Order of Man - February 27, 2026


The Rise and Fall of Shia LaBeouf ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES


Episode Stats

Length

24 minutes

Words per Minute

157.18869

Word Count

3,773

Sentence Count

372

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is not about judging Shia LaBeouf.
00:00:02.820 It's about looking in the mirror.
00:00:04.800 Fame didn't destroy the guy.
00:00:06.220 Isolation did.
00:00:07.440 Fame magnified it, but isolation destroyed it.
00:00:10.300 A lack of accountability ruined him.
00:00:13.340 Absence of consistent and real brotherhood ruined him.
00:00:17.600 And those are the same forces that are working on ordinary guys like you and me.
00:00:23.740 Quietly, subtly, privately, in isolation.
00:00:30.000 Gentlemen, today I want to talk with you about a man that most of you know.
00:00:35.460 Actually, you might not know him personally, but because you've watched him rise, you've watched him fall, you've watched him rise again and fall again publicly, very, very publicly.
00:00:45.920 And I'm talking about Shia LaBeouf.
00:00:49.320 You've probably seen the headlines.
00:00:51.280 You've seen the viral clips of him losing his mind.
00:00:53.960 You've probably watched his podcast, which quite honestly is probably my favorite podcast of him with or on the real ones.
00:01:05.200 And it's pretty sad if I'm being honest.
00:01:09.920 It's a story of substance abuse, violence, public meltdowns, arrests, even lawsuits, apologies, relapses.
00:01:22.000 It's really, really difficult to watch.
00:01:24.740 And I know it's easy for us to sit on the sidelines and think, well, this is a guy who has the world at his fingertips.
00:01:30.960 And he certainly does.
00:01:32.260 And he's very talented and very gifted and worked hard to achieve it.
00:01:36.640 And he's got the world at his fingertips.
00:01:38.460 And yet he continues to fall apart.
00:01:40.760 And I want to tie this back into what I see so many men doing in their own lives.
00:01:45.600 And even me, to a degree.
00:01:48.300 Because I'm a little hesitant to share this with you because I don't want you to tune out and believe that I'm just getting into celebrity gossip.
00:01:58.820 So, let's not go there.
00:02:01.700 This is not about Hollywood.
00:02:03.460 This is not about what happens when a man has talent and opportunity and the world at his fingertips and self-awareness of who he is.
00:02:12.120 But no consistent system.
00:02:15.620 He doesn't have brothers.
00:02:21.140 He doesn't have a brotherhood.
00:02:22.760 He doesn't have accountability.
00:02:24.040 He doesn't have a system in place that's strong enough to hold him up when the pressure of his life hits.
00:02:31.980 And again, it's easy to say, well, he's got everything.
00:02:35.860 Why should it be so hard for him?
00:02:37.420 It just is hard for everybody.
00:02:40.580 Life is hard for everybody.
00:02:42.980 And I don't need to compare my woes to his or anybody else's to yours.
00:02:46.880 You don't need to compare your woes to mine.
00:02:48.560 It's hard for everybody.
00:02:49.640 And we don't know what pressure we're going to deal with.
00:02:55.880 We don't know what pressure we're capable of holding on to.
00:03:00.400 And here's the really uncomfortable truth about this.
00:03:03.500 Most, I was going to say average men, ordinary men, but your everyday guys like you and me,
00:03:10.860 we're struggling in the exact same way.
00:03:14.280 The only difference is we don't have cameras on ourselves at all times because if we did,
00:03:19.100 if we had every camera on us, if we had every thing that we ever said or did recorded,
00:03:26.080 we would probably fall into the very same trap.
00:03:29.560 And I have a level of empathy that I probably have not had before in my life
00:03:33.720 because I've dealt with substance abuse, alcoholism.
00:03:37.640 I've gone through a divorce after 18 years of marriage and it's hard.
00:03:44.240 Guys, you've gone through divorces.
00:03:46.000 You've gone through bankruptcies, losses of a job, substance abuse issues, arrests, lawsuits,
