared of just about everything in real life, and I'm kind of a hermit. And then I go off and dive into these stories when I research them and and, you know, you're running around the exotic places or Vegas or or whatever it is. And and, yeah, I wanna be these people, so I am very envious of everybody I write about. Yeah. Sure. Because it's pretty cool to, like, go to Las Vegas with 1,000,000 of dollars, gamble, and make money. Right. So, like, who do money for your clothes and and getting chased around by private eyes. And and when I research the books, I actually try and be a part of the story. So I did, you know, strap a quarter $1,000,000 to my body and then flew to to Vegas, and I got chased around. And then, you know, it's it's exciting. It's like, you know, being James Bond is how they used to tell it. And, all my books have that theme in them. What about, Facebook? I know you probably didn't hang out with Mark Zuckerberg, but I guess you hung out with, the Winklevoss or Winklevoss twins? Eduardo a lot, the Winklevoss. Sean Parker, I hung out with a lot. Mark did not wanna talk to me. He was not thrilled that I was doing it. He did not like it. Although, I've heard he liked the movie, but, in general, he was Facebook was not pleased with me for a while. But, yeah, I did hang out with a lot of these guys and, you know, talk about envy. I mean, you know, listen. I went to to college, and I never came up with anything great. And then these guys are all you know, they did something pretty amazing. I I love Not only that, by the way. You went to Harvard, and they went to Harvard. Like, does that feel like a failure? Like, they went to Harvard 10 years after you, and they made the billions. Even worse, when I was writing a a a Facebook book or a social network, whatever you wanna call it, it was, 2,007 or 8. If I had just bought stock instead of written the book, I'd probably be doing much better. Well But it's, yeah. I mean, you know, it is there is that whole feeling of I miss something, about the whole Internet, I guess. Because, you know, a lot of friends who did very well, but, that story was amazing. I mean, it was one of these kinda Shakespearean dramas, and and coming at at it from Eduardo's point of view was was was an interesting way to go, I think. And, partially because I had no choice because Mark didn't wanna talk to me, but partially because no one had heard that side of the story before. Now, was Eduardo allowed to talk to you? No. Not at all. In fact, a lot of people think he was sort of Machiavellian. He he came to me. He was in the midst of this massive lawsuit, and I got an email out of the blue, at 2 in the morning, and it was from a Harvard senior who was his friend, and it said my best friend cofounded Facebook and no one's ever heard of him. And at that point in time, no one had heard of Eduardo. He wasn't on the masthead. He didn't exist. And so I went to drinks with this guy and and in walks Eduardo, and he proceeds to get really, really drunk and then starts to starts the conversation, you know, Mark Zuckerberg screwed me. And, I think he used the worst language than that. And, and I was blown away. I've never heard any of this stuff before. And then from him, I got to the Winklevii, which are not very hard to get to, if you know the Winklevii. And then Sean Parker was very, very giving with his time, and and, I think he was trying to bridge the gap between me and Mark and trying to to get Mark involved in the story because he knew that I was the thrill. Right? Sean was a good big fan of bringing down the house, but that's why he was willing to talk to me, I think. But Mark never wanted to talk to me, which I understood. Like I said, I don't he wasn't supposed to be talking to anybody. Massive lawsuit. You know, he was in the midst of it. And then what happened was it leaked onto the Internet that I was writing this story. I wrote a 14 page book proposal. I sent it to my agent, and somehow it ended up on the Internet. Quote, unquote, somehow. Somehow. It was not my fault. I would say that. Everything went crazy. You know, Facebook freaked out. They settled with Eduardo. My understanding is the the the settlement agreement said on it, you can never speak to Ben Mezrich again. Uh-huh. He got what eventually became, I guess, to her between $24,000,000,000 and he ran off to Singapore. Sent restraining orders to me, you know, said he can never speak to me again. He dumped the girl he was dating because he was my wife's best friend and he couldn't be connected. It was this kinda crazy experience. And then Aaron Sorkin called. You know, he read it on the Internet as well and said he wanted to write the movie, and everything kinda went crazy from there. And so were you heavily involved with Aaron Sorkin writing the script? Like, were you involved? Yeah. I hadn't actually written the book yet. You know, I had this 14 page book proposal. And, Sorkin got on board. Fincher saw it as well and said he wanted to direct it, but only if we did it right away because who knew if Facebook would be around in 2 years. And, and so we, I basically went into a hotel and wrote chapter by chapter. Sorkin took it and, wrote a screenplay in about 3 weeks after that. And it was, you know, a brilliant screenplay, an incredible movie. And, Yeah. It was fast. I was involved very heavily in in terms of the screenplay. Well, all of your nonfiction has this kind of thriller like appeal. Like, it's it's it's it's you've really created your own genre of nonfiction with all these things. And, you know, it's not it's not kind of traditional journalism. It's not, you know, you people have said it's not a 100% fact, but you kind of get the idea that that's okay, that the the the essence of every story is coming through here. And, they're all they're all very good. But before this, you actually did attempt a few novels. Yeah. I mean, when I first started out as a writer when I was in college, I wanted to be a thriller writer. I wanted to be Michael Crichton. You know, I wanted to be John Grisham. And my first six books which nobody read were all thrillers, medical thrillers mostly. And then I wrote for the x files. I wrote a a stand alone story starring Mulder and Scully, about a skin transplant gone bad, which I