Latest / Drawn of History / Robert Greene _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _503(M4A_128K)

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Robert Greene _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _503(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I have some new tour dates to tell you about.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: We've added a third show in London on June 16th
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: at the Ebb and Tim Apollo. We also have shows
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: in New York City on May 31. Belfast in the
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: UK on June 6th. That's an added show. June 7th
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: is sold out. Idaho Falls, we've added a show on
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: June 27th. Salt Lake City, Utah on June 30th. And
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Nevada. on July 5th and 6th at Resorts
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: World Las Vegas. Get all your tickets at theovon.com slash T-O-U-R.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: And if tickets are too expensive, just wait. We'll come
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: back around. Make sure you buy them through our link
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and not off of a secondary site. Thank you guys
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: so much for your support. Today's guest is one of
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  Speaker 1: the best-selling authors of the last 20 years. You may
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: know him from his books, The 48 Laws of Power
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  Speaker 1: and Mastery, as well as The Art of Seduction and
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  Speaker 1: more books. We're going to talk about relationships, human interaction.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: We cover a lot of ground, and I'm grateful to
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  Speaker 1: talk with Mr. Robert Green.
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  Speaker 2: Shine that light on me.
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  Speaker 1: I'll sit and tell you my story next. Thank you
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  Speaker 1: so much, man. Oh, you're very welcome. Please, that's really,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: really nice of you.
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  Speaker 3: My pleasure.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: That's a wonderful gift to have, 48 Laws of Power
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, thanks for coming. Nice to meet you.
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  Speaker 3: Very nice to meet you.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, man.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, thanks. Same.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you for all the inspiration. Yeah. Thank you
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  Speaker 1: for taking the time to think and write down your
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  Speaker 1: thoughts and things that make you feel something or things
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  Speaker 1: that you feel are worth sharing with the world. Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's been what I've been doing for 26, 28
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  Speaker 3: years now. Hopefully I can keep going for another 10,
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  Speaker 3: 20 years. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Unless the government puts like a word limit on people.
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  Speaker 3: Or it's like it canceled or something for some reason. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean... I don't think so.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think we would– sometimes I
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  Speaker 1: wish the government would put a word limit.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, sure, on a lot of people. Yeah. God, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: That would be wonderful. You'd have to really articulate.
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  Speaker 3: You mean for books or just in talking?
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  Speaker 1: Maybe only in talking because books– it's more of a choice.
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  Speaker 1: People can go to choose to look in it and
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  Speaker 1: read it. But talking, it's like, yeah, you only– you
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  Speaker 1: got like a.
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  Speaker 3: Of course, some people would have more, some people would
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  Speaker 3: have less if they're really obnoxious or irritating. We'd cut
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  Speaker 3: it down to like 200 words a day.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe your neighbors vote on how many you have
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  Speaker 1: or there's– but yeah, I think it would be great.
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  Speaker 1: Then if you're– yeah, like especially like if a guy's–
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  Speaker 1: like a lot of guys would be like, hey, guys,
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  Speaker 1: come over to the house today. Marjorie only has four
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  Speaker 1: words left this month.
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  Speaker 3: That would be wonderful, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So the good times over here, you know, we're going
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  Speaker 1: to be able to do whatever we want.
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  Speaker 3: Well, the ancient Greeks had this thing called Ostraki, where
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  Speaker 3: they would put on little clay tablets, fragments of a
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  Speaker 3: clay pot. You could write down the name of somebody
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  Speaker 3: that you wanted to banish from the city. Yes. And
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  Speaker 3: then every year they would collect that and they would
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  Speaker 3: banish the person who got the most votes because it
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  Speaker 3: was inevitably the most obnoxious person in the whole city.
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  Speaker 3: Can you imagine how wonderful that would be if we
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  Speaker 3: had something like that?
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  Speaker 1: I would love that. Well, you would think if we
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  Speaker 1: get to vote people forward, we should be able to
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  Speaker 1: also vote people– Off the island. Yeah. Right?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, that would be so wonderful. And it could even
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  Speaker 1: start in your own home, you know?
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  Speaker 3: With your kids.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, okay. I think it's up to the– I mean,
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  Speaker 1: it would be quite a topic for family discussion. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: here it is right here. Ostracism.
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  Speaker 3: That's where the word ostracism comes from. Wow, that's pretty cool.
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  Speaker 3: They got that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was an Athenian democratic procedure in which any
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  Speaker 1: citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for
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  Speaker 1: 10 years. So you get a chance to get it together.
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  Speaker 1: While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the citizen,
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  Speaker 1: ostracism was often used preemptively. It was used as a
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  Speaker 1: way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to
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  Speaker 1: the state or a potential tyrant. Though in many cases,
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  Speaker 1: popular opinion often informed the expulsion. Wow.
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  Speaker 3: Wow, that's pretty cool they put that up there.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. Broken pottery.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I was saying.
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  Speaker 1: Shards were used. Served as a kind of scrap paper.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. That'd be exciting.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it would.
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  Speaker 1: It would, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Let's bring it back.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's bring it back, huh? Be a movement. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you've written so much, man. 48 Laws of Power, Mastery
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  Speaker 1: are the books that I've absorbed the most of. Okay. Um,
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  Speaker 1: which is so nice to have this. This is so cool, man.
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  Speaker 1: I really lit up when you gave me that.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: Um, and a lot of what we talk about on
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  Speaker 1: this show for a lot of young men and women
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  Speaker 1: is purpose, you know, and, and what it means to
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  Speaker 1: have purpose and how to find purpose. And you talk
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  Speaker 1: a lot about that in mastery, um, about purpose. Do
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  Speaker 1: you think that everyone has purpose?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's a difficult question to answer. I mean, uh,
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  Speaker 3: I believe that everyone, the way I look at it
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  Speaker 3: is you, Theo, were born with a DNA that will
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  Speaker 3: never be replicated in the past or in the future.
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  Speaker 3: It's a unique marker of you, right? So genetically, there
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  Speaker 3: is something different about you. Weird, odd, gray, whatever you
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  Speaker 3: want to put it, okay? And it's like something that's
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  Speaker 3: planted at your birth. It's what makes you different from
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  Speaker 3: everybody else. It's even what makes you different from your parents, right?
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  Speaker 1: Right?
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  Speaker 3: I mean, you do inherit their genetics, but it's always different, okay?
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  Speaker 3: And so, that's like a seed at your birth. If
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  Speaker 3: you cultivate that seed, if you cultivate your uniqueness, it
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  Speaker 3: gives you a purpose in life. It's why you are unique.
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  Speaker 3: You can look at it as if somebody or it's
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  Speaker 3: just nature intended it to be this way, but it's
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  Speaker 3: what makes you you. It's your energy. It's your character.
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  Speaker 3: It's your awareness. It's your sense of humor. It's what
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  Speaker 3: draws you to certain things, what you hate about certain things.
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  Speaker 1: It's you.
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  Speaker 3: If you listen to that, it's like a voice inside
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  Speaker 3: of your head. Instead of listening to all the other
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  Speaker 3: bullshit that's around you, what your parents are saying, what
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  Speaker 3: your teachers are saying, what your friends are saying. If
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  Speaker 3: you listen to that voice clearly, it directs you. It
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  Speaker 3: gives you a purpose. Now, I'm saying everybody has that potential.
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  Speaker 3: But quite clearly, not everybody, in fact, few people actually
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  Speaker 3: go that far. So if you see somebody out there
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  Speaker 3: in the public eye, yourself or others, who's reached a
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  Speaker 3: level of fame and success, you can say that there's
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  Speaker 3: nobody else like them out there. They're unique. They're one
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  Speaker 3: of a kind, right? You can say that about a
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  Speaker 3: Steve Jobs. You can say that about Elon Musk. You
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  Speaker 3: can say that about political figures, et cetera, et cetera.
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  Speaker 1: Richard Simmons, Mr. T.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. 50 Cent, somebody I've worked with. There's only
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  Speaker 3: one person like them. That's because they found their uniqueness
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  Speaker 3: and they brought it out and they cultivated it. They're
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  Speaker 3: not afraid of it. And that's what gives them their purpose.
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  Speaker 3: A lot of people are afraid of being different. That's
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  Speaker 3: one of the worst things that can happen to you.
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  Speaker 3: Because it's what makes you different that is what makes
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  Speaker 3: you powerful. So to answer your question in my long-winded way,
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  Speaker 3: everybody has a purpose. but not everybody follows it. Not
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  Speaker 3: everybody connects to it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess there's a lot of fear in it, huh?
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  Speaker 1: Because you're going to be different. You're going to have
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  Speaker 1: to choose to, people are going to look at you.
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  Speaker 1: The eyes of the tribe are going to turn towards you.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: If you try to step out into a different march
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  Speaker 1: than the group.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes I would see like, yeah. Sometimes you
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  Speaker 1: ever be like on a floor somewhere and you just
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  Speaker 1: see one ant by itself.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And you're like, this guy is a gangster.
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  Speaker 3: Well, they're called scout ads. I mean, I wish they
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  Speaker 3: were gangsters, but what they're doing is they're looking for
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  Speaker 3: food or something, and they're signaling to the army, hey, guys,
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  Speaker 3: here's where it's happening. Let's follow me.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, damn. Yeah, I thought they were dudes that were like,
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  Speaker 1: you know what? I'm going to do something different.
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  Speaker 3: Well, that would be the more interesting interpretation.
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  Speaker 1: So it's not that some people don't have a purpose.
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  Speaker 1: It's just that some people are able to hear a
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  Speaker 1: voice inside of them that directs them more towards their purpose.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so what is it? I call it
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  Speaker 3: in mastery, I call it a primal inclination. So we
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  Speaker 3: see that in certain people. So at a very, very
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  Speaker 3: young age, and I maintain it happens to everybody, but
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  Speaker 3: you forget about it. So you look at like Albert Einstein.
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  Speaker 3: He was like four years old and his father gave
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  Speaker 3: him a compass. And he was like mesmerized by it
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  Speaker 3: because it meant that there was some kind of force
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  Speaker 3: out there that was moving the needle of the compass,
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  Speaker 3: an invisible force. For a child, that was an overwhelming
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  Speaker 3: thought that there's something out there in the universe that
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  Speaker 3: is moving something, but you can't see it. It had
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  Speaker 3: a lasting influence on his whole way of science and
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  Speaker 3: wanting to discover these unseen forces. Tiger Woods, when he
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: was like two years old, his father would be hitting
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: golf balls in the garage. And he would be going,
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: the little baby tiger would be going crazy. Like, I
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  Speaker 3: got to do this. He was so enamored with just
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  Speaker 3: the physicality of it. He had to do it. I
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  Speaker 3: could go on and on and on with athletes, with dancers,
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  Speaker 3: with writers. I'm not putting myself on their level, but
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  Speaker 3: I had a relationship when I was six years old
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  Speaker 3: or so to words. Words just mesmerized me. I couldn't
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  Speaker 3: believe that there was a word that meant something. I
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  Speaker 3: was entranced by the sound of it, by the look
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  Speaker 3: of it, et cetera. Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Well, even just to think that a bunch of letters
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  Speaker 1: would get together and party like that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I remember first they taught us letters, and
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  Speaker 1: I was like, okay. But then the words showed up,
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  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. They're in gangs.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: You know, there's some real turf wars out here.
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  Speaker 3: That's right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I guess the best way for a parent
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  Speaker 1: then to probably help associate their child or give them
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  Speaker 1: the best opportunity to find or to bring their purpose
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  Speaker 1: to a boil would be to present them with more options,
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  Speaker 1: do you feel like? Like is that kind of what
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  Speaker 1: you're saying?
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  Speaker 3: Well, yes and no. I mean parents try to do
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  Speaker 3: too much sometimes. So children are more interesting. They're more powerful.
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  Speaker 3: They're smarter than we think they are. We don't give
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  Speaker 3: them enough credit. So they find their ways to the
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  Speaker 3: things that excite them and interest them. What you're looking
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  Speaker 3: for in your child is that spark, that look in
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  Speaker 3: their eye of excitement. They can't control it. I'm so
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  Speaker 3: excited by this. I have to do it. It could
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: be physical activity. It could be music. It could be math.
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  Speaker 3: It could be technology. It could be objects and their colors.
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  Speaker 3: When they have that excitement, lean into it. Don't try
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: and tell them, oh, I don't know. You can't make
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  Speaker 3: a living doing that. You want to be a rock
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  Speaker 3: and roll star. You'll never make a living. You got
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: to go become a lawyer. Cut that crap out. Let
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: them go into their lane of excitement. Encourage it because
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  Speaker 3: that is a sign of what I'm talking about, that
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  Speaker 3: purpose that you were born with.
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  Speaker 1: Is there like certain ways or times or moments that
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  Speaker 1: you would create for yourself or that you would suggest
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  Speaker 1: people create for themselves to try and hear that voice
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  Speaker 1: of purpose?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's a very interesting question and it's a very
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  Speaker 3: difficult one because I get a lot of people writing
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: to me saying, You know, Robert, I hear what you said.
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  Speaker 3: I've read your book, but I have no idea. I
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  Speaker 3: can't hear it anymore, right? I'm lost.