00:03:53.780 death of loved ones.
00:03:55.360 You've gone through a lot.
00:03:56.540 And when we see a guy like Shia LaBeouf go through the same thing, it's, it's, I don't know,
00:04:03.180 I don't know what it is.
00:04:03.960 I relate with him for some reason.
00:04:05.580 And maybe it's because I watched him on Holes or I watched him in a movie called Disturbia,
00:04:10.660 which I loved, Indiana Jones, but there's, for some reason I relate with him.
00:04:18.520 And, and he was a young man.
00:04:21.820 He might've been, he might've started in Disney.
00:04:23.800 I don't actually know, but he was a young man with a lot of natural talent.
00:04:29.980 He had a lot of range.
00:04:31.840 He had the ability to act.
00:04:32.960 He had depth.
00:04:33.640 He had charisma.
00:04:34.980 He had work ethic, but by his twenties, he had something.
00:04:39.560 A lot of us don't, he had all the money, all the fame, all the influence more than most
00:04:46.200 of us will ever experience in a lifetime.
00:04:49.580 He had thrust upon him, but here's, what's interesting.
00:04:53.800 Success amplified him, but it didn't stabilize him.
00:05:01.240 Think about that.
00:05:02.140 It amplified him, but it didn't stabilize him.
00:05:04.280 And the reason I want you to think about that is because usually when we think of what we
00:05:07.760 would need, it's some external thing.
00:05:09.780 Oh, if only I had millions of dollars, if only I had the fame, if only I had the notoriety,
00:05:14.620 if only I had what he had, then I would have the life that I've dreamed of.
00:05:20.080 And that's the first lesson that I want to share with you today.
00:05:24.180 Success by any metric does not fix us.
00:05:29.120 There's no amount of money that could fix you.
00:05:31.240 There's no amount of fame or notoriety that will fix you.
00:05:33.840 It's just going to reveal who you already are.
00:05:36.760 And if there's fractures, if there's breaks, if there's hairline cracks internally, then
00:05:43.580 success just magnifies it.
00:05:45.560 It just widens the cracks.
00:05:46.860 It just makes it more brittle.
00:05:48.200 And for somebody like Shia, we've seen over the years, a pattern at this point of public
00:05:56.860 intoxication, disorderly conduct, violence, lawsuits regarding abuse.
00:06:06.300 I mean, really emotionally unstable, all of it caught on camera.
00:06:10.860 And then recently there's a viral video again, yet again, showing up about his substance abuse.
00:06:18.200 It's about his confrontational behavior.
00:06:20.000 And guys, this isn't a one-time mistake.
00:06:22.220 This is a system failure.
00:06:24.900 And I don't, I don't put labels, or at least I try not to put labels on myself or other people,
00:06:30.200 but this is a system failure, not a human failure.
00:06:32.520 It's a system failure.
00:06:34.080 And this is where it ties into what we're talking about.
00:06:36.740 So before you say, you know, well, yeah, Hollywood messes people up.
00:06:42.680 I want you to ask yourself something.
00:06:44.840 What is your Hollywood?
00:06:48.600 Seriously, what's messed you up?
00:06:52.920 For some of you, maybe it's business success.
00:06:56.620 For some of you, and even in my life, I've experienced this over the past several years, it's divorce.
00:07:01.400 For some of you, it's alcohol.
00:07:03.100 That's what I've dealt with.
00:07:03.980 For some of you, it's porn when nobody's watching.
00:07:09.940 For some of you, it's just rage and contention and animosity.
00:07:13.820 For some of you, it's the lack of a father.
00:07:17.640 Average men, I don't even like that term.
00:07:21.260 Everyday men, like you and me, we are imploding every single day.
00:07:24.820 And the only difference between a guy like Shia LaBeouf and you and me is that there's no TMZ in our living rooms.
00:07:34.600 And so it's easy to point fingers and say, look at that guy.
00:07:39.440 Look, what an idiot.
00:07:40.280 He's threw it all away.
00:07:41.500 And yet we've done a lot of the same thing.
00:07:43.640 And we've got to get to the real issue.