think came out in, like, 1999 or 2000. So I really was a thriller writer. And I Wait. Wait. How did you get the x files to do an episode with you? They actually came to me. I had written a book called Reaper, which was about a computer virus making the the jump to the biological world, and people started to get sick from their TV sets. And it was made into a really trashy TV movie called fatal error, which starred Antonio Sabato junior. I remember him, the the the model. And, it was on, it was on e TBS, I think. I think it was their first premiere movie or something or TNT. This was back in 2000 and or 1999, and and the X Files people saw that. And they had me come in, and I met with them, and they asked me to come write for the show, but I didn't wanna move to LA because I don't really drive. I'm I'm very neurotic kind of terrified individual. And, and so instead, I said, well, I'll write a book, starring Mueller and Scully as a stand alone novel, and so that's how that developed. So so you you say nobody read your earlier fiction, but now you just told me that, a, you know, because of a novel, you also did an X Files episode, and by the way, a TV movie was made based on your novel. I I guess what I mean is nobody read the book. I guess that's a it was it was, you know, they were fun. I had a lot of fun with it, but it really wasn't until you know, I was a thriller writer, and I used to hang out at a bar in Boston called Crossroads, which is a kinda MIT dive bar. And that's where these MIT blackjack players used to hang out. And I befriended them, and I started going to Vegas with them. And so over a period of about 6 months, I basically joined the MIT blackjack team to write their story. And that's kinda when my whole life and my career changed. Because I didn't wanna be a nonfiction writer. It was never my intention, but this was a true story, and so I basically wrote it like I write thrillers. It just happened to be true. Well, did you debate making it a fiction? No. I never did because, you know, this was one of these untold, crazy stories. It was amazing to me that no one had ever written it before. And and I was just so blown away by that that I wanted to tell it as a true story. But I think, you know, I've always was a fan of Hunter s Thompson. I was a fan of kind of this gonzo journalism where you insert yourself, where you kind of write it however you wanna write it. And that's that's what I did. And, you know, listen, it's been controversial. Everyone has attacked my nonfiction. There are definitely a lot of journalists who don't like the way I write nonfiction. But that's how I always wanted to go at it. I wanted to write it like a thriller. I wanted to keep it fun and exciting and and also Hollywood. I mean, I love movies, and and and that's how I decided to go for it. So I I never thought about writing that story as fiction. I always wanted to do it as nonfiction. Yeah. And who cares what journalists think anyway? Like, if the book is kind of getting the point across what you're trying to get, which is that here's what it's here's these odd extreme stakes, high risk situations, and what is happening to the people in those situations. You you get that across very well, and, you know, it's why people it's why these books are page turners. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, I I definitely always approach it that way. And I understand, you know, the people who don't wanna read a nonfiction book like this. But I I I also think this is a fun way to tell a true story, and it's exciting, and and why not? And, I've never had a problem with it, and I stand by it. And, you know, the the important stuff, it's all true. This is a true story. I mean, in terms of there will be people who will debate, different pages in it maybe, but overall, I think, you know, the people who were in it would see this as their story. So so getting to your fiction now, and I'm gonna get to q in a second. But the earlier fiction, did you have a hard time, getting the very first thing published, or or what was going on in your life then? Well, you know, I I was very fortunate in some ways. I mean, I was also kind of insane and obsessive compulsive. I graduated from college, and I locked myself in an apartment in Boston, and I wrote 9 novels. Oh my gosh. Stories. And I you know, rejection after rejection after rejection. I got about a 190 rejection slips, and I had them taped to all the walls in my apartment. And, you you know, I was a I was a struggling writer, and but 3 years it took about 2 years, I guess, until I I signed an agent. And then, a year after that, I sold my first book. So I was about 26 years old. So I was lucky that I sold my first one quickly. And then what happened was this Wait. Wait. When you say quickly, not most people would not consider 9 novels written quickly. Yeah. In terms of the amount of writing, you're right. I had written many, many pages. But in terms of time, I'm I was writing 30, 40 pages a day. I was kind of in this crazed whirlwind of writing day and night, and I didn't really have a life outside of that. And then I had no money, and I was just like, that's all I did. But it happened, you know, in a couple years, which I think is very quick for a writing career. And then my first book, you know, led to a second book, which led to another book. And I was getting book after book, and even though no one was reading them, I was vastly overpaid. Like like, what was an exam like, for the advance of your very first book, what was that? Book wasn't a big advance. I think it was, like, $50,000. But what happened was That's pretty big. People don't really get that right now. Right. But then it started getting bigger and bigger. And this was the kind of the nineties when it was a crazy time in writing, I think, as they were all looking for the next Grisham, and, there was a a a People Magazine article, which one of my fiction books described as the next Triton or the next Grisham. So suddenly, I was then signing very big deals, and selling movie rights even though the movies weren't getting made. And so the first six novels, I had 6 novels that were published, and by the end, you know, they were doing very they were earning a lot, but not selling well. And then I met the MIT