On Michael Crichton's Busy Ambition

00:00:00.000 | Let's get rolling right away with today's deep dive.

00:00:05.000 | I'm calling it the two types of ambition.

00:00:10.540 | Now this deep dive is based off of an article

00:00:14.120 | I posted to my newsletter at calnewport.com

00:00:17.480 | just a few days ago.

00:00:18.960 | So the original title of the article,

00:00:21.000 | and I have it on my screen here

00:00:22.120 | for those who are watching instead of just listening.

00:00:24.960 | The original title of the article was

00:00:26.760 | On Michael Crichton's Busy Ambition.

00:00:30.480 | It's from October 28th.

00:00:33.360 | So the motivation for this article,

00:00:34.760 | which I wanna pick apart in our deep dive today,

00:00:37.660 | was actually coming across a profile of Crichton

00:00:42.160 | in the New York Times archives from 1970.

00:00:46.000 | And I have this on the page now on the screen

00:00:49.200 | if you're watching, a profile that's titled

00:00:52.800 | For Michael Crichton, Medicine is for Writing.

00:00:55.400 | It's also a picture of a young Michael Crichton there.

00:00:58.540 | So what struck me when I read this profile recently

00:01:01.880 | was the busyness of Michael Crichton

00:01:05.480 | at this very early stage of his career.

00:01:07.800 | So let me set the scene for you.

00:01:09.020 | This is the scene that I opened the article with.

00:01:12.160 | All right, it's Michael Crichton,

00:01:14.280 | his last year at Harvard Medical School.

00:01:16.400 | He's 26 years old.

00:01:17.720 | He goes to the dean of the medical school,

00:01:22.000 | and he says, "I don't think I'm gonna practice medicine.

00:01:25.720 | "I've figured this out, but what I do wanna do

00:01:28.340 | "is publish a nonfiction book about hospital life,

00:01:31.720 | "in particular, the hospital in Boston

00:01:34.320 | "where he was doing his intern rounds."

00:01:38.160 | And he asked, "Can I, instead of doing

00:01:41.680 | "some of the normal whatever work you would do

00:01:44.920 | "during your final semester, can I instead

00:01:46.540 | "go around the hospital and gather research for my book?"

00:01:49.520 | And here's the actual quote I have here

00:01:51.680 | from this article, which was written

00:01:53.440 | one year after this occurred.

00:01:54.560 | He said, "Why should I spend the last half

00:01:56.520 | "of my last year at medical school

00:01:58.420 | "learning to read electrocardiograms

00:02:00.140 | "when I never intended to practice?"

00:02:02.080 | All right, so he says this to the dean

00:02:04.760 | of Harvard Medical School.

00:02:07.060 | The dean replies, paternalistically,

00:02:09.840 | "Michael, I don't think you realize

00:02:11.780 | "how hard it is to write a book."

00:02:14.400 | Right, so he's trying to warn this young kid,

00:02:16.160 | like, you can't just go walk around the hospital

00:02:17.920 | and gather some notes.

00:02:19.000 | This is when Crichton did his mic drop

00:02:21.920 | and revealed to the dean of Harvard Medical School

00:02:24.140 | that he had already published four books

00:02:26.280 | during his first three years at medical school.

00:02:29.240 | He had been doing so under the pen name John Lang,

00:02:33.520 | L-A-N-G-E.

00:02:35.840 | Not only had he written those four books,

00:02:37.460 | but he had multiple other projects in action,

00:02:39.620 | not just this nonfiction book idea,

00:02:41.240 | which he had already started, by the way,

00:02:43.120 | but his first two, I would say,

00:02:44.760 | serious publication efforts.

00:02:46.860 | His first four books are potboilers.

00:02:48.440 | I've read 'em, you can buy 'em, they reissued them

00:02:50.680 | under Michael Crichton's original name.

00:02:52.760 | They're Clive Kustler, James Bond-style thrillers

00:02:57.120 | with some techno flavor added in.

00:02:59.140 | But he was also, by this final year of his med school,

00:03:02.480 | deep underway with some more serious books,

00:03:05.100 | the first being A Case of Need,

00:03:08.320 | which he published under a pseudonym as well,

00:03:11.240 | but it was really the first thriller he wrote

00:03:13.120 | that got medicine more deeply involved.

00:03:16.680 | This would win, that next year,

00:03:20.120 | it would win an Edgar Award

00:03:21.400 | for Best Mystery Novel of the Year.

