In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and podcaster joins us to talk about his love of music and his love for the art of singing. We talk about the importance of the vocal booth, the differences between singing and other types of sound, and what it's like to be in a musical cult. We also talk about a crazy movie about a guy who built a theater in order to make music in front of other people and then it fell apart because he was a member of a cult. And we talk about how important it is to have a good night's rest and a good day's sleep, and why you shouldn't care if you don't have it all. And, of course, there's a lot more. Enjoy! Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Please rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to our new podcast, Podchaser, wherever you get your favorite podchips, and don't forget to leave us a rating and review! It helps us spread the word to the world about what we're doing it! Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next Monday! Peace, Love, Blessings, Cheers! Cheers, EJ & Rory, Ej & Rory. -Alyssa, Caitlyn, -Jon & Sarah, -The Joe Rogans Podcast by Night, Kristy, AKA The Joe and Sarah, and the Crew, Sarah, & the Crew at the Podcast Project by Night by Night's Backyard Podcast by Joe, Joe, the Podcast by the Podchior, and Sarah & Sarah Sarah, the Crew by Nightly, and EJ, and The Crew at The Podchor, and Hannah, and Rachel, , and Sarah at the Pod Chorchor. , Jon & Sarah Atwood, and Caitlyn's House, and Joe, and much more! - Thank you, Jon and Sarah's Note: We're looking forward to seeing you all in the next episode of the podchor and Jon's podcast, and all that's coming soon! -- , Caitlyn & Sarah's back from New York's Backroom, and Jon s Backyard, and more! -Jon and Sarah s Back Yard, and so much more, too!
00:05:27.000And this guy got a consignment to write this article.
00:05:33.000And in the process of writing this article about the Manson murders, he starts uncovering all this crazy shit about the real root of what had happened.
00:05:44.000And it turned out, 20 years later, what it was really all about was the CIA. And the CIA had been doing these mind control experiments with hippies and LSD, and they did a lot of it in prison and had gone to prison to visit Charles Manson,
00:06:01.000had given him an acid in prison as a part of these studies.
00:06:07.000And then during his whole rampage, the whole Manson family, supplying them with acid, getting him out of jail every time he was arrested, and they ran a clinic in San Francisco, the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic,
00:06:23.000which my wife's mom was a hippie in Haight-Ashbury in the 70s, went there in the 60s, went there for treatment.
00:06:32.000She lived there and went there, and it was a front for the CIA. They were doing drug experiments on people.
00:06:38.000They also did thing called Operation Climax, Midnight Climax.
00:06:43.000Operation Midnight Climax, they would take over brothels, and they would have two-way mirrors, and they would give the prostitutes drugs to give to the Johns.
00:06:54.000So these guys would come in to try to have sex, and they would give them a drink, and they would take a drink, and they would get LSD. And so then they would study them.
00:07:02.000So they would inadvertently trip when they went to these places, and then they'd be studied by the CIA. And they ran these for years.
00:07:14.000There's this great book called Traumatic Narcissism that talks about the psychology that often leads to co-leaders.
00:07:20.000It's a clinical book, but I found it really, really fascinating about the type of person that has that need, that drive to cause other people to submit, to help support their own image of themselves.
00:07:35.000Well, the crazy thing is how prevalent it is throughout history, right?
00:07:39.000Because we're looking at it in terms of non-sanctioned versions of this, like the Holy Hell guy or Manson, but the Catholic Church or many different churches.
00:07:49.000You're dealing with the same exact scenario.
00:07:51.000You're just doing it in a sanctioned form where you have cardinals and bishops and the pope, and it's all going down.
00:07:57.000But at the end of the day, when that person is running that parish, Unless they are as true to the word of Jesus as is humanly possible, to the point where they're selfless and they really dedicate themselves to...
00:08:12.000I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine today about that, where he was telling me about this guy who works with the homeless in Austin that literally bought this chunk of land, built housing on it, has people come out there.
00:08:26.000He and his wife live with these people and works to rehabilitate them.
00:08:30.000Like, the guy literally does, like, the work of the Lord.
00:08:34.000Like, he's trying to, like, help these people's lives.
00:09:31.000There's a guy named Dan Carlin who's amazing, and he says he's not a historian because he's not technically accredited as a historian, but he really is a historian.
00:09:42.000He's just more of an amateur historian, but he's incredible at breaking down historical events.
00:09:48.000And he did this one about Martin Luther and about how Martin Luther was the beginning of Lutheranism.
00:10:07.000Anyway, what he did was translated the Bible into a phonetic language that is accessible to everyone.
00:10:15.000So instead of it just being in Latin, where these folks who were religious had to go and have it given to them by the priests.
00:10:25.000Instead, they were able to read it themselves.
00:10:28.000And they were also, he did another thing that made him a heretic, where he said, you should be able to interpret the Bible into your own thoughts.
00:10:39.000Like, you should be able to interpret God's Word.
00:10:41.000You shouldn't allow anybody else to interpret it for you.
00:11:16.000I think what people don't realize and not that...
00:11:18.000I mean, I don't know if you know much of what happened with my mom and I, but like something I don't think people realize is like that lobster in the pot thing of...
00:12:05.000They have nicer teeth, but what are you going to do?
00:12:10.000Yeah, it's funny, on that show, my little brother texted me, he's like, I'm about to sign a TV contract, and he doesn't have a TV, so I thought he was at an electronics store.
00:12:18.000Trying to buy a TV and that they're making them sign a contract or something.
00:12:22.000And I was like, why are you signing a contract to buy a television?
00:12:25.000He's like, no, like a reality TV show contract.
00:13:25.000And I'm like, that's closer, but it's not what a homestead is.
00:13:28.000But they just couldn't understand and would, of course, really make fun of, like, I was raised with an outhouse and I grew up only eating what we killed or canned or harvested.
00:13:40.000Homesteading is basically when the government gave you free land to settle a wild territory.
00:13:45.000So my grandmother and grandfather were born in Switzerland, living in Germany.
00:13:49.000My grandfather was going to university, I think in Geneva maybe, and he came up with this theory because he was taking a history class on the fall of civilizations.
00:13:58.000And he had this theory that if a population hits a certain critical mass, that it collapses.
00:14:03.000And so he started looking at the population of Europe and he felt like Europe was going to collapse.
00:15:06.000No, he was, like, raised in Switzerland, you know?
00:15:09.000People were just so hardcore back then.
00:15:10.000Yeah, and my granddad was, like, he was just a hard guy.
00:15:13.000So, anyway, the war starts to break out.
00:15:17.000Like, Hitler starts to become an actual problem, and now nobody can get visas in this group, except my grandmother, whose father had come to America during World War I and went back to Switzerland.
00:15:30.000So she decides to leave everybody, her boyfriend, her family, everybody, because she didn't want to be in Europe while this war started gearing up.
00:15:39.000So she got on the very last civilian ship that left right before the war.
00:15:51.000And he's like, do you want to get married?
00:15:53.000LAUGHTER And her mother was a seamstress, really poor, but had given my grandmother all of her cash and just said, this is so you don't ever have to rely on a man, which is to me so sweet.
00:16:04.000So my grandmother had this huge wad of cash in her pocket, probably more than anybody in that area had.
00:16:59.000My dad's childhood photos look like the 1800s.
00:17:02.000It's a horse and wagon with wheel, wooden wheels.
00:17:05.000And when the tides were out, they could take the wagon down to the beach and then they could go into where there was a town and they could get some basic supplies like flour.
00:17:13.000But that's all they bought was maybe flour, salt, and sugar.
00:18:57.000And she looks on the ground and there's a cat that's very fat at this point with little crumbs of cheese everywhere.
00:19:03.000And so my grandmother takes the cat, chops its head off, cuts it open, grabs the cheese out, cooks the cat, and serves it with the cheese sauce.
00:19:13.000And it wasn't, she wasn't, I mean, she's probably pissed at the cat, but that was just food.
00:20:10.000During the pandemic, when things started getting weird and food started missing from shelves, I had a buddy of mine who sent me a photo of his...
