Twenty One Pilots Quotes

I'm forced to deal with what I feel. There is no distraction to mask what is real. - Twenty One Pilots

I'll stay awake because the dark's not taking prisoner's tonight.

I was told when I get older all my fears would shrink, but now I'm insecure and I care what people think.

You don't know my brain the way you know my face.

Sometimes to stay alive you've got to kill your mind.

The beginning of purpose is found in creating something that only you understand.

Don't let the fear of unhappiness cripple your pursuit of finding what you believe.

Are you searching for purpose? Then write something, yeah it might be worthless Then paint something then, it might be wordless Pointless curses, nonsense verses You'll see purpose start to surface No one else is dealing with your demons Meaning maybe defeating them Could be the beginning of your meaning, friend.

Sometimes death seems better than the migraine in my head

Don't you test me now, just because I play the piano, doesn't mean I'm not willing to take you down

Blurryface is a fictional character and a reference to insecurities, which I think all people have.

I look outside and see a whole world better off without me in it trying to transform it.

A loser hides behind a mask of my disguise

Domingo en fuego, I think I lost my halo..

What kids are doing are killing themselves They feel they have no control of their prisoner's cell And if you're one of them then you're one of me And you would do almost anything just to feel free...- From the song Fake You Out

While you're doing fine, there's some people and I Who have a really tough time getting through this life So excuse us while we sing to the sky.

Who is blurryface and why does he want me dead?

We did it :: |-/

Sometimes to stay alive, you gotta kill your mind.

Can't stop thinking about if and when I die. For now I see that "if" and "when" are truly different cries for "if" is purely panic and "when" is solemn sorrow and one invades today while the other spies tomorrow.

Sometimes quiet is violent I find it hard to hide it My pride is no longer inside It's on my sleeve My skin will scream reminding me of Who I killed inside my dream I hate this car that I'm driving There's no hiding for me I'm forced to deal with what I feel There is no distraction to mask what is real I could pull the steering wheel

You don't my heart the way you know my face.

I ponder of something terrifying 'Cause this time there's no sound to hide behind I find over the course of our human existence One thing consists of consistence And it's that we're all battling fear Oh dear, I don't know if we know why we're here Oh my, too deep, please stop thinking

Basically, we are all responsible for the preservation of our personal joy; but happiness is different. Joy is not circumstantial, happiness is. You can be depressed and still have joy. You can be suicidal and still have joy. We all stop thinking and we all stop talking and we all stop sharing and we all stop creating, because by doing any of these things we quickly find out just how unhappy we are. But that's okay. That's normal. Don't let the fear of unhappiness cripple your pursuit of finding what it is you believe. Since joy is found in belief, we all have to push through unhappiness to find joy. Basically.

In time, the Navy would compile statistics showing that for a career Navy pilot, i.e., one who intended to keep flying for twenty years... there was a 23 percent probability that he would die in an aircraft accident. This did not even include combat deaths, since the military did not classify death in combat as accidental.

When your body's screaming, trust your mind's listening

All I do is fly, so one-upping Ann was pretty easy. “A few years back, at a book signing, I met a pilot,” I began. “He flew the Newark to Palm Beach route, right? So it’s December twenty-third, and as they touch down in Florida, one of the flight attendants takes the microphone and delivers her standard landing speech. ‘Please remain seated until the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign has been turned off and be careful when opening the overhead bins. We’d like to wish you a merry Christmas and, to those of you already standing, happy Hanukkah.

CAPT. J. W. SIMMONS, master of the steamship Pensacola, had just as little regard for weather as the Louisiana’s Captain Halsey. He was a veteran of eight hundred trips across the Gulf and commanded a staunch and sturdy ship, a 1,069-ton steel-hulled screw-driven steam freighter built twelve years earlier in West Hartlepool, England, and now owned by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company. Friday morning the ship was docked at the north end of 34th Street, in the company of scores of other ships, including the big Mallory liner Alamo, at 2,237 tons, and the usual large complement of British ships, which on Friday included the Comino, Hilarius, Kendal Castle, Mexican, Norna, Red Cross, Taunton, and the stately Roma in from Boston with its Captain Storms. As the Pensacola’s twenty-one-man crew readied the ship for its voyage to the city of Pensacola on Florida’s Gulf Coast, two men came aboard as Captain Simmons’s personal guests: a harbor pilot named R. T. Carroll and Galveston’s Pilot Commissioner J. M. O. Menard, from one of the city’s oldest families. At

Sometimes quiet is violent I find it hard to hide it My pride is no longer inside It's on my sleeve My skin will scream reminding me of Who I killed inside my dream I hate this car that I'm driving There's no hiding for me I'm forced to deal with what I feel There is no distraction to mask what is real I could pull the steering wheel I have these thoughts, so often I ought To replace that slot with what I once bought 'Cause somebody stole my car radio And now I just sit in silence I ponder of something terrifying 'Cause this time there's no sound to hide behind I find over the course of our human existence One thing consists of consistence And it's that we're all battling fear Oh dear, I don't know if we know why we're here Oh my, too deep, please stop thinking I liked it better when my car had sound There are things we can do But from the things that work there are only two And from the two that we choose to do Peace will win and fear will lose It is faith and there's sleep We need to pick one please because Faith is to be awake And to be awake is for us to think And for us to think is to be alive And I will try with every rhyme To come across like I am dying To let you know you need to try to think I have these thoughts, so often I ought To replace that slot with what I once bought 'Cause somebody stole my car radio And now I just sit in silence

If we could shrink the Earth’s 5.7 billion population to a village of one hundred people, the resulting profile would look like this:        Sixty Asians, fourteen Africans, twelve Europeans, eight Latin Americans, five from the United States and Canada, and one from New Zealand or Australia.        Eighty-two would be nonwhite.        Sixty-seven would be non-Christian.        Thirty-two percent of the entire world’s wealth would be in the hands of five people.        All five people would be citizens of the United States.        Sixty-seven would be unable to read.        Fifty would suffer from malnutrition. Thirty-three would be without access to a safe water supply.        Eighty would live in substandard housing. Thirty-nine would lack access to improved sanitation. Twenty-four would not have electricity.        Only one would have a college education.30

As the Pensacola’s twenty-one-man crew readied the ship for its voyage to the city of Pensacola on Florida’s Gulf Coast, two men came aboard as Captain Simmons’s personal guests: a harbor pilot named R. T. Carroll and Galveston’s Pilot Commissioner J. M. O. Menard, from one of the city’s oldest families.