00:07:48.060 And it's not talent or lack thereof.
00:07:50.900 It's not intelligence.
00:07:53.100 It's not trauma, though trauma does matter.
00:07:56.760 The issue is that many of us are isolated.
00:07:59.600 And when a man becomes the center of his own universe, when no one can confront him without losing access to him, he becomes untouchable.
00:08:10.280 And I was there.
00:08:11.060 I felt that myself to a degree, a very slight degree of what he must be feeling.
00:08:17.220 Nobody understands me.
00:08:18.640 Nobody gets it.
00:08:20.980 Nobody can see what this is like.
00:08:25.200 And so I had a bunch of people around me that were what I call bobbleheads, where their heads would just go up and down.
00:08:31.400 Yes, sir.
00:08:32.160 Yep, you're great.
00:08:33.120 You're amazing.
00:08:33.740 You're wonderful.
00:08:34.680 How do we get access to you?
00:08:36.320 But I had nobody doing this, bobbling their head the other way.
00:08:41.060 Hey, you're not wonderful.
00:08:42.280 You're not great.
00:08:43.180 You aren't as good as you think you are.
00:08:44.800 You can be doing better.
00:08:45.900 Let me help you.
00:08:46.660 Let me walk with you.
00:08:47.700 I didn't have anybody like that.
00:08:49.220 And Shia doesn't either.
00:08:50.800 He's got a bunch of people around him that are taking advantage of his rise and his fall.
00:08:57.880 And it's horrible.
00:08:59.820 When he's doing well, people ride his coattails.
00:09:02.440 When he's doing horrible, everybody mocks and points at him.
00:09:05.500 And that's what's happening to you.
00:09:08.020 Right?
00:09:08.380 If you're being honest, that's what's happening to you.
00:09:10.460 When you're on top of the universe, all your buddies and your friends and people on social media are like, oh, you're amazing.
00:09:17.060 You're wonderful.
00:09:18.020 I wish I could be like you.
00:09:19.420 And then when you fall and you do something stupid, everybody's like, I knew it.
00:09:23.780 He's a fraud.
00:09:24.680 He's a failure.
00:09:25.520 He's a hypocrite.
00:09:31.200 Untouchable men become unstable.
00:09:34.160 And I want to say that again.
00:09:35.540 If you're untouchable because you don't have real men in your life who are willing to tell you the truth, you're going to become unstable.
00:09:42.780 If nobody can call you out, if nobody can challenge you, if no one can look you in the eye and say, hey, Ryan, you're off track.
00:09:53.180 You're losing it.
00:09:53.900 You could do better than you are.
00:09:55.980 Then you're in danger.
00:09:57.220 And I had that.
00:09:58.520 When I was in the throes of my alcohol abuse, I had that.
00:10:03.680 When I finally came clean and I talked publicly about what I was dealing with and then also privately with friends, I had a couple people say, yeah, I knew.
00:10:12.700 I knew what was going on.
00:10:15.220 And I was shocked.
00:10:16.200 I was almost taken back.
00:10:17.320 I was like, I was almost offended.
00:10:19.440 Wait, you knew?
00:10:20.720 Yeah, we knew.
00:10:21.660 Why didn't you say anything?
00:10:22.720 Because I was untouchable.
00:10:26.720 Because they knew if they said something, then I would lose it.
00:10:30.720 I wasn't humble.
00:10:32.480 I wasn't open and receptive to what my friends had to say.
00:10:35.560 And so they didn't say anything.
00:10:36.780 Guys, you're in danger.
00:10:38.720 Fame, success, accolades, all of that isolates.
00:10:42.460 Even shame isolates.
00:10:45.800 And when you are isolated, it will destroy you.
00:10:49.640 And that's what's going on with Shia right now.
00:10:55.000 Historically, men did not operate alone.
00:10:56.960 The warrior class had war bonds, something that we were willing to work towards.
00:11:03.340 Even in athletics.
00:11:04.280 When I was a kid, if I missed a ground ball or I missed a block or whatever it may be, you better believe that my teammates were calling me out.
00:11:11.480 Hey, you missed that block.
00:11:12.500 Hey, that was on you.
00:11:13.520 Hey, that was your fault.
00:11:14.420 And that's what lifted us up.