00:20:28.000And that thought process went through a lot of people's minds.
00:20:31.000They're like, I'm just assuming that this supply chain is always going to be in place and they're always going to be delivering chickens and all this stuff that's going to be there for me to buy.
00:20:41.000But if it's not, it rewires our perception of what food is.
00:20:46.000It rewires our perception of what it means to survive.
00:21:39.000So I feel like when we went from a village and started to urbanize, we stopped having a relationship.
00:21:45.000In a lot of ways, I think it kind of caused us to be schizophrenic as a humanity.
00:21:49.000We went from this cohesive environment where there was a healer and food and everything was in this really cohesive environment that we had a personal relationship with.
00:21:57.000And then all of a sudden, we no longer had a relationship with our food.
00:22:44.000And that to me is one of the saddest things is when you're saying people don't know where their food comes, you're saying they don't have a relationship with it anymore.
00:24:07.000The society that we've created, it's not like it was like, this will be the best for people and when we take into account people's psychology and the needs and our human reward systems and all the different things that are in play because of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, this is probably the best way to make it smooth.
00:25:12.000Doesn't make us happier, particularly, but it's like we are the most advanced civilization in the history of humankind, but we're the unhappiest.
00:25:20.000You know, suicide rates between 2006 and 2018 went up 70% across almost every demographic.
00:25:30.000You know, I think it's, like, distraction.
00:25:33.000And I was raised around a lot of American natives.
00:25:35.000I was adopted by these uncles when I was, like, 15. I moved out at 15, and these uncles, like, boy, they taught me a lot.
00:25:40.000But it's really interesting because, like, my uncles taught me certain definitions of, like, power has a definition, and active power is something that serves you and your community, and it becomes a circular action, and so it has a momentum and becomes self-sustaining.
00:26:18.000When they were actually healing complex things.
00:26:20.000And no, they didn't have a shot at chickenpox and all the crappy shit that we exposed them to.
00:26:25.000But there's so much wisdom in that tradition and in many indigenous traditions that when you look at like how our technology has outpaced our philosophy, we really...
00:27:17.000But you still have to make a decision from your heart if it's going to have sustainability, which to me is just, if you're selfish, that's a great idea.
00:27:30.000Through you understand that there are these pitfalls and you avoid them and you recognize them and you could speak so eloquently about all the things that are wrong with our modern society and the way we view stuff.
00:29:53.000I mean, if you're going to build your own house and hunt your own food and grow your own vegetables and can them, there's a lot of things you have to learn how to do.
00:30:01.000You can't call someone to fix the plumbing.
00:31:06.000But I do think with homesteading, it gave me a tremendous amount of advantages as far as I was raised in an environment where it was like, figure it out.
00:31:17.000I know you don't know what you're doing, but you're going to be expected to figure it out.
00:31:21.000And then I wasn't raised with a male-female system where the women do this job and the men do that job.
00:31:27.000I was raised where you just – everybody does everything.
00:31:30.000And so I was expected to do all the work.
00:31:33.000And I know I wasn't as strong, but I know I was as smart or as capable, and I was still expected to find a way to do it.
00:31:38.000Not to mention, like, the eight kids that were originally born, my dad's siblings were six girls and two boys.
00:31:43.000So it was very female-heavy, and the women, you know, logged – I think that's why I was willing to move out at 15 when my dad wasn't nice.
00:32:48.000And so then my dad, you know, leaves Vietnam, marries my mom, has three kids and my mom leaves and all of a sudden he's just trauma triggering.
00:32:55.000Nobody knows what that, we didn't know those words, you know.
00:32:58.000So he starts drinking to try and help that, and he ends up repeating the cycle, much less than his dad, mind you, but started getting hit at that age.
00:33:06.000And so that's why when I moved out at 15, I just knew, statistically, I'm going to end up in an abusive relationship, on drugs, drinking, some version of all of that.
00:33:56.000You had to do things that were very difficult and know that you're capable of doing those things.
00:34:01.000Like, what was it that allowed you to have the kind of confidence that most 15-year-olds are not...
00:34:06.000They're just going to tolerate whatever bullshit their environment throws at them because it also provides warmth and a roof over their head.
00:34:14.000I think part of it was, you know, that I was raised on a homestead and I was raised around really strong people, male and female, that I was willing...
00:34:44.000And so I was willing to pay the price and figure out how to pay rent and figure out how to get jobs so that I didn't have to be around that.
00:36:32.000Not to say reading the symposium or, you know, the allegory of the caves or something isn't mind-altering, because it is, you know, and that kind of stuff, I think, really...
00:36:40.000It helped me think in different terms, but I learned about the dialectic, right?
00:36:53.000I think it was in eighth grade or something.
00:36:55.000And then I realized if I asked myself a question, I could often hear an answer.
00:36:59.000So I could have a dialectic with myself.
00:37:01.000I could sit and get quiet and ask myself a question and it's like, I kind of know an answer or I'd feel like I knew a direction.
00:37:09.000And then I think between that, which was starting to cultivate like an inner awareness, I call it your greater sense of intelligence.
00:37:16.000You know, there's your brain, which can only know what you're programmed to know.
00:37:20.000But then there's like this other thing you can tap into.
00:37:22.000And I think a lot of artists, that's what we do.
00:37:24.000We're supposed to tap into something a little bit outside of our brain, a little outside of, you know, I call it, I don't know what else to call it, my greater sense of intelligence.
00:37:32.000And when I did that, I noticed patterns I didn't realize I noticed.
00:37:35.000So if I sat and wrote while I was doing that, I was kind of just going inward, I would see patterns.
00:37:41.000And I could ask myself questions like, why does my dad hit me?
00:37:44.000And I would see an answer that I didn't know I knew before.
00:37:49.000And I found it fascinating and it made me love it.
00:37:51.000And then the other thing was watching nature.
00:37:53.000I really think nature taught me how to be a human.
00:37:56.000I was raised around such big, beautiful nature that, you know, if I'd sit on the bluff and watch the tide go in and out, I was really sad this one day.
00:38:04.000And the tide takes a long time to go out there and a long time to come back in.
00:38:08.000And for some reason it just hit me like, nothing's permanent.
00:38:14.000So I'm sitting here really depressed, thinking the rest of my life is going to be depressing, but I'm not so special that I'm the only thing in all of the universe that will not change.
00:38:51.000I could name so many things that I learned from nature.
00:38:54.000It's so easy for us to get stuck in us and not take into account the grand scale of everything that's around us.
00:39:04.000And I think it's one of the reasons why people that live on beachfront areas are more relaxed.
00:39:11.000Because I think you look at the ocean and you go, I'm not shit.
00:39:15.000Whatever my problems are, it's like in the face of the magnitude of water, in the face of a mountain, in the face of nature, in the face of the stars, there's nothing more humbling than looking up at the Milky Way and just trying to imagine that this goes on forever and that there's hundreds of billions of these same kind of galaxies that are out there.
00:39:38.000You can't imagine, but then you're worried about your electrical bill or whatever it is that's fucking with you.
00:39:44.000You're worried about your relationship.
00:39:46.000But in the moment, those things seem like everything.
00:40:29.000I mean, all of that is probably these human reward systems that are designed to keep us alive.
00:40:35.000You know, the ego and jealousy and all these different things that are in place, they probably serve some sort of evolutionary purpose at some point in time, but they're not serving us a purpose in our lives.
00:41:55.000That was like one of the most transformative moments in my life.
00:41:57.000The first thing I remembered was this quote that was attributed to Buddha that said, happiness doesn't depend on who you are or what you have.
00:42:06.000And so I was just like, I have to double down on figuring out this what am I thinking thing.
00:42:11.000But the other thing, I mean, it just led to so many, like, insights.
00:42:16.000It was like, I don't even know where to begin because it's like so many things start coming to my head, but I couldn't tell what I was thinking because I had so much anxiety and I was just disassociating a lot.
00:42:25.000I was getting agoraphobic at that time.
00:42:28.000And so I decided, like, your hands are the servants of your thought.
