Do you remember Poppa Neutrino? I suspect very few people do, but for god’s sake they should! His accomplishment(s) are definitely for the history books. In 1998, Neutrino — who changed his name from David Pearlman after a brush with death some years earlier — built a raft from trash he found on the streets of New York. Pushing off from there, Neutrino sailed across the North Atlantic on his homemade raft, and actually succeeded.

And not only that, he also invented the Neutrino Clock Offense, a nearly unstoppable football play that a former New York Jets coach called “as innovative as the forward pass”.

He’s just that kind of guy.

Now, ten years after his historic voyage, Neutrino, seventy-four, is preparing to take another, similar one across the Pacific. It is around the preparation for this voyage that Alec Wilkinson has based his book, The Happiest Man in the World: An Account of the Life of Poppa Neutrino, which serves both as a biography and an in depth explanation of Neutrino’s philosophical base, a concept called Triads. He believes that that in order for a person to be truly happy, he or she must define their three deepest desires and pursue them without end.

The fun doesn’t end there: Wilkinson appeared on NPR just yesterday. Listen to the full interview.