00:11:16.480 Society today says, oh, don't talk about your faults.
00:11:19.620 Don't talk about what you missed or the assignments that you didn't get completed.
00:11:23.520 But real men do that.
00:11:25.160 So if warriors had their bonds in war and tradesmen had guilds, fathers had councils of elder men, men in general had other men who knew their business.
00:11:41.680 But today, what do we have?
00:11:43.980 What do we have today?
00:11:45.120 We have followers.
00:11:46.920 We have likes.
00:11:48.940 We have very surface.
00:11:50.520 We have a lot, but we have very surface level friendships.
00:11:52.920 But what we don't have is we don't have confrontation.
00:11:58.180 We don't have people that will say, hey, Ryan, you're messing up.
00:12:01.880 Fix it.
00:12:02.740 And I'm here to help you.
00:12:04.960 And how many of you have dealt with substance abuse, dealt with adultery, dealt with pornography issues, dealt with all sorts of vices, and you know it's not right for you.
00:12:20.600 And yet you don't have any man in your corner willing to call you out.
00:12:25.720 But real brotherhood, it does three things.
00:12:27.620 Number one, brotherhood, it actually sees you clearly and even more so than clearly, honestly, an accurate representation of who you are.
00:12:36.840 Number two, it tells you the truth, even though and in spite of and especially when it's uncomfortable.
00:12:43.020 And number three, it refuses to let you self-destruct quietly.
00:12:49.840 And that's what so many of you are doing.
00:12:51.740 That's what I was doing.
00:12:52.960 I was self-destructing quietly.
00:12:54.860 I would wake up and I'd be miserable.
00:12:57.420 I'd wake up next to this woman in my bed who I was married to, and I'd wake up with my kids prancing around the house and having fun.
00:13:03.800 But I felt so isolated and alone.
00:13:08.700 And guys, brotherhood is not about your drinking buddies.
00:13:11.200 It's not about your golf buddies.
00:13:13.420 It's not about how many people follow you on Instagram.
00:13:17.560 It's about the guy who will sit across from you and say, hey, Rye, you're slipping.
00:13:22.180 Or, hey, John, you're lying to yourself.
00:13:24.060 Or, hey, Steve, you're unrecognizable.
00:13:27.400 You're becoming someone you said you'd never be.
00:13:29.200 And then what they do is they stick around.
00:13:33.140 And that's the difference.
00:13:34.380 They stick around.
00:13:35.600 They don't take pop shots from the cheap seats.
00:13:39.160 They don't take jabs at you.
00:13:41.560 They don't throw you under the bus and try to prop up their own social media clout.
00:13:47.080 That's weak.
00:13:47.920 That's cowardly.
00:13:49.840 That's not accountability.
00:13:51.040 They'll say it's accountable.
00:13:51.720 I'm just holding them accountable.
00:13:52.860 No, you're just being a jerk.
00:13:57.220 Guys, accountability is.
00:13:59.200 Having care and love for another brother of yours and telling him where he's messing up.
00:14:08.640 And then this is the most important thing, sticking around.
00:14:12.960 Hey, you're messing up here and I'm going to walk with you in it.
00:14:16.120 Most people don't do that.
00:14:18.740 Most people try to shame you and belittle you and push you down and make you feel small so they can feel big.
00:14:25.640 But real men, real brotherhood, it rebuilds you.
00:14:30.840 Hey, you're messing up, but I'm here still.
00:14:32.800 And I have half a dozen guys right now I can think of way more than that actually, but maybe a dozen that I can think of right now who will call me out on my BS and then stand by me.
00:14:46.260 And guys, accountability is not punishment.
00:14:48.260 And guys, accountability is not punishment.
00:14:49.820 It's structure for your life.
00:14:51.780 If a man only changes when he feels like it, he's never going to change permanently.
00:14:57.000 He might change temporarily because we can get motivated and hyped up periodically.
00:15:02.400 Your feelings, they'll fluctuate.
00:15:04.360 The way you feel about things and whether you're up to it or not or if you're motivated, it'll fluctuate.