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  Speaker 1: Right, because there's still a lot of guys who are
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  Speaker 1: young adolescents and middle-aged and who are like, well, I
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  Speaker 1: still don't know what my purpose is.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, so when you're younger, there's hope. Like when
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  Speaker 3: you're 16, you'll find it, man. And I've helped people
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  Speaker 3: who are younger find that path.
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  Speaker 1: It's easier.
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  Speaker 3: By the time you're 30 or 40, it gets more
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  Speaker 3: and more difficult. When you're 50... I don't know. It's possible,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: but it's harder and harder and harder. I didn't really
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: find my niche, if you will, until I was about
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  Speaker 3: 38 years old. But until then, I knew it was writing.
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  Speaker 3: I just couldn't figure out what kind of writing. But
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  Speaker 3: you have to go through a process. The problem that
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  Speaker 3: most people have is they're not connected to themselves. They're
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: too outer directed. They're not inner directed. So what you
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: need to be doing is you need to be looking
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  Speaker 3: at yourself, not listening to others, not listening to what's
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: on social media, not listening to what your peers are saying,
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  Speaker 3: but listening to yourself, who you are, what really truly
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  Speaker 3: excites you. You have to cut out all that other
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: stuff that your parents told you that other people are
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: telling you. And so you're looking for signs of things
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: that bring back, you're looking for your childhood again, for
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  Speaker 3: that child inside of you that got so excited about
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  Speaker 3: those things, but that you forgot. There is not a
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: child on the planet that doesn't have that. In Mastery,
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  Speaker 3: I have a story in there about a woman named
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin was born with severe autism. It
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: looked like she would have to be committed for her
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: entire life to hospitalization. She was very deep on the spectrum.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: But she had a teacher that kind of slowly drew
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: her out. And she discovered at a very early age
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  Speaker 3: that that excitement was animals. And a lot of autistic
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  Speaker 3: people and people on the spectrum a very intense relationship
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  Speaker 3: to animals. It's humans that they can't quite relate to,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: but animals excite the hell out of them. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Humans can be so trashy too.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. And they can be so deceptive and tricky, but
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  Speaker 3: animals are genuine, right? She found animals I love and
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: she became a scientist dealing with animals, animal behavior. And
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: so somebody born with deep, deep autism found her way
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  Speaker 3: to that voice.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: So I bring that up as If someone like that
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  Speaker 3: can do it, anybody can do it. But it's that
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  Speaker 3: she really, really wanted to break out of the shell
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  Speaker 3: that she had been in. So it's the level of desire.
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  Speaker 3: If you're 20 years old and you're lost and you're
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: worried about it, but you're hungry and you don't want
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: to be like your whole life wandering, you have a
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: good chance. But a lot of people don't have that energy.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: They don't have that desire. It's not strong enough in them.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: And it's going to be a very much more difficult process.
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  Speaker 1: Bring up Temple Grandin. I know she created, didn't she
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: create a more, I don't know if that's the right word,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: heartwarming way to decease the animals? Yes.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, you put it more or less correctly. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: her idea was cattle. She had a very deep connection
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: to cows and cattle. They're going to be slaughtered anyway.
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  Speaker 3: She's not going to end. She herself eats steak, et cetera.
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: She's not going to end it. But if you're going
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: to have to kill them so that, you know, for
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: people who eat meat, then let's do it as humanely
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: as possible. So she created a way. One of the
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: worst things is the whole process of how we slaughter animals.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: It's so horrifying for them. Right. So she had found
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: a way to make them comfortable so that they don't
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: really know where they're going when they're being led to
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: the slaughterhouse. Whether she knew exactly how to comfort them,
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: how to make them feel comfortable. Soothed in those moments.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: A little more bait and sweat. Like, yeah, just something to... Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: just not make it such so horrific.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Not make it such a haunted house.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, because also when they're so distressed, they release
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: all these kind of hormones and things that are actually
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: very bad for us as well.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And then it's in the food. I believe that a ton. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So does everyone have the chance to find their purpose?
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Say if somebody like, you know, they... accidentally got a
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: girlfriend pregnant in high school, something like that. They, you know,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: and they got really put off track, uh, developed a
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: lot more responsibility because sometimes responsibility takes away the freedom
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: that you have, even just the space in your life
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: to feel anything. Um, but those people aren't, they don't
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: not have a purpose. Maybe they just haven't been able to,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: to reach it.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah. I mean, these things happen to everyone. We're
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: all human beings. We're flawed. We don't, we don't have
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: We can't see the future, especially when we're young. We
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: make mistakes. We do things that we would later regret,
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: et cetera. And I've dealt with people who say, you know,
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: I'm stuck in a horrible, horrible job. I have, just
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: like your scenario, I have a child I have to support,
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: a family to support, and I'm flipping burgers. I'm working
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: at Dairy Queen. I don't care whatever it is, right?
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: What do I do? Yeah, selling things, selling, yeah, braiding
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: hair at the beach, something like that.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: Or telemarketing back in the day. You know, so what
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: do I do? Well, the first thing you have to
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: do is you have to realize that you have to
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: want to get out of it and you have to
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: want it badly enough. So you got to figure out
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: a path out of this trap that you're in. And
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: it is a trap because if you're living paycheck to paycheck,
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: it becomes a habit and it's going to stay with
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: you your whole life. So every time there isn't a paycheck,
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: you're going to freak out and you're going to go
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: get the quickest, easiest job that you can get. You
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: have to break out of that. So I tell people,
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: even in the most Despondent circumstances. First of all, think
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: of what is that childhood thing that you loved? It
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: doesn't have to be a very specific job. It's just
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: something that excited you, all right? Okay, we want to
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: start moving in that direction. So let's say you're flipping burgers,
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: but what really excites you is video games and programming,
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: which is fine. That could be a path in life, right? Mm-hmm.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: But you want to be a programmer. You want to
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: be the person creating video games. All right? So let's
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: do some research. What is the first step that usually,
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: what's the entry-level job that people take? What is the
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: education that will lead to that kind of thing? All right?
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Here's step, it's like three possibilities. You go to school,
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: you study this, you get a job doing that, whatever. Okay?
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: You can choose one of them. Right? And you're going
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: to start doing it right away. So you still have
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: your job. You're still paying for your family. but you're
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: going to go to school at night. You're going to
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: take a side job. When you go home at night,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: you're going to study things on the internet, which is
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: an amazing resource that nobody had 30 years ago. You're
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: going to learn new skills in your spare time, even
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: in the only two or three hours a day that
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: you have. You're going to create a little space in
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: your brain for moving in that direction, a little wedge
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: that's going to open up. And I've had this feedback,
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: just knowing that that's happening, just knowing that's a possibility,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: that I don't have to be flipping burgers, that I
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: don't have to be this horrifying, soul-sucking salesman my whole life.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: And that I can go this other route. It's enough
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: to excite the hell out of you. It's enough to
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: get you out of it. It's enough to give your
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: life some meaning and some purpose.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you will build. You will follow that
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: sort of thing. That energy, it's like it really becomes
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: a magnet in your life.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. How did you find your way? What was it?
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: Can you go back?
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember. Well, I wanted to. I think I
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: wanted to make my mother laugh. You know, my mother
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: was always stressed out.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: And I don't mean to laugh.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: No, it's funny.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: It's terrible.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: It's it is what it is, you know, and she would.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: But sometimes she'd go lay in her bikini outside and
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: have a beer or whatever. And so we'd left her
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: alone on that during those hours. But otherwise, I think
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: I wanted to make her laugh.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: The second I saw This may sound crazy to some people.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I remember being like in a– it might have just
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: been my bed or– I don't think it was a
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: crib because I hate– when people say that I remember
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: at four months old like that, I think that's insane.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: You don't remember shit. Yeah, you've been using. But I
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: remember one time I just remember being in my bed
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: and my brother like poked his head up and I
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: just remember it just made me laugh. And it was
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: like the first thing I remember that made me feel
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: so good And I just, I loved it.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: That's interesting.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: And then when I saw like if somebody laughed that they,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: even if they were sad, like and you could get
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: them to laugh, it could, that someone could be crying
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: and then a laugh could get through that. And man,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I just found that to, it was like watching lightning.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: It's like power.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was, and it was just like watching lightning,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I think. And so, yeah, I think I loved that.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And then the other thing that ever, the happiest day
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: I ever had in my life, I was in, I
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: was a student actually on an exchange thing and I
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: was in India, um, the country. And, um, we had to,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: we worked at this children's home, uh, clearing the land
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: or something so they can make a playground there. And
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I just, I still remember it was the greatest feeling
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: that I ever had just that this one day, um, So, yeah,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: those are things in my life.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: How old were you?
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: The India part, I was probably 20. But the laughter
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: was just most of my youth. I just became obsessed
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: with laughter. Because it was a trump card. It was
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: like it could be a sad moment. It could already
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: be a happy moment. You could take it to another level.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: Well, let's just imagine a scenario where you're 26 and
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: you're you and you somehow got off on the wrong
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: track somewhere. Would you be able to remember that and
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: remember the power and the feeling that you had with
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: that laughter when you were a kid and then go
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: back to it in some way?
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I would notice. I feel like it's
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: kind of easy to know what really makes you feel good.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I just think that sometimes circumstances have sailed our ship
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: kind of far in other directions. And so we may
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: be able to appease ourselves. but we may not get
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: to a level of mastery of it in this lifetime.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Um, just because of circumstances, you know? Um, and then
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: if people, another thing I noticed is like a lot
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: of times, you know, some people aren't always going to
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: be trying to achieve and do more. Uh, I noticed I, I,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of times I enjoy also just feeling content.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Like if I can feel content, that is a victory, right?
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Um, Like, what do you mean?
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Like, just if I can feel at peace.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Right?
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Like, not.
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: Not only.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Maybe I might be a little bummed if I'm not
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: striving for something, but I'm not upset that I'm not
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: at a level or in a place with something, a
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: certain thing, right? So being just content. Like, is there.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with being content.
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: No. The only thing is.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: If you're completely lost in life, if you hadn't become
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: a comedian, you've gone on the wrong track, it's harder
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: to have those moments of contentment because it gnaws at
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: you and you become a little bit bitter. And as
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: you get older and those childhood dreams start getting fading,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: you feel resentful and some dark energy can start taking over.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: And that contentment can be harder and harder to come by.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: But to have moments of peace, to have moments where
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: you're just happy and you've got– your kids are on
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: the– you're raising them well, et cetera, et cetera, that's fine.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: That's beautiful. That's another form of mastery. I just think–
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: and I could be wrong because I'm not inside the
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: skin of other people and I've only known myself, I
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: have to say. But if– I can say that pretty confidently.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: But– You know, I have the feeling that if you
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: don't know what you're doing and you're just flailing around
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: in life, it's hard to have those peaceful moments in
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: your day-to-day existence. You may find them, but what will
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: happen is you will try and grab, because this is
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: the nature of the human animal, you will try to
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: grab that contentment through quick things, through drugs, through online porn,
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: through whatever will give you that quick, instant little... buzz
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: of gratification. And that'll become your habit. And you'll feel
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: kind of, I don't know if it's contentment, you know,
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: you'll feel something, some form of pleasure. But those pleasures
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: become harder and they become smaller and smaller and smaller
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: and quicker and quicker and quicker. And so it's a
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: trap that you fall into. So I still believe that
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: if you figure out what you were meant to do
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: in life, it opens up doors to having other moments
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: where you don't have to constantly be pursuing you don't
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: have to constantly be striving you know like I can
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: sit down and I can watch a basketball game tonight
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: and enjoy it and not feel like I'm wasting my
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: time because I worked so much hard during the day.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Right yeah I think that's kind of what I'm getting
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: at is it doesn't have to be occupational finding your
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: purpose no yeah yeah because sometimes I think the best
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: thing that a person could be could be a parent.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: For sure believe me we need more of them yeah
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: God damn, that should be like a job that people
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: should get a degree for.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: It really should. Yeah, I would– if government subsidized parenting,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: good parenting, wow, I would be.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: Or put people to school to go learn how to
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: do it, yeah.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, well, there should be at least a famphlet
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: when you leave the hospital. Yeah. that says, hey, these
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: are seven things you have to do, right?
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: But, you know, I think I don't have kids, so
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: it's easy for me to say.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, me either. So we're just obviously a couple
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: of grifters yelling at people.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, right.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: But, no, I do think, though, that there should be
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: something that tells a parent basic things because you can't
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: just assume everyone has the knowledge just because they can
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: conceive a child.
• 27:43
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  Speaker 1: Thank you. You talk a lot about how unique humans are,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: you know, and just how rare. Like, how unique is
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: it that a person exists? How unique is an individual? Well.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: It's something I'm going into in my new book. And
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to tell you how you must realize how
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: strange it is for you to be alive at this moment.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: I don't know if that's quite what your question is.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: No, I think it is kind of. How rare is it?
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I want to be able to remember how rare
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: I am. And not just me. I mean that as
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: a voice of a human. I want to be I
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: want to remind myself more often that I am one
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: of one. And not me, but every person.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, the way I try to describe it in
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: my new book, I'm not going to go into the
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: full thing because it'll take hours. But first of all,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: the idea that our planet has life on it is
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: incredibly strange and weird. It was like an accident, totally fortuitous.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: We know best. Billions of other planets that have no life, right?
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: So something snapped 3 billion years ago, 4 billion years
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: ago that we don't understand.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: All right. From that point on, life evolved in this
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: weird fashion. And there was this moment about 600 million
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: years ago called the– the word escapes me. It's a
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: period in history. Mesoloic? No, no, no. It's before that.
