SmartLess

So I read most of his stuff for preparation, I guess.

So let's say we'll take The Blind Side for instance. I didn't understand anything.

You know, I watched football my whole life. I didn't understand the importance of the left tackle.

Now, of course, people in football would. But you honed in on this idea of the left tackle.

And then you told it through the lens of this young man who was an incredible talent at left tackle.

The Blind Side, nobody wanted to make that movie.

But I did it with like, okay, I'm going to find characters and they have to be obviously relevant to the story but like I'm going to start with people I'm just interested in and I'm only going to write a book if I find people I'm interested in.

And it took a while but the three people who were at the center of that book are the three best characters I've ever had.

And they are like unknowns.

I mean, like I'll give you one quick example. Charity Dean is a local public health officer who has been like fighting disease on the ground for the last 20 years who, let me leave her to one side because the guy who's easiest to describe is the guy who wrote the pandemic plan for the United States who invented basically an idea of how to respond to a pandemic.

And his name is Carter Mesher. He was a ICU doctor by his whole career.

As a kid, A House with a Clock in Its Walls I read all those books as a kid God, me too, me too Yes, I loved those books so much To see you play Mrs. Zimmerman, who's one of my favorite characters in any kids book of all time That was such, it was so incredible to see up there

And as a kid, A House with a Clock in Its Walls, I read all of those books as a kid. And when- Me too, me too. Yes, I loved those books so much. And to see you play Mrs. Zimmerman, who's one of my favorite characters in any kids' book of all time, that was such, it was so incredible to see up there.

He's got a brand new book out. I should have asked him. It's called The Storyteller.

It's called The Storyteller.

Joe book is called Lucky Bastard.

Lucky Bastard can be found wherever you like to buy your own books.

It's on discount racks everywhere.

Forget the title of your book that you wrote that you won the Pulitzer for, was it Lennon's Tomb?

It was about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

You know, Duddy Kravitz, the apprenticeship at Duddy Kravitz.

I know it all too well. It's so good in that great line of like a man is nothing unless he owns land.

It's a father-daughter story in which- which is led really by the daughter who plays Jennifer Vogel and played by my daughter, Dylan Penn.

I have a book called Vegetables Unleashed and the tomato recipe I have, the tomato sauce recipe I have for the pasta, with permission of Marcella Hassan, is the best tomato recipe in the history of mankind for pasta.

I'm on a show called Station 11, which is a sci-fi thing based on a book.

But Why the Last Man is what it's called. Oh, David. Based on a really great graphic novel.

It's a graphic novel. It's the letter Y, like the chromosome. Y, the last man. It's really good.

I do have a book called Devil May Dance, but it's not about meeting your soulmate at a disco.

It's about Hollywood and the Rat Pack in 1962.

The first one in the series, I did the audio. And then the second one, they hired a professional.

It's available now, yes. At fine bookstores. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it at Barnes and Noble. You can get it on jaketamper.com. You can get it.

I think you guys actually would like it. It's about Hollywood in the 60s.

Let's talk about Body Slam, the Jesse Ventura story published in 1999. My first book.

Body Slam is probably the Teen Wolf 2 of my career.

Look, I had done some writing about sports and I worked for Washington City Paper, a free weekly in DC, and a publisher came to me and said, you know, Jesse Ventura was just elected. They need somebody to do a book and they need it done in two months or something like that.

I've read a lot. I like reading books about athletes and I read Golf My Way. Remember that book?

And did you ever read John Daly's book, The Golfer?

It's really good because the guy had zero boundaries. Yeah. And it's he had crazy relationships, went through money. It's it's a very entertaining book. But what are you doing reading? I highly recommend it.

But the John Daly book is really worth picking up. Because are you are you a big sports fan?

But what's interesting about the book is that he had zero boundaries. He couldn't help himself. He had no control.

And what the funny part is, his wife stabbed him in the arm the hand with a fork at the dinner table. She went to prison. It's just like it's just crazy, crazy shit. You know, and it's good. Yeah, it really is.

And so I think it is technically possible, but I think it's been an engineering limitation. So we don't have that, but I wouldn't want that because I'll tell you, floating all the time is so much fun.

I wrote this book called Our Time Is Now. And part of what I wanted to do is let people understand just how complicated the United States has made its most basic right.

it says that in the book of Revelations, it says, out of the mouth comes a double edged sword.