00:03:23.560 | It's a hard award to win.

00:03:25.440 | He also was working on The Adronoma Strain,

00:03:28.760 | first book he would publish under his own name,

00:03:31.760 | and of course would be a big breakout bestseller.

00:03:34.040 | It's what really started his fame in the literary world,

00:03:37.040 | became a big movie back in the '70s.

00:03:39.400 | He had all this stuff already going on

00:03:41.800 | when he went to talk to the med school dean.

00:03:45.100 | So by the time you get to a year later

00:03:46.580 | when this New York Times profile is written,

00:03:48.820 | you see that this is a one-man multimedia operation.

00:03:52.520 | So in addition to all of those projects going on,

00:03:54.820 | he somehow has two more potboilers,

00:03:58.000 | he writes under his pseudonym, by 1970.

00:04:01.120 | So somehow he adds two more books

00:04:03.160 | unrelated to A Case of Need,

00:04:04.320 | unrelated to The Adronoma Strain.

00:04:06.480 | He also, by this point,

00:04:07.440 | was working on what would become The Terminal Man,

00:04:10.320 | his second techno thriller written under his own name.

00:04:14.160 | It was called something different.

00:04:15.200 | The profile, they're still calling it The Sympathetic Man,

00:04:17.800 | like the sympathetic nervous system,

00:04:19.520 | but Terminal Man is much better.

00:04:21.240 | He revealed that he was already intent

00:04:23.440 | on directing the movie for The Terminal Man.

00:04:27.200 | So he was concurrently writing a screenplay.

00:04:29.680 | He was also traveling to Hollywood every week

00:04:32.760 | on what he called, and I'm highlighting this here,

00:04:35.560 | a skills-building gambit.

00:04:38.440 | So he was going to Hollywood.

00:04:39.920 | He's trying to pick up,

00:04:40.760 | because he wanted to be a director as well.

00:04:42.520 | And so he was going to Hollywood a couple days a week.

00:04:45.720 | So this was the year after he left medical school.

00:04:47.660 | So he had this sort of half-hearted post-doc

00:04:51.400 | at the Salk Institute in La Jolla.

00:04:53.340 | La Jolla, J-O-L-L-A.

00:04:57.680 | - Hoya. - Hoya, is it La Jolla?

00:04:58.920 | - Yeah. - Okay.

00:04:59.760 | Which is not far from LA, I guess.

00:05:01.120 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:05:01.960 | - So he was going back and forth.

00:05:02.960 | - It's like San Diego area.

00:05:04.080 | - Yep, all this stuff was going on.

00:05:05.840 | 27 years old, all this was going on at the same time.

00:05:09.300 | The New York Times profile

00:05:10.920 | called his career hyperactive.

00:05:13.140 | And it is, can you imagine that?

00:05:16.360 | I mean, I do a fair amount of things.

00:05:17.640 | That's crazy, the amount of things he had going on.

00:05:19.800 | So all these different projects,

00:05:20.920 | he was juggling at the same time.

00:05:22.240 | Oh, and by the way, he also published a novel

00:05:23.960 | with his brother under a pseudonym

00:05:26.160 | between 1969 and '70 as well,

00:05:28.000 | an experimental novel about drug dealing,

00:05:30.000 | where they would pass the manuscript back and forth,

00:05:32.280 | and he would write an entire draft,

00:05:34.880 | and then his brother would edit an entire draft.

00:05:36.200 | All this stuff's going on.

00:05:38.100 | So, busy guy.

00:05:39.560 | I compared him in this article,

00:05:41.040 | let's say apples to apples,

00:05:42.780 | another really successful fiction writer, John Grisham.

00:05:48.200 | John Grisham's younger.

00:05:50.560 | He really got his start in the early '90s,

00:05:53.400 | whereas we have Crichton getting his start

00:05:55.880 | in the early '70s, but whatever, same idea.

00:05:58.440 | And there was a period in the '90s

00:05:59.560 | where they were competing back and forth,

00:06:01.420 | not just for the biggest book sales.

00:06:03.400 | Grisham and Crichton for a period in the '90s there

00:06:05.940 | were in a huge war on movie rights.

00:06:08.360 | They were breaking deals, breaking records for movie deals,

00:06:12.040 | and their agents would say things like,

00:06:14.080 | "I want whatever Crichton got for his last book plus $1."

00:06:17.180 | Like they were trying to one-up each other.

