The Art of Manliness - Zombies, Minecraft, and Dealing with Uncertainty

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.000 in order to thrive in a world that's constantly in flux you have to learn to overcome your fear

00:00:16.200 of the unknown and adapt yourself to whatever circumstance you find yourself in zombies and

00:00:21.000 minecraft can teach you how to do both today on the show i talked to max brooks son of famed

00:00:26.900 filmmaker mel brooks who is the author of books that include world war z and a series of minecraft

00:00:31.680 novels for kids max and i discussed how he's used his fiction to explore learning to be resilient in

00:00:36.400 the face of change and how his work writing about the zombie apocalypse led to a gig at the modern

00:00:41.080 war institute at west point along the way max offers insights on overcoming your fear of the unknown

00:00:46.400 and how minecraft can help your kids learn how to thrive in a world where becoming a creative

00:00:50.940 problem solver is the name of the game after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:00:55.720 aom.is slash max brooks all right max brooks welcome to the show good to be here thank you

00:01:12.100 for having me so you've had a really interesting career as a writer i know a lot of our listeners

00:01:16.780 have read your books you famously wrote the zombie survival guide and then later world war z which got

00:01:22.980 turned into that brad pitt movie and that led to an opportunity to serve as a fellow at the modern

00:01:28.520 war institute at west point and then you've written some other fiction you did something about the

00:01:33.100 harlem hell fighters of world war one and then you've also been doing a series of books based on

00:01:39.100 minecraft books for kids and i gotta say my 10 year old daughter scout she she's a big minecraft fan she

00:01:45.800 plays the game she also reads the books and i told her that i was interviewing max brooks she said

00:01:51.420 well let him know that max brooks writes the best minecraft books um that's awesome so a big

00:01:59.140 endorsement there from scout mckay age 10 of tulsa oklahoma i want to talk about your writing career

00:02:04.860 more because i think your career as a writer tracks a theme that you see throughout your work and that

00:02:11.760 is adaptability and navigating new changes in your environment let's talk about your zombie writing

00:02:17.340 what got you writing about zombies back in the early 2000s like what were you hoping to explore

00:02:23.300 with writing about a zombie apocalypse well actually it was just fear really i mean it's it's just to be

00:02:31.100 brutally honest when i was about 12 or 13 i used to sneak into my parents room because they had cable

00:02:36.780 when they'd go out to dinner and i found myself watching an italian cannibal zombie movie and it was

00:02:43.880 really brutal and it scared the just the living hell out of me and for years i thought oh my god what

00:02:52.280 would i do if there were really zombies and then in the 90s y2k was coming around for your younger

00:02:59.340 listeners who don't remember it was this mass panic that on new year's eve year 2000 all the computers

00:03:05.520 were going to reset bank records would disappear nuclear missiles would launch and land on the farms

00:03:10.840 and people's really started thinking about survival and so i thought well what what would happen if it

00:03:18.960 was a zombie apocalypse now i should say that in the interim i had seen a movie that gave me hope

00:03:24.600 and it was night of the living dead because suddenly there were rules there actually was a way to survive it

00:03:30.660 wasn't that sort of dark euro feeling of like you're just doomed it was an american ideal which is yes

00:03:37.880 you can have a happy ending if you know what you're doing and so i really started to think about it and

00:03:42.780 then i saw dawn of the dead in graduate school and i really started thinking about it so by the time

00:03:48.160 y2k came around i thought as a as a pure exercise just for me i'm going to take a few hours every day

00:03:55.920 every night and then just write a guidebook on how to survive a zombie attack and that's where it came

00:04:01.680 from and it sat in a drawer for years and then when i was on saturday night live i met this book agent

00:04:08.100 who thought he could get me a book deal and it got published marketed absolutely wrong completely wrong

00:04:18.140 because they tried to portray it as making fun of zombies a zombie joke book written by mel brooks jr

00:04:27.640 that's how they tried to portray it and i warned them i said it's going to be a disaster because

00:04:32.780 people expecting jokes are not going to get it and my tribe the the horror nerds who i am of and who

00:04:41.400 don't know me yet are going to think that mel brooks's hollywood brad is taking a giant dump on

00:04:46.220 everything that they love and that's exactly what happened mainstream media hated it horror nerds hated

00:04:52.520 it and thank god i was married to the best woman ever who said you need to throw that marketing plan

00:04:56.880 out market it yourself so i went to fangoria on my knees begged for an interview let me introduce

00:05:03.680 myself to you and slowly but surely i established my street cred as a zombie nerd and that eventually

