Arthur Brooks

Anyway, David Brooks, he said, I remember years and years and years ago, he said, you know, being number one in the New York Times bestseller list, it's really not that great.

We're having lunch.

And I said, let me try.

Let me see how it feels, right?

And that was exactly the point that you made.

Now, Ryan Holiday talks about that too.

The first time he had a book that was number one in the New York Times bestseller list, he's like,

This is great.

And the next week it was some yo-yo who had a stupid book as number one.

And he realized how little it actually meant.

But he wanted the next one to be number one too.

Actually, it's more tyrannical than that.

Because if your next one doesn't make number one, now you used to be great.

And there's almost nothing worse than that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I wanted to do a show at one point where I talked to a producer about the idea of a TV show called I Used to Be Famous, where I, as a behavioral scientist, will go talk to people who are living relatively ordinary lives, and they used to be famous.

Some are happy, some are not.

Some are addicts, some are crazy.

Some are normally married.

Yeah.