Kids and kind of everything changed. That book exploded out of the gate. Even though it was a very small book, when I sold it, it was, you know, the first printing was 12,000 copies, and I sold it for less than I'd ever sold any of the other books. And and nobody cared about Vegas or cards. You have to remember when that book came out, and and it sold out in the 1st day. It was one of these crazy situations where I did the Today Show, and, and there was an article in Wired Magazine and in Playboy, and then, I did CNBC, which at the time was was a big network, and, and everything just went crazy. It sold out in a day, and then it kept selling out and selling out, and so this kinda changed my life. All altogether, how many copies have your nonfiction book sold? Oh, I don't know. Maybe 6, 7,000,000? That that's I mean, that's really incredible. Congratulations. Thank you. I mean, I have no idea. The Bringing on the House came out in 27 countries, and that one, you know, sold 2 or 3,000,000 copies. And then, and the National Billionaires and the Social Network was was very big. My other ones, you know, sell half a1000000 probably or whatever it is depending on the book. But it's some of them are different. You know, it's it's always kind of like you never know when you write a book whether people are gonna take to it or not, especially in nonfiction. And, it's, it's been fun. I mean, it's it's it's, it's an incredible journey. Yeah. Did you think about giving up, like, on rejection number 180? Like, what made you go the extra 11 rejections? No. I mean, I was very used to rejection if you knew me well. You know that rejection was a big part of my high school and college careers, but I, I always wanted to do this. It's all I ever wanted to be. I had no other options, really. I I wrote all day and all night. You know? I didn't didn't wanna do anything else. So Did you did you have a timeline on yourself? Like, if it doesn't happen by this year, I'm gonna go be an investment banker or I was just telling my parents set a timeline on me. So I graduated from college, and I was working odd jobs. And and my parents sort of said, you know, we won't let you starve, but we're only gonna give you 2 years. So I basically had 2 years of my parents supporting me at the basic level. And luckily, I managed to sign an agent within that period. Myself, I didn't really give a timeline. What I was gonna do was go to law school or go to grad school, but just keep writing on the side. And so, yeah. I mean, I definitely said if it didn't happen, I personally said 5 years, but my parents said 2. So I don't know what would've happened on year 3. So you did you did have some confidence, though. You did figure that, eventually did you feel eventually you would improve enough, or you feel that eventually people would see what you were seeing? Like, where was It's it's less confidence than it is delusion. I think that I think every artist has to be delusional in the beginning, though. Very delusional. You have to believe in yourself to the degree that everyone else is telling you that you suck and that you're wrong, and you have to be incredibly delusional about your abilities. And to this day, I feel like I'm very delusional whenever I I write something. I'm I'm not one of those sort of dark, brooding writers who hates what he does. I I hate the act of writing, but whenever I finish a book, I always think, oh, this is this is gonna be the big one. So, I mean, I think to some extent, you have to be that way. It's, it's just you're gonna get rejected so much. I mean, this industry is all about walls and keeping people out. Well, you know, like, particularly, I would imagine with your stuff, there's probably a lot of jealousy among nonfiction writers where you're gonna publish something. It's gonna sell millions of copies or be made into a movie or whatever. And all these guys are writing kind of, let's call it journalistic or academic sort of books, and, you know, you must get a lot of heat from that from from some circles. I certainly get a lot of heat from, from a lot of critics and and sort of nonfiction writers who feel that nonfiction can only be written one way. Or they feel like, you know, you you have to write like, you're doing a documentary every time or something like that. But in terms of, you know, I don't know if it's jealousy or it's it's, you know, training. I didn't go to journalism school, so I don't know if it's just this kind of wall, that people are behind. I don't really know. That's a good question. I do think that, you know, overall, I've been received very positively in the entertainment press and much less positively in sort of places like the New York Times. But on the other hand, they do sort of take it seriously enough to to do reviews, which I'm at. So, I mean, it's it's it is what it is. I I don't really mind it at all. I feel like, you know, there's gonna be an audience of people who like it, and then there's gonna be a few people who don't. And then and just straight out, honest question, did you start writing because you figured, okay. If I publish a novel, I'm gonna be able to meet girls. I mean, listen. I think we all we all, to some degree, have that in the back of our mind, but I wish I had played guitar instead because I think that would have been a lot better way to do it. No. I, you know, I definitely wanted to be a writer since I was about 12. Who who were you who were your favorite writers? When I was 12 or now? Now I would say, you know, Hunter x Thompson, Michael Crichton were kind of my inspiration. The songwriters was my favorite book. I love Sebastian Junger. I think he's amazing writer. I don't know. I I think there's, you know, Game of Thrones, I think I was blown away by even though I don't think I could ever write in that style. Fahrenheit 4 51 was one of the book that made me write Q. That was the book that sort of made me wanna write something like this. But, yeah, I have a lot of heroes, but I started very young. My determination to become a writer started when I was about 12, and this is all I ever wanted to do. So it really wasn't, you know, I wanna get rich. I wanna get famous or whatever. Certainly, those things are are are things that come into mind when you start succeeding. But