00:05:12.380 led to world war z is kind of the follow-up to is you're kind of putting the things you wrote about

00:05:16.680 in zombie survival guide and playing it out like war gaming it well yeah because well because zombie

00:05:21.920 survival guide was all about how an individual or a small group would survive and i took it to the

00:05:27.560 next level in world war z because as a lover of zombie stories i realized that every almost every

00:05:34.520 zombie story i've seen is about small groups but it didn't answer a big question i had which is what

00:05:41.180 about countries how would governments survive how would big systems survive international trade

00:05:46.860 international relations how would we as a species survive a zombie plague because zombie plagues are

00:05:52.680 big and there was no book out there for me so i thought i'd write it myself and one of my favorite

00:06:00.960 books growing up was the good war by studs turkle it's an interview with survivors participants in world

00:06:05.600 war ii i had listened to it my mother gave me the audiobook because i'm very dyslexic and i always loved

00:06:12.240 it and i thought that's my template i'm going to do a book interviews with survivors and that's the

00:06:16.280 best way to try to tell this giant global story of a zombie outbreak what do you think was going on

00:06:22.240 in the zeitgeist in the you know the 2000s where people were really into zombies and we even we've i

00:06:28.680 remember doing some content on the website you know zombie themed content what do you think was

00:06:34.200 going on why did zombies have a moment during that period i have no idea i you know if i was good

00:06:40.660 at understanding the marketplace they probably wouldn't have fired me off saturday night live

00:06:46.340 i don't know how to write for an audience i don't know how to judge trends i really i just don't know

00:06:52.360 all i can do is is write for me and this is what was important to me at the time and i guess i just

00:06:58.380 got lucky that what was important to me happened to be important to other people and how did writing

00:07:04.100 about zombies lead to a position as a fellow at the modern war institute at west point that seems

00:07:10.000 quite the leap well for me what happened was when i wrote these books i wanted to make them as real

00:07:16.820 as possible i'm a huge tom clancy fan i grew up loving his stuff and i love that he took this sort

00:07:23.240 of ian fleming pseudo macho male psychosexual fantasy of james bond and just threw it away

00:07:29.840 and said how do real spies act how do real submarines work as a giant nerd and wannabe

00:07:37.320 he decided to educate his readers as well as entertain them and i realized that's what i want

00:07:42.980 to be too so like zombie survival guide if you take away the zombies it is a disaster prep manual

00:07:50.340 everything in it's a hundred percent real from dehydration to clean socks to breaking in your shoes to

00:07:57.440 which guns are going to jam the most it's all real i did i did a just a ton of homework same thing with

00:08:04.060 world war z i studied how systems work how countries work so what happened was i got a call after the

00:08:11.900 book came out from admiral wisecup at the united states naval war college and he invited me to come

00:08:19.060 and speak to the students and i said are you sure you have the right guy he said yeah no no no no we got

00:08:24.980 the right guy i love world war z and if you take out the zombies you have written a credible scenario

00:08:30.880 of how our planet would respond to a global catastrophe and i want you to come speak about

00:08:36.160 how systems are interlinked and how they can collapse and i did and i must have said something

00:08:41.140 right although it doesn't seem that way i think the youtube video is still out there and i'm just

00:08:46.540 flop sweating like albert brooks in broadcast news and saying something like are you sure there the

00:08:52.580 orders didn't get mixed up there isn't like a lieutenant commander max brooks wandering around

00:08:55.900 comic-con but i must have said something right because then i was invited to come back and then

00:09:01.060 i was invited to speak at other military forums and then i was invited to be a non-resident fellow

00:09:07.820 at the atlantic council's brent scowcroft center for strategy and security to study global crises and then

00:09:15.860 i was invited to speak at a listening tour at the pentagon this is where generals come around

00:09:20.960 and they they they try to be open to new ideas so like right before me sebastian younger came up and

00:09:27.900 spoke about what is facing the average infantryman in afghanistan and i got up and i spoke about how the

00:09:35.340 american public is a hundred percent divorced from the global war on terror i said if you're just going

00:09:41.720 on pop culture references 9-11 never happened and you need to reintroduce the american people to

00:09:48.520 those who protect them because this sheep and sheepdog model is not working and it's not sustainable

00:09:53.380 and there was a young captain john spencer in the back of the room just got back from iraq and he said

00:09:59.540 to me listen we're we're starting up a brand new think tank called the modern war institute we are going

00:10:04.940 to study how we fight each other and no ideas are off the table and we'd love you to come in as a

00:10:13.620 fellow and bring your perspective and that's how i got into the mwi and so what are you doing there