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: It will come to me a little later. 600 million
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: years ago? 600 million years ago. Suddenly life became complex.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: It'll come to me at some point. Maybe it's the
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: Cretaceous period.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Spring or something?
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: Cretaceous. Cretaceous. Cretaceous. So suddenly complex life evolved.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Cambrian explosion.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: Cambrian explosion. Thank you, sir.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Sorry, not to cut you off. But 600 million years ago,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the Earth experienced an evolutionary event which has never been repeated,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the Cambrian explosion of So a huge increase in new
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: life forms, many of which lay the foundations for the
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: body plans of all subsequent animal life. Wow, I've never
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: even heard of that.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so there's this guy, Stephen Jay Gould, who
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: wrote a book about the Cambrian explosion and how there
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: were these forms of life, and he has pictures in
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: his book, of these really grotesque-looking creatures that lived in
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: the ocean because all life was in water then. And
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: if only one plan survived, which is the plan that
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: all bodies basically have, right, with a head, et cetera,
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: et cetera. But if that hadn't happened, it almost didn't.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: The strangest, most weird-looking forms of life would be walking
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: around this planet. You have to see these pictures to
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: believe it, right? Anyway, that happened. Okay, I can go
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: on and on and on. Then there were the dinosaurs.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: And the dinosaurs disappeared because of, we now know, because
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: of a meteor, what do you call it, a.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Heat or something?
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. A meteor hit the planet Earth. Oh,
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: a big bang. Yeah.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Or like a.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: A meteor wiped everything out.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It shook the whole thing, huh? About 60 million
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: years ago, right? It ended up to the extinction of dinosaurs. Damn.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: But that meteor could have easily missed planet Earth. It
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: had shifted just a slight degree. It could have hit
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: somewhere else, but it landed in exactly the spot in
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: the Yucatan Peninsula that caused the greatest amount of damage.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: If that hadn't happened, dinosaurs would still be roaming the planet.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: And then we wouldn't.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: We wouldn't. Humans, about 80,000 years ago, nearly went extinct.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: There were only about 8,000 of us. We had been
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: decimated by various illnesses, et cetera. We very nearly went
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: extinct as a species, okay? So humans surviving all of that,
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: surviving that life evolves, surviving that life evolved in the
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: way that it did, that dinosaurs disappeared, that mammals came on,
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: is extremely unlikely. And then add on to this, Theo,
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: the fact that your parents met and there was a
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: chance that they, the chance that they met was probably
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: a bit unlikely. It could have easily been somebody else
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: who was your father, right? And then you would still
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: be you, but you wouldn't be you exactly. You'd be different.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: Multiply that by 70,000 generations going back to the earliest humans.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: If they hadn't met in a certain way, if they
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: hadn't met each other, you would be completely, you wouldn't
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: be you at all, right? So the fact that you
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: are here, the odds against it are so astronomical that you,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: I say in the book, you must have to sit
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: down on your knees and it's like almost like a religion.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: You must think it is so strange. It is so
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: miraculous that I'm so grateful that I am who I am.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: It is incredible. There's a reason for that. Yeah.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's something, yeah, that we all should, yeah,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: it's like, That you were here like you were– there
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: was purpose in you. There was some– the universe chose this.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Whoever you are, the universe chose you. Whatever pain, whatever prosperity,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: whatever this walk is right now, that you were chosen
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: for it. It's like– I feel like it just gives–
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it helps me have some ownership
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: when I'm thinking of myself or– I don't know what
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: it does for me, but I think it's important to
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: hear that because I think more than ever now, it
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: feels like that individuality is getting lost for how rare
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: we are to exist. Like no, we only, only some
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: of us have the same fingerprint. None of us have
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: same fingerprints, right? That's crazy, bro.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: You know? And I think also is this, the, I
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: think I read that nobody has the same sphincter either,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: which is, yeah, the 11th fingerprint.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: Never thought of it that way.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's crazy. Just to think that at both ends,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: they really got you sealed off very uniquely. But I
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: feel like for as unique as we are, we're losing
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: individuality sometimes. And that's a problem that I feel like
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: is going on today.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: A lot of it is social media. I mean, you
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: don't want to beat that drum too much. But I
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: think there's some truth to it. We're too much attuned
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: to what other people are doing. And it's hard for
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: us to think about what we want, what makes us different.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: You know, a lot of young people going to high school.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, I remember when I was in high school
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: being weird and different. You could be laughed at. But
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: I think it's much, much worse right now.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: Yes, I do. I mean, I was kind of a
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: loner in high school. I was a hippie. I had
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: very long hair.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: Did a lot of drugs.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, buddy. Oh, there you are right there, Bobby Green.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Robert Green right there. Wow.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: That's me. That's 19-year-old Robert.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: Bro, you look like you were looping right there, gooming
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: on some boomers.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we were doing a lot of LSD at that time. Yeah.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: You can see the tie-dyed sofa behind me.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: They had a tie-dye sofa yeah look.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: At that look at that thing yeah we were like
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: getting into the grateful dead if you can believe it oh.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah american beauty yeah that album was.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: Out yeah working class dead was the one that working
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: man's dead was the one that we were that came
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: out just at that time.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Would you who would you who would you uh take
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: it with by yourself or would you take it with
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: friends oh we.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: Took it with friends yeah uh You really want me
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: to go into this?
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: The drug that we really, really, really liked at this point,
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: we're talking about the 70s, I'm an old dude, man,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: was peyote.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: Wow, never got to do it.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: It was really big because this was in Berkeley, and
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: it was like the trendy thing. There were these buttons
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: from cactus from Mexico or Arizona, and if you ate them,
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: you would be incredibly sick. So you had to pull
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: out all these little hairs. so that you could digest
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: them without throwing up. Then you had to, and they
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: tasted absolutely horrible. You had to put them into these
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: tiny little pieces and eat it in like peanut butter
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: or like a milkshake so you didn't have to just
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: swallow it. Man, you'd be tripping like you can't believe it.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: It was just unbelievable. Totally transcendent. The most spiritual drug
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: of all.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah. How would it get more, because spiritual is
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: a unique word to use, because LSD would get freaky
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: and weird sometimes. mushrooms would get more spiritual I felt
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: like definitely so peyote you felt like went even more
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: spiritual than that.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: I think so I think so I mean I did
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: it probably maybe about a dozen times when I was
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: younger yeah and and I've done LSD and I've done
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: mushrooms are pretty spiritual kind of revealing all this crap
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: of my youth.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: But no I think it's important a lot of people
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: do these things especially psychedelics are coming back more than
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: ever now.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: Well I must say I don't do them anymore I
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: mean I've I've tried little tiny micro dosing of mushrooms.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: I don't do it anymore. But it had a very
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: positive impact on me. It opened my mind to things
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: that I will never forget, right? Experiences that still resonate
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: in my brain that I may not create through drugs,
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: but I create through other means. I like try to
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: return to spiritual sensations that are very powerful. So those
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: drugs could be used, could be, I say, for very
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: positive purposes. They shouldn't be used just for partying and
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: just for forgetting yourself, but they can be used to
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: open what Aldous Huxley called the doors of perception. Yeah.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: That's a great way. Yeah. That's the biggest thing is
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: just the perception because perception is how you change everything
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: about your life. Like, um, yeah, mushrooms have helped me
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: many times to have perception adjustment, to realize where I
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: was being, uh, not giving myself enough grace or, just being, uh,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: to trying to be control things to, you know, just
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: to relate, just to have a little more, because the
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: mushrooms is like a sponge, you know, just to add
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: a little bit more space into my, into your, how
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: you view things or see things. And it could be anything,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: a relationship. I mean, there's business situations. I mean, they
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: can help so much. I feel like, um, and they're
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: being used more than ever. It seems like, you know,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: because yeah, I've microdosed before that just microdosing. I'll just like,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: During the day at one point I'll just start, I'll
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: see a mosquito and I'll kind of follow him around
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: the house for a minute. Then I'll go back to work.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: But that's about as like weird as it gets. That's
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: pretty damn weird. Yeah, I'm just kind of curious, you know.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Just doing a little air traffic control.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: Are you seeing the little ant on the ground there?
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, to see where he's going. I'm like, tell me
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: if you're a scout. Yeah. Hey, look, dude, if you're
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: trying to get away from something, blink once, you know.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: So how long did peyote last? Did it last for
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: like a long time?
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: You mean when you took it? Yeah. Well, like all
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: those drugs, you would take effect after about 40 minutes
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: or so.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: And then it would be very intense for about four
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: or five hours, and then it would kind of wear off.
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: It's kind of had the same sort of span as mushrooms.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: It just depended on how many buttons you consumed. If
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: you consumed like a dozen buttons, man, you'd be tripping
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: for like several days. Yeah. I don't think we went
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: that far.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, your damn elevator car at that point, dude. You're
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: going up, bro.
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: But, I mean, it has an incredible history among Native
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: Americans and Mexicans.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what did they use it for? Can you bring
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: that up, Nick? I want to learn, like, if there
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: was a distinctive, like, were they trying to talk to
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: a god? Because I can't imagine the first time they
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: took it, it must have blown their minds.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: Well, it was the first time people experimented with all
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: kinds of drugs, you know. That fascinates me, how they
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: didn't kill themselves, how they knew that it had that effect.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: In the late 1800s, the modern-day Native American church was formed,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: a key part of which is the ingestion of peyote
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: as a religious sacrament during all-night prayer ceremonies. In this context,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: peyote is not viewed as a drug but rather as
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: a medicine for healing. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that kind of
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: reminds me of how ayahuasca is these days.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: It is very much so. I've never done it. I
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: think ayahuasca sounds even more intense. Yeah, so I don't know,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: but I think it's similar to that, yeah.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I've had some good experiences with it. For me, it's
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: been very therapeutic.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Oh, really?
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think of it as a drug, and
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: I understand if other people do, that's fine. I think
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: of it as a medicinal drug, but I don't think
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: of it as a party. You know, it's very painful
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: to go sit there and you go through the filing
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: cabinet of who you are and pull out some files
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: and kind of burn them in a way, you know?
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I'm a little bit frightened about that
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: myself at my age, you know?
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, you could rock in there, I think.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: You think so?
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't– I find it to be actually not
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: super invasive. I could get up and go pee or
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: go get a snack in the kitchen and then go
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: sit back down and drop back into the meditation.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I felt very okay with that.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: Well, I'll consider it. Yeah.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: How do you feel like we're– like, well, one thing
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: that I worry about with society today is since we
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: watch so much of each other, right? We're never spending
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: that time like getting to know ourselves kind of. We're not,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: you know, I remember we used to just lie around
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: all the time. And sure, it seemed like you were bored,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: but your brain was like maybe coming up slowly building
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: ideas or, you know, forming like thoughts or hopes, dude.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: I remember you used to be able to hope so
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: much because you would hope you would see this girl
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: across town or you would hope that she was going
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: to be at summer camp. There was just no way
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: to know everything. So you had so much hope all
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: the time. And now there's so much information that I
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: feel like it's taken away a lot of hope. But
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I feel like even more so that– and I don't
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: want to be like Debbie Downer. There's still hope. But
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's subdued hope. But I feel like
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: if you're looking– if we're always watching stuff, then do
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: we start to just mimic it instead of being individual?
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: That's what I worry about. Do you think that's possible?
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Like if we're always– do we become more mimics– than creators,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: and has it always been that way, do you think?
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: No, I think things are getting worse. Of course, I
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: don't know. I don't have, you know, I can't see everything,
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: but my feeling is it is getting worse. I mean,
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: you know, I do believe that there is something as
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: vague as that word is that is like a soul
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: that a person has, and that soul is connected to
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: who you are as an individual. Like, you're kind of
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: born with it, right?
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: And when you know who you are, when you go
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: deep into it, when you connect to things that you
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: really love, when you connect to your memories from childhood,
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: to things that make you different, that soul's kind of alive.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: It feels alive. It feels vibrant. It feels right. The
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: feeling of rightness, which is something people don't understand. Some
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: things feel right. Some things don't. Okay. And I know
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: for myself, and I'm guilty of it, if I spend
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: an hour on Instagram chasing this thing or that thing
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: or wasting my time on this website or whatever, I
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: have this feeling like a bit of my soul was
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: sucked out of me.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: That I kind of lost something, that I'm just this
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: kind of machine that's just processing data and I'm not
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: a human being anymore. And I feel that soul kind of,
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: it's like a vapor that's escaping me, right?
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like they got me, they tricked me.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: The second I set it down, I feel like, It
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: almost takes a couple of seconds for you to get
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: out of this trance.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: In a way.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: It is a trance.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: You're like, dang, they tricked me.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: They did. They did trick me. Yeah.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of the algorithms and just the entertainment
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: value of it is so strong. Sure, it's entertaining. But
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: with all the time you spend doing that or that
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: I or anybody spends, it's time that I feel like
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: you could be doing things that would get me to
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: know myself better. Yeah. But it's. That's what I'm wondering,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: are the scales of that other stuff getting so heavy? So, like,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: have they narrowed the algorithm so cleanly with everything, the pornography?
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: It's taken away so many, like... It's frightening. It's frightening.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: That's what I wonder. Do you feel like there is
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: a way for that? Is it just a cycle and
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: there's a way out of that?