We've spoken of the Knights of the Holy Grail, Percival. Do you know what I was? The Knight of the Unholy Grail. In times like these when everyone is wonderful, what is needed is a quest for evil. You should be interested! Such a quest serves God's cause! How? Because the Good proves nothing. When everyone is wonderful, nobody bothers with God. If you had ten thousand Albert Schweitzers giving their lives for their fellow men, do you think anyone would have a second thought about God? Or suppose the Lowell Professor of Religion at Harvard should actually find the Holy Grail, dig it up in an Israeli wadi, properly authenticate it, carbon date it, and present it to the Metropolitan Museum. Millions of visitors! I would be as curious as the next person and would stand in line for hours to see it. But what different would it make in the end? People would be interested for a while, yes. This is an age of interest. But suppose you could show me one "sin," one pure act of malevolence. A different cup of tea! That would bring matters to a screeching halt. But we have plenty of evil around you say. What about Hitler, the gas ovens and so forth? What about them? As everyone knows and says, Hitler was a madman. And it seems nobody else was responsible. Everyone was following orders. It is even possible that there was no such order, that it was all a bureaucratic mistake. Show me a single "sin." One hundred and twenty thousand dead at Hiroshima? Where was the evil of that? Was Harry Truman evil? As for the pilot and bombardier, they were by all accounts wonderful fellows, good fathers and family men. "Evil" is surely the clue to this age, the only quest appropriate to the age. For everything and everyone's either wonderful or sick and nothing is evil. God may be absent, but what if one should find the devil? Do you think I wouldn't be pleased to meet the devil? Ha, ha, I'd shake his hand like a long-lost friend. The mark of the age is that terrible things happen but there is no "evil" involved. People are either crazy, miserable, or wonderful, so where does the "evil" come in? There I was forty-five years old and I didn't know whether there was "evil" in the world.

In four separate fires in the 1990s, twenty-three elite wildland firefighters refused orders to drop their tools and perished beside them. Even when Rhoades eventually dropped his chainsaw, he felt like he was doing something unnatural. Weick found similar phenomena in Navy seamen who ignored orders to remove steel-toed shoes when abandoning a ship, and drowned or punched holes in life rafts; fighter pilots in disabled planes refusing orders to eject; and Karl Wallenda, the world-famous high-wire performer, who fell 120 feet to his death when he teetered and grabbed first at his balance pole rather than the wire beneath him. He momentarily lost the pole while falling, and grabbed it again in the air. “Dropping one’s tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility,” Weick wrote. “It is the very unwillingness of people to drop their tools that turns some of these dramas into tragedies.

In due course I got my license. I was a pilot now, full fledged. I dropped into casual employments; no misfortunes resulting, intermittent work gave place to steady and protracted engagements. Time drifted smoothly and prosperously on, and I supposed—and hoped—that I was going to follow the river the rest of my days, and die at the wheel when my mission was ended. But by and by the war came, commerce was suspended, my occupation was gone. I had to seek another livelihood. So I became a silver miner in Nevada; next, a newspaper reporter; next, a gold miner in California; next, a reporter in San Francisco; next, a special correspondent in the Sandwich Islands; next, a roving correspondent in Europe and the East; next, an instructional torch-bearer on the lecture platform; and, finally, I became a scribbler of books, and an immovable fixture among the other rocks of New England. In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one slow-drifting years that have come and gone since I last looked from the windows of a pilot-house.

Let me take a little second to tell you as we see a prophecy that came true You see we need to believe that He literally bled through The clothes on His back His sweat the day was just like crimson rain Crimson stains tide bounty and the devil can't wash these stains away Who's He you ask, He's a friend of me Cause my inability He was sent for me I hear birds and trees they're all telling me It's a good thing He won Gethsemane Cause this enemy is too much for me And this flesh and world is triple teaming me It seems to be the very end I scream please oh please pass this cup from me! The thing is it did pass And it passes every day He took my cup from me and gracefully He drank the grave And I don't mean to speak of blasphemy when I say But I am speaking of the day when my God passed away, Okay? No wait wait wait no that's not it no that's not all I don't wanna leave you hanging This stories banging Against my throat and against these walls It can't be contained no it won't stay in here it will thrive Cause stories just don't die when the dead come alive

On one sunny day in August, journalist Virginia Cowles found herself watching a major air battle while lying on the grass atop Shakespeare Cliff, near Dover. "The setting was majestic," she wrote, "In front of you stretched the blue water of the Channel and in the distance you could distinguish the hazy outline of the coast of France." Houses lay below. Boats and trawlers drifted in the harbor agleam with sun. The water sparkled. Above hung twenty or more immense gray barrage balloons, like airborne manatees. Meanwhile, high above, pilots fought to the death. "You lay in the tall grass with the wing blowing gently across you and watched the hundreds of silver planes swarming through the heavens like clouds of gnats," she wrote. "All around you anti-aircraft guns were shuddering and coughing, stabbing the sky with small white bursts." Flaming planes arched toward the ground, "leaving as their testament a long black smudge against the sky." She heard engines and machine guns. "You knew the fate of civilization was being decided fifteen thousand feet above your head in a world of sun, wind and sky," she wrote. "You knew it, but even so it was hard to take it in.

The native allies arrived in time, and Cortés then organized his troops for battle. I divided them and assigned them to three captains, each of whom with his division was to be stationed in one of three cities around Tenochtitlán. I made Pedro de Alvarado captain of one division and assigned him thirty horsemen, eighteen crossbow-men and gunners, and one hundred and fifty foot soldiers, and more than twenty-five thousand warriors of our allies. They were to make their headquarters at Tacuba. I made Cristóbal de Olid captain of another division . . . the division to make their headquarters in Coyoacán. Gonzalo de Sandoval was captain of the third division . . . This division was to go to Ixtapalapa and destroy it, then to advance over a causeway, protected by the ships, to join the garrison at Coyoacán. After I entered the lake with the ships, Sandoval would fix his headquarters where it suited him best. For the thirteen ships I left three hundred men, almost all of them sailors and well drilled, so that each ship had twenty-five Spaniards, and each of the small vessels had a captain, a pilot, and six crossbowmen and gunners. On May 10, Alvarado and Olid left Texcoco with their commands. The siege of Tenochtitlán was about to begin. It was to become the longest siege and one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the New World. At its end, an entire civilization would be destroyed and the largest city ever found by the conquistadors laid waste.