00:10:21.280 like what kind of research and writing are you doing for the think tank i study crises that are

00:10:27.220 non-kinetic at the moment when i say non-kinetic i mean crises that will eventually lead to shooting

00:10:33.140 if they're left unattended like perfect example one of the articles i wrote for the modern war institute

00:10:38.820 was about food insecurity because the united states is the only great power in world history

00:10:45.660 that has never been vulnerable to food blackmail all the other great powers russia britain ancient rome

00:10:53.500 japan you name it somebody has held a gun to their head and said i'm going to cut off your food supply

00:10:59.700 if you don't comply but not us even in the darkest days of our civil war we were still growing enough

00:11:05.220 surplus wheat to sell to great britain for for profits all that changed with monsanto because

00:11:11.520 monsanto has patented their seeds as if it were intellectual property and so then if a farmer grows

00:11:18.620 a field of wheat for monsanto and then takes a little piece of those seeds that harvest later and banks

00:11:26.660 them and then replants them the next year he goes to jail for copyright infringement the same way you're

00:11:32.440 copying a a dvd so monsanto established that precedent which means that now for the first time since the

00:11:40.580 birth of the agricultural revolution farmers are not allowed to bank their seeds anymore and for a

00:11:48.180 company that basically has i think at the time it was something like 90 of our soybeans 80 of our corn

00:11:55.560 and that's huge and if that's not bad enough monsanto was sold to bear german company now we

00:12:01.700 have a security treaty with them they're our friends they're our allies but there was nothing in the bill

00:12:06.220 of sale that would stop bear from selling monsanto say to china and if that ever happened you can see a

00:12:12.520 scenario where china's ready to invade taiwan and times it at planting season and makes a call to the

00:12:19.020 president of the u.s and says listen you better back the hell off or we are going to withhold our seeds

00:12:24.380 and maybe you won't starve but the panic that will ensue and the riots and the looting and the death

00:12:29.700 will be a hell of a lot worse than anything our army could ever do to you we have the potential to

00:12:34.300 kill more americans than if we actually went to war with you that's crazy so i mean it sounds like

00:12:39.220 the modern war institute is using your talent as a fiction writer where you can think about a plot

00:12:45.360 line from a single point and see where that can carry out and helping them figure out what are some

00:12:50.140 potential scenarios yeah that's what i do is i i take my imagination as as a novelist and look at

00:12:56.420 the real situation and also the kind of novels i write always go just below the surface like with

00:13:02.120 zombies i write about the fact that most people wouldn't really die in a zombie apocalypse from

00:13:07.600 zombies they would die from second and third order effects like dehydration malnutrition infection

00:13:13.120 it's the same thing in national security like when i wrote about uh cyber security my research

00:13:18.920 showed me that we actually have the technology to ward off any kind of cyber attack from any enemy

00:13:26.500 the problem is we don't have a doctrine we don't have a strategy in how to use it there's literally

00:13:31.400 no master plan for how to protect us from the great hack and our enemies know that they have plans

00:13:39.300 they have doctrine they've been working on it actually since desert storm on how to hurt us

00:13:44.200 but imagine if you had a bunch of warships but no plan on how to use them which has actually happened

00:13:52.120 in history so that's kind of the what i do and then how did you make the connection with minecraft

00:13:59.360 like how did that collaboration happen when i first saw my my son he's 18 now but when he was a

00:14:07.780 little boy he was about eight maybe playing minecraft and i played it with him i realized this

00:14:13.680 had the potential to be possibly and i'm not exaggerating possibly the greatest teaching tool

00:14:20.660 since the printing press and that is because you and me and everyone on this planet has been trained in

00:14:28.940 the industrial model of education and that model of education was designed to help human beings thrive

00:14:36.980 in the industrial revolution this new crazy business model in the 18th century of breaking down labor

00:14:44.940 into an assembly line instead of one person making a shoe it's 10 people making a part of the shoe

00:14:52.000 and whoever could master that could master the world so it became about memorization regurgitation

00:14:58.360 standardization as the clock is ticking and it worked in fact it worked so well that japan mastered it

00:15:05.640 and then ate us for breakfast in the 1980s the problem is the industrial revolution is in the rearview

00:15:11.780 mirror now and the workforce has changed and so today's kids have to learn a whole new skill set

00:15:19.400 they've got to be innovators they've got to be resilient they've got to be fluid problem solvers

00:15:25.380 and our method of education teaches them exactly the opposite so what the hell do you do

00:15:31.420 and watching my son play this video game i realized wow this game if curated correctly