00:42:31.000If you want to know what you're thinking, watch what your hands are doing.
00:42:33.000Because it's like thought cooled down into action because your hands are just obeying thoughts, right?
00:42:38.000So I decided for two weeks I would just write down everything that my hands did.
00:42:42.000And it was just a dumb life plan, but I literally did it.
00:42:45.000And I couldn't stop stealing right away.
00:42:47.000So I'd write down when I stole, write down when I washed my hands, or if I wouldn't shake somebody's hand.
00:42:53.000Whatever the hell it is, I wrote what my hands did for two weeks.
00:42:58.000At the end of the two weeks, I look at my little journal, and it looks like a bunch of weird shit.
00:43:01.000I'm like, well, I quit believing in myself.
00:43:04.000But the much more interesting thing is my panic attacks went away in that two weeks, and I didn't even realize it until I sat down.
00:43:10.000And what I stumbled on was presence, right?
00:43:12.000I stumbled on being so absorbed in the moment that I couldn't fixate on things that I was afraid of.
00:43:20.000And this idea of, like, fear is this thief that takes your past, it projects it into a future that hasn't happened, and it robs me of the only chance I have to be safe, which was my main concern with safety, which was right now.
00:43:33.000And if I couldn't even show up right now to advocate for myself or to make a good decision, I was fucked.
00:44:35.000And have so much pain that we're not conscious enough that we can actually be intentional and get ourselves off sort of the merry-go-round of our programming and set ourselves on a new course.
00:48:15.000I was so scared because I was in so many bad situations.
00:48:20.000But jealousy, greed, fear, worry, not sleeping, not connecting to humans, not exercising So then one day – so my panic attacks were still really a big problem.
00:48:35.000And I started to get to where I could feel a panic attack coming on.
00:48:46.000And so I was like, I wonder if I could hack my way out of a contracted state by forcing myself to participate in something off of my list that dilated me.
00:48:56.000And so I looked at gratitude and I was like, I'm going to try that one.
00:48:59.000And so like my anxiety is building up.
00:49:01.000I'm doing my rocking thing where I'm about to head into my panic attack.
00:49:05.000And I'm like, what am I going to be grateful for?
00:49:06.000And I'm homeless and I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself that day.
00:49:11.000And so one of the best, like, hacks to get present is curiosity and observation.
00:49:16.000Because you can't, like, observe this and not be really present because you have to be present to observe it.
00:49:22.000So I used that to look around me and I saw the sunlight filtering through this palm tree.
00:49:27.000And it made this, like, lacy pattern on me.
00:49:30.000And it reminded me of being a kid in Alaska laying in the meadows and watching the tree, you know, through the leaves.
00:49:36.000And I don't know why but it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks that like I was alive and I was here and I hadn't killed myself and I was so grateful and the gratitude of that which was so unexpected but it just erupted and moved me to tears that like what an act of defiance to not have killed myself and to have been there and just trying to figure it out and I was suddenly grateful for myself which was weird because you know I had a lot of self-loathing and all kinds of things at the time.
00:50:05.000And the next thing I knew, a half hour had passed and I didn't have a panic attack.
00:50:08.000You know, and that to me was like, Eureka!
00:50:17.000So this, the desire to kill yourself, was this just from the sheer pain of the anxiety and the depression and just the hating the position that you're in in life that you just can't take it, you just want out?
00:50:33.000Yeah, that permanence, you know, I guarantee you like whatever had me sitting on the bluff that day watching the tide saved my life.
00:50:39.000Because whenever the idea of this is too painful, life is too long to go on this way.
00:50:46.000It's just too painful to feel this way for 60 years.
00:51:16.000And so that's why I was very into like, if I got an idea, I tried to figure out how to make it practicable, like an actionable step, a behavioral step.
00:51:35.000And then you have to take notes on it and you have to see if it works.
00:51:37.000And if it doesn't work, you have to try something different and then you just have to not give up and you have to keep doing it.
00:51:42.000But what's so impressive is that you develop this structure and you've figured these steps out on your own.
00:51:50.000Like even the step of having communication with yourself.
00:51:53.000To try to come up with a different result.
00:51:55.000To sit down and think about the different states that you're in and what are these acts or what are the different activities that lead you, the different thought processes that lead you to the good states, the bad states.
00:53:02.000I don't know anybody that's interesting that had it easy.
00:53:05.000I know a lot of nice people that had it easy.
00:53:09.000They're lovely, they're wonderful, but there's something about the emotional depth of your music in your lyrics that probably wouldn't be possible.
00:53:21.000If you grew up in the suburbs with a happy mom and a happy dad, I don't want to say it wouldn't be possible.
00:53:27.000Because everybody's got their own trials and tribulations in life and just the existential angst of being a living finite organism, spinning around on a planet, hurling through infinity.
00:54:39.000And these conversations, these descriptions, your own personal experiences that you're relaying in this very honest way is fuel for people.
00:54:53.000For someone right now that's in a bad place, and I guarantee you, there's probably a lot of people listening to this right now, that this is resonating with them, and they get something out of this that's not available through any other source.
00:57:34.000You know, like we take complex PTSD, self-harming, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, and these kids turn around in radical fashion and they're happy.
00:57:44.000And you can see what it looks like on the other side of suicide ideation, you know.
00:57:49.000What is the name of this organization?
00:58:04.000When I was cleaning buildings in Homer, Alaska, for rent, a dance teacher came from out of state and he was doing a two-week dance workshop and I wanted to take it.
00:58:13.000And so I asked him if I cleaned his studio in exchange, would he let me take a dance class?
00:58:18.000Turns out I was a really crappy dancer.
00:59:09.000I loved Cole Porter because there was a gay man in me dying to get out, apparently.
00:59:13.000And I loved the entire Cole Porter songbook.
00:59:16.000And so a local piano player learned the piano parts, and so I sang these Cole Porter songs.
00:59:23.000And the town—and my aunts taught me how to make flyers and how to pass them out and then how to go to businesses and ask for donations— Wow.
00:59:58.000So I had enough money to get a plane ticket to Detroit, but I had to hitchhike from Detroit up to Traverse City, which is so dumb, but that's what I did.
01:00:06.000I don't know how far it is, but Traverse City where the school is pretty far in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan.
01:00:11.000So I show up and I am walking through like the main street of the campus and I'm looking around and people are like pointing at me.
01:00:22.000I don't know why they're pointing at me.
01:00:24.000And then a teacher rushes out to get me and she goes, you need to go to the dean's office.
01:02:52.000First of all, before that, I want to back up.
01:02:54.000Your dad sang and he brought you with him to bars?
01:02:59.000Yes, so my mom and dad had a show at the Captain Cook in Anchorage, Alaska.
01:03:04.000They did shows for dinner tourists, and it was like an Alaskan show.
01:03:07.000There was like a lot of footage of my family that was homesteading, and my dad wrote original songs, and me and my two brothers would get up and be part of the act.
01:03:16.000So I started yodeling with him since I was little.
01:03:20.000And then when my mom left, my dad and I became a duet, and it just turned into bars.
01:03:24.000So I was bar singing from a really young age, and like, you know, I would have guys put dimes in my hand, and they would fold my fingers around the dime, and they'd go, call me when you're 16. You're going to be great to fuck when you're older.
01:04:49.000And so I was just like, and I knew I was in pain because it's like right after the divorce and my dad just started drinking and I was like, note to self.
01:04:56.000So your dad didn't drink at all before the divorce?
01:05:22.000And so, it seems like your dad has always had this sort of showbiz thing.
01:05:30.000Like if he was doing that show up there where he was doing like an Alaska show for dinner theater and then moving to bars, like he always had this desire for an exorbitant amount of attention.
01:05:45.000My grandmother had been an aspiring opera singer and poetess in Europe.
01:07:56.000Like, if you looked at all the people that have various addictions and various, like, self-destructive patterns of behavior in their life, how many of them come out of it on the other end for the better?
01:08:12.000You know, it's most people that go down unless they have some really good help or they figure it out because they hit rock bottom and they come to an epiphany.