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: Well, the possible optimistic scenario, which I don't know will happen,
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: is that human beings have a spirit... And that we'll
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: get so disgusted with it that we'll rebel, that a
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: young generation will evolve, probably not Gen Z, probably three
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: or four generations from now, that we'll find it so
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: lifeless and so, sick but so unfruitful, not giving them anything,
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: that they will rebel and they will be angry and
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: they'll say, screw all this crap. I want to go
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: back to something else. I want to go back to
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: something in the past or whatever, however far back, or
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: I want to create something new, a real revolution of sorts,
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: a consciousness revolution. That can happen. because human beings have
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: that capacity and it's happened before in history where we've
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: gone through these cycles of, of kind of ours, our
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: soul disappearing.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: Yes, definitely. And people kind of going crazy and moments
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: of chaos.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Does one come to mind?
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, think of, of the people that have
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: succumbed to things like Nazism or, you know, those kinds
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: of things where they're, they're mass hallucinations and being drugged. Yeah. And, uh,
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: The Germans now, I mean, however, you might not like Germans.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, they're nice people.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I'm fine with them. I don't know all of them.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: But they're not like that anymore, right? So they emerged
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: from that. That's a good point. So kind of mass
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: hallucinations sort of thing. But there were periods, I'm going
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: to get kind of wonky here, but I believe it
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: was the 3rd century or 4th century BC in Greece
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: where they went through this incredible crisis and where their belief,
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: their gods, all that was disappearing, people who didn't believe
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: in it anymore, and there was a crisis. You know,
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: human beings need to believe in something, need to believe
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: in something larger than themselves. And when they don't, things
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: can get really nasty and chaotic and soulless. And I
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: think that's sort of what we're going through right now.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: That's kind of what I'm writing about in my new book.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: But I think people will find their way back to it.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: It'll take young people who get disgusted with this kind
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: of mechanical culture that we have. Will that happen? I
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: don't know. You know, these algorithms, as you say, are
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: insanely powerful.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like we're really up against this dark, this
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: darkness that we've created, which is kind of fascinating too.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: You know, it has a very much a story. It's
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: like all the stories, you know, it's like the, it's
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: like the perfect story, you know, it's like you create
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: the Frankenstein, you know, it really is. Um, When it
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: comes to like individuality, right, what is a good way
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: for people to start to get to know themselves? Does
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: it make sense to you what I'm asking?
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it does. Well, I keep coming back to something
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: that I tell a lot of people I think is
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: very important is the desire to know yourself. So people
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: are very good at faking it. And you could be
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: out there listening and go, yeah, I kind of want
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: to know myself better. okay, let me get online and
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: they just forget about it because the other forces are
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: stronger than them. You have to have a level. You
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: know that if you're in recovery, a level of disgust,
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: you have to hit bottom. You have to go, I
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: don't want to be like this anymore. I want to
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: find out who I am. I want to touch that
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: core of individuality that I know is still within me,
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: that soul that I believe is still there. You have
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: to have the desire. If there's no desire there, if
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: you're just mimicking if you're just saying it just for
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: the sake of it because it sounds good i can't
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: help you but if it's still there yeah you want
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: to start by i mean the many the many paths
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: you can take a very good path is to take
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: a journal and start journaling right and writing down your
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: thoughts and writing down your dreams and when i say
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: that i say don't do it on a computer i
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: mean i know a lot of young people don't know
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: how to handwrite anymore But pick up a pen. I
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: still handwrite a lot of things. Pick up a pen
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: and a journal and write it down. Dreams, I know
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: this sounds woo-woo, but it's not. Dreams are really powerful,
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: very interesting. They're going to tell you a lot about yourself, right?
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: It's going to tell you about those journeys your brain
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: takes at night that are pretty fantastical, okay? You write
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: that down. You go back into your childhood and you go,
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: what was it that made me so different, that was
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: so weird about me? What was it that I was
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: attracted to? As you go through that process, things will
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: start coming up. It's like you're digging, you're excavating, like
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: you're an archaeologist into your own past.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like using a brush and brushing off and
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: you see a little bit of bone and then you're like,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: what other questions can I ask around here that might
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: help me remove a little more dirt?
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and memories will come up, like your memory when
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: you're two years old and your brother popping up his head.
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: Things will start coming back to you and you'll start
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: connecting to who you were when you were young, and
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: you're connecting to who you were as an adolescent. Adolescence
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: is an extremely important part of our life. It really
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: is almost the most formative part. It's where we really
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: made that turn into this or into that, right? And
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: I find Returning to your adolescence, returning to those strong,
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: powerful emotions that you felt, those sexual things that were
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: just so overwhelming. Yeah. Those other things that were happening.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: Returning to that because people, psychologists have studied that is
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: the period when you feel what makes you different the most, right?
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: It's when you feel the most rebellious, when you understand
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: this is who I am. I'm not like my parents.
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: You're 13, you're 14, all of a sudden you go,
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: I don't have to be like mom or dad. In fact,
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: I want to be totally different. Adolescence is like a
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: really key thing to go deep into that will show
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: you a lot about your individuality, about who you are,
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: and about who you've become. So it's a process, and
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: it should be a very exciting process.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Right, right. You shouldn't look at, yeah, that's the thing.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: If you look at it as like, oh, shit, I
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: got to do this. But to carve out a little
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: time where you're like, Yeah, let me think. What were
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: some things? Look at old photos and stuff like that.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Really look at yourself a little bit like you're studying something,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: Even listen to the music that you liked, however embarrassing
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: that might be.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what'd you listen to, man? Remember the first song
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: that you heard?
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: I can't go. I think I was four years old
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: or so and my sister, who's four years older than me,
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: had a Beatles album. Yeah. And it was, I mean,
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: this is, Abbey Road? No, God, no. I'm almost so
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: much older than that. It was like, meet the Beatles.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: And it was the song, I Saw Her Standing There,
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: I think the single. And I was like, wow, this
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: is so weird. This is so different. It's hard for
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: people to imagine because the Beatles seem sort of cliched now.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: But when that sound first came out, I was like,
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: there is nothing else like this out there.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: It's fantastic. And I remember my grandmother was there and
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: she couldn't understand it. She thought it was awful. And
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: I thought it was the most amazing thing. I think
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: that was the first song I can remember, I can recall.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I remember my mom used to play Brian
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Adams all the time and make us clean the house
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: to it. And then she would sometimes abuse us if
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: we didn't clean up good. Brian Adams, wow. Yeah, it
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: was kind of crazy. But then what else would we– oh, yeah,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: I've told this story before, but the first– A camp counselor,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: a woman, picked me up and took me to camp
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: one day because my mom couldn't take me in summer camp.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: And she reached over and put my seatbelt on me.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: And it was like the first time that like a woman,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: like other, I guess, than my mother had been near me. Oh, wow.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: And then she put on Bon Jovi. Wow. And I
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: was like, what is going on, dude?
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: Are we married?
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: How old were you?
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: I was probably eight, seven or eight. And I'm sure
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: I'd heard something before that, but nothing that, you know,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: this moment, that was the first song I remember hearing
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: and being like, yeah, I want to hear that song again.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I think it was because there was a,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe because there was a woman there or something,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: but that was something that I remembered. What was it,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: you know, in a lot of your books, you have
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: The Art of Seduction. You have 48 Laws of Power.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: You have Mastery. you're always like looking at yourself and
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: finding ways. It seems like to encourage the most out
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: of oneself.
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Um, how did that kind of begin for you? Like
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: what was there like a period in your time where
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: you're like, I got like, I wasn't my best self
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: or I'm not going to let this happen to me again.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: Like what was that trigger kind of for you?
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: Well, there were, there were many triggers. Um, So I
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: was out of college. I decided to go into journalism
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: because I needed to make a living. I wanted to write,
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: but I had to support myself. I was living in
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: New York, and I was very poor at the time.
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: I had a very low-level job. And it wasn't connecting
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: to me. I felt like something was wrong. I didn't
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: like the fact that you would write something, and then
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: the next day you'd be on to something else. It
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: was totally forgotten. It didn't last. And I was into
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: something because I love history. If it doesn't last more
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: than 24 hours, what's the point? It should last like
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: 12 years, 20, 100 years. What you write should have
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: some weight to it. I felt wrong. So I left it.
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: I wandered around Europe for about four or five years.
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: Sometimes with a backpack. I worked in a hotel in Paris.
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: I did construction work in Greece because I ran out
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: of money. I taught English in Barcelona. I worked in
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: a crappy television show in London. I led a tour
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: guide thing in Dublin, Ireland, trying to write novels. And
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: I was starving.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: It's like a John Irving story, it almost seems like.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: It was. It was like, it's such a cliche. I
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: was excited. cliche of the young American trying to write
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: a novel. I had amazing experiences, you know, experiences that
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: seeded all of my books, but nothing happened, and I
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: was lonely, and I was depressed, and I felt like
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: something was wrong.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Were you basing your achievement on something? What do you
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: think you were looking for in that? Because it sounds
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: like a searching kind of time.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: Well, I was trying to write a novel, but I
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: couldn't write it. It wasn't happening. My mind wasn't– I
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: don't think I would have been a good novelist because
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: I'm too much into ideas and my novels were just
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: like these kind of big– kind of sticks with a
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: big idea on it that you were supposed to read about.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: It didn't have life to it. I think I could
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: do it now. But something was wrong about it, and
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: I couldn't earn a living off of it. I was
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: on my own. I had to earn a living. I
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: didn't want to be doing all these crap jobs my
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: whole life. So I came back to L.A. where I'm from.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: My father wasn't well, and I got a job in Hollywood.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: This is the golden path, money, writing, glamour, whatever, the dream.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: Fancy, yeah. Cocaine, women.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: All of that. Yeah. And none of it happened. Damn, bro. Well,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, I had the cocaine and all that stuff.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: I didn't have the success. I had all the other stuff,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: but none of the really stuff I was after. And
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: so to answer your question, nothing was going right. Nothing
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 3: was quite fitting, right? And I had a moment. I
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: was getting kind of desperate. And my girlfriend was saying,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe you've got to stop, like, trying to
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: have it both ways. where you have your writing, your creativity,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: and then you have earning a living. Maybe you can't
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: have both. So she said, I always wanted to write
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: plays and theater and stuff. So she said, go ahead
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: and do that. And that was a kind of a
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: turning point where I'm going to stop trying to just
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: be this person that other people wanted me to be.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: And I'm going to follow what excites me, even though
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: I can't make a living in it. And that was
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: a very important part. It meant like, Yeah, I can
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: do something that's kind of fun and maybe it will
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: turn into something.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Well, it's the same thing you talk about in mastery too,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: kind of that we were talking about earlier. Yeah.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: And then, so sometimes fate has its weird ways of operating.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: Just as after I had done that, writing the plays,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: we put them on here in Los Angeles. We performed them.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: I acted in them. She directed them. We did all
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: the work ourselves. Very strange plays. Right after that, I
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: met this man in Italy who, who offered me the
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: chance to write a book. And something clicked in me going, Robert,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: all the bad choices in your life, all the mistakes,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: everything can turn on this moment, right? You can go
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: from being this kind of loser in your one-bedroom apartment
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: in Santa Monica. You could somehow turn this around.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: A book?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Wow, I never thought of that before. Not a novel,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: but a nonfiction book.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: I see. So you'd never really take, you'd never consider that.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Of course not. If you're thinking of fiction, you're thinking
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: of like the, you know, the F. Scott Fitzgerald, you're
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: thinking of like a magnificent piece, you know, on the
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: road with Kara, you know, you're thinking of something that's
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: going to change the tides, you know?
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: But then you're like, oh, damn, like a nerd book.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: Exactly. But I'm kind of a strange individual, I have
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: to say, for better or worse, because it's Until I
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: was 38, it was for the worst, right? And my
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: parents were getting really worried about me. But when I
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: had the chance to write The 48 Laws of Power,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: my first book, I made it a book that's not
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: like anything else out there, right? Because I'm sure it's
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: something you've done in your comedy. There's nobody else out
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: there like Theo Vaughn. You're unique. I made the book
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: look weird, feel weird. Nothing about it was like anything else.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: It was dark. It was kind of like language was
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: a little bit strong. It was controversial.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: It even looks biblical almost, this one.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: That one, yeah.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: This copy. The coolest thing is the face that's in this.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: There's two faces.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, is one of them Benjamin Franklin and one of
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: them is you?
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, no, wait.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: One of them is Henry.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: No, it's Machiavelli.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, Machiavelli. And me. I was thinking it was a
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: guy from Black Flag. You know who that is, Henry?
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: Henry Rollins? Yeah. It looks like Henry Rollins. A little bit.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: You mean me? Or Machiavelli.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Well, unfortunately, Machiavelli. He still looks like you, but you
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: look handsome.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: Henry Rollins is a lot more, yeah, I know he's
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: a lot beefier than I am.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: He's different than us, man.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: He's more intimidating.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe he's more intimidating.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: Is he still alive? What happened to him?