00:15:38.900 can teach kids everything their brain needs to know about how to become resilient creative problem

00:15:46.100 solvers no i would agree so you know my daughter she loves to play minecraft and i'm always impressed

00:15:52.420 because i'll check in on hey so what are you doing in minecraft and then she'll show me the stuff she's

00:15:57.080 made uh and what's crazy about minecraft the way it's formatted it's it's an open world you can do

00:16:03.040 whatever you want in it and i'm always impressed with these like crazy contraptions she makes with

00:16:08.960 all the i guess it's redstone is what it is and then you can make like oh yeah redstone yeah redstone

00:16:13.980 is like this magic stone where you can basically make machines inside so she's made like roller coasters

00:16:18.980 she's made these elaborate mazes with secret doors if you light a torch it'll set off this chain reaction

00:16:24.860 that will and i'm like this is crazy i mean you know growing up my video game was like super mario

00:16:30.080 brothers where it's just a line that was it it's it's completely different gaming experience from

00:16:35.060 other video games oh exactly like imagine if you played call of duty but the best way to take out

00:16:41.160 the enemy team was to have an authoritarian government on your side that then has very cheap labor that then

00:16:49.280 entices the other team's government to outsource their manufacturing base to your side

00:16:53.760 so your side makes their bullets and then withholds the bullets when the shooting starts

00:16:58.780 yeah right that's literally how china is eating us for lunch but there's no video game out there

00:17:06.260 certainly not a game like call of duty that could do that whereas minecraft you actually can whereas

00:17:11.740 in minecraft you are given hard and fast rules especially if you play like on survival like you're

00:17:16.920 gonna starve or the the sun is gonna go down and the monsters are gonna come out you're gonna die

00:17:21.840 so you do have hard and fast goals like shelter and food but how you accomplish those goals

00:17:29.380 totally up to you oh yeah minecraft also has zombies right those are the monsters minecraft has zombies

00:17:34.980 all right there's the other connection thanks mojang yeah so i want to dig deeper into some of the

00:17:39.760 themes you write about in all of your work and a big one is how we respond to this state of uncertainty

00:17:47.660 that comes with dramatic change and you see this in the uh the minecraft books i read the island the

00:17:54.580 intro to the island is awesome this character is put in this completely foreign situation he's trying

00:17:59.340 to figure out what's going on you see this in world war z so what's the typical response human response

00:18:04.440 to dramatic change initially there is there is shock and paralysis sometimes there's denial it really

00:18:12.480 depends on your personality type some people simply cannot accept the world has changed and is doing

00:18:19.560 everything possible to get back to where they were there's a frustration anger tantrums bargaining

00:18:27.520 there's so many different stages of dealing with crisis and there's no one size fits all like i said it

00:18:32.240 depends on who you are and how you deal but that's always what i study because my life has always been

00:18:39.120 constant change and i think maybe growing up with dyslexia i never got a chance to just cruise through

00:18:45.400 life i think a lot of times it depends on who you are and how you struggled in your formative years

00:18:51.880 to how you deal with crisis when you're a grown up right people have talked about whenever we

00:18:57.260 experience a disruption in our environment there's either the fight flight or freeze response

00:19:03.100 and a lot of times people think it's either fight or flight but i think a lot of times people just

00:19:07.620 freeze i mean you probably you've people probably seen videos where something crazy happens right a

00:19:12.540 car goes through a storefront and it's funny the amount of people you see just sit there watching

00:19:17.580 their brain can't compute what is going on and it takes like a minute or two for them to finally

00:19:23.840 figure out oh my gosh something really bad's happened i got to do something yeah one one of the

00:19:28.940 fellows at the bonner war institute combat veteran of iraq multiple tours he once told me apparently

00:19:34.500 everybody freezes but it's a question of for how long do you freeze because some people freeze for

00:19:40.100 a nanosecond so that way it doesn't look like they freeze but some people freeze for a really long

00:19:45.600 time i mean joseph stalin totally locked up for hours and hours when hitler attacked when they were

00:19:51.780 like comrade stalin the nazis are coming and he's like no no hitler would never do that to me we're

00:19:56.540 friends we signed in a you know non-aggression pact general macarthur totally froze right after

00:20:03.180 pearl harbor for a day he was commander of u.s forces in the philippines he'd heard about pearl

00:20:09.380 harbor and didn't spring into action and didn't ready our forces so literally the next day when the

00:20:14.380 japanese attacked the philippines they pulled another pearl harbor well i mean how do we overcome

