The Art and Obsession of Writing with Rich Cohen

One of the reasons people think that they're not introspective people in the past is because it's hard to accept the reality of somebody that's not alive right now. It's just imp very hard to make them anything but kind of a character in your mind and not real. Most of the people in the past thought that they were doing the right thing. Yes. So in order to judge them. It's not just that you're you having more information and everything else. You have to believe that you are doing the right thing right now. Rich is one of my favorite writers, so I was honored to have him on the show. He has just brought to life things that I didn't know about, things that I didn't know I wanted. He had this book called Tough Jews that I love. His father is fascinating, who we wrote a book about called The Adventures of Herbie Cohen, who wrote that book. About negotiation. He wrote a book about youth hockey. He wrote a book about the Rolling Stones. He wrote a book about the Jewish resistance in World War Two. He created this show with Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger called Vinyl on HBO. That's also incredible.

I guess what I'm saying is this is one of my favorite authors. I've gotten so many stories from his books. I've learned so much from his books, and uh I just loved this conversation. We dove into history and memory and writing and parenting and sports and grief. Great conversation. I think you're really gonna like it. Let's get into it. So I was thinking about a conversation you and I had. Like ten years ago.

when I was working on obstacle, I had just read the fish that ate the whale. But we were talking about Zimmery, who is a fascinating figure, and you said something that I I've been thinking about Which is like you thought that he thought he would T appreciated by future generations.

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