00:15:08.760 But accountability means you don't disappear when you relapse.
00:15:13.260 You don't slink back into isolation because people don't let you be alone.
00:15:17.160 You don't hide when you screw up because people know when you screwed up and they'll call you on it.
00:15:22.360 You don't justify what you know is wrong because everybody knows that you know what is right.
00:15:28.540 And you acted out of alignment with that.
00:15:32.000 You report, you confess, you correct your behavior.
00:15:36.100 And most men aren't lacking the desire.
00:15:38.280 I've never met a man who didn't have some sort of desire in his life.
00:15:41.780 But I've met plenty of men who don't have reinforcement.
00:15:46.760 Guys who are like, I want to stop drinking.
00:15:49.540 I want to stop being angry.
00:15:52.200 I want to stop numbing out of my life.
00:15:55.780 But they have no system in place that forces that consistency.
00:16:00.200 And Shia doesn't have that.
00:16:03.060 I would actually love to get a hold of him and say, bro, you're in the fold now.
00:16:07.820 You're with us now.
00:16:09.300 And bring them in and say, look, we're going to hold you accountable.
00:16:12.240 We're going to take you to the battle plan.
00:16:13.900 We're going to help you work through the issues that you're dealing with.
00:16:16.360 I would love to do that.
00:16:19.480 Because willpower is powerful.
00:16:21.000 But without structure, it's a losing game.
00:16:25.580 You don't have enough willpower to deal with all of what life has to offer.
00:16:30.740 So here's the big idea.
00:16:31.940 The systems that you implement in your life, for better or worse, will define you.
00:16:39.420 And the better your systems, the more likely it is that it's going to save men.
00:16:43.240 It's not motivation.
00:16:43.980 It's not inspiration.
00:16:45.820 You can get all the platitudes.
00:16:47.140 And you can get all the Instagram reels.
00:16:48.920 And you can hear from David Goggins and Jocko and Andy.
00:16:51.680 And they can hype you up and motivate you and piss you off and fire you.
00:16:54.960 They can do all that.
00:16:55.580 And I'm not discounting it.
00:16:57.220 But what I am saying is it's not enough.
00:17:02.240 You can watch a movie from Shia and be motivated.
00:17:07.140 You can get these viral redemption stories and be hopped up for a minute.
00:17:11.420 But a system, a system is what's going to save you.
00:17:17.120 I train at this time, whether I feel like it or not.
00:17:20.460 I meet with my brothers every single week at this time.
00:17:24.900 Whether I'm winning or losing, I limit alcohol and substance abuse intentionally.
00:17:33.540 I have boundaries on technology.
00:17:35.720 My phone's over there.
00:17:36.580 I have boundaries on technology.
00:17:38.940 I have mentors who are above me, further than me.
00:17:42.340 And I have peers who are at my level.
00:17:44.660 And I have people I'm helping who are behind me.
00:17:49.060 Guys, when the system is strong, that man can have a weak day.
00:17:54.900 It's going to happen.
00:17:55.560 You're going to have a weak day.
00:17:56.280 You're going to be tempted.
00:17:57.120 You're going to slip.
00:17:57.820 You're going to fall.
00:17:58.340 I do all the time.
00:18:01.100 But when the system is weak, one bad day will become a downward spiral.
00:18:05.800 And that's what you see with Shia.
00:18:06.920 It's really tragic to watch because he's so talented.
00:18:11.940 He's so intelligent.
00:18:13.400 He's so gifted.
00:18:14.800 And you might say he has the world at his fingertips.
00:18:17.160 And I would agree.
00:18:18.140 And yet he's ruining it because he doesn't have men in his corner.
00:18:23.400 What he has is cheerleaders.
00:18:26.560 What he has is handlers.
00:18:28.220 What he has is people who are just riding on his coattails.
00:18:32.620 And the minute he falls, they pile on.
00:18:37.280 That's not what brotherhood does.
00:18:41.700 Brotherhood actually cares about people.
00:18:45.540 So here's the tragedy.
00:18:48.660 In so many public collapses of his.
