Some Of The Best Days Of My Life

It wasn’t pretty…

I slogged the €40 Ryanair flight to Stansted pre dawn, snuck my extra baggage and podcast polls past the sleepy flight attendants in one of the great misdirections of all time and ended up taking just as long getting from the airport to Earlsfield as it did from Stockholm to London.

I spent the last 72 hours sleeping on my mates couch to record 4 podcasts in person (one of which is a top 3 guest of all time)…

Day 2 (morning) was with Brian Klaas…

This guy is an overachievers overachiever. 37 years old and already publishing his second book, a professor of political science, a huge podcast and a Substack with +20,000 readers…

He’s just published his book, Fluke, which is straight out of the Talebian worldview (view my Nassim Taleb and Incerto podcast). A diatribe reminding the reader of the hidden but forceful hand which randomness and chance play in our lives. Brian does incredible research, he’s a smooth talker and also keenly aware of the media landscape. He made for an incredible guest, and I am stoked to get it out there.

We recorded at his home in Winchester… our 60 minute allotment turned into 120 and he even gave me a little tour of his town! Winchester hosts a cathedral +1,000 years old, is beautiful and quintessentially British.

Day 2 (afternoon) was with Bill Browder…

Keen and longer term listeners of the podcast will recognise that this is Bill’s second appearance on the pod! He first joined in 2022 and produced what was undoubtedly the then high water mark for the pod. His first book, Red Notice, is this fascinating memoir of a fella not that unlike me and you who through sheer hard work, curiosity, luck and competence found himself the host of the largest source of western capital in Post-Soviet Russia. The infamous privatisation of Russia’s economy in the 90’s…

Listen to that episode here…

But this time around the guard was a little bit dropped. We spoke about the Russian culture, the war, the future, his security and it all took place in his London office’s… a swanky top floor view over Bank. Very cool.

Day 3 (morning) was with Jon Lee Anderson…

Jon Lee Anderson is a staff writer for the New Yorker, the journalist who discovered the CIA had buried Che Guevara under a landing strip in Bolivia and is the embodiment of the hard nailed, war journalist, investigative reporter they make movies about…

He organised a venue for us to speak at… ‘The Frontline Club’ of which he is a founding member. It’s an exclusive place in London for journalists to come, eat, drink and stay. It’s hosted all manour of significant events since it’s founding, not least of which, the very same stage that we recorded our podcast was the place Julian Assange announced Wikileaks.

Jon Lee and I hung out for 4 hours, about two and a half of which was recorded for the podcast.

If you recall the welcome email you got to this newsletter, you might remember this line… ‘The people who I admire most are great adventurers, great writers and great journalists (the best is a combination of the 3!)’

Jon Lee is all three. It was a tremendous privilege to have gotten to record with him.

Day 3 (afternoon) was with Sam Leith…

Jon and I went overtime on recording and as such I was franticly late for my next appointment with literary editor of The Spectator, Sam Leith.

I was criss-crossing all over town for these events which is a trek and half in London. Sam lives in East Finchley which is the Northern line at it’s extremity. Thankfully, though, Sam was flexible with his schedule, working from home, and was upon my late arrival completely unfussed and unrushed to get straight into it. That worked for me! and so we played 30 minutes of Ping Pong and gossiped about Nassim Taleb.

Sam wrote ‘You Talkin’ To Me’ which is a book written exclusively in service to rhetoric. Such is the nature of serendipity it was born out of a surprise viral piece he wrote about Obama (back in the day).

Sam is also host of a podcast and a lifelong writer and journalist. He is also probably the best read guest to have ever appeared for the podcast, his job is after all, writing and reviewing books and so he was as close to a perfect guest that a podcast host could ever hope for... extremely articulate and a practiced rhetorician!

We spoke about rhetoric, Trump, Christopher Hitchens, great speakers, anti-rhetoric and a whole lot more I’m forgetting now. Will be out soon.

Day 3 (nightime) was with Gregson…

So these three days had been huge. In and amongst these snippets of memory was nervousness that my equipment was going to fail, second guessing over whether I had done enough research, doubts over the right questions, fretting over this and that to make sure the final podcast you consume is as tip top and good as possible.

I was pretty wrecked and would have very happily cuddled up to a frozen pizza with my mate Greggy but he had other plans… he had been invited to this party at a bar/club that he insisted on dragging me along too.

Nice people, nice place, £10 drinks and my ears are still ringing, not sure if I ever need to go back… but a great way to round out London.

I turned in a 02:30 and had an alarm for 05:00. Back to Stockholm via Stansted. Tired, groggy, pretty grim, but I was stoked.

Because even though I was slammed, pressure was high and I had nothing to fall back onto, none of that felt cumbersome for a second. I am crazy bullish on the pod and something Hitchens said when he was an old man has really stuck with me when thinking about this post…

Towards the end of his life, he was asked about his ‘career’ and he responded that he was never interested in a career, he was instead, ‘interested in a life’.

Going around and speaking to these interesting people and reaping all of the tremendous serendipity that happens because of it is the life that I want.

Therefore, some of the best days of my life?

I reckon.