overall, I think my goal was to have a life where I could sit and write, and that'd be my my career. So now let let's talk about q. So it's basically it's a page turner. It has thriller like aspects, of course, because it's about, this guy, Grady, who, tracks down people who possibly who are who are probables. They they are they are possibly or probably infected by this heavily contagious, heavily fatal disease, and, you know, it's kind of sweeping the world, this contagion. And it looks to me like you started the research at least for this book, way in advance because in the middle, you did you did this really interesting thing. You you become this character in the very middle of the book when you're interviewing, doctor Emily Gray, who was working with contagious diseases, and you interview her about what stages the government takes when a disease becomes different levels of contagious. Was that interview real? So yes and no. So, basically, this book did start as nonfiction. It was during the SARS epidemic, if you remember the SARS epidemic. This was a really scary moment in human history that most people don't realize how scary it really was. You know, SARS was this strange respiratory disease that was sweeping around the world. You know, it was in Canada, started in Asia, and and went to Canada. And it was on the verge of coming to the United States in a big way. And I began to research it because, people started telling me, people in the sort of infectious disease world, that we were days away from martial law. We were days away from massive quarantine laws going into effect, because nobody knew how bad this disease really was, how easily it was gonna spread, and how quickly it was gonna kind of end the world as we know it. So that's kind of when this began for me. And what I was intrigued by was the people who are gonna be on the front lines of an epidemic aren't really scientists and doctors. They're gonna be regular cops. They're gonna be police officers because what's gonna happen is as people start to get sick, they're not gonna wanna be quarantined when it really starts to spread. And the people whose job it is to take people in are gonna be regular cops. And that kind of intrigued me. I've always been kind of interested in the idea of what happens if an infectious disease starts to spread where people are symptomless or have minimal symptoms in the beginning, but it's incredibly contagious. So we're not necessarily talking about Ebola where, you know, you're bleeding from your eyeballs or whatever. We're talking about something where you're coughing. But let's say that cough can lead to a 60%, you know, death rate. What do you do? How do you stop that? And that's essentially what SARS was. SARS was something that was stopped in the airports in Toronto by, infrared, temperature guns where they basically went down the line and they took everyone's temperature. And if you had a temperature, they took you out of line and that's how they stopped SARS. And that's really interesting to me. I mean, it's it's scary and it's terrifying, but, it was intriguing to me. And then the other thing that was intriguing to me was was during the AIDS epidemic, Cuba, and a lot of people don't remember this story, but they mass tested and then quarantined everyone who was HIV positive. And today, Cuba has basically the lowest, AIDS or HIV rate in the world. It was draconian. It was horrible. These were lifetime quarantine. Wow. Are they are they still quarantined? Well, I I haven't really followed up on it recently, but I'm assuming all those people are dead. Who they quarantined back then because this was pre the drugs and this was, you know, a while back. Right? But, you know, it's, it's an amazing idea. Quarantine works. It's been around in this country for since this country, you know, became a country. And the laws in each state are incredibly severe. If something actually happened, like an Ebola or something like that spreading across the country, the powers that each state has to actually quarantine people is almost unlimited. There's no jury trial. There's no judges. There's no, you know, presumption of innocence. If you are showing symptoms, you can be quarantined. I get I guess that's like a that's happened already at least once, like the example of typhoid Mary a 100 years ago. Right. Happened with typhoid Mary, but it also happened during the Ebola, that nurse who didn't wanna be quarantined, in Maine, right, who was resisting her quarantine. The state could put her away. You know? They can place you away, and they can actually charge you criminally for breaking a quarantine. So it's it's interesting. I mean and the thing is is that, you know, as as horrible as it sounds, it also might be the final line of defense. It might be the only way to save a country from a massive infection. So I don't know. It's intriguing to me, and and it's why I started writing this book. So let me ask you about SARS because and I I always wonder this with SARS, with swine flu, with, Ebola. You know, how much of it is media creation? Like, the media needs to be scared of something. Like, ultimately, less than a 1000 people worldwide died of SARS from from what I can tell. So how much of it was just meet you know, the newspaper headline because they had no news that day to report on? Well, that's certainly what's going on with on with Ebola. I mean, Ebola to some extent was a media scare thing in the United States. Not in the countries where it was going on, but all over the rest of the place it was filling the news cycle. But SARS was a little different in that if you interviewed actual infectious disease specialists and doctors, they were terrified. There were a lot of people in the, you know, virology industry who were scared of this disease. I do think the media does run with it. You know, they're looking for the story of the day. I mean, if you look at what's going on with the flu right now, you would think we're in the massive, you know, and it's 1918 all over again if you read about the flu every day in a newspaper. And the reality is this year's flu is bad, but it's not, you know, out of the range of the last 5 years' flu. But but the thing is is that with SARS, it was a confusing disease because it started