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: I think he lives, I believe, actually, that he lives
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: in Tennessee, yeah. Oh. I've heard that. I heard he
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: moved to Nashville. Yeah, I heard that he moved to Nashville.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: I would love to meet him sometime. Some of my
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: friends have worked with him. I think he's a very
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: interesting guy. And there's Machiavelli now.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: I don't see a resemblance really there.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: Maybe the eyes, yeah.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe the eyes. They each have two eyes. That's
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: a good one. Thank you for trying to support me there, Robert.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: It took me a little while to hear the catch-all.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: It took me a while, too. I didn't realize it
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: was a joke until after I said it. But so
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: then at that point, that's you kind of like realizing
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: something's different here. There's this voice that says this could
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: be something for you. you need to follow this. And
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: was it hard for you to start to make that
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: happen for yourself?
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: Well, as I said, I was 38 years old. I
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: hadn't really amounted to anything. And this guy, Joost Elfers,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: who's the producer of the book, he offered me this chance.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: I pitched to him what turned out to be the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: 48 Laws of Power. He got so excited. So what
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: happened was I went home to L.A. and I go, Robert,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: it was before 50 Cent coined the expression, but it's
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: either get rich or die trying here, right? You either
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: make this book work or you're just going to be
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: floundering the rest of your life, right? So I was
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: so motivated. I was so hungry and desperate that this
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: had to be it, that I put everything I had
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: into it. And it's hard for me to understand now
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: because it took two years to write. Now it takes
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: me five years to write a damn book.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: Damn.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: All that research, all the creating something that hadn't been
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: out there before, I don't know how I did it.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: But all I can say is there was something else
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: inside of me that was so hungry that it made
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: it happen. So there wasn't any like I can't do
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: this kind of thing. It was like if I don't
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: do it, that's it. I have in one book in
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: my book on strategy and warfare, this thing that I
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: call death ground strategy. It's a great expression. It comes
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: from Sun Tzu. And it's if your back is to
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: the ocean or your back is against a mountain and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: you're fighting the enemy, you're going to fight with 10
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: times the energy because it's either conquer them or you're
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: going to die. Right. So you put yourself on death ground.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: You either succeed or terrible things will happen. You find
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: energy that you hadn't believed you had. You'll find creativity
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: that you hadn't believed you had.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: Did you lock yourself in a hole or something? Did
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: you create that scenario for yourself? Did you change your habits?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Because it seems like you have to really change your
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: habits to produce something that.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I had good work habits and I had learned
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: how to research. But one thing my girlfriend did was
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: I had this cat.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: Who just would never leave me alone.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: He was so attached to me. And quite honestly, he
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: probably made it so I couldn't write a book. So
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: she created this table, this very thin table that would
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: fit right in here on the chair. I could put
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: my laptop on. He couldn't get on it.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, it wasn't enough space for him. No. Wow.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: And that allowed me to write the book.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: Damn, dude. They say a cat also– and I don't–
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you because I know this, but a cat
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: will– if you die, a cat will start eating– will
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: probably start eating your face within like 48 hours.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: That's very nice to hear. Thank you for sharing that.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: You're welcome.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to look at my cat the same
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: way now.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: But I just want to let you know. So don't
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: be shocked that they want to stop you from writing
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: a book.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: Okay. Okay. He wanted to eat me, you're saying?
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying they're playing a long game. Okay. You
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: know what I'm saying? They want to ruin it all.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: So yeah, they're just– Yeah, you know, they're just saving face,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: you know, by trying to get you to think that
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: writing a book is the issue. But that's so– it's
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: like– but that's such a– it's almost such a metaphor.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: Like I'm going to make a table that a cat
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: can't get on. And that way I'll be able to
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: write my book.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: We still have the table. It's really cool looking. She
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: made it. She painted it. She made these like kind
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: of backgammon signs on it. It was really cool.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's super cool. Yeah. Yeah. What a neat– that's
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: a fascinating little piece of information. Did you feel more
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: powerful after the book?
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: Well, I couldn't have felt less powerful because I had
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 3: no power really up until then. But you don't know
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: because like a lot of things fail in life, right? Oh, yeah.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: And the book could have been– could have flopped easily
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: because it was so different and weird. And so I
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: had no idea.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: Then suddenly it starts selling well and I'm I'm getting
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: you know the press was pretty good and I remember
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: in early 1999 I was invited to Italy for a
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: book tour and this was like the strangest moment of
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: my life probably I don't know if you know at
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: Disneyland they have Mr. Toad's Wild Ride where it's like
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: he goes on this really weird adventure and it kind
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: of blows your mind if you're like four years old.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: This was like my Mr. Toad's Wild Ride because suddenly
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: I was invited to this conference where I was mingling
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: with Italian politicians where paparazzi were following me around and
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: taking my photograph. Who am I? But this was the
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: land of Machiavelli. And the 48 Laws of Power seemed
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: really great to them, right? So suddenly I'm starting to realize, well,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: maybe this book has legs. Maybe something will happen. Then
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: a couple of years later in Playboy magazine, there's an
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: interview with Jay-Z. And Jay-Z quotes the 48 Laws of Power.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: I go, wow. It's like infiltrating that far. That's pretty interesting.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: Slowly the hip-hop world, more and more and more, you know,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: meeting 50 Cent. People were coming to me for advice.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: Me that was always giving advice before I wrote the book,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: but nobody would ever listen to me. Now they were
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: coming to me for advice about their businesses, et cetera,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: et cetera. I got put on the board of directors
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: for the company American Apparel. It was like being on acid.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: It was so weird. Because I had had so little
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: success before that. If you have success when you're 23,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: it kind of spoils you and you think that this
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: is what life should be like.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: I had so much loneliness. I had so much not
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: being able to pay bills. I had so much frustration
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 3: and depression that when it happened, it was like, man,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: this is like, I'm like on a drug. It's fantastic.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because the odds, the odds of that are slim.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: They are very slim.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: The odds of that are slim.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: I'm very grateful.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: And did you feel like you had found mastery, though,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: or do you just felt like you had found your calling?
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: Did you feel like you just got fortunate? Did you
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: write it? Sorry. Yeah, that's the question. And I think
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: it's three questions.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, there's luck involved in anything. So meeting
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: this man who produced the book, I was in Italy.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: That could have not happened very easily. We could have
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: not taken the walk that we'd taken, and I would
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: have never improvised the idea that came to me.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: So you met a man and took a walk.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in Venice. We were walking. It was a beautiful day.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: I was in a good mood, and I pitched this
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 3: book idea. And I pitched other ideas, which he didn't like,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: but he liked that idea. Anyway, that's a slender, slender
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: thread that the whole thing hangs upon.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: Me going to Italy, this man also being there, Us
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: taking this walk, me being in a good mood, me
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: improvising it. Okay?
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: But it's just as unique as going back to like
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: how people are created, how an idea, how something magnificent happens,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: how something unique happens that this had to happen. Your
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: grandparents had to meet each other on a ship or
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: somebody had to be a slave or somebody had to
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: work at a Chick-fil-A or whatever. It's like there's all
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: these little things, you know?
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: Twists of fate.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just twists of fate.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: Sorry, go on. So, you know, if that hadn't happened,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: there wouldn't be any book. But on the other hand,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: I might have, there's some feeling that, I don't know
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: if people out there can relate to, but in some
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: way I had a feeling like it was meant to happen.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: That something about me or him drew us together and
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: that all of those bad experiences in life All of
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: the really awful bosses that I had, and I had
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: some really bad ones, right?
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Roger, too. I had this guy, Roger.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: Roger, what was he?
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: He was just, he was a damn deviant dude. He
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: would make us work, and he would sit in his
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: car also and smoke weed a lot of the time.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: But whatever.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: Where's Roger now?
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: That's a good question. I know his wife left him.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: But, you know, he also was a– he did lead our, like,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: company bowling team or whatever. So that was, like, the
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: one redeeming thing he did.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: Well, that's pretty impressive.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: It was nice of him to do. Yeah. So he
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: bought us all jerseys and everything. But anyway, go on.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: Well, that's a great story.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: Anyway, so– What other books did you pitch him that day?
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: You shouldn't ask that question. I remember, so I really
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: was into Louis XIV for whatever reason.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm from Louisiana, so.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Louisiana Purchase.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: Hey. You know?
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Les ébontons roulants.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: That's what they say, right?
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: Exactly. So I pitched an idea about how weird, how
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: different people were in the court of Louis XIV, like
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: what their psychology was. But it was kind of related
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: to the 48 Laws of Power. But this other idea
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: that I pitched was I had read this book about
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: nonsense and kind of It was called The Philosophy of Nonsense.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: It's a very kind of theoretical book, but it was
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: all about how nonsense could be actually kind of revolutionary.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: To take words and to kind of make you think
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: that there's a meaning but there's no meaning kind of
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: excited me, right?
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it activates a part of your brain that's
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: not a common path.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Sort of like some of the things in
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: Lewis Carroll, like in Alice in Wonderland.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: Right, like you're falling through a hole in the ground
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: and come up into a new universe, like world. Yeah,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: like ridiculous walking into mirrors.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: Change of perception.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: Exactly. So I was pitching him an idea about nonsense,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: but it would be kind of a popular book that
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: would sort of show, you know, how nonsense can be
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: kind of a powerful force, can be very poetic and exciting.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: That idea didn't fly. Those are the ones I can remember.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But hey, that's what it takes, man. That's what
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: it takes to get something that does fly.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: But, you know, I think it was, so what I
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: was saying is all the horrible bosses I had, all
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: the bad experiences, I worked in a detective agency briefly
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: here in Los Angeles, actually in Pasadena.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: For PI, private?
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: Well, it was a firm.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: What is PI?
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: That's private investigator. I wasn't a dick. I wasn't a gumshoe.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: I was what's called a skip tracer. And it was
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: one of the worst jobs I ever had where basically,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: you know, some guy in Wisconsin jumps bail or owes
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: this company this amount of money. I'm sitting in an
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: office on the telephone trying to find him. That's what
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: literally means skip trace. You're tracing where he skipped. And
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: they give you like these dialogues you're supposed to follow.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: You call his mother up and you pretend to be
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: a high school buddy of his. You do some research.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: You went to Kenosha High School. And you do little
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: research things you can say to kind of bullshit your way.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: And I was very good at bullshitting. And I would
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 3: kind of do that. And she'd say, oh, he's– she'd
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: give you a clue. Yeah. Then you would find him.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: And then they would get the guy and they would
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: get him to pay. I felt so awful.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: I was like helping the law.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: By these poor suckers.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: You were kind of a– yeah, you weren't a snitch,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: but you was like– Kind of. Yeah, you was like
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: an undercover– kind of guy on the phone. Yeah. Not
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: a cop, yeah.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: And I had the worst boss there. I hated that
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: son of a bitch. Anyway, all of those people went
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: into the 48 Laws of Power. I kind of got
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: my little digs into them because they sort of inspired
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: some of these awful laws that I ended up creating.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, was some of the 48 Laws of Power written
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: with like vengeance? Was it written like, yeah.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: A little bit.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: I think you have to have something like that. You
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: have to have a fire. You have to have a fuse.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: I was angry. Yeah.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: Were you angry at the world? Were you angry at circumstance.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: Do you think?
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: Because I get angry a lot. I try to think
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: about what I'm angry at. It's hard for me to
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: sometimes know what it is.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: It is hard to know what it is, what's like
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: really underneath it. Because you can't be superficially angry, but
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: there's something else underneath that's gnawing at you. I think
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: I was angry at people's bullshit about people pretending to
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: be something that they're not is what really angers me
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: and what angered me about Hollywood. I don't know your
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: relationship to Hollywood.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: I hate Hollywood.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, good. Thank you. Well, people pretending to be these liberal,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: wonderful people in favor of all the best causes out
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: there to create art, what bullshit? They wanted power. They
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: loved having the power over people, right? Producers and directors
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 3: loved the power they had over actresses, et cetera, et cetera,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: et cetera. And so I had a law in there
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: about get other people to do the work but always
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: take the credit, which is one of the nastier laws.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: That's what happened to me a lot of times in Hollywood.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: I would do the work. I would write all the dialogue,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: et cetera, in some screenplay. I wouldn't get any credit
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: at all. So I was kind of like turning it
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 3: around and telling people this is how the world works.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: People will get you to do things and they'll put
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: their name on it kind of thing.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: Okay. So is some of it not as much with
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: 48 laws is not as much telling people to do
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: these things, but making people aware of things. It's almost
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: like making people aware of different clocks that tick in time,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: but that aren't necessarily timekeeping clocks, but just clocks of
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: like how things work. Does that make any sense?
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: Almost. Almost. There's something there. Thanks.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, start it off.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: I can think about it.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: I feel like it started off good.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go to bed thinking about that. There
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: is something there.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: Or it's different like– Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's not
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: all how to do things as much as it– some
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: of it can be warnings or awareness.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a law in there about play on people's
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: need to believe to create a cult-like following. And the
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: idea is that there are a lot of cults out there.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of cults. Definitely 30 Seconds to
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: Mars I think is one.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: What's that?