00:20:19.260 that tendency to freeze when we experience a big shift in life have you uncovered anything in your own

00:20:24.140 life or observing and studying war yeah i think that from what i have seen is that we have to be

00:20:33.300 comfortable with being uncomfortable you know the the sooner the better we have to train ourselves

00:20:41.700 to always be doing uncomfortable things trying new things you know that feeling you had like your first

00:20:47.560 day at a new school when you're a little kid it's the worst feeling in the world right absolute worst

00:20:53.240 feeling likewise your best feeling for a lot of us is like second semester senior year in high school

00:21:00.540 when you know everything now i've always believed in i've always seen is that that feeling of your

00:21:08.980 first day as a little kid in a new school is actually when you're at your best is when you're at

00:21:14.480 your most nimble and you're most willing to try something new and you're at your worst when you're a high

00:21:19.920 school senior and so it's not too complicated to describe it's just for me i've always found that

00:21:26.920 when i have that feeling in my gut of being feeling small and scared and angry that's when i'm at my

00:21:32.960 best because it means i'm over my head and i'm trying something new and i'm growing we're gonna take a

00:21:38.280 quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show when another thing you talk

00:21:45.080 about in your work is that this unwillingness to recognize or accept the change that's happening

00:21:51.260 this can bite you in the butt not only in a survival situation but it can bite you in the butt

00:21:56.020 in your career right like you may be in an industry that's changing like you're used to it being a

00:22:00.660 certain way because you got started 20 years ago but now thanks to the internet it's changing you think

00:22:06.480 well you know maybe this change isn't going anywhere it's just a fad and then 10 years later you're out

00:22:14.300 of a job because that fad that you thought was a fad just ate your lunch oh yeah i mean you who

00:22:21.260 invented the digital camera kodak they had the first patent they could have ruled the market in digital

00:22:27.300 cameras but they're a film company and they said oh no no that's just not the way it's going to be

00:22:32.920 you see it i mean blockbuster should have devoured netflix when they had they were holding all the

00:22:41.620 cards and netflix was this you know dumpy little startup they didn't they're like we are a video

00:22:48.360 cassette rental company that's what we do we have brick and mortar stores so they were not nimble i

00:22:55.900 mean you see it all the time i mean this is one of the things i write about constantly in all my

00:23:01.400 think tanks is how desert storm was the absolute worst war america ever fought not vietnam not iraq and

00:23:07.900 afghanistan desert storm because we were at our best and we thought we were showing the world

00:23:14.100 deterrence we thought we were like if you mess with the usa we are going to atomize you on the

00:23:18.960 battlefield we didn't realize our enemies thought oh well if you're going to mess with america don't

00:23:23.300 go anywhere near the battlefield don't hit them where they're strongest so they've spent a whole

00:23:28.020 generation developing asymmetric warfare you know cyber economics uh information ops terrorism proxy war

00:23:35.860 all these things and now we are really playing catch up yeah one of uh my favorite writers who

00:23:44.700 also writes about the theme of change is jack london and one of my favorite short stories he wrote is in

00:23:50.580 a far country and it's got this awesome intro i'll link to it but basically it's just jack london starts

00:23:57.440 off this siloqui about if you go off into a far country which for him was like the great north

00:24:02.640 alaskan wilderness is that you have to change and if you don't adapt to the circumstances you find

00:24:09.340 yourself in you will die yeah and the whole story is basically after that's recounting these three

00:24:15.500 individuals who weren't willing to adapt to the environment they found themselves in and they all

00:24:20.380 ended up dying in this cabin of scurvy and freezing to death oh yeah yeah i this this notion of

00:24:27.300 change and and i say this as someone who hates change i absolutely despise it i love the way things

00:24:33.640 just are so i get it when people are like i really don't want to change i'm not comfortable i'm like

00:24:38.840 i hear you but unfortunately you have to and you can see it through time i mean i'm very lucky

00:24:46.920 that as a gen xer i was raised by greatest generation parents who did not ask to have to adapt and did not

00:24:55.960 ask to have to be more than themselves it was forced upon them but they did you know you look

00:25:02.520 at my dad and all his friends these nebbishy guys hey don't you want a little nosh these are not the

00:25:08.060 guys you would think to crawl through snow diffusing german s-mines or hunting u-boats in the north

00:25:14.880 atlantic or being shot down over regensburg on a b-17 bombing run but they did it because they had to

00:25:22.760 right and i think it gets harder to change as you get older i'm in you know i'm in midlife

00:25:26.900 and i think man like i've spent 20 years developing a skill set now you're saying i gotta develop another