A MAP IN THE hands of a pilot is a testimony of a man’s faith in other men; it is a symbol of confidence and trust. It is not like a printed page that bears mere words, ambiguous and artful, and whose most believing reader — even whose author, perhaps — must allow in his mind a recess for doubt. A map says to you, ‘Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.’ It says, ‘I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost.’ And indeed you are. Were all the maps in this world destroyed and vanished under the direction of some malevolent hand, each man would be blind again, each city be made a stranger to the next, each landmark become a meaningless signpost pointing to nothing. Yet, looking at it, feeling it, running a finger along its lines, it is a cold thing, a map, humourless and dull, born of calipers and a draughtsman’s board. That coastline there, that ragged scrawl of scarlet ink, shows neither sand nor sea nor rock; it speaks of no mariner, blundering full sail in wakeless seas, to bequeath, on sheepskin or a slab of wood, a priceless scribble to posterity. This brown blot that marks a mountain has, for the casual eye, no other significance, though twenty men, or ten, or only one, may have squandered life to climb it. Here is a valley, there a swamp, and there a desert; and here is a river that some curious and courageous soul, like a pencil in the hand of God, first traced with bleeding feet. Here is your map. Unfold it, follow it, then throw it away, if you will. It is only paper. It is only paper and ink, but if you think a little, if you pause a moment, you will see that these two things have seldom joined to make a document so modest and yet so full with histories of hope or sagas of conquest.

Put yourself in the way of grace,' says a friend of ours, who is a monk, and a bishop; and he smiles his floating and shining smile. And truly, can there be a subject of more interest to each of us than whether or not grace exists, and the soul? And, consequent upon the existence of the soul, a whole landscape of incorruptible forces, perhaps even a source, an almost palpably suggested second universe? A world that is incomprehensible through reason? To believe in the soul---to believe in it exactly as much and as hardily as one believes in a mountain, say, or a fingernail, which is ever in view---imagine the consequences! How far-reaching, and thoroughly wonderful! For everything, by such a belief, would be charged, and changed. You wake in the morning, the soul exists, your mouth sings it, your mind accepts it. And the perceived, tactile world is, upon the instant, only half the world! How easily I travel, about halfway, through such a scenario. I believe in the soul---in mine, and yours, and the blue-jay's, and the pilot whale's. I believe each goldfinch flying away over the coarse ragweed has a soul, and the ragweed too, plant by plant, and the tiny stones in the earth below, and the grains of earth as well. Not romantically do I believe this, nor poetically, nor emotionally, nor metaphorically except as all reality is metaphor, but steadily, lumpishly, and absolutely. The wild waste spaces of the sea, and the pale dunes with one hawk hanging in the wind, they are for me the formal spaces that, in a liturgy, are taken up by prayer, song, sermon, silence, homily, scripture, the architecture of the church itself. And as with prayer, which is a dipping of oneself toward the light, there is a consequence of attentiveness to the grass itself, and the sky itself, and to the floating bird. I too leave the fret and enclosure of my own life. I too dip myself toward the immeasurable. Now winter, the winter I am writing about, begins to ease. And what, if anything, has been determined, selected, nailed down? This is the lesson of age---events pass, things change, trauma fades, good fortune rises, fades, rises again but different. Whereas what happens when one is twenty, as I remember it, happens forever. I have not been twenty for a long time! The sun rolls toward the north and I feel, gratefully, its brightness flaming up once more. Somewhere in the world the misery we can do nothing about yet goes on. Somewhere the words I will write down next year, and the next, are drifting into the wind, out of the ornate pods of the weeds of the Provincelands. Once I went into the woods to find an almost unfindable bird, a blue grosbeak. And I found it: a rough, deep blue, almost black, with heavy beak; it was plucking one by one the humped, pale green caterpillars from the leaves of a thick green tree. Then it vanished into the shadows of the leaves and, in the same moment, from the crown of the tree flew a western bluebird---little aqua thrush of the mountains, hundreds of miles from its home. It is a moment hard to top---but, I can. Once I came upon two angels, they were standing quietly, keeping guard beside a car. Light streamed from them, and a splash of flames lay quietly under their feet. What is one to do with such moments, such memories, but cherish them? Who knows what is beyond the known? And if you think that any day the secret of light might come, would you not keep the house of your mind ready? Would you not cleanse your study of all that is cheap, or trivial? Would you not live in continual hope, and pleasure, and excitement?

I Don’t Care Anymore,” Hellyeah “Ballad of a Prodigal Son,” Lincoln Durham “Battleflag,” Lo Fidelity Allstars “How You Like Me Now (Raffertie Remix),” The Heavy “Black Honey,” Thrice “Bourbon Street,” Jeff Tuohy “Cellophane,” Sara Jackson-Holman “Drive,” Joe Bonamassa “Fake It,” Bastille “Heathens,” twenty one pilots “Jekyll and Hyde,” Five Finger Death Punch “Lovers End,” The Birthday Massacre “Meth Lab Zoso Sticker,” 7Horse “Bad Reputation,” Joan Jett “Peace,” Apocalyptica “Send Them Off!,” Bastille “Tainted Love,” Marilyn Manson “Take It All,” Pop Evil

Today’s equivalent is probably ‘get an engineering degree’, but it will not necessarily be as lucrative. A third of Americans who graduated in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) are in jobs that do not require any such qualification.52 They must still pay off their student debts. Up and down America there are programmers working as office temps and even fast-food servers. In the age of artificial intelligence, more and more will drift into obsolescence. On the evidence so far, this latest technological revolution is different in its dynamics from earlier ones. In contrast to earlier disruptions, which affected particular sectors of the economy, the effects of today’s revolution are general-purpose. From janitors to surgeons, virtually no jobs will be immune. Whether you are training to be an airline pilot, a retail assistant, a lawyer or a financial trader, labour-saving technology is whittling down your numbers – in some cases drastically so. In 2000, financial services employed 150,000 people in New York. By 2013 that had dropped to 100,000. Over the same period, Wall Street’s profits have soared. Up to 70 per cent of all equity trades are now executed by algorithms.53 Or take social media. In 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. It had sixty-five employees, so the price amounted to $25 million per employee. In 2012 Facebook bought Instagram, which had thirteen employees, for $1 billion. That came to $77 million per employee. In 2014, it bought WhatsApp, with fifty-five employees, for $19 billion, at a staggering $345 million per employee.54 Such riches are little comfort to the thousands of engineers who cannot find work. Facebook’s data servers are now managed by Cyborg, a software program. It requires one human technician for every twenty thousand computers.