and nobody really knew for sure where it was gonna end. I do think, yeah, that does happen. The media does go crazy with these things because, you know, in Hollywood, it's they're looking for the next, you know, Contagion movie. They're looking for an outbreak. They're looking for something to write about. But it doesn't, you know, change the fact that some of these things are really scary. Like, do you think the infectious disease specialists get influenced by the media? So, like, it it becomes a way for them to get funding for their research and so on because people are scared? Absolutely. But the reason they are doing it, I believe, is because they all believe, every single one of them, believe that sooner or later, there will be a massive, massive contagion. If you interview virologists or infected specialists, every single one of them says, it's not, you know, if but when. Sooner or later, this will happen. It's sort of like if if you have a blue Honda, then suddenly you're gonna see a blue Honda everywhere on the street. So is that that that going on. I mean, certainly with the flu, that's what happened. But I do believe every single one of them believes this is, you know, how the world might end. And So so how far like, you know, the few the flu mutates and becomes stronger every year basically to handle, like, the latest batch of medicines and vaccines. How far do you think we are? And I don't know how you measure this really, but how far do you think we are from the flu today to something like what you describe in your book? Well, I think the flu itself, you know, the ones that we're seeing, the seasonal flu is not as frightening as, you know, avian flu, as these things that come out of Asia every now and then or or the Middle East that you you you don't really know a lot about, and there's only a few cases here and a few cases there. They have the capacity of being much worse than, say, the seasonal flu, I believe, because the seasonal flu kinda drifts. It drifts from from from, you know, one one type of flu to another, but we're always kind of close to it. It's these kind of game changing things like SARS, like, like, you know, avian flu, like things like that that are a lot more frightening, because they could suddenly take a form that we wouldn't be able to do anything about. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. There's no way to predict, you know, how far away we are from it. We do know that historically it's happened before, and that the likelihood of it happening again is very high. But, you know, you'll never know when. So so you're saying it's happened before because of things like the bubonic plague? Bubonic plague, the influenza of 1918. There's been typhoid. There's been, you know, the history of the United States or the history of the world is a history of these diseases. I mean, every now and then one comes and wipes a quarter of the population away. Do you think we're we're in an incredible golden age right now of medicine where we have a lot to fight against? And if the same influenza that took out so many people in 1918 happened today, it would take out much less people, because of the hospitals we have, the ability to quarantine the way we do, antibiotics for, you know, the resulting things that happen after the viruses, you know, get you. But in general, sooner or later, there will be something that we'll have to deal with. So in your book, you suggest that because of SARS, we were 5 days away from a potential martial law in, Yeah. That that's you know, listen. It's a it's a mix of nonfiction and fiction in this book. I interview a lot of, of people who who were, you know, terrified of what could have happened. But we were very close to one plane load coming into New York City and spreading, a disease that would have changed the way New York runs. Yes. What what does martial law even look like? Because I feel like there's not enough cops to to do that. So you call in the army at some point, but what happens is is essentially things have to change quickly. You have to make it illegal for people to to come together in groups. Things like movie theaters stop, you know, restaurants stop. Transportation on the whole pretty much stopped. You can't just fly in a plane without everyone checking temperatures and making sure. And and, you know, during SARS, you know, they quarantined plane loads of people. People don't remember this, but they were taking planes off the tarmac and holding people. And so if something really started to spread, you would see things like that happening. You would see forced quarantines all over the place. You would see, during the influenza of 1918, you know, they made it illegal for groups to join together. You weren't allowed to to go in a group of more than I forget how many people. And that's the kind of thing that would happen. They'd have to shut everything down for a while until they gain control. I didn't I didn't know that about 1918. So so what did they fully do? So you couldn't did they close down movie theaters? They closed down movie theaters in certain cities, you know, where the where it was spreading quickly. I think Philadelphia was one of them and a couple of others where they basically said, you know, you can't gather and group them more than 3 people. There was a it was basically stay at home kind of kind of rules, where you're supposed to wait it out. And in Africa, they just did a similar thing with Ebola. I think it was in Liberia, where they basically told people to stay at home for a few days. But, you know, if something happened that was horrible, they would have to get direct phoning in about it. They would have to tell everyone stay in your home. They would have to tell people not to go on subways, and there would be not you know, planes wouldn't fly and things like that would happen. And you have to shut everything down until the disease goes away. And Yeah. Why hasn't Ebola kind of been more contagious in the United States? I think think maybe one person's died from it in the United States. Well, listen. Ebola is not that catching. I mean, Ebola is only really catching in when the person is dying or dead, and they're spewing, you know, particles all over the place. When you, you know, just got an