Jon Finkel📚💪

HUGE NEWS: My next book is LOCKED & LOADED. I set out to write a thriller unlike any other... Inspired by two of my favorite novels of all time: Jaws & First Blood. It's Rocky meets The Revenant. Next fall... get ready... for BEAR BRAWL:

Books & Biceps Issue #398 is arm wrestling the other emails in your inbox right now and winning because we've got an exclusive interview with @SheaSerrano. Whenever I ask the crack Books & Biceps analytics team (me) to dig up numbers, I’d say sixty percent of the time they get it right every time. So I can say with confidence that this is either the fourth or fifth or sixth book of Shea's that we’ve featured here in B&B, but for sure this is our second interview. We’ve recommended Movies (and Other Things), Basketball (and Other Things), the Action Hero Scouting Report and his fiction work, The Abduction, which I liked a ton and you would too. There may be one more I’m missing, but the gist is, Serrano is a first ballot Books & Biceps Hall of Famer and whenever we build the world’s only bookstore and gym combo location, we’ll have a bust of Shea on the wall in his Tim Duncan jersey. Today I’m pumped to share an interview about his newest book, Expensive Basketball. This one came out late last year, but I just got around to reading it and enjoyed the hell out of it. The format is great. You can skip around to the chapters that interest you, read it straight through, or treat it like a series of longform columns and leave it on the coffee table to read during commercials or while you’re lounging on the couch. Got it? Good. And now that the table is set, please enjoy our exclusive, behind-the-book Author Q&A with Shea Serrano: booksandbiceps.beehiiv.com/p/books-biceps…

A great cause here - and one that hits home for me personally - if you're in a position to help or participate. #Pancan #PurpleStride secure.pancan.org/site/TR?fr_id=…

@BenjaminPutano haha... i was a legit 5'11" on the nose my whole life... then a few years ago, at my son's physical, i got measured for the first time in 20 years... and i lost half an inch! 5' 10.5" devastating!

@Jon_Finkel I used to claim I was 5'10 3/4... friends called me out, we measured like we were at the combine, and turns out I'm officially 5'10 flat 😅 huge ego blow

a lot of dudes who have been saying they're "about six feet" since high school are about to be exposed as 5'10" hahaha the MLB's Short King Scandal is upon us, Joe! (spoken as a 5'11" dude who always said I was 'about six feet' haha)

great newsletter this AM from @kendallbaker and crew wrapping up Day 1 of March Madness missed this quote from Chase Johnston postgame... this was all of us growing up in our driveways. literally me and my brother and our friends. so cool for him:

We have a HUGE behind-the-writing Books & Biceps author Q&A in today's issue. Comes out at 11:11AM You should sign up ASAP. It's free. Don't miss it. Link in bio.

this is dead on:

This is a brilliant piece: midlifemale.com/the-8-guys-you…

@CaptainCons whenever we've moved to a new neighborhood, which has been a decent amount my own personal first impression way to judge if we'll like living on a certain street is how many hoops are up in the driveway

Feel like not enough kids have basketball hoops in their driveway any more

@roguewealth bots talking to bots, apparently

@Jon_Finkel I don't actually know what these guys envision for this site.

"just tap the summarize button" you really just went from 140 characters to 280 characters to "try our new longform Article feature!" to we can summarize that article in 140 characters... well done

@roguewealth so dumb... such an all-out effort to remove any real writing and thinking from this app

afternoon...

@toddlieberman @CarlyKleinbart haha great faceoff

What happens when Enzo from THE HOUSEMAID meets 81 from WAR MACHINE? Our office becomes the crossover nobody asked for. #TheHousemaidMovie #warmachine

@CaptainCons i agree and have said this a few times. sundays and monday night were perfect... most people have, you know, "things to do" and "other things they like" and college football.... and so as soon as you make it too often, most normal people choose those other things more and more

Craig here nails it Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It’s the same reason there is part of me that’s happy when the football season ends. Anyone who subscribes to the “what are you talking about it’s more football?!” ends up in the pipe like Augustus Gloop