Our 182-passenger Boeing Classic this morning is under the able command of Captain Hiram Slatt, discharged from service in the United States Air Force mission in Afghanistan after six heroic deployments and now returned, following a restorative sabbatical at the VA Neuropsychiatric Hospital in Wheeling, West Virginia, to his “first love”—civilian piloting for North American Airways. Captain Slatt has informed us that, once we are cleared for takeoff, our flying time will be between approximately seventeen and twenty-two hours depending upon ever-shifting Pacific Ocean air currents and the ability of our seasoned Classic 878 to withstand gale-force winds of 90 knots roaring “like a vast army of demons” (in Captain Slatt’s colorful terminology) over the Arctic Circle. As you have perhaps noticed Flight 443 is a full—i.e., “overbooked”—flight. Actually most North American Airways flights are overbooked—it is Airways protocol to persist in assuming that a certain percentage of passengers will simply fail to show up at the gate having somehow expired, or disappeared, en route. For those of you who boarded with tickets for seats already taken—North American Airways apologizes for this unforeseeable development. We have dealt with the emergency situation by assigning seats in four lavatories as well as in the hold and in designated areas of the overhead bin. Therefore our request to passengers in Economy Plus, Economy, and Economy Minus is that you force your carry-ons beneath the seat in front of you; and what cannot be crammed into that space, or in the overhead bin, if no one is occupying the overhead bin, you must grip securely on your lap for the duration of the flight. Passengers in First Class may give their drink orders now. SECURITY:

The third principle is to resist the allure of middling priorities. There is a story attributed to Warren Buffett—although probably only in the apocryphal way in which wise insights get attributed to Albert Einstein or the Buddha, regardless of their real source—in which the famously shrewd investor is asked by his personal pilot about how to set priorities. I’d be tempted to respond, “Just focus on flying the plane!” But apparently this didn’t take place midflight, because Buffett’s advice is different: he tells the man to make a list of the top twenty-five things he wants out of life and then to arrange them in order, from the most important to the least. The top five, Buffett says, should be those around which he organizes his time. But contrary to what the pilot might have been expecting to hear, the remaining twenty, Buffett allegedly explains, aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all costs—because they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to him to form the core of his life yet seductive enough to distract him from the ones that matter most. You needn’t embrace the specific practice of listing out your goals (I don’t, personally) to appreciate the underlying point, which is that in a world of too many big rocks, it’s the moderately appealing ones—the fairly interesting job opportunity, the semi-enjoyable friendship—on which a finite life can come to grief. It’s a self-help cliché that most of us need to get better at learning to say no. But as the writer Elizabeth Gilbert points out, it’s all too easy to assume that this merely entails finding the courage to decline various tedious things you never wanted to do in the first place. In fact, she explains, “it’s much harder than that. You need to learn how to start saying no to things you do want to do, with the recognition that you have only one life.

She cranked up the radio, though, and the moody lyrics of Twenty One Pilots filled the car. I had to give her props for her taste in music. Her loud, off-key singing… not so much. I preferred music over talking anyway.

make a list of the top twenty-five things he wants out of life and then to arrange them in order, from the most important to the least. The top five, Buffett says, should be those around which he organizes his time. But contrary to what the pilot might have been expecting to hear, the remaining twenty, Buffett allegedly explains, aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all costs—because they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to him to form the core of his life yet seductive enough to distract him from the ones that matter most.

Approaching target area," they heard the pilot say, "Ninety klicks to go, drop-off in one minute thirty-five seconds." However, there was nothing to be heard but the wind rattling against the plane traveling at high velocity across the stormy sky. The voice spoke directly into their heads. "OK, people, get ready," another disembodied voice said. To everyone in each of the three stealth combat aircraft, this voice was almost as familiar as their own. It belonged to Metatron, the commander. "Our scouting drones report no movement whatsoever and minimal security measures. Everyone is sound asleep. They have no idea what's coming at them. Exactly how we like it," he paused for a moment before continuing, and the condescending tone in his voice indicated that he would enjoy the things to come, "Stick to the routine, and this will be a walk in the park. I won't tolerate any casualties today." Nephilim prepared herself, running a final status check on her systems. Her neon-blue eyes were the shape of almonds. When she closed them for a moment, her delicate, pale face appeared to be that of a young woman in her early twenties. Anyone who assumed this, however, couldn't be more wrong. A second later, she was content. All systems were operating within specified parameters. She was ready. Opening her eyes again, she caught a look from Adriel sitting opposite to her. A slight grin flashed over his lips. His deep black skin contrasted with his unnaturally blue eyes, and they outright glowed in the half-dark. He, too, was prepared and agreed with the commander's words. This shouldn't be much more than routine.

Stressed Out,” twenty one pilots

The third principle is to resist the allure of middling priorities. There is a story attributed to Warren Buffett—although probably only in the apocryphal way in which wise insights get attributed to Albert Einstein or the Buddha, regardless of their real source—in which the famously shrewd investor is asked by his personal pilot about how to set priorities. I’d be tempted to respond, “Just focus on flying the plane!” But apparently this didn’t take place midflight, because Buffett’s advice is different: he tells the man to make a list of the top twenty-five things he wants out of life and then to arrange them in order, from the most important to the least. The top five, Buffett says, should be those around which he organizes his time. But contrary to what the pilot might have been expecting to hear, the remaining twenty, Buffett allegedly explains, aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all costs—because they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to him to form the core of his life yet seductive enough to distract him from the ones that matter most.

When a TV show starts out, it is incredibly competitive: maybe one in a hundred TV ideas goes on to get made into pilot (tester) episodes. Maybe one in twenty of those pilots will go on to have a first series commissioned. And maybe one in ten of those will be asked back for a second season. It takes a sprinkling of fairy dust and a lot of goodwill. But do two seasons and you will quite probably go on to do five--or more. So we got lucky. No doubt. And I never even asked for it. Let alone expected it. I was simply, and blissfully, unaware. But on this journey, Man vs. Wild has had to endure a lot of flak from critics and the press. Anything successful inevitably does. (Funny how the praise tends just to bounce off, but small amounts of criticism sting so much. Self-doubt can be a brute, I guess.) The program has been accused of being set up, staged, faked, and manipulated. One critic even suggested it was all shot in a studio with CGI. If only.