Ebola, you're not that catching. I mean, you have to actually have fluid contact. So it's it's not a great sort of spreading disease like, say, the flu is. The flu is so much more catching. So even when someone with Ebola walks around New York City for a day, nobody's gonna catch it from it. If that person died in the middle of the street in New York City and a lot of people went over and touched the body, yeah, they would catch it. And that's why it's happening so badly in these African countries is that people are dying in the streets and people are grabbing them and holding them and picking them up and they're catching it and then they're taking them home or they're not letting them, you know, be taken away from from a it's a horrible thing. But Ebola is not sort of the game changing disease. It's going to be one of these respiratory diseases that you can catch from being within 6 feet of someone who has it. It's not gonna be one of these things that you have to get blood or or or or, you know, whatever bodily fluid on you. It's gonna be one of those things where you can breathe it in. You know, in some sense, it it also reminds me of your your nonfiction a little bit where not not necessarily obviously, not the envy side of your nonfiction, but, kind of the high stakes and the questionable ethics side. Like like, we don't really know in any of your nonfiction books, we don't really know what the right ethics are. Like, everybody's operating in this huge gray area, which is probably why there's opportunity. And and in the same case with this book, q, you know, the idea of of mass quarantine is very scary, and you obviously you don't wanna be a victim, but you don't really it is the ethics of it is a gray area as you point out. Right. And, you know, there will be a lot of ethical questions, you know, and then there all we are with quarantine. I mean, at what point do you allow society to fall into this kind of horrible state where you're pulling people off the streets for coughing, where people are turning each other in because they think they might have a disease, where, you know, where you're going after people who are refusing to be quarantined, you know, families where one member has a disease and the rest of them may or may not have the disease, you're gonna get into a lot of horrible things. And, also, one of the things I have in the book is, and I don't go too much into it, but the idea of people, like, using this opportunistically. I mean, a mayor who gets elected running on hardcore quarantine laws. And we saw with Ebola a lot of people getting on the news cycle and going on about how we needed stricter this and stricter that. And they were using it to advance themselves in a way. So you will see a lot of that going on as well. But, yeah, I mean, I do think this gray area, these ethical questions are a part of all of my books. I'm always intrigued by people who have to make a decision right or wrong, and and the right decision isn't always the decision you wanna make. And it's not always the the decision that's easy to make. Yeah. And and and you also I I think throughout all these books, there is no answer. Like, just because something's a gray area ethically, it might stay in that area forever. Right. I mean, there is no right answer. And and in terms of you know, it's it's no it's it's it's different in a lot of levels, obviously, when you're talking about Q and some infectious disease or or Facebook and and building an Internet company. But in the end, there are gonna be questions. You know, 2 guys in a room come up with an idea. 1 of them goes and builds the idea, and then the other one comes back and says, I want my 30%. I mean, that's really the basic story of The Social Network. Does he deserve his 30% or not? And that's always gonna be an ethical arc or a question or, that there isn't a right answer to, I don't think. And that's similar in this in that, what do you do when people start to get sick, and you know the only way to stop it is to do these horrible things. So why you why did you decide to make this, fiction versus nonfiction? You know, I think, I was very inspired by Fahrenheit 4 51. I always liked her taking on something like this that is so dark, and doing it in kind of a science fiction way. I mean, I grew up reading a lot of science fiction. You know? Heinlein and Asimov. And I guess I always wanted to try my hand at that. And this is a novella also. It's not a, you know, a very long book, which is also why I released it as an ebook, you know, on Kindle rather than as a as a as a hardcover book out in the bookstores. It's just very different than anything else I've ever written. It's not about young people and money and sex and using crazy locales. And I just think it would have been such a a right turn from everything else I've been writing. I see. So a little bit is, not necessarily dictated by the audience, but you figured this was a good opportunity to to switch formats. Well, to try something out. I mean, listen, the world is changing. The world of publishing is changing. And I was curious, and I wanted to give it a shot. And, it just was something that I've been working on for a very long time. I mean, I've had this book in hand for for a number of years, and it just seemed like, you know, give it a shot. And, you know, there's this second person element of it. Like, stylistically, this is a lot different from your other books as well. Yes. I wrote it in the second person, present tense, I think, to some extent. So it's a little it's as a did you do that, like, influenced by bright lights big city? Or Big city was was the book that I read a 100 times when I was young. That almost ruined my career. Because when I started out as a writer, I decided I wanted to try and be, you know, Jay McEnany or Brady Sun Ellis, and and that's the worst thing you can do when you're a young writer because nobody else can be Jay McEnany or Brady Sun Ellis. And so a lot of my first novel attempts that got rejected were took place in bars in New York City and were deep and dark and, you know, had a lot of cocaine and things like that in them, and and nobody wanted to read them. So, you know, it's, I definitely was very influenced by that book when I was starting out. And then when I sat