Just shared a phenomenal endorsement for Bear Brawl to our Books & Biceps crew... Yes, we’re nine months from publication day. And yes, we don’t even have a cover yet. And yes, I’m not reading the audio book for a few months… But, we landed a knockout (pun intended) blurb from 14-1-1 heavyweight boxer, my man Ed Latimore, who also happens to be a bestselling author himself (he wrote a great book: Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business). This is Ed’s full blurb and it has me so damn hyped for you all to read this book: "It's insane. It's primal. It's poetic. Bear Brawl is like Rocky IV meets The Revenant, but with a deeper emotional undercurrent about grief and masculinity. Finkel captures the mind of a fighter better than most writers ever have--and reminds you that sometimes, the fight isn't just about the opponent, but also with yourself--or in this case, with a bear." - @EdLatimore I love this imagery. It make me think of this picture. The main difference, however, is that our hero in Bear Brawl, Brick Bridger, is a bear of a man who would dwarf Rocky and even Drago. Bridger is 6’6” 265. Ex-college heavyweight wrestling champ. Ex-UFC heavyweight. All bad ass. Pre-order your copy here: amzn.to/47oPtXC

@ArtEddy3 yep. stay sharp!

@Jon_Finkel I see so many people using AI and letting their own ideas and creativity go out the window.

I stumbled into an analogy that helped me explain using (and resisting) AI to my teen son and it has to do with school essays, ChatGPT, shortcuts and push-up goals. I think you’ll find it useful as we enter this “hey, just have AI do it” wild west. Or you can tell me I’m wrong. To start, my thirteen-year-old son has hit the age where he’s beginning to notice muscle and strength in that cool, young dude way. The kid never wears a shirt. He flexes in every window or mirror he sees. He eats mountains of calories every meal. It’s awesome to witness – like watching myself grow up in a way haha. The flip side of that is he’s realizing that to get strong and build muscle, you have to, you know, workout and push yourself. It doesn’t just happen. You can’t snap your fingers and be jacked. His goal since the summer has been to do 25 strict push-ups straight. On his first attempt he did about eight (his form was terrible, though). For a little background, he does a ton of push-ups several times a week at Taekwondo and has for years (which is why he wasn’t starting from zero), so on non-practice days he started with five sets of five push-ups (slow and strict, with perfect form) to where he now does five sets of fifteen or more. And he can now do about twenty push-ups with great form and then he gets a little wobbly. He can “do” twenty five, but let’s just say a military man wouldn’t count them. But he’s getting there and he’s working hard. He’s watched his shoulders round out. His deltoids thicken. The top of his chest broadened a bit. He’s noticed his triceps forming and just a general thickness to his upper body. And of course, strength. He’s able to shoot deeper threes. Throw a football farther. All that stuff. Most probably attributed to his growth spurts, but a decent percentage to getting stronger. And this is where our conversation about AI and being a meathead merge, because on the brain side of things, my son has had several essays and papers due lately in school and he has to learn how to think and write all while ChatGPT beckons like a literary drug dealer. Hey buddy. You need some words? C’mon. I can give you some words? C’mon. Just try one sentence. You’ll like it. I swear. You know what? I’ll just do the first paragraph and you do the rest. It’ll be our secret. Just tell me what you need. I got you… Can you imagine if we had this option in middle school and high school? What would it have been like to sit down at your boxy Apple IIc in the school computer lab or if you were lucky enough to have a giant IBM Aptiva desktop at home and instead of typing an essay, you could just tell some program to write it for you? We’d have all tried it. Or at least dabbled in it until we got caught. How could we not? To a thirteen year old (or twenty-three or thirty-three or forty-three) year old, this sounds like heaven. But there is a huge cost, which brings me to the push-up analogy I shared with my son. The other day he was telling me about an essay he had to write for science and he mumbled, “I wish I could use ChatGPT and just be done.” Like I said. What thirteen-year-old wouldn’t feel this? But then I said to him: “When you started doing push-ups, you couldn’t really do five good ones, right? Now you can do twenty. What have you learned?” Of course, he told me the question was dumb and asked why he had to answer it and all the BS teen boys give before actually trying to think. Finally, he answered. He told me he learned that the hand position mattered because if he put too much pressure on his shoulders he got tired earlier. He told me if his arms were too wide his chest got tired first. He told me that sometimes he felt the strongest on his last set and he realized he could do one or two more than he thought. He told me that if he took a few days off, he felt worse doing them. He told me some days he felt strong but couldn’t do as much as he thought. Other days he felt weak but surprised himself… And on and on. Then I asked him... Read the full Manologue Column for free in the next post.