As Sean watched the proceedings he missed her so bad he ached with it. Letting her get away was one of the great tactical errors of his adult life. He should have found a way to convince her they’d be fine together without marriage, without a bunch of ankle-biters. But at twenty-eight, pumped up on his fighter-pilot prowess, he’d been overconfident. He had especially not been ready for some woman to be calling the shots. Now, at thirty-two, he realized how stupid he’d been at twenty-eight.

Ma’am,” Piper said with her best smile. “You don’t mind helping us one more time, do you?” “I don’t mind,” the pilot agreed. “We can’t take a mortal into battle,” Jason said. “It’s too dangerous.” He turned to Leo. “Do you think you could fly this thing?” “Um…” Leo’s expression didn’t exactly reassure Piper. But then he put his hand on the side of the helicopter, concentrating hard, as if listening to the machine. “Bell 412HP utility helicopter,” Leo said. “Composite four-blade main rotor, cruising speed twenty-two knots, service ceiling twenty-thousand feet. The tank is near full. Sure, I can fly it.” Piper smiled at the ranger again. “You don’t have a problem with an under-aged unlicensed kid borrowing your copter, do you? We’ll return it.” “I—” The pilot nearly choked on the words, but she got them out: “I don’t have a problem with that.” Leo grinned. “Hop in, kids. Uncle Leo’s gonna take you for a ride.

And then the omnipotent Integral intervened … a practical joker to the end! Early on the morning of April 12, the fabulous but anonymous Builder of the Integral, Chief Designer of the Sputniks, struck another of his cruel but dramatic blows. Just twenty days before the first scheduled Mercury flight he sent a five-ton Sputnik called Vostok I into orbit around the earth with a man aboard, the first cosmonaut, a twenty-seven-year-old test pilot named Yuri Gagarin. Vostok I completed one orbit, then brought Gagarin down safely, on land, near the Soviet village of Smelovka. The omnipotent Integral! NASA had really believed—and the astronauts had really believed—that somehow, in the religious surge of the mission, Shepard’s flight would be the first. But there was no putting one over on the Integral, was there! It was as if the Soviets’ Chief Designer, that invisible genius, was toying with them. Back in October 1957, just four months before the United States was supposed to launch the world’s first artificial earth satellite, the Chief Designer had launched Sputnik I. In January 1959, just two months before NASA was scheduled to put the first artificial satellite into orbit around the sun, the Chief Designer launched Mechta I and did just that. But this one, Vostok I, in April 1961, had been his pièce de resistance. Given the huge booster rockets at his disposal, he seemed to be able to play these little games with his adversaries at will. There was the eerie feeling that he would continue to let NASA struggle furiously to catch up—and then launch some startling new demonstration of just how far ahead he really was.

Gabby’s theme Song: “Bloodstream” by Ed Sheeran Lucas’ theme Song: “Making Love out of Nothing at All” by Air Supply Karen and her family’s theme song: “Photograph” by Ed Sheeran Killer’s theme songs: “Bandito” by Twenty One Pilots and “I Don’t Care Anymore” by HELLYEAH. Other important songs I basically play on repeat as I work: “Neon Gravestones” by Twenty One Pilots  “Heathens” by Twenty One Pilots “Getting Away With It” by James “The Girl You Think I Am” by Carrie Underwood “Waiting for the Miracle” by Leonard Cohen “You Want it Darker” by Leonard Cohen

Seven Devils” by Florence + The Machine “Paint it, Black” by Ciara “Monsters” by Ruelle “One Way or Another” by Until The Ribbon Breaks “Paranoid” by Post Malone “Royals” by Lorde “So Thick” by Whipped Cream featuring Baby Goth “Sweet But Psycho” by Parker Jenkins “My Blood” by Twenty One Pilots “Candy” by Guccihighwaters “Birthday Cake” by Rihanna “Horns” by Bryce Fox “No One” by Mothica “All The Time” by Jeremih, Lil Wayne and Natasha Mosley “I Wanna Be Yours” by Arctic Monkeys “Monster” by Meg Myers “Soldier” by Fleurie “Fuck It I Love You” by Lana Del Rey “Kill Our Way to Heaven” by Michl “Sweet Dreams” by Emily Browning “Everybody Wants to Rule The World” by Lorde

Then, Japanese pilots found the range, and five bombs struck the ship. Three hit forward of Turret No. 1 and left the bow a mangled mess. One of these ignited a gasoline storage tank and started a blaze that might have proven as catastrophic as that on the Arizona but for the fact that as part of a regular ammunition rotation, the Nevada’s crew had yet to reload twenty-eight hundred bags of powder into its main magazines. The other two bombs exploded at the base of the main mast and smokestack, damaging the director stations on the foremast. Rather than risk the ship sinking and blocking the entrance channel, the senior officer afloat ordered the Nevada to beach near floating Dry Dock No. 2, adjacent to Hospital Point.

Some twenty-three hundred miles away Major General H.H. “Hap” Arnold, head of the Army Air Corps, had traveled to Hamilton Field near Sacramento to personally see off a flight of thirteen B-l 7s destined for MacArthur in the Philippines by way of Hawaii. The first leg to Hickam Field took fourteen hours, so the big bombers flew with only four-man crews and were unarmed. One of the pilots objected. At least they ought to carry their bomb sights and machine guns. Arnold said they could be put aboard but without ammunition to save weight. So the bombers could home in on its signal, Major General Frederick L. Martin, head of the Hawaiian Air Force, had his staff ask station WGMB in Honolulu to stay on all night. Sure thing, general. Another night of ukuleles and Glenn Miller drifting out across the Pacific courtesy of the U.S. Army Air Corps. When Lieutenant Colonel George W. Bicknell of Army intelligence heard about it, he blew up. Why tip our hands whenever we have planes coming in? Why not keep WGMB on the air every night? One of those who caught the station was Lieutenant Kermit Tyler on his way to work the graveyard shift at the radar coordinating station at Fort Shafter. Must be planes coming in from the States, he told himself.

The top five, Buffett says, should be those around which he organizes his time. But contrary to what the pilot might have been expecting to hear, the remaining twenty, Buffett allegedly explains, aren’t the second-tier priorities to which he should turn when he gets the chance. Far from it. In fact, they’re the ones he should actively avoid at all costs—

On this mission, one crew, piloted by Glenn Dye, flew their twenty-fifth. They were done. They could go home. They were the only original crew of the 100th’s original thirty-five who finished a tour. One out of thirty-five made it through a tour. And even on Dye’s crew, one gunner was killed. None of the original crew all made it. That did not encourage us much.