01:08:46.000If you're a healthy person and you're in a job, as long as things don't go terribly wrong with your health, in terms of your physical health, you move forward and you kind of progress and you eventually get to a better place.
01:09:00.000You go to school, you get a degree, you get a graduate degree, and hopefully you get a job.
01:09:04.000But there's this progression that takes place that's tangible and it's trackable.
01:09:13.000Seems to be insurmountable because it's a puzzle that involves your emotions and involves whatever it means, whatever your identity is, whatever it is that's keeping you in this prison of your own control.
01:09:32.000And that, it's amazing how few people get out of that one.
01:09:37.000It might be our biggest problem as humans.
01:09:40.000But to me, again, it comes down to somewhere along the line, we forgot as a species what to do with pain.
01:09:46.000We forgot how to transmute pain into something that's useful and becomes nourishing.
01:09:52.000And, you know, one of the things it'll be in my next book, it's not in my last one, but this idea of like, when you tolerate the intolerable, you become ill.
01:10:26.000And so then you have to figure out how to get a simple, and that was like a lot of what I've had to do is like, how do I get it back to the most root, like the top domino?
01:10:34.000Because if you keep treating the pain further down the domino line, it doesn't matter because you haven't gotten to this root of like, how do I stop tolerating the intolerable?
01:10:45.000You know, so for people that were raised in really abusive environments or whatever it is, whatever your pain is, It's, you have to start gaining skills for what do I do with pain without reverting to my bag or negative coping mechanisms.
01:10:58.000And then it's also like, how do I stop tolerating the intolerable so I stop getting ill?
01:11:03.000And those just aren't things people are helping us talk about or think about.
01:11:07.000Yeah, it's it's not something that comes up very often and it's it's also It's it's not something that's taught to many people in terms of like how do you cope?
01:11:20.000What do you what's a healthy thing to do?
01:11:23.000Exercise, you know meditate Have conversations with people you love and trust if you don't have those people You know seek out help try to do something like this is not like standard It isn't.
01:11:40.000You know, I really was angry about the fact that everything I needed to learn, like, when I moved out, I knew I needed a new emotional language.
01:12:04.000And I knew where to go to learn Spanish, but I didn't have anywhere to go to learn a new emotional language.
01:12:10.000And that was like, how am I going to solve for that?
01:12:13.000You know, I started by just looking at other people and when they had a skill I liked, I would just sort of study them or I'd even interview them and just talk to them.
01:12:21.000But with time, what I've learned to do is you really do have to neurologically rewire yourself.
01:13:23.000Because in the last 18 years I've been like really just refining like how do I help these other kids that don't have traditional support systems.
01:13:31.000And then how could I, like, scale these skills that help us be happier through systems that already exist?
01:13:37.000So, like, through public school systems, you know, like English class.
01:13:41.000Can I figure out how to bake in these skills into an English curriculum so that every kid who comes through that English class gets exposed to these ideas?
01:13:49.000And then I'm also creating, like, a culture company.
01:13:53.000I did it with Tony Hsieh originally from Zappos, but he passed away.
01:13:57.000But now I'm doing it with the Hudson Bay Company, where I'm creating a culture program for companies.
01:14:04.000Because I really believe if we can figure out how to invest in humans in a more meaningful way, they're going to show up with more bandwidth at work.
01:14:11.000I think it'd be smart for employers to invest in their humans, understand what are your pain points that I can help you solve, whether it's relationship fitness or parenting fitness or...
01:14:23.000Give them training and education in that.
01:14:25.000I think people are going to show up at work with a lot more bandwidth, creativity, resiliency, and all those things should pay off dividends.
01:14:50.000But to have something like that for mental health would be as important, if not more.
01:14:56.000Because the mental health would actually facilitate you doing something about your physical health, because you'd be healthier, you'd think about it better, you'd have a better perspective.
01:15:04.000Yeah, and so many, I mean, I forget, I have all the stats somewhere, but, you know, billions of dollars are lost annually for employers because of mental health days, like employees taking sick days for mental health reasons.
01:15:16.000Like, I do just think it's just going to be better for everybody if we can figure out...
01:15:21.000I call it like putting the village back into the city.
01:15:24.000We've got to find ways of helping humans where humans are feel better.
01:15:29.000And I think we kind of have an obligation to do that.
01:15:32.000And if we can scale it through pre-existing systems, why not?
01:15:44.000We both do what we actually want to do.
01:15:47.000That's very different than most people.
01:15:49.000I think there's a certain amount of pain that just comes from the grind of doing something you don't really want to do every day over and over again.
01:15:59.000And you're doing it for benefits and you're doing it for raises and futures and vacations and all the things that you're planning.
01:16:11.000And one day I'll have a retirement plan.
01:16:13.000I got a 401k and I got this and I got that.
01:16:25.000And creative, you know, oftentimes a lot of people that are very creative Yeah.
01:16:51.000There's a lot of people out there, and I don't know what the number is, but I would imagine it's in the high 60. What's with me in percentages today?
01:16:59.000It's a lot of people are not doing what they want to do, you know?
01:17:03.000It's like that Thoreau quote, that I always love this quote, that most men leave lives of quiet desperation.
01:17:11.000And I think the final part of that is, and they go to the grave with the song still in them.
01:17:20.000But that is the reality of most people's existence.
01:17:23.000And I think our modern-day education system that funnels people into occupations and tells them that what you do or what I do is almost impossible.
01:18:05.000Like, if I'm watching Richard Pryor in a movie, and he's doing stand-up, if I'm watching live at the Sunset Strip, like, clearly this took place.
01:18:14.000So this man is a real person that got to this point.
01:18:18.000But people will tell you that that path is almost impossible.
01:18:22.000And how many people were discouraged off of that path that wanted to be a singer or wanted to be a comedian or wanted to be whatever it is that seems hard, that's an untraditional path or a path that's not as well-lit as your standard,
01:18:39.000you know, I'm going to be a dentist, you know, and then you're going to follow this groove and this is how you do it.
01:18:44.000There's so many people out there that just, they got hoodwinked.
01:18:48.000They got hoodwinked by the system and they never figured out how to develop the kind of horsepower that you need to pull yourself out of a ditch.
01:19:32.000Because taking the risk you took, taking the risk I took, where there is no guarantee, it isn't handed to you and it isn't a promise that's going to happen, that's a risk.
01:19:40.000And a lot of people are just very risk adverse because you don't, the fear of the unknown.
01:19:45.000And we want to go back to the familiar.
01:19:47.000It's why even if you're miserable, you kind of just keep going back to familiar emotional habits because it's familiar.
01:19:54.000Or even if you're on a good path, a lot of times people will fall back into a bad path because it's more familiar.
01:20:00.000That happens to a lot of folks that lose weight.
01:20:02.000They lose weight, they get really healthy, and then some part of them sabotages this new journey.
01:20:51.000And that's why if a therapist or anybody you're working with isn't giving you a new tool, right, resiliency is just a new tool, You're going to keep hitting it with the hammer you have.
01:21:46.000It takes an incredible person to say something to you that really resonates.
01:21:50.000Like, oh, she knows the fuck she's talking about.
01:21:52.000For most people, that's why the idea of therapy to me, I mean, it's great if you get a great therapist.
01:22:00.000But therapists are basically like every other type of person, every other occupation.
01:22:06.000There's people that are really good at it and there's people that are uninspired and they're shitty and they're arrogant and they don't really want to do what they're doing or maybe they don't like you or whatever it is.
01:22:17.000And that's such a difficult, painful job that, you know, the amount of therapists that are drinking and our addicts are pretty high, actually.
01:22:56.000And try and get a little more nitty gritty about it so that you can find a path to that.
01:23:01.000When I was younger and I was competing in martial arts, I studied psychology, and when I was trying to think about what my eventual path in life would be, I thought, because I was very fascinated by the way the human mind worked, I thought, maybe I should be a psychologist.
01:23:17.000But the more I studied psychology and the more I started talking to people about it, the more I realized, you're only going to be talking to fucked up people.