00:25:34.380 skill set i don't have to do that you know but you got to yeah no the the funny thing is the toughest

00:25:39.260 guy i'm friends with you would not think so he is the dorkiest dude you've ever seen and yet

00:25:47.740 he has had to change he's changed careers three times he's about my age he got to start in

00:25:55.440 magazines magazines completely just cratered when the internet came and he was like well i'm just

00:26:01.540 gonna have to reinvent myself so he did and he went and did something else and then that whole business

00:26:06.020 went away and now he's doing something else and then that looks like it's going away and he doesn't

00:26:11.260 whine he's like oh what's my path my life my career he goes ah i gotta go back to the drawing board

00:26:17.560 because his family needs to eat so he is the manliest guy i know right adaptable i love it so

00:26:26.980 you know fear is another response we have to change and you talked about the very beginning

00:26:32.100 of this episode you started writing about zombies because you wanted to explore fear what have you

00:26:37.240 learned about managing fear from writing about zombies you know the strange thing is i

00:26:44.200 there's a lot of misconceptions about sort of what i do and how and and how i am as a person

00:26:51.040 because people say to me like well we write about all this stuff aren't you worried you're gonna scare

00:26:55.960 people to which i say no no you don't understand i'm already scared and the studying of the threat

00:27:02.300 calms me down it's like the first two acts of jaws for me are the scariest because i don't know

00:27:09.100 what's out there it's this nebulous thing in the darkness and the depths and i just don't know what

00:27:14.580 it is oh my god but that moment you know in the when you're looking in the top down shot on the orca

00:27:20.220 and you actually see the shark for the first time then i was like oh okay now i know what i'm dealing

00:27:26.100 with so for me the best way to deal with a fear is to study what you're afraid of and figure out

00:27:35.140 where the nose and the tail is and how how heavy it is and what it does because then then you actually

00:27:41.280 have something tangible as opposed to the worst thing which is your own imagination

00:27:46.520 when an interview you did it was with hawkeye it was with alan alda um you talked about my mentor

00:27:53.940 yeah you talked about your mother taught you about investigating and researching as a way to

00:28:02.100 overcome fear what did your mother teach you about overcoming fear well my mother i mean my mother

00:28:06.860 is the reason i am who i am there's just no way around i i i was deeply privileged to have the best

00:28:13.400 mom ever because she was a thinker and an explorer and so she always taught me if you're afraid of

00:28:19.480 something figure out exactly what it is you're afraid of and she i watched her do this when i was a

00:28:26.360 kid in my 20s working for the bbc in africa my mother was terrified she bought herself a map of

00:28:33.060 africa and studied the geography of it so that way whenever there was a headline you know violence in

00:28:39.360 mogadishu or there's ebola in zaire or the rwanda genocide my mother knew exactly where rwanda and zaire

00:28:47.240 and somalia were as opposed to where i was and that calmed her down so i got to watch her do that

00:28:54.180 and that's always set me on on my course too if there's a threat out there if there's something

00:28:59.500 i'm really scared of something in the news well study it figure it out has writing about this

00:29:05.600 survival stuff has it nudged you to learn some survival skills yourself like how to start a fire

00:29:09.920 without matches and how to filter water and things like that oh yeah oh yeah i mean it's funny i've

00:29:15.360 become friends with less stroud oh yeah we've had less drought on the podcast isn't he awesome i mean

00:29:21.000 less is the real deal man less like that that's the good part about growing up in show business is

00:29:27.600 i can spot bullshit a mile away so when i see some of the other survivalist reality shows i'm like oh

00:29:33.680 you're a total fraud whereas less what i love about less is he's not afraid to fail on his own show

00:29:40.580 remember on on episodes of survivor man i would say at least a third of the time he'll try something

00:29:46.380 and be like no this is too hard i'm gonna get killed i can't do this i have to retreat which

00:29:51.960 then validates when his he succeeds and so i've always been a devotee and studying him i've learned

00:29:59.600 how to start i don't know how to start a fire with two sticks but i can do flint and steel and char cloth

00:30:04.860 purifying water big deal because i also i live in southern california and back to talking about my mom

00:30:12.780 my mom was a survivalist it wasn't called survivalism back then it was called just being ready for an

00:30:18.960 earthquake so we always had a survival kit we always had a survival plan you know if there's an

00:30:25.720 earthquake where do we meet we had basic skills on how to disinfect a wound on what to eat and what not

00:30:33.720 to eat so my mom always knew that stuff and to us now we call it prepping you're a prepper but the truth