Classification and then reduction, the mind’s strongest weapon against conscience, if it wants to relieve your conscience to kill innocents, it would classify them within a group and include with them those who deserve death in its view, then reduce all the small details into generalities, and ignore them. As it will not fail a trick, to make the killing of children and women an inevitable necessity, towards a higher goal and a better world. Thus began the story of Baibars himself, nearly twenty years ago, when the extremist organization decided to classify the entire American people as one group, ignoring that the number of Muslims killed by Muslims themselves was many times greater than those killed because of American policies in the Middle East, and then decided that the destruction of their opponents in the Middle East. The destruction of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Their minds reduced all the details; a child playing in his father’s office, a girl waiting for her mother’s return, a wife on the plane eager to meet her husband, their conscience did not hesitate for a moment to kill thousands of innocent people, for the sake of their ultimate goal. And so did America itself, when it decided to avenge its murderers, categorized, reduced, and shot everyone. Its pilots saw neither the children nor the families in the homes they were about to demolish over their heads. So did Hitler, Napoleon, Hulagu, and every serial killer known to mankind. It makes you like a pilot driving a plane, throwing a bomb over the houses, not seeing the trace of what it did on the ground, and if he carried it with his hand and walked in the streets, and watched the children, women, the innocent, who would fall dead from this bomb, he would not detonate it, but he only sees houses that look like matchboxes from the sky, general picture, no details. Satan’s most powerful weapon for controlling the mind, or the most powerful weapon of the mind to control us, and at some point, it masters it, to the point where it no longer needs to justify, reduce, or categorize anything, kill your opponents, and all their offspring, destroy them, burn them, leave none of them. Since many minds are tools in the hands of Satan, it can manipulate them as it wants. Since its working mechanisms have become known to him, Baibars decided, why not? Why do not we make them tools for good. He used Satan’s own style, manipulated everyone, and at times, reduced, but according to his laws, do not reduce the innocent. He is not afraid, he made his decision in the war, and whoever made this decision must bear the consequences of it. He wished time would go back a thousand or two thousand years and freeze there, where the wars between human beings were fought with swords and arrows, at that time, not many innocents fell, only soldiers who made their decision in advance to war, to kill, knowing that they might die. Everyone had the time and the ability to think, make decisions, and even escape. While today, most of the victims of wars do not make a decision, they pay with their lives without anyone asking them if they want to be part of this war at all. Cities are bombed and destroyed over the heads of their inhabitants, and most of them reject this war from the beginning. When someone detonates a bomb in a mall, he does not ask the victims of his bombing about their political stances, their religion, and even if they want to be part of this war, and so do the planes, they do not ask, and their victims have no opportunity to make a decision. As for him, Baibars, he made up his mind It is to fight in defense of those who did not have the opportunity to take it.

He once told his personal airplane pilot, Mike Flint, that Flint needed to do three things to reach his goals. The first was to write down his top twenty-five goals. The second was to circle the top five most important ones. Finally, he should separate the top five goals into a separate list—and put goals six through twenty-five on a “not-to-do” list.

Two vehicles and 238,900 miles: three days there and three days back. Twenty-one hours on the surface of the Moon for two astronauts in the lunar lander, while the service module circled the heavenly body in a parking orbit. Katherine knew better than anyone that if the trajectory of the parked service module was even slightly off, when the astronauts ended their lunar exploration and piloted their space buggy back up from the Moon’s surface, the two vehicles might not meet up. The command service module was the astronauts’ bus—their only bus—back to Earth: the lander would ferry the astronauts to the waiting service module and then be discarded. If the two vehicles’ orbits didn’t coincide, the two in the lander would be stranded forever in the vacuum of space. The leadership of the Space Task Group set a risk standard of “three nines”—0.999, a criterion requiring that every aspect of the program be projected to a 99.9 percent success rate, or one failure for every thousand incidences.

The term pilots use to describe this type of short-burst communication is notifications. A notification is not an order or a command. It provides context, telling of something noticed, placing a spotlight on one discrete element of the world. Notifications are the humblest and most primitive form of communication, the equivalent of a child’s finger-point: I see this. Unlike commands, they carry unspoken questions: Do you agree? What else do you see? In a typical landing or takeoff, a proficient crew averages twenty notifications per minute.

Moderate Republicans like Rockefeller supported the national consensus toward advancing civil rights by promoting national legislation to protect the vote, employment, housing and other elements of the American promise denied to blacks. They sought to contain Communism, not eradicate it, and they had faith that the government could be a force for good if it were circumscribed and run efficiently. They believed in experts and belittled the Goldwater approach, which held that complex problems could be solved merely by the application of common sense. It was not a plus to the Rockefeller camp that Goldwater had publicly admitted, “You know, I haven’t got a really first-class brain.”174 Politically, moderates believed that these positions would also preserve the Republican Party in a changing America. Conservatives wanted to restrict government from meddling in private enterprise and the free exercise of liberty. They thought bipartisanship and compromise were leading to collectivism and fiscal irresponsibility. On national security, Goldwater and his allies felt Eisenhower had been barely fighting the communists, and that the Soviets were gobbling up territory across the globe. At one point, Goldwater appeared to muse about dropping a low-yield nuclear bomb on the Chinese supply lines in Vietnam, though it may have been more a press misunderstanding than his actual view.175 Conservatives believed that by promoting these ideas, they were not just saving a party, they were rescuing the American experiment. Politically, they saw in Goldwater a chance to break the stranglehold of the Eastern moneyed interests. If a candidate could raise money and build an organization without being beholden to the Eastern power brokers, then such a candidate could finally represent the interests of authentic Americans, the silent majority that made the country an exceptional one. Goldwater looked like the leader of a party that was moving west. His head seemed fashioned from sandstone. An Air Force pilot, his skin was taut, as though he’d always left the window open on his plane. He would not be mistaken for an East Coast banker. The likely nominee disagreed most violently with moderates over the issue of federal protections for the rights of black Americans. In June, a month before the convention, the Senate had voted on the Civil Rights Act. Twenty-seven of thirty-three Republicans voted for the legislation. Goldwater was one of the six who did not, arguing that the law was unconstitutional. “The structure of the federal system, with its fifty separate state units, has long permitted this nation to nourish local differences, even local cultures,” said Goldwater. Though Goldwater had voted for previous civil rights legislation and had founded the Arizona Air National Guard as a racially integrated unit, moderates rejected his reasoning. They said it was a disguise to cover his political appeal to anxious white voters whom he needed to win the primaries. He was courting not just Southern whites but whites in the North and the Midwest who were worried about the speed of change in America and competition from newly empowered blacks.