down to write this story, I wanted the people reading it to be in it. You know? I wanted you to feel like you were in this story, because it could happen tomorrow. It could have already happened. It could already be started. You don't know. And that's why I wrote it this way. So, yeah, it was very different than anything I've written before. It also had an element, and maybe this is also kind of related to your nonfiction. I felt like there was a little bit of, James Frey in there, particularly, well, Bright Shiny Morning and the the million little pieces one. Because you you use short sentences. There's a lot of there's some, kind of repetition to kind of enhance the intensity of the moment. So I don't know if James Frey was an influence at all. Well, not not specifically, because I haven't read, his stuff so much. Although I think, you know, yeah, you know, he seems like a really interesting writer. I think there was a, you know, the short sentences, the clip sentences are very Crichton, as well. It was one of my big influences when I was starting out as a writer. I would reread Michael Crichton books over and over again because there was something very simple about his style that I love. And, yeah. I did a lot of repetition, a lot of kind of, you know, over and over again because I feel like that I don't know. It just came out that way. But it's something I've used before in my books that you don't necessarily notice as much. But repetition is something I also learned from Brighton, I think. You know, a few months ago, I was at a meeting, and, one venture capitalist was telling me how she was working on a project analyzing big data, quote, unquote, in the sewer in the sewer system. So everything that's in our sewer system, all the data that's there. And you refer to that. You have the specific phrase, the real information superhighway, the sewer system. And, you know, it's interesting. I think we're going to find a lot of data there about, cities and people and, you know, stuff that's maybe even more useful than what the latest Google trends are. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. But as I was writing this book, it came to me and I was thinking about this. There is a line into every house in the world, into every person's bathroom, essentially, that contains so much information about people. I mean, your DNA is going through the source every day. Right? There's a there's a the real information superhighway isn't through your computer. It's through the source system. And I don't think that's something that's sort of been capitalized on by anybody. I'm not even sure how it is, but there really is this weird sort of connection between every person, certainly in a city, running underground. You know, and I guess, you know, again, like, because this person was was working on this project, it it almost and then after reading your book, it almost scares me a little bit because, I I think it was your oh, I don't wanna give away any of the book at all. But, you know, the sewer system can give you clues as to who might be a probable on any kind of disease, basically. And, you know, so potentially that data could be used against people. It's more of a privacy issue than Facebook in my opinion. It really is. You could diagnose people, going through the source system. You could tell if someone in a in a building was using drugs. You could tell, you know, it's a really crazy thought, but it doesn't take very much, you know, of a sample size to figure out, you know, what what someone might have. And certainly as as science continues, as biosciences continue forward, it's gonna get easier and easier to sort of pinpoint things, through the source system. And you decided to, not quite self publish, but you took an alternative route with publishing this one. You went with Brad Feld's publishing company, FG Press. What what was how did that happen? Well, I think Brad's a genius, and he's he's an incredibly smart guy. I would think of I met him, for lunch once in in Boston. A a mutual friend of ours named Neil Robertson, who is, in the Internet world as well, you know, sold an Internet company out of his dorm room when he was 18 for, I don't know how many 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars, and he's been one of my best friends for many years. And he was my partner in crime in Vegas. He he and I have been friends for a year, and he introduced me to Brad. And I don't know a lot about, you know, this world. I've been in traditional publishing for a very long time, and all of my books have gone that route. And I've always sold a lot of books online and ebook because the type of writing I do and my audience, are very hooked up and connected. And so I thought, you know, it would be interesting to try this this way. They seem to be, doing something interesting, and we're just gonna try it in a new way. And, you know, I think we did a trailer that's on my website. And Oh, the trailer is beautiful, by the way. Benmazvic.com. It takes you right to the trailer. I I really was impressed by I I seldom see a good book trailer, and this was beautiful. Yeah. It's so dark and and quick. And so, yeah, I mean, I I I wanted to try this one. Since it was shorter in length, it's, you know, it's not like my other books. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to do something like that. And, and just like, you know, what you're talking about my envy, I'm envious of everyone who actually understands the Internet world and was able to sort of get into that world. I I love people in the VC world. I love, you know, people who build companies in their dorm rooms. I mean, I'm just fascinated by it. Even before I wrote the Action of Billionaires, these are people that have always kind of because I I just I missed it. You know, I missed that moment, and and, and I don't you know, I'm amazed by people who are who are creative and yet quick enough and smart enough to work in this field that moves so quickly. And so working with with them seemed like a really exciting thing to do. But, you know, in all, I mean, I know that a lot of published people, authors, you know, there's this whole thing Amazon or traditional books. And I love traditional books. I love bookstores, but I also love my Kindle, and