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: It's a band, I guess. It's also like a GPS estimate,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: I guess, if you drive a space shuttle or something.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: Excuse my ignorance.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I'm just joking. It's Jared Leto and his
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: brother's band. I'm just joking. I am joking, but people
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: always say that it's a cult. But yeah, there's a
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: lot of different cults out there.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm not telling you to go out and
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: create a cult.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: Although you could if you wanted to. I'm saying that
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: you might be in a cult right now. And here's
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 3: how to recognize when you're in a cult. These are
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: the things that people do to kind of trap you
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: into a cult. They create like an us versus them dynamic.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: While there's an enemy out there that's trying to destroy you,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: better stay inside here where it's us. And then they create,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: like they use numbers a lot. Like this is the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: fifth level of the sixth domain that you have reached.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: Then you know, brother, you're in a cult. You're hearing that.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: So it's not so much like go out there and
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: create this cult, but like, Maybe you're in one and
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 3: here's how to recognize it.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, that's hilarious, man. Especially now with the media,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: it's like it's definitely become cult-like behavior, you know, and
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: with their force over society. What do you think has
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: more effect on us these days, our government or our media?
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: Like who's a bigger power, Hollywood or the government?
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: Well, Hollywood, and you're also saying like tech, the tech world,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 3: like social media, I'd say they have more power. I mean,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know what the numbers would be. I'd have
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: to say like 70% and 30% would be the government.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, at this point, though, it's reaching a point
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: where the government and the media are kind of becoming one.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, bro, I'll tell you a story. So I'm at
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: the mall the other day in Century City in Los Angeles, right?
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: West Los Angeles, kind of. I'm in there. A construction
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: guy walks through. He's like, Dio, what's up? So I
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: start talking to him, and he's like, dude, guess what
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: we're building. I'm like, I don't know. I thought maybe
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: it could have been like a Hardee's or something. He's like,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: we're building like a 20-story building, and– 10 floors of
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: it are the CIA and the other 10 floors are
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: a management company, Hollywood management.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: That's pretty spot on.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: I was like, you gotta be kidding me. He goes, bro,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: I wish I was joking with you. He's like, that
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: is exactly who's going to be in the building. Cause
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: I was like, who's going to be in the building?
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: He's like, you're never going to believe it. I'm like, wow.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: I used to be, I might still be, I don't
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: think I am. I was with CAA and they were
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: trying to make movies out of my books. And you
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: go to that building and they call it like the
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: Death Star. I forget, maybe that's the name of it.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 3: And there are like, you know, politicians who are being
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: represented by CAA, athletes, tech bros, influencers, right? So that's
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: where all of that kind of, yeah, there's the Death Star.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Cool looking building. Their building is awesome looking.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: Um, it's, it's pretty frightening though. When you go inside,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: it's like all these people, everyone's like wearing a suit.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: It's almost like, um, it's almost like Dianetics. What's that
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: called again? Um, it's almost like Scientology, Hollywood's version of Scientology.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: Anyway. Um, thank you. Yeah.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: That's a pretty building though. Um, yeah. So it's, It
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: feels like there is a merging these days of the
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: government and social media. To me, social media is definitely
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: the power.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, for sure.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: That's what it's like. That's all the influence. I mean
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: the government couldn't even keep the post office open.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: You know? I mean, damn, dude. Yeah. The post office
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: is crazy, dude. You can go in there and just
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: ask for mail and they'll give you some mail, bro.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You don't even have to have any. They're just like,
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: here's some mail for you. I can try that.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: It's gotten way– yeah. They really lowered the bar on
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: like rules or whatever.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but the technology people, they've read all of the
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: books on marketing, on psychology. you know, Mark Zuckerberg, they
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 3: figured the whole thing out.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: They know how to move us around like little puppets
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: on a string, you know? So, um, yeah.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: I wonder if we'll get to a point in, uh,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: I have to pee. Do you or not?
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 3: I have to pee.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: You do? You go pee and then I'll pee after you.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to ask you, uh, do you think
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: like Hollywood has like an agenda? Like that it's an
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: organized agenda that they try and create and, through their art?
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: Or do you think that's just like a conspiracy theory
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: where people, that art just imitates life and that's just
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: the way things are?
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 3: Are you talking about the movie industry? Are you talking
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: about tech? Are you talking about which aspect of it?
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: That's a good question.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: Are you talking about video games? I mean.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: I guess I would probably talk more about the movie industry.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: Well, to me, for my being inside the belly of
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: the beast, so to speak, is it's really all about money.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's so much money involved and at stake.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: That's really the motor that drives everything in Hollywood. People
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: may pretend it's about creating art or supporting this cause
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: or that cause, but when you bring it all down,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: it's about making money. I'm sorry. It's capitalism. Yeah, and
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: that's what generates what they choose to make movies about.
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: So for a while, It was all the franchise movies,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: the Mission Impossibles. Then it was all the Marvel movies
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: because they need to sell their products abroad. If it
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: sells in China, they make a killing. Right.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: If they can make one thing that sells to everybody,
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: then it's like that's a super home run. Whereas if
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: they make one thing that sells like just to people
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: in a certain region of America, that's more of like
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: a single or a bunt.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: Right. So that's what generates their mojo. That's why they
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: make the things they make. So you don't want too
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: much dialogue because if it's like in India or China,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: you have to do all the subtitles. It doesn't work.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: Just a lot of action, a lot of people beating
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: each other up, a lot of explosions. So it's money
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: and then comes the art. Then comes, well, do we
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: actually film? That's how they think. I'm pretty damn sure
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 3: of it. So I don't think there's like a, conspiracy
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: to like move a certain agenda although you know there
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: is a kind of certain woke quality excuse me that
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: I won't deny that permeates it yeah right but it's
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: more about you know they would drop the woke stuff
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: tomorrow if they could make more money doing something else
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: it's just about what's going to bring the bucks and
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: big bucks because that's what Hollywood's all about.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: And Hollywood needs proof So Hollywood, I feel like, is
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: always a little behind the times in a lot of
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: ways unless they do something indie because they really need
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: proof that something is going to bring in the money.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: So until they start to see a swing in ticket
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: sales or streams or views, then they are just riding
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: whatever the previous few years were.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: Well, it used to be 30, 40 years ago when
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: there was independent film that you could have somebody like
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: a Jim Jarmusch... Who was it? Huh?
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: Jim Jarmusch. Who was it?
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: Bring him up.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, bring up Jim Jarmusch, please.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: He was a really interesting film director. He might have
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: been from the South in like the 80s and 90s.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: Let's bring him up. Yeah, Jimmy Jarmusch, baby. You'll take
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: the Fonz, huh?
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: He did that movie with Tom Waits that I really like.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen that.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: Down by Law?
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: Huh? Down by Law?
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: Down by Law. Thank you. Yeah.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: Thanks, Zach, for saying that. Down by Law. Put that
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: on the list of things to watch, too.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really interesting movie. Tom Waits is the
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: only time I've ever seen him act. Yeah. Are you
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: a Tom Waits fan?
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: Nope.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 3: Okay. Well, that's all right. I won't. Oh, wait.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: Cripple Creek, was that him?
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: No, that's somebody else. That's the band.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: That's the band, yeah. Oh, The Wait, I'm thinking of.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: That's also the band.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: That's the band. Tom Waits, bring him up. Decent guy.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, he's fantastic.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: Do I know him?
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, wait.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: Tom Waits, dude?
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: Dude, I know Tom Waits. Yeah.
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a fan of him, dude. I freaking know him.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: Show me another picture of him.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: He used to play, I think, with my buddy Josh Kelly.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: Tom Waits, dude.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: What's up, Tom?
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 3: He's one of my heroes from, like, I loved his music.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: Is he dead?
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, he didn't know he was Jewish. Whoa. He lives
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: in California now. No, he's still alive.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank God. Uh-huh. I'll text him then.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah please say hello.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: That's cool dude yeah I went I think he performed
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: on a show with my buddy Josh with a musician
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: friend of mine one time.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: He's amazing he's amazing.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah with Josh Kelly.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: That's cool man so anyway so back in the day
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: you'd have these like weird independent filmmakers like even Jonathan
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: Demme or Jim Jarmusch and they would create something weird
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: and different then it would start a trend People would
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: start doing independent films like that, you know, kind of... Right.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: You know, even films in black and white, et cetera,
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: et cetera.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: And.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: But now, you know, you can't make a movie for
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 3: a million dollars or half a million dollars like you
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: could back then. Now you need at least 10, 20
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: million dollars to even begin to think about making a movie.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: Well, to make a big movie.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 3: To make any movie.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: You think so? Yeah.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: Because... The costs have just gone way, way up. Like
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 3: just to even think because my wife, she's an independent filmmaker, right?
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: And she used to make her own films that she
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: would kind of raise the funds with. She could shoot
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: a film for a million dollars. It's not possible now anymore.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I mean I think you probably at least
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: probably have to have maybe $ 5 million or something.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 3: At least. Okay. At least.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: That I'll agree on, yeah.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: And they won't fund it. Right.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: They're not going to fund. Yeah. It's definitely hard. We've
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: been trying to get a movie made for a while
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: and I, David Spade and I wrote a movie and
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: it's not a super expensive film and it's been a nightmare.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: And so that's why sometimes it's like, I wonder, well,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: it's like, do they just not like us? Is that
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: why like William Morris won't help us make this thing?
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: You know, like why would it, you know, like, you know,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't want to get petty and
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not, I don't feel petty, but it's like, Why
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: wouldn't they invest in it, you know?
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 3: Well, what would happen is if you made your $ 5
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: million movie with David Spade, it could very well set
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: a trend. It could very well make $ 80 million and
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: be huge. But they don't want to take the risk.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: They're so scared. Their balls are so scrunched up in
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: a little, you know, they've got, and they're just so
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: afraid and timid that they only want to do what
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: they know is a slam dunk where they can make
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: a lot of money because their lives are on the line.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: It's such a precarious world now, Hollywood. It's not doing
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: very well. They're in kind of a crisis stage right
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: now because of streaming, because it's so competitive. It's really
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: hard to make money. So they're not willing to take risks.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: And this is a problem that's happening in America in
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: all fields. The amount of risk takers now is shrinking, shrinking,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: shrinking because people are so afraid.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: Ah, see, that's it. And that in a way is
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: also taking away our individuality because if we don't take risks...
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: If there's not enough space to take a risk or
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: someone isn't brave enough or willing or is able to
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: make it happen, it's not always bravery. A lot of people,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: they just– it's not feasible based on their life. And
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: it's okay if they can't take a risk. But you
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: need those people.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 3: You do need those people.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: You need those people for things to change, to start
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: a new curve. Yeah, that's really interesting, man. Thinking about
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: what you just said a second ago, I had a–
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: a friend of mine is a publicist and he was
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: saying the other day, he's like, man, Hollywood's just, nobody's
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: making a lot of things, you know, like, like last year, uh,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: I think, um, Sony pictures only made like 12 movies
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: last year.
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: You know, that's crazy. I think this year there's, they're
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: on slate to make like 20 or 25.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 3: A lot of that had to do with the strike.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: Right. Oh, that's a good point too. But to think
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: that like probably 10 years ago, they probably made a
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: hundred movies. And if you can bring up any numbers
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: on that, that'd be great. If you see anything, let
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: me know. But yeah, he was... Well, one of the
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: problems also, I think, with Hollywood is you have like.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: Nepotism is alive and well in America overall. So I
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: think you get... I don't know if this is true,
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: but I feel like you get people that are just...
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: Now it's the children of people, it's their sons. The creativity,
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: the guy moving from you know, Dubuque, Iowa with a
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: great idea isn't coming here anymore because they're giving that
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: job to somebody's kid. It's all, and you start to
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: lose creativity because the creativity isn't going to come there
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: after a while because it doesn't, it's not nurtured.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, there is a possibility. There is some hope
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: that it's so cheap to make a movie with your iPhone, right?
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: The means of making a movie could be You could
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: go out there if you're some 20-year-old kid and you
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: have a really interesting, weird idea and you just go
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 3: ahead and make it.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: You could create a trend, but the problem is a
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: lot of people are afraid to even make that step.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: They want to make the money first. Sometimes I tell
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: people it's okay to do something for free. It's okay
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: to take a job. Where you're getting paid very little.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: But if you learn a valuable skill, if you actually
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: make something that gets a lot of attention, the money
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: will come in. But a lot of people are so
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 3: afraid of making that step, right? So if you're like
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: a young person, you have an idea for film, don't
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 3: sit there and wait and try and get William Morris
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 3: and get all the other crap online.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: It will never happen.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: Just go out and make it on your own for $ 10, 000.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: And something could happen.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: But so you're saying right there, then you can make
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: a movie for $ 10, 000, but you can't make like a,
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: it's a different looking movie.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But you could get a lot of attention for
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: it and you could maybe start a trend and you
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: could create something so weird and stylistic that it reflects you.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: A hundred percent. A proof of concept.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Other people will now want to imitate. There
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: just needs to be more of that. And the same
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 3: thing's happening to the music industry as well right now.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: You know? Yeah.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: Well, I think. In music, it's an easier barrier to
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: entry probably because it is cheaper maybe to create. You
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: need an instrument because then you have to pay editing.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: But maybe not really. These days you can learn everything online.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: I just wonder if we're less creative or more creative
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: than ever. Or maybe we're the same as we've always been.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 3: Well, being an old guy, I'd have to say less creative.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 3: But that's maybe just a misperception that comes with age
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 3: where you think everything was so much better. Back in
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 3: the day.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: Right. Sometimes I think that's possible. But I also think
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: the imagination isn't used as much because there's so much–
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: I can be like, okay, right now, could I think
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: of something to entertain myself or to keep me busy
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: or to see where my thoughts take me? Or can
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: I open up TikTok and just see something that's definitely
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: going to be entertaining?