01:23:26.000I mean, it's great if you have this calling in life to help people get out of their rut, but I recognized as a 16-year-old boy, I was looking at this going, like, this path is going to leave me to be, like, if you work in a chemical factory,
01:23:47.000If you work with sick people all the time, emotionally sick people, the energy that you're taking in on a regular basis is that of people that are destroyed.
01:23:57.000People that are just depressed and sad and angry and confused and I don't think it's nourishing for a human being.
01:24:06.000I mean, I think some people, they have a calling, and it's amazing that they help people in that way, but that wasn't me.
01:24:12.000I was like, I'm too fucked up for this already.
01:24:14.000I got to figure out a way to be happy, and I can't be happy just dealing with other people.
01:24:20.000And I also realized I'm only interested in psychology because I'm trying to figure out why I'm so scared.
01:24:27.000I'm like, what can I do to empower my mindset so I can compete and not worry?
01:24:35.000But the idea of dealing with people and their suicidal tendencies and problems and angst and anger and all the other things we've already talked about, I was like, I just don't think I could do it.
01:24:45.000Yeah, you have to have such a strategy in place if you're going to do that type of work.
01:24:50.000Because it is like being exposed to Chernobyl every day.
01:26:22.000And so I just had this dyslexia of like, I thought icky experiences, that was called love in my head.
01:26:29.000So retraining that type of emotional dyslexia is really hard, but basically it just starts with saying, writing down on a piece of paper, what things nourish me?
01:26:38.000What am I consuming in my environment that I'm confusing for nourishment that isn't?
01:26:43.000That one simple question, if people will answer those two little questions, can change your life.
01:27:18.000I mean, there's so much of that in abusive, like when you hear about people that come from physically abusive relationships, like so many children of physically abusive people wind up being physically abusive to their own children.
01:27:35.000Or people that see their mom and dad beat the shit out of each other, they wind up doing that to their own children or to their own spouse.
01:27:42.000Yeah, that was that nature versus nurture thing of like, that's an emotional language.
01:27:46.000That was a billion data points of interaction that those children have during the day and at night they're tucked in and they might be told, I love you, good night.
01:27:54.000You know, they're taught that's what love is and that's that emotional language and that's what retraining that, nobody's really figured out how to create a system out of it.
01:30:18.000I think you're a sea of possibilities, but I don't think you are your thoughts, because if you can observe them, you're something other than them.
01:31:24.000So I stopped looking at my anxiety as my enemy that I was trying to disassociate from and push away and keep at bay.
01:31:31.000And I started treating my anxiety like a friend and I would sit down and I would take deep breaths and I would get really calm and I would ask my anxiety to come closer and I would have a conversation with it, which sounds really silly.
01:31:44.000But I was always consuming something that made me anxious.
01:31:47.000And I was like, oh, it's when I talked to Sally.
01:32:28.000Because your life will get better if you stop consuming the things that make you anxious, you know?
01:32:33.000Change is so hard for people, especially radical change like getting a divorce, like quitting your job, like moving out of state, like doing whatever it takes to just shift and figure out what it is that's causing you so much pain.
01:32:52.000And so much frustration and so much fear.
01:32:56.000It is most likely your body is sending you a message that the pattern that you're on right now, the pattern that you're following is not good.
01:33:04.000It's not good and you better switch it up or you're going to have to just numb yourself every night.
01:33:10.000And that's what scares the shit out of me is that that solution of numbing yourself every night is the most common.
01:33:18.000Because people just aren't taught this type of emotional courage.
01:33:25.000And the longer you avoid it, the bigger the problems get, right?
01:33:28.000It really could be you need a divorce.
01:33:30.000It really could be you have to quit your job and do drastic Hail Mary moves.
01:33:33.000But if we can teach people at younger and younger ages, you know, like with our kids, that's one of the fun things is their age is like when they don't sleep, they feel like crap.
01:34:29.000It's so unusual that someone not only has that insight but then structures a sort of plan of attack to mitigate all these factors that are fucking your life up and try to strengthen your resolve to improve and get out of there.
01:36:10.000That's always obsessed my music, what I've been building in my business outside of music, because you just know how much it means to people.
01:36:18.000What do you think it is that makes rich people so stingy?
01:36:58.000It's easy for you to judge other people and go, they're lazy.
01:37:00.000Like me being homeless, I was shocked I ended up homeless.
01:37:03.000I didn't see that on my programming list, you know.
01:37:07.000It was just one thing led to another like that boss wouldn't have I wouldn't have sex with him and he wouldn't give me my paycheck and then my landlord was like you can't stay like you've been late too often.
01:40:15.000So it is all like a feverish, weird memory.
01:40:18.000But I remember going in and getting in the passenger seat of my car, a little teeny like Datsun hatchback 510. And I was too sick to go anywhere else.
01:42:10.000And once I started, like, getting a grip on my panic attacks and figuring out, like, that dilated and contracted things, it was like, I could feel a momentum.
01:43:03.000I was like, maybe I could get a gig somewhere and start singing because I made money singing, you know, like for my whole life since I was little, like 100 bucks, 200 bucks, but whatever.
01:43:11.000So I'd go around to coffee shops in the area, but San Diego started to be a hotbed for signing activity, you know, grunge.
01:43:18.000There was like kind of a grunge scene in San Diego.
01:43:20.000And so I go in there and they charged you to sing there.
01:46:57.000It went from two people to four people to eight people to 40 to 80 to capacity to people standing outside watching me sing through the window.
01:49:10.000And you know from like being on stage, but like I wouldn't make a set list and I would just feel the audience and like I talked and I did a lot of, I tell a lot of stories and like, kind of like stand-up, I would just tell like just stories and I would just take a little break so people could use the bathroom.
01:49:35.000And when people started standing outside and they couldn't hear but they were just watching me through the window and the look on their face like to this day it like gives me chills like they looked at me with like a certain look and it was like holy shit like this is different and they would stand out in the rain like we put little speakers out there so they could hear and people would stand in the rain and just listen to me singing through the window with little speakers and it was just like it was very humbling like very very humbling wow yeah so then what happens how do you get discovered There
01:50:07.000was a radio DJ, a programmer, excuse me.
01:50:11.000He ran 91X, which is a really big radio station in the country.
01:50:14.000They might have been number two in the country at the time.
01:51:08.000I'd saved up enough door money to buy a car.
01:51:11.000Cheap car, like a couple hundred dollar car.
01:51:13.000So I get down to the radio station and I sing a song for him and we talk a little bit.
01:51:17.000And I guess he went ahead, him and this guy named Lou Niles put it on the radio and it got requested by fans.
01:51:27.000That's back when you could still request songs and they'd listen to it.
01:51:29.000And it got somehow into the top 20 of this station, which is a big deal.
01:51:37.000Like, top 20 on that station was like, you know, labels pay a lot of money to promote their artists to try and get them into the top 20. And this was like an acoustic guitar demo in the middle of like all this grunge music.
01:54:06.000And, God forbid, you take somebody with my emotional background, and they ever get famous, I'm the recipe for every movie you've seen about every musician.
01:54:17.000And again, I didn't want to be a statistic and I fought so hard for my happiness up to this point that I was like, I don't think I could trust myself to have a record deal and figure out how to do that career without self imploding.
01:54:31.000I remember being on the beach one day and I was like, I wanted to do it, but I was terrified of doing it.
01:54:37.000So I made myself a promise that my number one job would still be to figure out how to be happy and my number two job would be to be a musician.
01:54:46.000And then, under the musician category, that I wanted to be an artist more than I wanted to be famous.
01:54:52.000And so knowing those was like having my North Star and I felt like I could navigate and make decisions based on those things.
01:54:59.000And so I went ahead and signed the record deal.
01:55:34.000But I took the biggest back end anybody had ever been awarded.
01:55:38.000And so if I sold records, I was going to make a shit ton.
01:55:43.000So because, like, under the artist category, I wanted to be an artist more than I wanted to be famous, it meant I had to put myself in an environment and in a position to win as a singer-songwriter, and as a folk singer, no less, at the height of grunge.