00:30:41.620 is it's literally just how poor people used to grow up in the great depression and she was a depression

00:30:46.360 kid right let's talk about the minecraft books i really enjoy these what i like about them is one i

00:30:52.040 got to like you know it's something i can share with my daughter right and talk to her about that

00:30:56.040 has been fun but also they're fun to read and what you do with them is with each chapter there's a

00:31:02.020 lesson that you're trying to explore about how to deal with change and how to deal with uncertainty

00:31:07.260 and one of the big themes in the island which was the first one is learning from your mistakes

00:31:14.280 because in a survival situation you're in a new situation you're going to make mistakes you don't

00:31:18.960 know what you're doing but mistakes in a survival situation can get you killed so how do you make

00:31:26.320 sure when you're put in this new situation of uncertainty that you don't make a mistake that

00:31:31.540 will kill you or you know make things worse well i think in a life or death situation you have to be

00:31:39.280 very cautious obviously you know one of the greatest sci-fi novels ever written for me was a tunnel in

00:31:45.940 the sky by robert heinlein and it's in the future where kids have to go on a survival test to alien

00:31:52.180 planets and the theme of it is don't be a tiger be a cockroach so don't try to be all macho and cool and

00:32:00.540 i'm gonna dominate man no no no you have to accept your natural place in the food chain

00:32:05.880 and be a quiet looker and listener so in situations like that in in life or death no no no you do not

00:32:14.400 stride boldly into the light because that's where the saber-toothed cat is waiting for you

00:32:18.280 but in any other non-life or death situation you have to take risks you have to fall on your ass you

00:32:25.660 have to be humiliated and fail miserably you know millennials used to have that phrase epic fail

00:32:31.260 as in like well i'm never going to have an epic fail well then you're never going to live your life

00:32:35.920 you have to be in situations where you will fail miserably and spectacularly and then learn to recover

00:32:43.240 because that's the only way you're going to move forward how have you learned to not beat yourself

00:32:48.280 up over your mistakes that you've made in your career oh i am still learning because i know that

00:32:55.600 that even though i'm sitting here in the attic recording this if i were to say oh well i've i've

00:33:01.760 learned how to do this somewhere telepathically my wife would roll her eyes so yeah i beat up on

00:33:07.900 myself a lot i've always said that the only criticism of my books that hurt the worst are the

00:33:13.360 ones where i agree with it because i get a lot of criticism and i'm like yeah whatever but sometimes

00:33:17.820 if i agree with a specific one i'm like oh god damn it they're right yeah so yeah no i i beat up on

00:33:23.200 myself a lot and because remember the lessons of the island that i put in for i always say jack black

00:33:30.980 because he read the audiobook the lesson for this characters are lessons that i'm still learning i am not

00:33:37.360 this this wise sage sitting on a rock saying oh look at all the things i've mastered i ain't mastered

00:33:43.920 nothing these are the things that i know are right and i'm working towards will i ever master them who

00:33:50.660 knows yeah i love that at the end of the book you lay out all the rules they're good stuff for like

00:33:55.720 anyone to know but i'm glad that my daughter's reading this stuff like you know keep going never

00:33:58.940 give up panic drowns thought don't assume anything fear can be conquered anxiety must be endured

00:34:05.080 when the world changes you've got to change with it so it's great stuff and then in the second book

00:34:10.100 the mountain so the island for those who don't know this is like a soul character who finds himself

00:34:15.020 on the minecraft island i mean he's just bewildered the opening line is like why is the sun square

00:34:21.240 why are my hands rectangles what's going on and then it's his journey of learning how to survive on the

00:34:27.440 island and then the second one the mountain this is where he gets a friend and then you bring in the

00:34:32.920 social element of survival and i think that's where you shine with your work with like world war z

00:34:38.020 is exploring the social factor when it comes to survival and a disastrous situation how important

00:34:44.300 is the social factor in surviving it is incredibly important and let's clarify i say this as someone

00:34:51.980 who is anti-social right i i am an anti-social recluse only child grew up in my room would be very happy

00:35:01.720 if i didn't have to deal with people you know that that moment in castaway where tom hanks looks at

00:35:09.360 the island and it's just him i was like ah awesome but i know that is not how we survive first of all

00:35:18.020 it starts with our basic evolution which my mother was really fascinated by and would read to me books

00:35:24.060 about primitive humans we are in the middle of the food chain we are not tigers we are apes apes are in

00:35:31.440 the middle of the food chain and the only way we were able to thrive was to work together and that

00:35:38.120 has not changed that's why in the mountain i have the lesson that friendship is a survival skill right