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: So I think our imagination has started to– and I
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: don't even know how you would measure that, but I
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: think our imagination has started to become like the appendix
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: or something, you know, in the body. You don't even
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: know what it was for.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 3: Back in the day, George Carlin had a routine, you
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 3: know George Carlin?
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: About when he was a kid, he would just pick
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: up a stick and he would play with it and
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: he would create all these amazing games with just a
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 3: stick that he found on the road.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: He'd sit there and poke it and look at the
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 3: animals and then he would invent this, that, and the other.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 3: And he was like bemoaning how Nobody can take a
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 3: stick anymore and imagine something with it. He had a
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: much funnier way than I'm saying it right now.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: Believe me.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: Trust me. But the idea was that when you were
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 3: a kid, I remember we created something when I was
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 3: a kid. I was about eight years old, nine years old.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 3: It's called Dirt Village. And what it is is we
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 3: created a whole town in dirt on this hill near
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: where my friend lived. And we created houses. et cetera,
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: et cetera. And then we had wars. We took all
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 3: our army men and then we would like blast their
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 3: city and destroy it. But they had created like bridges
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 3: and lakes and all this stuff. It was like wonderful,
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 3: you know? So much fun. Making your own world.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think doing things like that was so interesting. Doing,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: like being creative. But one thing that always creates imagination
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: in people is love, I feel like. That's something that like,
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: You know, always like the risk of the siren in
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: the distance, you know, always was the that was a
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: big factor for me, I think.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: That always like sparked my imagination of whether I was
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: writing a girl a poetry or making a collage, doing something,
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: you know, trying to create. romance or something.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 3: Or figuring out how to seduce her and how to
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 3: strategize and where to take her and what would impress
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: her and all that other stuff.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I don't even think– I guess
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: I didn't think of it. It's weird because you think
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: of it– I guess seduction isn't just sexual, is it? Oh.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 3: OK.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, yeah, because I would think about, like, yeah,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: what could I go do that's nice with my girl?
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: What would make her care about me? What would make
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: me show her that I care about her? I loved
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: that stuff when I was young.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think online porn has definitely degraded
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 3: those skills.
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's ruined so much. I'm amazed that we allow it.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, you used to be, like... If you wanted
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 3: to meet, you were feeling lonely, you'd go to a
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 3: party or a bar or something. It took some guts.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 3: You had to get out of your house. You had
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 3: to take the risk of somebody saying no. And you
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: were kind of afraid and timid.
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 3: You were kind of trembling. And then maybe you had
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: a few beers and things went a little bit better.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: But it took like a skill that you had to develop,
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: a people skill. But if everything is so quick and instant,
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 3: you're afraid. So many young men are afraid of women.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 3: They get in their early 20s. They don't know how
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 3: to approach them.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: Because they've never had to approach them. They've never had
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 3: to deal with the fact that somebody could reject them
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 3: because it's just.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: Right there.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 3: You don't have to deal with it.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: Never rejected. So then no interaction. So then this, yeah,
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: this weird feeling of weird fear. I had a ton.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: I was definitely– Too much pornography.
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: Oh, really? Yeah.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: My 20s, dude, bad news, dude. Jerking my, yeah, just
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: jerking my body off or just looking at porno.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 3: This is in the earlier days of porn.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: This was, yeah, 15 years ago, 13 years ago or whatever. Yeah.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: How much longer ago was it? Yeah, it just was bad, man.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: I would, yeah, well, sometimes I would even set a
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: date up And then instead of going on the date,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: I would end up looking at some pornography and then
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: just cancel the date.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: All right. Yeah.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, why am I going to go
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: on this? Because I think probably some of it was nerves.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to have to go. But then also
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: it was like you just found a loophole to make
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: yourself feel sexually gratified. But the long-term effects of that, miserable, man.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: Because then I started thinking anytime I was like engaging
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: in sexual activity, I would think of it almost like
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: camera shots or something. You know what I'm saying? Like
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: it was all like, um, and I didn't even realize it,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't like in a moment. It was just like,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: I'd almost be just watching. Um, yeah, like it wasn't,
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: I wasn't in the moment, even the way I saw
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: it was, I'd seen it so many times this way
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: that I couldn't break the pattern.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 3: Wow. That's really scary. Oh, no idea. Yeah.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: It was where it was tough, man.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: Ruined.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 3: Ruined.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: Um, Some relationships that I was in. And I'm not
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: trying to be self-pity. I'm just saying, yeah, that I
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: was certainly not even a victim of it. I did it,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: you know, and I wish that it hadn't have been
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: there because I do miss the days when I would
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: just lay at home and just scream like, where are
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: all the chicks, you know? And just jerk off that way,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: you know, instead of at least like looking at the
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: screen or whatever.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 3: And then their bodies could never measure up to what
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 3: you saw.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the lighting is never, it's all, it's never the same.
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: It's never the same. So then next time a girl
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: comes over to your place, you have 700 watt bulbs
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: in the ceiling. She's like, what the hell's going on?
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: But dude, there was nothing. That's what drew you out
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: into the world as a man, the fantasy, even going
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: to Europe or whatever. What if I meet a, Someone
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: on the corner smoking a cigarette.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 3: I remember when I worked in this hotel in Paris,
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 3: I was 21. It was the hotel where all of
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 3: the models would stay.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: Wow, dude.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: I would hide under a bed in there.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 3: It was like paradise. I'd die and go out of heaven.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 3: And there was this guy who kept showing up at
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 3: the hotel. His name was Eduardo. He was this tall
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 3: Brazilian man. This is kind of where the art of
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 3: seduction came from. I would watch this guy. He was
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 3: so smooth. He had every skill in the book.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 3: He was so relaxed that when women were around him,
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 3: they just melted, right? And so I was thinking, what
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 3: is this power that this guy has? Yeah, he was
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 3: pretty good looking. He wasn't the most handsome person in
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 3: the world, but he had some kind of skill that
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 3: he had developed. And, you know, he had crafted it
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 3: coming to this hotel partially, you know, because he had
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 3: seduced so many of the models staying there. But I
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 3: was thinking, what is it about him? And I was
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 3: kind of fascinated by him. And I became friends with
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 3: him briefly. And I realized it was his confidence, his calmness.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 3: There was nothing defensive about him. And the fact of
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: him being so undefensive made him incredibly charming to women.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: What does undefensive mean?
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 3: He's not insecure. He's not thinking about himself. He's not
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 3: in the moment with a woman going, What do I
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 3: need to say to impress her? He's not there at all.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 3: He's like so on them, inside their mind, so relaxed
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 3: and not thinking about himself. That's what I mean.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: Eduardo.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 3: Eduardo. Where is he now?
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: God. Probably with some chick, probably.
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 3: Well, now he's going to be in his 60s or 70s.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: That ain't stopping him, dude. I'll tell you that.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 3: Maybe not. Maybe not. Gosh, yeah.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: I think seeing somebody be like, Oh, I was always
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: shocked when a guy was good with the girls. I
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: was like, who is this wizard?
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: Who is this damn wizard?
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and there were people like that. They had something
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 3: about them. And it wasn't just looks.
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: Mm-mm. No, dude. Yeah, I mean, it was not. It's
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: just a comfortability. Yeah. Sometimes there are moments I would
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: get into that state where I would be fearless with women,
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: very rarely. But it's gotten better as I've gotten older.
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: But yeah, when I was young, it was so hard
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: just to even look at a girl and talk at
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: the same time. I don't even know. I feel like
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: my legs were just going to climb right into my butt.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: I just was so scared.
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 3: Well, we've all been there.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Is that what propelled you out into Europe? Were
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: you a ladies' man growing up?
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: I had a period. My 20s were a bit like that. Yeah.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 3: And then I kind of grew out of it for
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 3: whatever reason.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: What do you mean grew out of it?
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 3: It got tiring.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, just chasing women kind of?
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it felt like something, you know, like it's
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 3: okay when you're in your 20s. You're young. You look good.
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 3: You've got energy. You've got spirit. You start getting into
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 3: your 30s. You start getting into your 40s, and it
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 3: seems kind of pathetic.
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: It doesn't seem, that's how my, my, maybe if you're
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: Mick Jagger, it's not pathetic. But for me, it's felt like, ah,
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 3: it doesn't feel right anymore. But when I was in
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 3: my twenties, I'm not saying I was, I wasn't on
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 3: the level of Eduardo.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: No way, man.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 3: But you know, uh, the interest was there. I was
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: aspiring to be in his league. Let's put it that way.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: And were you brave with women? Like, were you brave
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: enough to go talk to him and stuff? Cause Part
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: of that is learning just the art, like learning even
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: being in the dance. Like I never even put myself
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: in the dance so many times. I'm like, dude, you
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: got to at least get in the interaction moment, you know?
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 3: Well, the key to me that I learned, and maybe
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 3: it's just me, is that if you're really interested in her,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 3: if you're really excited by her, if it's not just
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 3: about sex but there's something about her that excites you,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 3: It'll bring something out of you that you didn't think
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 3: was in you, right? It'll bring energy out of you.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: It will make you, they will feel that your excitement
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 3: and your interest, they'll see that it's not mechanical, that
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: it's not just about sex, that you're genuinely interested in them.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 3: That will relax them, which in turn will relax you
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: back and forth, back and forth. So if you choose
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 3: somebody that you genuinely feel a connection to, and it's
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 3: also sexual, It will have this kind of reverberating effect
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 3: where you will bring out your– I remember sometimes I'd
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 3: be funnier than I've ever been in my whole life.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 3: I'd be wittier. I'd be an actor. I'd be saying
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 3: all kinds of weird things. And they brought it out
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 3: of me. But then other women, no, nothing at all
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 3: like that. I'd be nervous. It didn't happen. But that
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 3: kind of magic happens when it's like a real connection.
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: When there's purpose there. Yeah. Kind of like even what
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: we were saying earlier about purpose showing up, that it
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: shows up, that there's something there if you can navigate it,
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: that at a moment there's something, there's some energy there
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: that shows up that connects you to your purpose. Yeah.
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: It's very similar to the energy that shows up to
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: connect you to a woman in a way, I would say.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: Or someone of the opposite sex.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: Did they outlaw, sorry, the art of seduction in prison?
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 3: I hope so.
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: Right, right. That's hilarious, dude.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't want that book in prison. I wouldn't feel
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 3: very good about myself.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: Sorry, sorry, sorry. I meant to say I heard they
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: outlawed the 48 Laws of Power in Prison. Is that true?
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: They might have outlawed The Art of Seduction. I don't know. Yes,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 3: they did outlaw the 48 Laws of Power in a
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 3: lot of prisons.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: Well, they picked the wrong book. I'll say that now.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: They just piggybacked on your joke earlier.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 3: Why? Why?
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: They don't want people having power in there?
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 3: Well, um.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power is second most banned
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: book in prisons.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 3: Damn, Robert. You know what the most banned book is?
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: Is it an obvious one or not? Oh, I know
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: what it is.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 3: Um.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: Hold on. I know exactly what it is, dude. I
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: don't think you do. Yes, I do, brother. I know
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: exactly what it is. It is Shawshank Redemption.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 3: No. No way. It's a recipe book about how to
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 3: cook ramen. I kid you not.
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: Prison Ramen, the most commonly banned title on the list. What?
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 3: There you go. Thank you.
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: The 48 Laws of Power is also one of them.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, The Art of War,
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: and Cuba Libre.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Prison Ramen. Don't ask me why.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: What is, yeah, why is Prison Ramen? Let's get the answer.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: Why is your book banned in there?
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 3: Well, because ostensibly it's because it's about manipulation. Hmm. And
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 3: they're worried that people are going to use it in
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 3: prison to manipulate other prisoners. But really, it's not really
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 3: about that. Really, it's about prison is, and I have
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 3: a lot of feedback from prisoners. I don't have a record.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 3: I've never been in prison, so I can say that.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 3: But I have a lot of sympathy for people in prison.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 3: I understand that if not for the grace of God,
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 3: I could be in that situation.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 3: There's a side of me. There's a slight criminal side
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 3: to my psyche, I have to admit.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 3: So I understand it. And prison is about power. It's
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 3: about making you feel. It's about dividing the prisoners amongst
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 3: themselves so they don't get together and see what's really
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 3: going on. It's about controlling what they read, controlling what
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 3: they see, controlling every aspect of their life, what they eat,
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a book
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 3: about gaining some of that control back. And they're very
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 3: much afraid of it. And I've had prisoners tell me
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 3: about that. Like, you know, the games that wardens play
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 3: on prisoners and guards play are really powerful and really manipulative,
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 3: very psychological. And they said that the book kind of
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 3: helped them see through that. I have a woman who's
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: in prison in Texas who she had gotten the book
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 3: from her, I think, husband or boyfriend. And I think
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 3: she ended up committing a crime against him, something like that.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 3: But she realized how he was using the book against her,
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 3: and the book opened up her mind. And she's in
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 3: prison in Texas. They will not let her see it.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 3: So she has it kind of memorized. She remembered the chapters.
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 3: But they're afraid of somebody getting a hold of that
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 3: and learning about how the system operates, how other people operate,
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 3: what the guards are up to, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 3: I think it's about that more than anything else.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: Did that make you feel pretty cool?
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel kind of bad about it. It's kind
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 3: of cool.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so. I don't know why, but it's
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: kind of cool because it's like, you're banned here, Robert.