01:55:56.000The odds of that working I knew were really slim, and I felt like the bidding war over me was just much more of like a dick contest between all the labels.
01:56:03.000I didn't think it necessarily had to do with my talent.
01:56:06.000I thought I was talented, but I thought the odds were still really, really against me.
01:56:11.000And I had to put myself in a position to be able to weather the fact that my first album may not be successful.
01:56:20.000But if you have a million dollar signing bonus, you have to have your first record be successful or else you'll get dropped because you cost so much to the label.
01:56:28.000And so I was just doing it to put myself in a position to make my art first and to not leverage my art unduly.
01:56:34.000You know, it's like saying you have to grow a pear but you don't even have a tree yet.
01:57:32.000And I wonder how much of that has to do with your ability to work your way through suicidal thoughts and depression and the anxiety and this way that you've sort of It's almost like it was preparing you for it.
02:01:06.000I bet on myself and created that record deal for that, right, to structure it that way so I wouldn't get dropped.
02:01:13.000But another reason I didn't mind betting on myself is, like, I looked where culture was, and, you know, the great thing about Nirvana is it just ripped the scab off of, like, culture that was like, we're a material world and we're material girls.
02:01:25.000You know, Nirvana's like, we're not happy.
02:02:07.000So even though culture, like in all the radio gatekeepers, were like, no, grunge is everything, From singing live for people, and I was opening for the Ramones, Catherine Wheel, Belly, punk bands by myself, getting shit thrown at me.
02:02:21.000But I saw in the audience that people responded to heart, to a lot of heart.
02:03:38.000I was kicked out of so many radio stations.
02:03:42.000My label was begging me like, Jewel, just bite your tongue.
02:03:46.000And I was like, I did not survive my life, turn down the guy and end up homeless so I could take shit from this little prick on the microphone.
02:04:13.000That whole thing about truth that you were saying earlier, or you were saying that there's something about singing, that there's an authenticity that comes through in music, in singing, and that that authenticity was really what killed hair bands,
02:05:00.000A friend of mine was in a hair band and was on his way to Europe, was in the airport, saw Nevermind on MTV, called his manager and said, we're going to go home.
02:05:45.000This authenticity, which was completely non-existent in the hairband world.
02:05:51.000The hairband world was all about like wigs and just platform shoes and whatever the fuck they were wearing and just like this frivolous rock and roll life.
02:07:36.000And then there's only so many employees at a label that can champion a band.
02:07:41.000And so I had to find a way of making sure I stayed a priority after a hot signing like that when I wasn't selling.
02:07:48.000And so I was like writing thank you letters to every secretary from the road, to the different heads of different departments, how much it meant to me.
02:07:57.000It was like it really, I really, it meant a lot to me.
02:08:00.000And then I just made sure it was affordable so that when board meetings happened and they looked at the roster, like acts were getting dropped.
02:08:07.000And I finally had one champion in the label and I was like, eh, she costs $12 this month.
02:08:12.000Just let the poor thing stay out there.
02:08:51.000It was only once that I opened for them and it was like the shed and of course was on during daylight really early and so there were people out on the lawn but not up in the seats and so I was like, I wanted everybody to come closer.
02:09:27.000One, I did give up on my first album and I went back into the studio and started making a second record and I started writing stuff that sounded grungier.
02:11:25.000But he really, really believed in my songs.
02:11:29.000Like every night after the show, he would bring me to his dressing room and he'd go over my lyrics with me and be like, hey, what made you write that one?
02:14:27.000To go from you watching the tide come in and out and realizing you don't have to kill yourself to five years later selling a million albums a month.
02:15:03.000But we don't do it for our own happiness.
02:15:05.000And I tried to just, even though I didn't have a lot of skills, I tried to be really practical.
02:15:09.000Like, Jewel, if you're saying happiness really is your number one job, You have to make a plan around it and be accountable to it.
02:15:17.000And so that was always like I thought about it every day.
02:15:19.000Like my music was a side effect of that number one job.
02:15:24.000That's why my music was always about like hands.
02:15:28.000My music was about this process for me.
02:15:31.000And so it required different strategies at different times, but the exercises I kind of developed while I was homeless, I kept developing those types of things that helped me cope with fame, helped me cope with, you know, anxiety, because plenty of stuff was coming up, you know, and it's hard and a difficult job for sure.
02:15:49.000And so I just kept coming up with planned strategies, seeing how I was doing.
02:16:31.000I think by that time I was on the cover of Time Magazine, and I was the type of famous where you can't go pee without people following you in and cross the street without people following you.
02:16:41.000And so I realized during that two years where I didn't do anything at the height of my fame, like, your profile really does go down.
02:19:28.000But it's still amazing to have that kind of insight while you're recovering from being homeless and then you get insanely wealthy really quickly.
02:19:38.000That kind of money, like making that kind of money, selling a million records a month is fucking insane.
02:20:53.000And you're dealing with the skills and the tools that you developed from growing up on a homestead to being homeless to...
02:21:03.000You know being a kid in a coffee shop getting discovered like that This is like the the structure and the framework is so rickety like Jesus Christ to survive reentry to pop through to this other dimension of Now being super famous and not losing your fucking mind and to have the insight to just chill for a couple years.
02:21:23.000It's pretty amazing Yeah, it was important like Did you lay low?
02:21:30.000Like, what did you do during those two years?
02:21:31.000I think I met Ty at the time, my ex-husband, and so I went on the ranch in Texas, Stephenville, Texas, and I just...
02:21:37.000I don't know, it was like a midlife crisis at 21, you know, or 22. It was like, all right, I achieved this thing I didn't ever think I could achieve.
02:21:46.000Now that I'm here, it doesn't feel really good.
02:21:48.000What bothered you the most about the fame thing that you realized that you needed to have some sort of a break?
02:23:04.000Like nothing was worth that feeling to me.
02:23:06.000When you see someone like Britney Spears today that seems to be really struggling, do you see that?
02:23:14.000Like that path and you see like what it was like for you as a young woman to experience that kind of very bizarre Fame that I mean we can talk about this We could sort of try to explain to people Who've never experienced it what it's like,
02:23:32.000but it's an it's an alien It's not normal.
02:23:40.000No one is supposed to go places and everyone knows who you are.
02:23:45.000It's not the way human beings evolved.
02:23:50.000You're supposed to know people who know you and that's it.
02:23:53.000You're not supposed to go places and everyone knows you.
02:23:57.000So, to experience that at a young age, and for someone like Britney Spears, who, you know, she was on the Mickey Mouse Club, right?
02:24:19.000Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, I know a few personally, they don't get through it.
02:24:26.000The way I've described it, it's like mixing concrete, but you don't add enough water, or you add some other stuff, and then you can't fix it once it's built.
02:24:48.000But what you had was like a different kind of concrete.
02:24:55.000Because being a fucking 15-year-old homeless kid and being suicidal and leaving your family and all that, like, man, that is con—like, you did figure out a way to form—you figured out a way to form it so much that you recognized the pitfalls and you're like,
02:25:29.000But when you see someone like Britney Spears, you know, and all this crazy shit that's going on with her, I mean, you don't watch the news, but have you paid attention?
02:25:38.000I'm totally aware of what's happening with her.
02:26:04.000You know, every, you know, the same way when I moved out and I knew I was in a really dangerous position, you know, statistically kids who move out at 15 that have been abused, it's a really predictable future.
02:26:16.000I knew that me getting signed at 18 was a really predictable future.
02:26:30.000It was very compelling to me and I felt lucky to do something I loved.
02:26:33.000But I also knew it was super, super dangerous.
02:26:37.000And so that plan, like my number one job is to be a happy person.
02:26:41.000That was my only way that I felt like I might be able to survive it.
02:26:45.000And so I just had to be really serious about it and be willing to walk away at any time if I thought I wasn't living up to my number one job.
02:26:52.000And that's where you have to create a lot of strategies, like self-worth.