I love, you know, reading that way. And, I do think that, you know, that's where we're heading. That's the future. And so, it was definitely worth worth doing on this one. I I definitely agree. Although, you know, what what they what you could do is you could kind of use the book distribution arm of a company like Simon and Schuster or Random House to get into the bookstores. But, you know, you probably like you said, you know, you're you're gonna get a lot of ebook reader probably mostly ebook readers of this anyway. Right. I mean, you never know. I I think because of the length, I think publishers on the whole are are reticent. I had a lot of meetings with publishers and they were you know, if you add a few chapters, we can publish this, you know, book. And and I felt like this book finishes where it finishes. It's, I did not want to add another, you know, a 100 pages to it just to to make it long enough to be published in a traditional bookstore. Yeah. I don't I I thought I mean, just my own single person's opinion. I thought this was, like, the perfect size for this for this book. And I I enjoyed it to the end, and, I'm not gonna give anything away, but I encourage people to read it to the very end. And also with this book, I felt like, you know, there should be a viral element to it because that's essentially what it is about. And I think you can get that viral element going, you know, in the ebook world that you don't really get in bookstores anymore. But, you know, who knows? Listen. It's it's it's it was an exciting thing to attempt to do, and, you know, and my next big nonfiction book comes out in the summer in June. Oh, what's that? So this is a big kind of secret book, but I can tell you about it. We we won't tell the the 100,000 people listening to this won't tell anybody. Won't tell anybody. It's called Once Upon a Time in Russia. It's a true story that I am terrified about, that I haven't really talked about yet. We just filled a very big movie with it. And, it's, it's about the Russian oligarchs, the the sort of where Putin came from, told in the words of people who've never spoken before, but it's a thriller. So I think to some extent, people will read it, and and it's reminiscent of a lot of interesting it's almost like a James Bond thriller meets meets meets Mario Puzo, but it's all true. And it's really the true story of this battle between oligarchs and this incredible rise of wealth and Putin, then it it's, it's a wild story. I haven't spoken about it yet. I would I did not wanna write it. I had a lot of meetings, in London and places like that and eventually wrote it because it's the most amazing story I've ever heard. But it's called Once Upon A Time in Russia, and it's it's out in June. And did you have to did you just get to speak to a lot of these oligarchs, and they weren't afraid of any kind of retaliation? Well, it wasn't even there. Then my sources were, you know, were the people who were there, who have never spoken before. You know, I'm not ever gonna really tell who they were or what was going on, but, it's, it's written in a way that is different than any other book about Russia's ever been written. And, it's from the point of view of of of these oligarchs. So I don't believe that it's not, I can't describe it, to some extent right now, but I would say that it's a story, that isn't necessarily about Putin and Russia, but does sort of give you a look into how that all happened. You know, there was a period of time where 7 men owned 50% of Russia's GDP. Seven individual men controlled that much wealth. And never in the history of the world is that that degree of wealth suddenly appeared in the hands of so few people. And that's essentially what this story is about. I always I always view and and now with your experience, you can answer this question. I always view Russia almost like one big hedge fund where Putin is the hedge fund manager, kinda skimming everything off the top. I think the current state of Russia could definitely be described in that respect. In the scope of this story, what's intriguing about it is that Putin is the good bot good guy. Because in in a time period, a very short time period as as Russia shifted from from, you know, communism to capitalism and Yeltsin was in charge, Basically, Russia's entire wealth was handed off to a group of oligarchs. They put Putin in power because they thought they could control this nobody, this this cog, this low level KGB agent. And he flipped it over, and suddenly, they were all either kicked out of the country, killed, or are part of his government. So, essentially, he repatriated this incredible amount of wealth, and then became probably the richest man in the world. But, it's definitely an intriguing story, I think. Oh, I can't wait to that. We'll have to have you back on the podcast for that one. I'm sure it's gonna be very interesting. It will be interesting. That's for sure. So so, Ben, once again, I really appreciate you coming on the show, and I really encourage the listeners to buy your book, q. It's almost a hard book to search on on Amazon. Yeah. It's, you know, it's it's, it's it's only available on Amazon right now for the next couple of months, and, it's just called q. So, yeah, if you search I probably have to search my name or go to my website. But, yeah, it's it's it's available. I hope people read it. It's definitely very different, but, it was an really an amazing kind of thing to get inside of. And if you've ever had any fears about quarantines or infection, I think it's a book that will keep you up at night. But listen. I appreciate it talking to you. It's really wonderful to talk to you. I I I I wish I could, learn, from you how to do what you do rather than what I do. No. You know, it's, and vice versa. So we'll we'll have to get together at some point if we're forever in the same city, but I I really appreciate you coming on. And, you know, all all your books, I've been such a fan of for for so many years. So so thanks again. I appreciate it, man. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Bye, Ben. Now that's what we call done. Visit Stansbury Radio choose yourself.com to download our free report called the choose yourself stories and check back daily for more Ask Altitude.