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: Don't you come around here, buddy. There's something about that,
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 3: But what if I ended up in prison and didn't
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 3: have to ban me because it's all in here? I
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 3: could tell everybody all the laws.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 3: That would be a good movie.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: I love that, huh?
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 3: Let's go to William Morrison's pitch that.
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure. In 10 years, we'll get it made. What
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: were some books you read that helped shape your worldview
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: or things you liked reading growing up? I was a
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: big John Irving guy, World According to God, Prayer for
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: Owen Meany, Hotel New Hampshire, some of my favorite books,
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: Confederacy of Dunces.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 3: That's a great book.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: Dude, that's a great book, isn't it?
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That's a great book. It's a wicked book.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: Robert O'Toole, I think.
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 3: Something O'Toole, yeah.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: What did you like?
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 3: Well, I was into some heavy stuff, but I also
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 3: really liked— Like Vonnegut kind of stuff? Well, like philosophy,
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 3: like Nietzsche, like Machiavelli. But I was also very much
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 3: into Carlos Castaneda. You don't know Carlos Castaneda?
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: But write him down so we can get one of
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: his books.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 3: Well, Carlos Castaneda was really big in the 60s and 70s,
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 3: kind of the hippie generation. And he writes a lot
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 3: about peyote, et cetera. His book, Journey to Ixalan, that
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: one on the second from the top, that had a
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 3: big influence on me. Carlos Castaneda was a professor of
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 3: anthropology at UCLA. And some people think he made it up,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 3: but he went to Mexico and he met a kind
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 3: of a curandero, a kind of a witch doctor type
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 3: person named Don Juan who had magical powers but who
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 3: ate a lot of peyote and took all of these journeys.
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 3: And he taught him about the world. And I swear
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 3: to God that book had so much impact on me
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 3: that a lot of the things in the 48 Laws
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 3: of Power actually come from that book. Wow. There are
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 3: ideas in there that are so amazing and practical and wonderful.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 3: For a 16-year-old, It was one of the most wonderful
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 3: books I have ever read. I really, really love that.
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 3: And that's where, you know, like a separate reality. They're
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 3: all great.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, that's cool. No, I want to order that.
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: Will you make sure to order that too, Zach?
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 3: And, you know, who else? I also, a writer named
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 3: Herman Hess, German writer who wrote books like Siddhartha and Damien.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 3: Which were really kind of quite radical. I liked things
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 3: that were a little subversive and radical and weird.
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: Like Clockwork Orange, that kind of stuff?
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Anthony Burgess, he was a great writer, sure.
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That was always one of the crazier things that, like,
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: when you were a kid, only, like, the weird kids
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: knew about Clockwork Orange when I was growing up.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: Like, the jocks and stuff didn't know about it.
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: But, like, the weirdo kids who would sometimes take a
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: little sip of gasoline knew about it.
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 3: You did sips of gasoline?
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: Not a lot.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 3: Wow. Think of the damage that did to you. Yeah.
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: I can't even think about it. I think it killed
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: off the cells I would have used to think about it.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 3: Well, when I was in college, there was this Englishman.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 3: This is when we were doing a lot of drugs.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 3: And he started telling us about something he did when
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 3: he was a kid called Lady Esquire shoe polish. And
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 3: basically you would take this shoe polish and you would
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 3: put it in a rack and then you would sniff it. Yeah.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 3: your brain would go crazy for like a minute. Then
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 3: you felt deathly sick. But for that minute, you were like, whoa.
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 3: And all you had to do was like $ 1. 25, shoe polish.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 3: And he said, you know, he got so excited that
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 3: we went searching for it. And we found a bottle
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 3: of it in San Francisco. And we did, and we
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 3: sniffed it. And it was the most awful thing I've
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 3: ever experienced in my life. It was like way too intense.
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 3: It was like... Everything was like– it was just awful.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 3: It was the equivalent of gasoline.
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. That's your gasoline. We used to
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: do everything. Like we heard about like cooking banana peels
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: or all those rumors that would go through town of
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: things you could do to get high. Nutmeg. Oh, we
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: smoked everything in my buddy Jeff's kitchen. We– I remember
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: one time we had– Oh, one time I took a
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: bag of mushrooms to a party and people had never
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: taken them there. And so I gave them to everybody.
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: And then I was like, we're going to play hide
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: and go seek, right? You guys go hide. And I'm
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: going to count, right? I'm going to count to like 700.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: And they all went and hid and I never went
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: and found them. And then I went home. Can you
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: imagine that?
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 3: Did they know you were giving them psychedelic mushrooms?
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: Dude. Fuck them. That's how I felt about it.
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 3: That's a pretty good trick.
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it was. It's basically like Chris Angel.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 3: They're probably still waiting for you. There's some guy in
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 3: a closet still wondering where you are.
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, there was things like that I loved. Like I
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: remember we went camping one time with a Boy Scouts
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: or something. And I told everybody the day we left
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: that Jay Leno had died, right? So all weekend, everybody,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: this is before the internet, everybody's like, God, you hear
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: people talking about it? So I would just lay in
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: my tent and I would hear dads telling each other,
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: you know, you hear that Jay Leno passed away. And
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: I would be howling in there, like laughing at a–
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: like it was coming out of the– like the core
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: of the earth through me. There was always– I loved
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: that element of creating a scenario that nobody knows if
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: it was real or not.
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 3: You can't do that anymore though.
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: Right, because the internet killed everything.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 3: It did.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: You can't lie. You used to be able to tell
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: a woman you were a lawyer, and she's like, you're 11.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: And I'll be like, I object! Don't be such a bitch!
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 3: Man.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to meet a cool chick.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 3: You're right. It did ruin everything. Can't lie anymore.
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: Your new book, Siren, is that what it's called? I've
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: heard you talk about it a couple times.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 3: Sirens? Sirens?
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: What's that about?
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I thought it was a new book
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: that you were working on.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 3: Like about police sirens?
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: No, about like the women in the distance.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 3: No, that's in The Art of Seduction.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's in The Art of Seduction. You're talking about sirens.
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: What was that? There was some new book I heard
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: you talking about.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 3: Are you writing a book on the sublime?
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: The sublime. Sorry, that was it. It's an S word.
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 3: It's close enough.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: That's what happened to me.
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's... In the 50th law, the book I did
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 3: with 50 Cent, the last chapter is about confronting your mortality.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 3: Because 50, you know, he nearly died. He got shot
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 3: nine times, close range.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: Gosh.
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 3: And he had like a near-death experience. So the last
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 3: chapter is sort of about, I call it the sublime.
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 3: And then in my last book, The Laws of Human Nature,
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 3: the last chapter is about confronting your mortality. And when
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 3: you do that, all the amazing little things that will
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 3: happen to your brain and your mind and how it
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 3: will make life seem that much more intense. That was
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 3: also what I called the sublime. And then about three
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 3: months after I wrote that chapter, I came this close
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 3: to dying myself with a stroke, which you can see
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 3: the results of. Oh, wow.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: So that's why you have some physical illness?
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I had a stroke. Damn, dude. So I was
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 3: driving here in L.A., and my wife was in the car,
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 3: and she basically saved my life.
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: Could you feel it as it came on?
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I didn't recognize it. I was like, something weird's
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 3: going on. And she noticed it right away. Like the
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 3: whole side of my face was like elongated and weird
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 3: and wrong. She knew right away. She forced me to
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 3: pull over. I'm like, what, what, what? And then I
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 3: started to get out of the car. And she came
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 3: around and... I don't remember anything else.
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 3: So, you know, there were some sounds that were a
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 3: little bit weird, and I was kind of acting like
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 3: nothing was going on, like it was all just a joke.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 3: But deep down, I knew something was very, very wrong.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: Dang. Anyway, so— That was almost a near-death experience thing,
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: kind of.
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 3: Very, very close, you know, because if I'd been alone,
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 3: which I often have, and it happened, it's just luck
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 3: that she was with me. even if I was driving,
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 3: because most of the time I'd be alone, I'd be
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 3: dead right now, or I'd have such bad brain damage,
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 3: it wouldn't be worth living. So I'm very lucky. But,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 3: you know, it was like I had written about it,
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 3: and now I lived it. And so the sublime is
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 3: about experiences, a lot of them related to some of
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 3: those drug experiences, that make you realize that there is
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 3: another level, another almost dimension to life itself that you're
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 3: not aware of. So your mind can either shrink, and
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 3: it'll shrink with your phone to the confines of your
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 3: stupid little phone, and what people are eating for breakfast,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 3: where they're taking their vacations, et cetera. It gets smaller
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 3: and smaller and smaller. Your circle of thinking gets narrower
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 3: and narrower and narrower, or it can expand, and it
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 3: can expand further and further. Books can do it. Drugs
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 3: can do it. I'm trying to make this book something
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 3: that will do that, will make you think about what
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 3: it means to be in a universe where we're alive,
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 3: a chapter about your childhood and how sublime your childhood was,
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 3: about the human brain and how weird it is, about
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 3: animals and our connection to animals, about love and how
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 3: love can be a sublime experience, about a relationship to
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 3: the past and history. I'm doing a chapter now about
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 3: what I call the daemon, which is a sense of
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 3: like there's a second self inside of you that's kind
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 3: of guiding you, has to do with what we're talking about, purpose,
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 3: is to get you out of the small thinking and
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 3: get you into thinking that there's something very weird about
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 3: being alive in the world and being a human being
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 3: who's conscious. So that's the book that I'm writing.
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's fascinating. Do you think God put consciousness in us?
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: Do you think we're just an anomaly?
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 3: Well, we now know that animals have consciousness, that animals think.
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 3: So we're kind of knocked off our high horse.
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: How long have we known? Huh? How long have we
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: known that?
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 3: Well, you can't know for sure because we can't get
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 3: inside of them. But people who study this very seriously,
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 3: who study what is consciousness, who study neuroscience, who study
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 3: animals very deeply, they're convinced that animals have consciousness. And
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 3: they have incredible proof for it. And even like bees.
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 3: And spiders, so I have a chapter about animals in
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 3: the new book. Yeah. Spiders actually think, spiders are amazing,
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 3: the powers that they have. And then.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: I knew it.
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 3: Octopuses.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: Water spiders.
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 3: Are the most amazing animal on the planet. So this
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 3: guy wrote a book called Alien. No, it's an anthology
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 3: called Aliens. It's all about alien life. And one of
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 3: the chapters in there is by a neuroscientist, a really good,
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 3: amazing neuroscientist named Anil Seth, an Englishman. He wrote a
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 3: chapter on octopuses. And he said, if there's an alien
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 3: consciousness that's different from ours in the universe, it could
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 3: be like the octopuses. Because octopuses have thinking, have brain
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 3: neurons in their arms. They have like 12 different centers
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 3: of consciousness. So they're thinking with their whole body. So
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 3: animals are conscious.
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: What's interesting, we only have five senses. That's not that many.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there are other senses out there that we don't have.
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 3: Like snakes can pick up the heat. They have a
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 3: sense of heat. There's a name for it, where they
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 3: can pick up the heat from a mammal in the
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 3: area to attack and eat it. Birds have a sense
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 3: of electromagnetic waves in the environment to navigate by. There
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 3: are other senses like that. Spiders have a sense where
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 3: they can pick up rhythms, or elephants have senses in
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 3: their feet that pick up the vibrations from the ground. So,
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 3: I'm blowing your mind.
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: There's just a lot out there.
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so... There's a lot that's... We're not so special
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 3: as we might think.
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: Right. And it is amazing to marvel at ourselves in
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: positive ways. In fact, we should do it more. You know, I...
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: I'm sometimes amazed how... few times I look up at
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: the sky or up at the gods the universe that
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: created me and even just let it see my face
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 1: like the universe created me and here I am all
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: the time just down here you know like just to
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: go out there and be like thank you you know
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: or here I am you know what you know or
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: even ask the universe for information like yeah it's like
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 1: here's the freaking universe and I'm down here trying to
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: read a book dude but you got you know I
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: don't know if that works or anything, but it's like,
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 1: if I look up like this, I feel like something,
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: I feel a little different.
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 3: Well, you can do that tonight.
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'll get out there tonight, Robert. Okay. Um, so
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: many thought provoking, I'm going to say that's who you are.
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you.
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the most unique things
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: that somebody can be. And thank you for charting so
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: much of it for us.
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you.
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: So we can go back through your thoughts. And, um,
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: and explore our own.
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 3: Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: That's great. Robert Green, love to get to chat with
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: you again sometime, dude, or sit, or if I come
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: across any peyote, I'm not going to say it out loud.
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah. Please.
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: But I will come watch you do it.
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 3: All right. Well, yeah, I'll do the peyote myself. You
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 3: can watch me. Cool, dude.
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: I'll be right there with you, man.
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah. When my next book comes out, definitely.
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to. The Sublime. I want to
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 1: know about it. If I get any neat ideas or
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 1: things that I think are sublime, I'll send them your way.
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 3: That would be great. I'd love it.
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: Not the jazz. It was kind of an insane thing
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: to say to you. Robert Green, thank you so.
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 3: Much, man. Thank you so much for having me. I
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 3: really enjoyed it.
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me too, bud.
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 2: Now I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone Oh,
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 2: of mind I found I can feel it in my
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 2: bones