02:29:14.000Because my goal was to figure out how to stay alive, like, over 60 years as an artist, which means, again, and Dylan really taught me this, was, like, you have, and Neil Young, too, like, you have to do what you think is right.
02:29:26.000But when I look at Britney, you're just like, I get it.
02:29:28.000I mean, that was a Louisiana family with probably not a lot of emotional skills, which I really relate to.
02:29:35.000And fame is a shit show and it's hard and there wasn't anybody there to protect her and help her stop and help her take breaks and check on her mental health.
02:29:45.000And the funny thing is everybody wants to be famous but if you look at our numbers we kill ourselves like flies.
02:33:14.000But there's this thing in Homer called a ride line and it's where you can get on the radio and say, looking for a ride to Anchorage will split gas or things like that.
02:33:24.000And then people, you know, you're like, leave a message at the radio station.
02:33:27.000And so you'd call the radio station, say, has anybody offered to give me a ride?
02:33:31.000And so I would do that to get up to see my mom.
02:33:35.000But I don't think I always told her about it.
02:33:37.000I think I just often showed up, like, on her doorstep.
02:33:40.000So I would, like, get a ride with a stranger, 250 miles, to go see my mom.
02:35:17.000I don't even know how to keep explaining.
02:35:18.000I have a book called Never Broken where I really like, it's like the life of my, it's my, I wrote my own biography, but it definitely, like it took that long to really figure out how to explain my mom.
02:35:30.000But my mom was really, like I said, really spiritual.
02:35:34.000She's like, there's, there's stalkers and there's dreamers in the world.
02:35:38.000You know, there's people that dream up things to do and then there's the stalkers and they do it.
02:35:42.000And she goes, I'm a dreamer and you're, you're a doer.
02:35:45.000Which again was starting to set up this narrative of like she dreams things up and I execute them.
02:38:52.000When I was 16, backing up just a little bit, so I was away at boarding school, she'd written me a letter and she said we were having the same soul in two different bodies.
02:39:02.000Which felt like a huge compliment to me.
02:40:42.000Things, you know, started seeming weird.
02:40:45.000You know, what's amazing is like that two-year, like, empowering break I took from the music industry to decide, like, do I really want to do this?
02:40:52.000I was going broke during then because she was spending so much money and I had no idea and she never said anything.
02:44:06.000So in a contract, for anybody listening, it doesn't know what a sunset clause is.
02:44:09.000If a manager helps make you famous, they could have an argument, even if you fire them as a manager, for having a piece of your career forever.
02:48:16.000Like that was a huge risk for me and I knew it, but I wanted to do it.
02:48:21.000Then I was really broke, taking a huge musical risk that I knew everybody would hate.
02:48:26.000I knew the press would hate me making a pop record, like, again.
02:48:29.000Like, I'll have to tell you a story about that, but I knew it was a risky thing.
02:48:33.000So now I'm like trying to make a record, deal with the fact that my mom is not who I thought she was.
02:48:37.000Everything pretty much had been told about my life from her was not what I thought it was.
02:48:42.000I'd have to go through my entire life emotionally and psychologically and figure out what was the truth and what was a lie from 35 years of my mom talking to me.
02:51:59.000And so I just stopped and I just didn't worry about the money and I didn't worry about anything and I just quit and I hit it on the ranch in Stephenville and I was like, okay, this is like you're gonna have to do the best figuring out you've ever done.
02:52:15.000And I didn't want to go to a therapist because my brain had been so fucked with.
02:52:36.000And something, I don't know why, really helped me was I went to the bathroom, was washing my hands, I looked in the mirror in my home, and I remember this thing called, it was like an allegory of the golden statue.
02:52:52.000It might be actually a real historical story, but a warring village was coming to ambush a village and they heard about it and they had a really valuable statue made of solid gold.
02:53:02.000They covered it in mud to hide its value.
02:53:06.000The war happened, the war left, and people were so busy recovering they never uncovered this statue.
02:53:14.000And so much time passed people actually forgot it was a gold statue.
02:53:18.000And then one day a huge flood came or rain came and it started to chip away the mud and it was revealed to have gold.
02:53:25.000So for some reason, I'm washing my hands, I'm looking in the mirror, and I think of that story, and I was like, what if I'm approaching this whole thing wrong?
02:53:33.000What if it's not that I'm broken, and I have to fix myself?
02:53:42.000And I was like, what if it's that like a soul or your nature, whatever you want to call it, isn't like a chair or a cup that can be broken?
02:53:52.000What if it exists like perfectly at all times?
02:53:59.000And so what if I just have to do like a really loving archaeological dig back to my true nature?
02:54:05.000And so in a weird way, it was like this full circle to this nature versus nurture thing.
02:54:10.000And like fighting for my life, for my soul, for my happiness, by getting rid of just the years of abuse and neglect and mud and blood and spit and harm and everything...
02:58:01.000And the fact that you have this separation from her and you're, you know, as a child, especially as an eight-year-old, which is just the idea of you waving goodbye to her as an eight-year-old is horrific.
03:01:02.000Like, it's not just important stuff to know, but it's a lot of people know.
03:01:08.000Some of the things that you're saying, but they haven't experienced some of the loss that you've experienced and some of the pain that you've experienced and then come through it like you have a working relationship with this.
03:01:20.000It's not as simple as you know the concept, you understand.
03:01:26.000When you hear self-help people, there's a lot of self-help people, right?
03:01:37.000There's a lot of these self-help people that are just talking to you about going for it and trusting your instincts and Really making a plan.
03:01:45.000But all you do is tell people how to do things.
03:01:58.000And blanket statements like trust your instincts.
03:02:01.000That's a nice thing to say, but which instincts do you trust?
03:02:04.000And how do you discern the difference between a fear and an instinct?
03:02:07.000That takes a much more mechanical look at something that, you know, quick three-minute videos on Instagram aren't going to help you with, you know?
03:03:15.000There's a lot of people that understand the concepts that are involved in reshaping your perspective and remapping the way you see reality, but have they actually navigated it?
03:04:10.000And you realize, I don't want to be like that.
03:04:13.000For me, when I was young, I just watched a lot of people living their lives in a way that wasn't fun.
03:04:17.000They just hated it and they were sick.
03:04:20.000They were like sick with life, like life made them sick.
03:04:24.000But I never had to go through anything like you did.
03:04:27.000No, but it's such an astute observation.
03:04:29.000And like I mentioned to you earlier, but like I'm writing a book and one of the things I'm putting in is like these four illnesses and these four addictions of when you tolerate the intolerable, you get sick.
03:05:30.000I think that's why, like, I mean, I know it's kind of probably a Buddhist saying, right?
03:05:34.000Something about attachment to suffering or something.
03:05:37.000But, like, it's really hard to leverage somebody that's willing to walk away from things.
03:05:43.000You know, and that's why I always stayed away from, like, the million-dollar signing bonus or the whatever, because that made me leverageable.
03:05:51.000But if you're willing to walk away, you can't negotiate with a person like that, that puts you in a powerful position.
03:05:58.000But if you're so addicted to outside things, you're going to be leveraged and that's not a good position.
03:06:20.000This will probably be really unpopular, but I kind of felt that way about the Me Too movement of, like, guys shouldn't be dicks in the workplace.
03:06:26.000They shouldn't be especially raping you and those types of things, obviously.
03:06:31.000But being propositioned doesn't mean you have to do it.
03:07:14.000I think there was a darkness in the movie industry in particular that existed that was literally interwoven into the structure of the business.
03:07:27.000And Tarantino talked about it on here where he was talking about a famous director, I forget, from the past, who had a bedroom set up in his office where he would take all the young starlets into there.
03:08:27.000There was a famous actress, I might have the wrong woman, but it's from the olden days, and she wrote something about this, this very thing about her career falling apart because she wasn't willing to sleep with the directors and she wasn't willing to sleep with the producers.
03:08:47.000And that she realized that she was always going to have this limited availability, this limited career.
03:08:54.000And that this was, you know, before the internet, before, do you know who it is?