00:06:18.960 | All right, so what's John Grisham's story?

00:06:20.320 | So John Grisham in the 1980s is a lawyer,

00:06:25.320 | small-town Mississippi lawyer.

00:06:27.400 | He runs for and also wins a seat

00:06:29.200 | in the Mississippi State Legislature.

00:06:31.440 | So he's a Democrat state legislature

00:06:33.880 | and a small-town lawyer doing both of those things.

00:06:36.480 | State legislator's a part-time.

00:06:38.160 | Job.

00:06:39.360 | And he decides he wants to write a book.

00:06:42.000 | He gets an idea for a book from a case

00:06:44.000 | that he wasn't trying, but was observing.

00:06:47.240 | And he gets this idea for a book and he tells his wife,

00:06:49.320 | "I wanna try to write a legal thriller."

00:06:51.880 | And she said, "Okay, but do two in a row."

00:06:54.600 | Right?

00:06:55.440 | So that way, maybe one of the ideas doesn't work.

00:06:57.880 | You have two shots at it right away.

00:06:59.880 | And if both of those ideas don't work,

00:07:01.200 | then you know that maybe that's not for you.

00:07:03.280 | So he does this.

00:07:05.000 | It's hard.

00:07:05.840 | It takes him longer than it takes Crichton.

00:07:07.520 | I have the numbers in here,

00:07:09.200 | but I think it was something like three years.

00:07:11.680 | Because he's writing in between these two jobs.

00:07:15.080 | And you can find him in some interviews talking about,

00:07:17.480 | "Oh, I have my notepad while I was waiting for meetings.

00:07:20.080 | "I was waiting for a legislative session

00:07:23.240 | "to begin, I had scribble notes."

00:07:24.800 | But I found a really definitive interview

00:07:26.520 | where he said, "This is the secret.

00:07:28.040 | "I woke up at five and I wrote every morning.

00:07:31.040 | "And it was really hard and I was often really tired.

00:07:33.360 | "And it wasn't like all that fun.

00:07:35.260 | "And that was the only way to really make progress."

00:07:36.800 | And it still took him three years to write the first book.

00:07:39.120 | He started the second book

00:07:40.920 | the day after he finished the first.

00:07:43.320 | Good thing he did that because the first name,

00:07:45.880 | the first book, "A Time to Kill",

00:07:48.680 | he had a hard time finding a publisher.

00:07:50.020 | When it came out, small first printing did nothing,

00:07:52.080 | disappeared.

00:07:53.080 | But he had already basically finished his second book

00:07:55.280 | by that point.

00:07:56.120 | So he's like, "I might as well."

00:07:58.120 | This time, his second book, which is "The Firm",

00:08:02.520 | his agent leaked bootleg copies of the manuscript

00:08:07.200 | to movie producers.

00:08:08.640 | So before they had even sold the book,

00:08:12.080 | Paramount came in and said, "We'll pay you $600,000

00:08:14.300 | "for the movie rights for 'The Firm'."

00:08:16.780 | So then once the publishing industry heard

00:08:18.680 | that Paramount had paid 600,000,

00:08:20.280 | they're gonna do a big movie,

00:08:21.120 | which they eventually did with Gene Hackman and Tom Cruise.

00:08:23.880 | Doubled A snapped up the book rights for a lot of money.

00:08:26.880 | That book got a lot of coverage, went on to sell a lot.

00:08:30.760 | The number I quote in the article is 7 million copies.

00:08:34.200 | I couldn't really source that well.

00:08:35.840 | It might be less than that.

00:08:37.100 | But anyways, it sold a lot of copies

00:08:39.000 | instead of his whole career.

00:08:40.880 | This is where, and I say in the article,

00:08:43.000 | Grisham's path diverges from Crichton.

00:08:46.220 | Grisham does not look at the buffet

00:08:51.640 | of appealing opportunities that is generated

00:08:54.640 | by his initial success and say, "Let's start feasting."

00:08:58.480 | He does something very different.

00:08:59.940 | He says, "I now have the leverage and money

00:09:04.080 | "needed to simplify my life in a way I couldn't before."

00:09:07.380 | Stops practicing law, leaves the legislature.

00:09:11.920 | Based on the advice he heard from a bookseller

00:09:14.720 | that all the big fiction names published once a year,

00:09:16.920 | he said, "That's what I'm gonna do.

00:09:19.180 | "One book a year, that's what matters.