fire on the surface of the sea, and for all too many there could be no escape from that. Nor was the fire any accident, but a piece of calculated and cold-blooded callousness for which there can be no forgiveness. In addition to machine-gunning and killing unknown numbers of people in the water—the twenty occupants of one raft, for instance, were completely wiped out by a sustained burst of machine-gun fire—the Luftwaffe pilots began to drop incendiary bombs on the oil-covered sea, and set it on fire. Oil on fire is the most horrible, the cruellest death known to men. It is death by slow, agonizing torture, by drowning to escape that torture, by incineration of those parts of the body above water in a lung-gasping asphyxiation—for the flames feed on all the life-giving oxygen on the surface of the sea, and a man suffocates in the superheated and lifeless air. But drowning is quiet and simple and almost without pain, and where no hope of escape is left, only a madman would stretch himself out on the shrieking rack of agony

Chapter 5 Eyebright For Eye Strain The other night, I took a break from writing and went for a walk. It was dark, but the moon was bright giving me the light I needed to see my way up the road and back. When I returned I could see a few lights on in the house, but what really stood out was my laptop that I had left open; it’s bright white light standing out. I thought, “man, I stare at that light for hours at a time!” No wonder my eyes feel tired so often. Many people do this for eight or more hours every day. When we are viewing the screens of our devices, we blink less than normal which can cause dryness and soreness. The intense focus can also be the root of headaches and other eye related symptoms. Relief can be achieved by taking frequent ‘eye breaks’ which involve looking at something in the distance every twenty minutes or so (there are even apps to remind you!), and making sure your screen is just below eye level. But the reality is many of us are spending a lot of time focusing intently on electronic devices and straining our eyes. Symptoms of eye strain range from dry, sore, or itchy eyes, to headaches, light sensitivity and blurred vision. Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom has provided us with a wild herb that works directly to reduce the discomforts of eye strain and many other eye issues. Eyebright, a tiny flowered, weedy looking herb found wild in Europe, Asia and North America can be used to treat all eye disorders. Eyebright’s tannin content, which acts as an astringent, and its anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, combine to make the perfect eye wash. Its 3 major antioxidant vitamins bring in eye-specific support as well:  Vitamin C, in conjunction with Eyebright’s high content of Quercetin, assists in reducing swelled and runny eyes; Vitamin E has been shown to help improve visual sharpness; and Vitamin A protects the cornea and prevents dry eyes. Eyebright is the perfect solution for eyestrain symptoms, but it can also be used for many other eye disorders including conjunctivitis and itchy or runny eyes caused by allergies. Traditionally it has been used to improve memory and treat vertigo and epilepsy. Harvesting and drying Eyebright is easy. The high tannin content makes it a fast-drying herb. Simply cut the flowering tops of the plant and dry for a day or two in an oven with just the pilot light on, or in an airy spot out of the sun for several days. The dried herb will have retained its colors, though the flowers will have diminished considerably in size. How To Use Eyebright How to make an eye bath:   Boil 2 cups of water and pour over 1 cup of dried or fresh herb and let sit for 20 minutes or more. Strain well using cheesecloth or an unbleached coffee filter, store in a sterile glass jar (just dip in the boiling water before adding the herbs and let stand, open side up), cool, lid tightly and place in refrigerator for up to a week. When you wash your face in the morning or evening, use a sterile eyecup or other small sterile container to ‘wash’ your eyes with this herbal extract. If you are experiencing a painful eye condition, it is better to warm the eye bath liquid slightly before use. You can also dip cotton balls in the solution and press one on each eye (with lid closed) as a compress. Eyebright Tea: Using the same method for making an eye bath, simply drink the tea for relief of eye symptoms due to eyestrain, colds and allergies.

I WOULD NEVER FORGET the day you slipped away. A small lift of your chin and our eyes met. I only saw emptiness in a place where a wistful vulnerability used to collide with wonder. Now, a hollowness of a bottomless pit. In your eyes, I’d never seen your shade of green so dim. It caused my stomach to fall into the same somber eclipse, spiraling faster and faster with no end, no walls, only darkness. And then you averted your gaze. The flesh from my bones, the blood in my veins, the oxygen in my lungs, all of it crumbled, breaking into small pieces yet still holding on by a thread—the thread was my heart. It pumped on auto-pilot as if it couldn’t associate with the rest of my body. It’s thumping sounded in my ears, and I wished it would stop, but my heart was not ready to let go. It continued with the same steady beat, refusing to give up what was right in front of me. Maybe your eyes will return to mine, I thought—well, prayed. And I waited. Two seconds passed. Then three—waiting as my body weakened from your disconnection, and my heart continued to pump. Four. And then your back was to me. Whatever we’d had no longer existed, but I remembered everything clearly, and it wasn’t fair. Could I have accepted the hollow look in your eyes over the wonder? Surely, anything you had to offer would be better than nothing. If only you had turned back around. Had you even noticed me? And then you took a step in the opposite direction. You were gone, left in obscurity and I couldn’t bring you back, but my heart still maintained a steady beat, pumping along to a rhythm of crimson hope. “Stay with me,” you had said over and over. Who would have thought you would be the one to take a step into oblivion? I’m screaming now, can you hear me?Why didn’t you stay with me? I didn’t get to kiss you goodbye. You were gone, and even though you were only twenty feet away, I missed you. It was entirely possible you’d wake up and turn back around, or I’d wake up. Either way, it was a nightmare. I forced my eyes closed. I couldn’t watch you walk away, each step drawing more distance and less of a chance of you coming back. The darkness was better, anyway, and if I held my lids closed tight, I could see stars. I focused on the yellow and orange horizon behind my eyelids, pretending it was a sunset through the bitterness. The only warmth was the water gathering in the corners of my eyes. The tears struggled for a moment, fighting the same lie as my beating heart. I wished I could switch places with you, because I didn’t deserve a world once blessed by your light, and you didn’t deserve this at all. But this is what I deserved. In the beginning, I’d thought you’d be fun, and I’d thought I could leave you effortlessly. It was me who ripped hearts out, but now mine was the one bleeding. The walls surrounding me had been durable, indestructible, before you. And with no more walls, and no more you, I was slowly suffocating. When it came down to you and me, I’d never thought you’d be the one to slip away.

