Brian Koppelman – Chasing Curiosity

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:04)
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:24)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is a principal and portfolio manager at O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:46)
My guest this week is Brian Koppelman, who I met because of a mutual love of books and reading. Brian is a writer, director, and producer. His movies include Rounders, Oceans 13, and Solitary Man. More recently, he co-created the incredibly entertaining Showtime show Billions, which allowed us to have some fun talking about the world of hedge funds and investing. We discussed creativity, the importance of storytelling, and why we are all so intrigued by billionaires.
Brian's method for chasing curiosity is something everyone can learn and apply in their own lives. You're going to love this discussion. For show notes, visit investorfieldguide.com forward slash Koppelman. And now please enjoy this conversation with Brian Koppelman.
So did you do TM right from the get go when you got interested in meditating?

**Brian Koppelman** (1:33)
Yeah, for me, meditation has been an incredible gift. It has various benefits, you know, I mean, you meditate so you know, but it has, for me, it had the effect of eliminating like the physical symptoms of anxiety in a big way. And then when when the anxiety chemicals stop firing, it allows for better chemicals to fire in your brain.
So it has this benefit of, I think, some kind of increased creativity, deeper thought, and TM is simple. One of the things that held me back from meditation, you know, I did a lot of when I was in college or whenever I took acting classes or any kind of theater classes, you would always do some kind of guided three minute relaxation thing. And I was, for me, that didn't work.
It felt this kind of forced thing or then when I'd have to do breathing, concentrate on your upper lip kind of stuff. But TM is so simple to do and the way in which I was taught it, it took all the pressure off and it became easy. So about six years ago, I think I started and I meditate every day. I don't really miss a day. I mean, I could miss a day out of two or three months, but I really don't. I mean, I bet you I've missed five mornings of meditation in six years.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:51)
It's very hard to describe what it's like if you haven't done it and gotten pretty deep into it. Are there other experiences or states that you could equate to the feeling either during or immediately after meditation?

**Brian Koppelman** (3:06)
I think the only one that... There are moments when you're running.
So I used to play a lot of sports. And so the idea of the zone, right? So those days when you're on a basketball court and you see it all super clearly and you're not really performing from a place of conscious thought, there's something similar in the way that it feels then and sort of right after you have a game like that. I mean, there's a euphoria attached to that, that I don't chase in meditation.
I mean, you're in one of those times where you're kind of working in basketball in particular, you're working with these five guys and you're in that when that thing happens in a way that you have one of those games, you are afterwards completely at peace, but also there's this euphoria. Jogging though, I went through a period of doing a lot of jogging about 10 years ago and maybe seven years ago after reading Murakami's book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and I found that the days and I had started by doing Couch to 5K because I couldn't even, I had gotten it from a guy who played a lot of full court basketball. Like Couch to 5K is this incremental thing where at the end you're doing three miles, 3.2 miles and then I got to where I was running three, three and a half miles, three, four times a week and I did fine and then I would do a long run, you know, like a five mile run and at the end of the week and sometimes, running is a weird thing because sometimes it's blissful and sometimes it's hell and you just don't know, right? I mean, you run.