00:09:21.220 | "Especially in the beginning,

00:09:22.300 | "I need a book every year to solidify my audience."

00:09:25.660 | And he basically retreated into just a writing routine

00:09:29.800 | of one book per year.

00:09:31.400 | And I have some of the details of it

00:09:33.160 | because he's talked about this before.

00:09:34.340 | Here's how he eventually perfected this,

00:09:36.400 | I would call it almost monastic writing routine.

00:09:39.200 | He starts writing on January 1st.

00:09:41.480 | He works three hours a day, five days a week.

00:09:45.820 | He used to write in their Oxford,

00:09:48.080 | then he moved to Charlottesville, Virginia.

00:09:50.240 | They have a farm, he has an outbuilding on that farm

00:09:53.340 | that they renovated for him to write.

00:09:54.720 | No internet connection there.

00:09:56.360 | First thing in the day, three hours.

00:09:58.180 | He basically writes till lunchtime.

00:09:59.640 | Five days a week, not on the weekends.

00:10:01.560 | That rhythm has him finish the first draft,

00:10:06.100 | usually by March.

00:10:07.360 | The editing begins.

00:10:09.400 | He wants to have the manuscript

00:10:10.420 | completely locked in by July.

00:10:12.480 | Starts in January, six months later,

00:10:15.000 | done with the manuscript.

00:10:16.280 | Now that's it for writing until the next January.

00:10:20.120 | Now he'll think and do research

00:10:21.840 | about what his next book is gonna do at his own pace.

00:10:24.260 | He will do, clearly, publicity.

00:10:27.360 | He usually does fall releases.

00:10:28.980 | So when that book comes out in the fall,

00:10:30.760 | he'll do publicity, but he's not a big publicity guy.

00:10:33.300 | He does limited tours.

00:10:34.240 | He'll do the big shows and interviews

00:10:35.760 | and then retreats again back to his farm.

00:10:38.080 | And that's kind of it.

00:10:41.000 | He doesn't do these other projects.

00:10:42.240 | He doesn't wanna direct.

00:10:43.360 | He doesn't wanna do 17 different types of books

00:10:45.520 | like Crichton was doing.

00:10:46.800 | He wasn't trying to establish a production company

00:10:49.240 | or get involved in television.

00:10:50.840 | They would sell the movie rights to his books,

00:10:52.640 | but that was about it.

00:10:54.600 | 15 hours a week, six months out of the year.

00:10:58.680 | The rest of his energy goes to other things.

00:11:01.100 | When he had younger kids,

00:11:02.480 | he was really into Little League baseball.

00:11:05.000 | And so he built,

00:11:06.360 | it's not officially associated with Little League,

00:11:11.040 | but a youth baseball complex.

00:11:13.480 | Five really great fields.

00:11:15.280 | They started their own youth baseball league.

00:11:18.360 | He was the commissioner of the league.

00:11:20.840 | He loves baseball.

00:11:21.680 | He loves coaching.

00:11:22.500 | He thinks it's great for kids.

00:11:25.080 | I know he's heavily involved

00:11:26.080 | in political fundraising as well.

00:11:28.320 | He just has other stuff that he does.

00:11:30.240 | So I found an article and I can't excavate this anymore,

00:11:34.540 | but I remember finding this and reading this.

00:11:37.280 | And I wrote about this somewhere.

00:11:38.680 | I can't find where.

00:11:39.540 | So I can't find the original source,

00:11:40.840 | but you'll have to take me at my word for this.

00:11:43.320 | At some point, this was an article

00:11:45.060 | from probably the last 10 or 15 years,

00:11:47.600 | his longtime assistant retired.

00:11:49.440 | And he realized, according to this article I found,

00:11:52.080 | that he didn't need to hire a replacement

00:11:53.560 | because there was no work for her to do.

00:11:55.520 | I mean, his agent has his number.

00:11:58.280 | His editor has his number.

00:12:00.160 | They know his routine.

00:12:01.360 | He's not involved in a lot of projects.

00:12:02.920 | He's not involved in a lot of schemes.

00:12:04.480 | So there was nothing for the assistant to even organize.

00:12:07.080 | He writes from January to March,

00:12:08.520 | edits from March to July,

00:12:10.360 | does a one-week publicity tour in the fall.

00:12:12.560 | So anyways, very different than Crichton.

00:12:14.600 | Crichton says, "I now have success.

00:12:18.680 | "I wanna go do lots of different things."