03:09:46.000And then you have these people that are, the reason why they want this insane amount of attention in the first place, they usually have this hole in their soul they're trying to fill up, right?
03:09:55.000And so they're willing to do anything to make it.
03:09:58.000And that, seeing the audition process firsthand, you know, when I first came to Hollywood and I was doing auditions for TV shows and movies and stuff, I'm like, This is like the worst way for people that are already damaged psychologically and mentally.
03:10:15.000This is the worst way for them to try to navigate through life.
03:10:19.000To go and hope people pick you, and then when they don't, you're like, and then you try again tomorrow.
03:10:56.000But like your boss in San Diego that forced you to become homeless and those, you know, people that have that kind of power, they've been using that forever.
03:12:59.000It's the same thing with emotional addictions, sexual addictions.
03:13:02.000That's why people who start getting sexual addictions have to do weirder and weirder and kinkier and kinkier shit to get the same biochemical payoff.
03:13:10.000It's the same with that kind of sexual predatory behavior.
03:13:13.000It starts here, and then to get the same thrill, it has to escalate to here.
03:13:17.000And that's where it's just like, how do you look at stuff like that?
03:13:20.000How do you start healing and creating a space where there can be some kind of education or reform to help people that are sick?
03:13:52.000There's lots of smart people out there.
03:13:54.000But when you don't live in your heart, when you can cut off your conscience entirely and do things that are strategic and smart, you're going to leverage vulnerable people.
03:14:20.000So to me and the businesses that I'm creating, it's all just like, how can I figure out how to help people stop worshipping at the altar of sheer mentalness and get into their heart and realize it's a safe place to be because it's scary.
03:14:35.000It doesn't seem safe to be loved in this world.
03:15:02.000Well, I think they had a smaller number of variables to take into consideration and a much greater library of knowledge about the variables that did exist, right?
03:15:18.000You had to have the customs of the tribe, you had to have the ability to provide, you had to have the ability to protect your loved ones from intruders, and you had to have respect for the land and for the animals and for what provided you with life.
03:15:34.000As we've expanded our variables, we've abandoned all these core ideas about the value of all these different things like love and community and friendship,
03:15:50.000because we've thought, that's important, but you really want to make sure that you get a career.
03:15:53.000You really want to make sure that you have your PhD or you really want to make sure that you get ahead and you invest in the stock market.
03:15:59.000And if you're not investing in crypto, you're not investing in the future.
03:16:04.000You're dealing with so many variables that the human mind, which is designed for tribal life and small groups of 150 people trying to get through the world.
03:16:24.000Most of us make concrete with shitty ingredients.
03:16:26.000And so, the structure of what you are...
03:16:31.000Very few people are purposely going through difficult trials and tribulations on purpose to try to figure out who you are, forcing themselves, pushing themselves, digging into their consciousness, trying to figure out,
03:16:47.000okay, what's wrong with the way I think?
03:17:01.000How do I do a real analysis of who I am and try to figure out what patterns that I feel like I should stop and what patterns I feel like I should enhance?
03:17:53.000And it's for a system that was built in the industrial age that doesn't even have to do with the fact that we're moving into a gig economy.
03:17:59.000And so creativity, the ability to pivot, the ability to lean into the unknown are actually the skills our kids need.
03:18:05.000And that's not what we're training for kids right now.
03:18:54.000But what's cool is like right now we're the number two tennis academy in the country and number one and number three recruit tennis players and we just give ghetto kids rackets.
03:19:19.000You know, like, and we flipped the model because usually there's this paradoxical reflux.
03:19:24.000If you give somebody charity, because I was on the receiving end, you feel bad about yourself, but you're grateful, but you feel shitty, you feel bitter.
03:19:32.000And I hated that paradoxical kind of reflux.
03:19:36.000And so with the kids, we don't give them anything.
03:23:08.000And you can assign them a positive meaning or a negative meaning.
03:23:11.000And you can decide that this is going to be a learning moment.
03:23:15.000And that this is going to build adversity, is going to build character, you're going to get through this, and you're going to come out on the other end a stronger person.
03:23:25.000And to realize that and to have these incremental moments where you see success and then you build upon that and then you learn to trust the process, you'll come out on the other end.
03:23:36.000But they're not teaching you that shit in school.
03:23:39.000They're teaching you how to memorize things.
03:23:40.000They're teaching you facts, and they're teaching you how to do calculus, and they're teaching you how to apply for schools.
03:24:09.000But anyway, I worked with the Montgomery County School Services there to create, like, how can I take this curriculum that I know works for me?
03:24:16.000I helped these kids for the last 18 years.
03:24:19.000And how can I get it into, like, an English class where it's not like you're going to the counselor's office for a separate thing or some other whatever outside school program or something.
03:24:35.000It's called CELA, like Social Emotional Language Arts.
03:24:38.000But it's where I start to introduce these ideas of, you know, I perceive what I think, therefore I am.
03:24:45.000How did you get this all put together?
03:24:48.000Like, how did you go from being a person who has overcome some mental health issues and overcome depression and suicidal thoughts to getting together and putting...
03:25:01.000How do you have the time to put this structure together?
03:25:04.000How do you have the time to oversee it and look at it?
03:27:43.000You just have to gut it out for a couple whatever weeks or something.
03:27:46.000So that's building the muscle of being consciously present.
03:27:49.000So that's like taking your car off of autopilot and getting it in neutral.
03:27:54.000That's really good, but it won't change your life.
03:27:56.000So just meditating won't change your life.
03:27:59.000That's where now that you're present, what are you going to do?
03:28:02.000And that's where you need something to practice, like a new behavior, something you're really going to work on, whether it's a gratitude practice or like, I'm going to look at when I'm dilated or contracted and see what I'm thinking, feeling and doing.
03:28:14.000And then you just start building one at a time on those skills.
03:28:17.000So I was able to sort of end with kind of these neuroscientists were like, yeah, these are legit.
03:28:23.000I started figuring out how could I teach these concepts like to a five-year-old, to public school children.
03:28:31.000For me, that was like creating this, you know, language arts program, and then this culture company for adults.
03:28:36.000And I've just found really good partners where I'm supplying the information that I know, and then like this, the great people in Ohio, and then a salesperson are helping sail it.
03:28:54.000I think we're about to maybe sell New York School District, which fingers crossed, because this is the right idea.
03:29:00.000Like, we have to start helping our kids with trauma in school where kids are without giving them an extra job.
03:29:06.000And then the Culture Country Company, we just started with Saksworks.
03:29:10.000It'll be our first project where we're actually trying to tinker with humans in the workplace and see how it goes.
03:29:15.000And I think also just for kids, particularly kids with trauma, you can give them an understanding and a sense that you care about them as an individual.
03:29:26.000They can go, oh, I'm not just a part of the herd.
03:29:31.000I'm actually a person and there's tools that they can help me use and I can get out of this.
03:29:37.000Whatever terrible feelings that I'm having right now, many other people have had terrible feelings and they've Overcome this to become very happy, productive, loving people.
03:34:36.000And so my big plan was just make up lyrics about people as they walk by, see if I could get their attention.
03:34:42.000And I would take my change to the Amtrak station and say, how far would this get me?
03:34:47.000And they would give me a ticket to whatever, the next city.
03:34:50.000It took me probably two or three days to make it to San Diego, and then I crossed the border there and hitchhiked from Tijuana down to Cabo.
03:35:49.000And so I got ferry money and went across the Sea of Cortez to the mainland side, then hopped trains through the Copper Canyons, back to Cabo, then hitchhiked back up to Tijuana.
03:37:47.000After all those lies you told, boy Who will save your soul If it won't save your own Oh, yeah We try to hustle them,
03:38:11.000try to bustle them, try to curse them And the cops want someone to bust down on Orleans Avenue, oh Another day, another dollar, another war.
03:38:23.000Another tower went up where the homeless had their homes.
03:38:28.000So we pray to as many different gods as there are flowers.
03:39:17.000Now some are walking, some are talking Some are stalking their kill You got so-called social security But that don't pay your bills Cause there's addictions to feed And there are mouths to pay See,