Hi, I'm Elvis Mitchell, and thanks for listening to The Treatment.

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From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell.

It's always nice to have a guest who knows how to use the word Uber properly and not as a noun, but as an adjective.

Let's see now. I guess the Webster Dictionary defines gumption as confidence or courage.

And I would now define gumption as a new book by my guest, actor, humorist, woodworker, and now author and also director, Nick,

Nick, first of all, so good to have you back. Thank you. What a privilege to be back on your show.

Oh, I'll fix that. Talk about the title of the book. Why did you pick the title? Well, my editor, Jill

Schwartzman and I first chose the idea of a list of great Americans, and then we came up with our, the loose list. We, we argued somewhat over the final few, but we came up with the list of people and I said, okay, smart guy, now what's, what's the adhering quality here what's the glue is

the reason that these people should be in a book together and it came immediately to me it's

their gumption they all in one way or another through their curiosity and and

creativity and intrepid willingness to go against the pack mentality,

have done things with their lives and careers that inspire me and make them heroes to me.

And in my opinion, you know, that these are people that I emulate,

I hope to accomplish one-eighth

of any of their works. And I said, well, that's what should bring people to the

bookstore is the notion of gumption and learning how to find it for themselves.

It's funny because as I was reading the book, the Walt Whitman song of myself came to mind.

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