00:12:21.040 | Grisham says, "I have success.

00:12:22.340 | "I wanna simplify my life."

00:12:23.560 | So what I did in this piece

00:12:24.840 | and what I wanna do right here

00:12:25.960 | is try to put names to these two different approaches

00:12:28.780 | to ambition.

00:12:30.440 | So what I write in the article is,

00:12:31.960 | the first model exemplified by Crichton

00:12:34.200 | is what I call type one.

00:12:37.000 | It craves activities and feasts at the buffet

00:12:39.260 | of appealing opportunities that success creates.

00:12:41.720 | The other model exemplified by Grisham

00:12:44.880 | is what I call type two.

00:12:47.340 | It craves simplicity and autonomy

00:12:50.320 | and sees success as a source of leverage

00:12:52.020 | to reduce stressful obligations.

00:12:53.960 | Medical school wasn't sufficiently stimulating for Crichton.

00:12:57.020 | Life as a lawyer was too hectic for Grisham.

00:12:59.740 | They therefore reacted to their success

00:13:01.160 | in much different ways when it respectively arrived.

00:13:04.420 | Now my argument is this is a spectrum,

00:13:07.440 | but most people fall towards one end of the spectrum

00:13:10.200 | or the other, the type one Crichton end

00:13:12.480 | or the type two Grisham end.

00:13:14.560 | And that it's important to understand

00:13:17.040 | where you fall on the spectrum

00:13:18.600 | because it will have a big impact

00:13:20.320 | on not only how you plan your professional

00:13:24.320 | or aspirational endeavors,

00:13:25.620 | but how you react to successes when they come.

00:13:28.360 | If you don't have this figured out,

00:13:30.360 | you can end up in a mismatch situation.

00:13:32.720 | If you're a Grisham that allows the pressure

00:13:35.060 | of your success to push you into a bunch

00:13:37.360 | of Crichton style projects, you're not gonna be happy.

00:13:40.060 | If you're a Crichton and you use

00:13:42.080 | your first book taken off to move

00:13:46.200 | to the middle of the woods,

00:13:47.760 | I can finally now live in the house in Maine

00:13:50.040 | overlooking the water, you might be bored.

00:13:52.800 | You might be depressed.

00:13:54.000 | You say, what I'm just isolated up here.

00:13:55.680 | This doesn't make me happy.

00:13:56.600 | So understanding where you fall, I think is important.

00:13:59.440 | And that was the call I made in that article.

00:14:02.800 | Recognizing those are two very different types

00:14:05.080 | and they're both valid, I think as in itself,

00:14:07.960 | very validating for people.

00:14:10.200 | So when you're doing something

00:14:11.120 | like lifestyle centric career planning,

00:14:13.000 | you have some clarity.

00:14:14.120 | So the final question is where do I fall?

00:14:16.920 | Well, in the article, I was really clear.

00:14:19.320 | Grisham is what resonates with me.

00:14:21.020 | I got some pushback though.

00:14:23.880 | People say, you say Grisham resonates with you,

00:14:26.120 | but your life looks more Crichton-y to us from the outside.

00:14:29.800 | And I think that's a very good point.

00:14:31.360 | And I guess what I would say is

00:14:32.560 | that I'm aspirationally Grisham.

00:14:35.600 | I mean, to me, being able to work autonomously

00:14:39.480 | on a hard project on my own terms, on my own timings

00:14:42.280 | to disappear for a while and just come back

00:14:44.640 | into the public eye occasionally, that really resonates.

00:14:47.320 | When I read that profile of Crichton, it stressed me out,

00:14:50.480 | made me anxious.

00:14:51.940 | So I think I resonate more times Grisham-y.

00:14:54.240 | Now it looks like I'm doing a lot

00:14:56.340 | and partially that's true.

00:14:57.900 | I'm probably a little bit more into Crichton spectrum

00:15:00.080 | than where I need to end up,

00:15:02.000 | but partly it's an illusion

00:15:04.760 | because I do things sequentially.

00:15:06.720 | I work on things a little bit at a time.

00:15:08.340 | This is classic slow productivity, a little bit of time,

00:15:11.140 | but with great focus, do that long enough

00:15:13.720 | and things begin to pile up,

00:15:15.020 | but I'm not necessarily working on all those things

00:15:16.520 | at the same time.

00:15:17.800 | I think the podcast, newsletter, video portion

00:15:21.080 | of my empire makes my activity seem really multiplied,

00:15:24.600 | but as Jesse will attest, this is a half day venture for me.