00:35:43.640 it's not just about like hey dude you're really cool let's hang out it's like no we need each other

00:35:48.480 always and one of my favorite movies is jeremiah johnson robert redford and you can be seen as sort of

00:35:56.460 man on his own man against the world man by himself which is bullshit because in the movie

00:36:02.580 he learns from other trappers when he's coming up who teach him how to survive and we all need that

00:36:10.520 whether you are a parent or whether you are in a job or you're in the army you know i as a novelist

00:36:17.700 it looks like a solitary profession but it is not i have an amazing editor and i have a great team over

00:36:25.120 at my publisher and every day i get up when i'm researching a book and i talk to experts who help

00:36:30.820 me out and i bounce ideas off my wife who says oh you could do better with that or no you're on the

00:36:36.000 right track so you're never alone and you got to embrace that it's great to be an individual and you

00:36:44.460 should be but you have to know the limits of your individuality and be man enough to admit when you need

00:36:50.240 help right yeah there's this idea of the lone wolf if there's a lone wolf he got kicked out of the pack

00:36:55.260 because he was annoying and he's gonna die and he's gonna die yeah i mean this is one of the things i

00:37:00.980 also hate about so many post-apocalyptic stories is this notion of like the lone badass you know just

00:37:09.220 just taking names and laying down the law and anybody who really believes that in a zombie apocalypse

00:37:17.120 they're going to be the lone badass i invite them to look at the average age of your local somali

00:37:25.600 warlord and see how long they live because if you want a zombie apocalypse look at a failed state

00:37:31.280 you don't see a lot of 80 year old somali warlords so you got another minecraft book coming out the

00:37:38.180 village what are you exploring in this one it seems like things are getting even more complex

00:37:41.740 oh yeah this is the natural progression because obviously book one you have to learn to live

00:37:46.340 with yourself figure yourself out book two you got to learn to be a good friend how to compromise and

00:37:53.860 you know how to communicate and don't lose all of yourself but how much of yourself you got to give

00:37:58.980 to you know work with somebody else book three is the village where they come to a village and they learn

00:38:05.000 how to be citizens in a community and that is so important right now because i see it all around me

00:38:10.320 i see it in think tank world i see it as a parent i see it when i turn on cnn we are in a national

00:38:16.480 crisis where we have forgotten what it means to be a citizen we are all out for ourselves and we are on the road

00:38:25.600 to ruin and so i am trying to impart all the civics lessons that should be taught in schools about how to be a

00:38:33.320 voter how to be a customer how to live in a village with other people which are all really critical

00:38:41.160 because and minecraft if looked at from the right lens teaches you all those lessons so like what is

00:38:47.800 the marketplace and capitalism and and why is money good and how could money be bad and what is crime and

00:38:54.160 punishment and why we need cops why do we vote no yeah there's some great stuff in here you talk about

00:38:59.920 economics so one of them is talking about specialization moves everyone forward it's not

00:39:04.840 the money that's evil it's what people might do with it you got to understand supply and demand it

00:39:09.120 was interesting like mike yeah you learn this when you play minecraft it's been interesting to see how

00:39:13.260 my kids they learn how to there's like a there's a business that goes on there you can trade with

00:39:19.300 other people to get things that you need and then also you have to deal with crime and punishment

00:39:23.640 you can steal from other people in the realms and you have to figure out how to deal with that

00:39:27.720 so yeah i think it's a fun game and it's a fun series of books and it's really cool what you've

00:39:31.920 done with it where can people go to learn more about the new book and the rest of your work

00:39:36.480 you know just you follow me on x and my website maxbrooks.com and i mean i sound like a 1980s

00:39:46.020 commercial that i grew up in wherever books are sold but you know wherever books are sold you're

00:39:50.200 probably going to see the minecraft books and maybe hopefully something else with my name on it

00:39:54.760 fantastic well max brooks thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thank you my guest today was

00:39:59.720 max brooks he's the author of several books including world war z and the recent minecraft

00:40:03.500 series they're all available on amazon.com you can find more information about his work at his

00:40:07.560 website maxbrooks.com also check out our show notes at aom.is max brooks where you find links

00:40:13.180 to resources we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast

00:40:25.500 make sure to check out our website at art of manliness.com where you find our podcast archives

00:40:29.500 as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything

00:40:32.700 you think of and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us

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00:40:44.160 it as always thank you for the continued support and until next time it's brett mckay

00:40:48.000 reminding you to not listen to aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - October 18, 2023

Zombies, Minecraft, and Dealing with Uncertainty

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