Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. I think today's interview is a really good

example of the power of the human voice and how someone says something can really imbue it with

some meaning. Matthew McConaughey is on the pod today, and he's got this book out called

Just Because. It's for kids, and it's made up of these little

couplets of wisdom. One goes like this. Just because you're wailing doesn't mean that you're a

crier. Now, when I say it, it sounds kind of trite, right? Like, uh, no, duh. But imagine Matthew McConaughey saying it.

It just feels more profound, right? This interview with NPR's A. Martinez is full of him

reading these couplets and waxing poetic on what it means to grow as a human. Give it a listen.

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A few days ago, actor Matthew McConaughey told me he wished he had not been so eager to grow up.

I think we can all relate to being a kid wanting to hurry up to become a teenager, then as a

teen wanting to hurry up to become an adult.

McConaughey wrote a children's book where he's exploring some of the trials at kids' face

that can be character-building. It's called Just Because, so I asked him why, just because.

When we're young, we like to do things because we can, you know, even if we don't want to

or need to. We grow older and we get a little more

mature and we start to measure our decisions not based on just if we can, but we ask

...