00:15:29.160 | So the way I see all of this,

00:15:30.480 | like what you're hearing right now is unlike Grisham,

00:15:34.360 | I'm a web 2.0 guy.

00:15:35.720 | I grew up with the internet.

00:15:36.860 | So I do like to be able to connect directly

00:15:39.680 | with my readers and listeners.

00:15:41.440 | To me, that's really important, but I keep it confined.

00:15:43.800 | And so I just have a burst each week

00:15:45.960 | of let's do a bunch of stuff to connect with our readers,

00:15:48.520 | but it's confined.

00:15:49.600 | It's not a lot of ongoing projects

00:15:51.640 | that are eating up a lot of my time throughout the week.

00:15:53.920 | So if you put that aside, it's basically writing in CS.

00:15:57.640 | And if I had to pick an ideal,

00:15:59.080 | where would I be when I sell 7 million copies of "The Firm"

00:16:03.680 | or whatever my equivalent is,

00:16:05.080 | honestly, to me, an ideal would be I'm always writing,

00:16:08.000 | I'm always thinking sequentially though,

00:16:09.600 | one thing at a time, I'm finishing this book chapter,

00:16:12.960 | then I'm writing this New Yorker piece,

00:16:14.400 | then I'm writing this academic article,

00:16:15.840 | then I'm writing a couple more book chapters

00:16:18.200 | with a half day every week where we do this nonsense

00:16:21.520 | so that I'm not just living in a cave.

00:16:23.120 | To me, that would be great.

00:16:24.680 | I'd be happy with that.

00:16:25.720 | I don't need to be directing

00:16:27.080 | or whatever the equivalent is of all of Crichton's business.

00:16:29.320 | So anyways, type one, type two, know where you are,

00:16:32.480 | use that knowledge to help direct how you approach

00:16:35.240 | both your ambitions and your successes.

00:16:38.560 | And I think it'll make people a lot happier.

00:16:40.600 | - Do you think Crichton's still like that?

00:16:44.200 | - Well, he's dead.

00:16:45.160 | So he's the ultimate.

00:16:48.160 | - Oh, right.

00:16:49.000 | I was thinking, yeah.

00:16:49.960 | - Yeah, so Crichton died in '08 maybe, cancer.

00:16:54.520 | Yeah, he's older.

00:16:56.360 | By the way, I'm always surprised by how old he was.

00:16:58.440 | Well, we talked about this before on the show,

00:17:00.000 | but you read his first book under his own name,

00:17:02.080 | "The Adronoma Strain," which again, reads so modern.

00:17:05.680 | You think this book was from the '90s.

00:17:08.320 | And yet in the book, no one's landed on the moon yet.

00:17:11.560 | So that's a long career.

00:17:12.720 | So when he first started writing these things,

00:17:15.200 | there were no personal computers.

00:17:17.040 | We hadn't landed on the moon yet,

00:17:18.720 | because he was born in 1942.

00:17:23.600 | - Yeah, I was getting confused with Moneyball.

00:17:27.000 | - Oh, Michael Lewis.

00:17:27.840 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:17:28.680 | Yeah, I wonder what his deal is.

00:17:31.480 | So he has a podcast with his buddy, Gladwell's Network.

00:17:37.280 | He writes, usually he's always working on a book.

00:17:39.960 | I thought he had one of these sort of visiting,

00:17:42.960 | like professorship things at Tulane for a while.

00:17:46.640 | I mean, I know that's what Isaacson's doing.

00:17:48.800 | I think Meacham is doing that.

00:17:49.840 | A lot of these writers, like these sort of,

00:17:52.320 | that generation came out of magazines,

00:17:56.440 | now they're in their 60s, Pulitzer-winning writers.

00:17:59.400 | A lot of them have these positions at universities.

00:18:02.360 | But yeah, I think Lewis is a good example.

00:18:06.800 | I think he's just like, "I just wanna write."

00:18:08.520 | - Yeah, I know both.

00:18:09.360 | The whole time I was just thinking about Lewis

00:18:10.920 | for some reason, I don't know why.

00:18:12.160 | - Yeah, why don't you go down that rabbit hole too?

00:18:14.000 | (upbeat music)

00:18:16.600 | (upbeat music)

00:18:19.560 | (upbeat music)

00:18:22.160 | (upbeat music)

On Michael Crichton's Busy Ambition

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