For many women who have been caring for and putting others first, midlife is the time when there’s finally space to start thinking about you. You may feel compelled to make room for you, to live with greater purpose, or to answer the call to do something big in the world. It’s during this time that we can begin to define what legacy we want to leave. If you’ve lost sight of who you are and what you want, it’s time to explore and experiment and define your own new milestones. Up until this point, there have been socially defined milestones like college, first job, maybe marriage, maybe kids, maybe grad school, maybe the first house, and then if there are kids, the kids’ milestones. The lack of milestones can make midlife feel like uncharted territory. It is, and it’s ready to be explored and conquered. If you’re reading this book, it’s time. Time for you. Time for vision. Time for clarity. Time for you to resolve unresolved issues from your childhood, adolescence, and early twenties. Because if you don’t, they are going to keep resurfacing. Trust me on this one.

We came to a stop just in front of the aircraft. The smell of engine fuel was strong enough to make your eyes water. I could see the ground all churned up and the plane’s cockpit smashed on one side. It was incredible to think anyone had even survived. Yet there he was, head bowed, kneeling on the grass maybe twenty feet away. The pilot’s uniform was in tatters. The damaged arm hung limp at his side. I didn’t see a bone, thankfully, but it was certainly bleeding badly. He was skinny in a way that made him look young – perhaps not much older than Ephraim. I’d not expected that; I’d not expected him to be crying, either. It made me more uncomfortable than ever.

Stressed out' I wish I found some better sounds no one’s ever heard I wish I had a better voice that sang some better words I wish I found some chords in an order that is new I wish I didn't have to rhyme every time I sang I was told when I get older all my fears would shrink But now I’m insecure and I care what people think My name's Blurryface and I care what you think My name's Blurryface and I care what you think Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out We're stressed out Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young How come I’m never able to identify where it’s coming from I’d make a candle out of it if I ever found it Try to sell it, never sell out of it, I’d probably only sell one It’d be to my brother, 'cause we have the same nose Same clothes homegrown a stone’s throw from a creek we used to roam But it would remind us of when nothing really mattered Out of student loans and tree-house homes we all would take the latter My name's Blurryface and I care what you think My name's Blurryface and I care what you think Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out We used to play pretend, give each other different names We would build a rocket ship and then we’d fly it far away Used to dream of outer space but now they’re laughing at our face Saying, "Wake up, you need to make money" Yeah We used to play pretend, give each other different names We would build a rocket ship and then we'd fly it far away Used to dream of outer space but now they're laughing at our face Saying, "Wake up, you need to make money" Yeah Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out Wish we could turn back time, to the good old days When our momma sang us to sleep but now we’re stressed out Used to play pretend, used to play pretend, bunny We used to play pretend, wake up, you need the money Used to play pretend, used to play pretend, bunny We used to play pretend, wake up, you need the money We used to play pretend, give each other different names We would build a rocket ship and then we’d fly it far away Used to dream of outer space but now they’re laughing at our face Saying, "Wake up, you need to make money" Yeah

No, you don't need to run. Stay with me, my blood

I’ll keep on trying, might as well, if you decide all is well. Though I am bruised, face of contusions, know I’ll keep moving.

Thirteen million Negroes in America have never known three of the “Four Freedoms” which America is supposedly spreading to the rest of the world. “Freedom from want” is a mockery to Negroes when they are last to be hired and first to be fired; when so many usually obtain only domestic work of short duration: when their wages are the lowest and their rents and food prices the highest. “Freedom from fear” is a myth to Negroes when they have no recourse against the “righteous” Southern citizenry who periodically find excuses to hold lynching parties; against the Northern citizenry who magnify every petty theft into a crime wave; or against those military police whose trigger fingers itch to soil a Negro soldier’s uniform with blood. “Freedom of speech” is meaningless to millions of Negroes who are kept in enforced ignorance and illiteracy by the most meager educational facilities in the South and who are sent to the most crowded schools in the North, so that throughout the country, 2,700,000 Negroes (or more than twenty per cent of the total Negro population) have had no schooling beyond the fourth grade. “Freedom of religion” is the only one of the “four freedoms” for the Negro which the ruling class has encouraged. The latter has hoped to keep Negroes satisfied by sky-pilots, saturated with spirituals, shouting for peace and security in another world and therefore content with their misery in this world. 47

It was early spring of 1997, about five years into my career as a journalist, a day of dark skies and cold rain. Peter Diamandis and I had gotten together for the very first time at a rundown diner on the outskirts of Chinatown, San Francisco. The diner was long and narrow, and we were seated toward the rear of the room. I was sitting with my back to the building’s far corner, Peter with his back to the rest of the restaurant. And the rest of the restaurant was staring at him. For twenty minutes, Peter had been getting more and more excited while telling me about his newly launched endeavor: the XPRIZE, a ten-million-dollar competition for the first team to build a private spaceship capable of taking three people into space twice in two weeks. Already, the Sharpie had come out. There were charts on napkins, graphs on placemats, a healthy rearrangement of condiments — the ketchup marking the end of the troposphere, the mustard the beginning of the mesosphere. About the time he got loud about how some maverick innovator working out of a garage somewhere was going to “take down NASA,” people began to stare. Peter couldn’t see them; I could. Twenty folks in the restaurant, all looking at him like he was stark raving mad. And I remember this: I remember thinking they were wrong. It’s hard to put my finger on why. Part of it was a strange hunch. Journalists tend to be cynical by nature and disbelieving by necessity. The job requires a fairly healthy bullshit detector, and that was the thing — mine wasn’t going off. More of it was that I had just come from a month in the Black Rock Desert, outside of Gerlach, Nevada, watching Craig Breedlove try to drive a car through the sound barrier. Breedlove’s effort was terrestrial-bound rocket science, for sure. The Spirit of America, his vehicle, was pretty much a miniature Saturn V — 40 feet long, 8 feet wide, 6 feet high, and powered by a turbojet engine that burned, well, rocket fuel. During those long days in the desert, I spent a lot of time talking to aerospace engineers. They all made one thing clear: Driving a car through the sound barrier was a lot harder than sending a rocket ship into low-earth orbit. In fact, when I asked Breedlove’s crew chief, former Air Force pilot turned aerospace engineer Dezso Molnar — who we’ll meet again later as the inventor of the world’s first flying motorcycle — what he was going to work on when all this was over, he said, “I want to do something easy, something relaxing. I think I’m going to build a spaceship.