00:18:52.780 The talent was obviously there.
00:18:54.800 The opportunity is obviously there.
00:18:59.080 Even the confession, right?
00:19:00.740 He went on the real ones and confessed.
00:19:03.020 He talked about all this.
00:19:04.300 But the system wasn't there for him.
00:19:06.480 He had no system.
00:19:08.940 And I want to reiterate, this is not about judging Shia LaBeouf.
00:19:14.760 It's about looking in the mirror.
00:19:17.860 Fame didn't destroy the guy.
00:19:19.380 Isolation did.
00:19:20.960 Fame magnified it, but isolation destroyed him.
00:19:23.480 And I hope to God, truly.
00:19:27.220 And I'm not even saying that as a figurative.
00:19:29.820 Like, I hope to God that he figures it out.
00:19:34.200 A lack of accountability ruined him.
00:19:38.420 Absence of consistent and real brotherhood ruined him.
00:19:43.980 And those are the same forces that are working on ordinary guys like you and me.
00:19:50.340 Quietly, subtly, privately, in isolation.
00:19:59.100 So here's your question for the weekend.
00:20:03.680 Who in your life has permission to confront you?
00:20:06.580 Who in your life have you given permission to confront you when you're not being the man you should?
00:20:15.740 Here's another one.
00:20:17.380 What system do you have in place?
00:20:20.100 Not ideas, not ideologies, not thoughts.
00:20:22.860 But what's, not even values.
00:20:25.260 What system is holding you upright?
00:20:28.140 And here's another one.
00:20:33.360 If everything about your life went public tomorrow, would your foundation hold or would you crumble?
00:20:40.340 It's easy to point and poke and prod and laugh and mock.
00:20:43.880 That's Shia.
00:20:44.380 But if everything about your life tomorrow went public, would your foundation hold?
00:20:51.780 Guys, build the brotherhood.
00:20:52.920 A thought came to mind, submit to accountability.
00:20:58.700 And submit's an interesting word.
00:21:01.540 Most of us think submit is about weakness and about subjugating ourselves to something or someone else.
00:21:08.220 But I would argue that if you submit to the right system or to the right creator, God, that you're not relinquishing your sovereignty.
00:21:20.580 You're actually bolstering it.
00:21:24.320 You're upholding it.
00:21:26.400 If you submit to a system that works, are you relinquishing who you are or are you deciding who you want to be?
00:21:33.180 If I relinquish and submit to God, am I giving myself up or am I deciding I'm going to plant my flag and make a stand on this system in God?
00:21:48.920 And if it's not God, what is it?
00:21:51.900 Maybe it is something else and I'm open to that.
00:21:55.620 Create systems stronger than your impulses, guys.
00:21:57.980 Because your talents and your God-given gifts and all of us have those, they can build a life.
00:22:04.360 Sure.
00:22:05.160 They can absolutely build a life for us.
00:22:07.460 But only structure can sustain it.
00:22:12.880 So I'm here.
00:22:14.980 And again, I don't know why I have such an affinity for this man, Shia LaBeouf.
00:22:19.520 But I'm here praying for him.
00:22:22.980 Maybe I see myself in him in a lot of ways.
00:22:25.420 And I really hope that he gets the help that he needs.
00:22:29.100 And I really hope that he finds, again, come into our fold.
00:22:34.520 We'll hold you accountable.
00:22:36.140 I really hope that he gets what he needs.
00:22:39.460 I don't want to see a guy like that or any man suffer needlessly because they don't have good brothers around them.
00:22:46.960 I don't have a call to action for you guys today.
00:22:49.040 I just wanted to share some thoughts that I've been thinking about as I've seen his downfall and his rise and his downfall again.
00:22:55.280 And I really hope he gets the help he needs.
00:22:57.280 And in turn, I hope you get the help you need.
00:23:00.020 I've had moments in my life where I've needed my own help.
00:23:06.100 And I've got the help I've needed.
00:23:07.760 And at times, I haven't.
00:23:09.140 And I can tell you life is better when you have good people around you who care about you enough to risk the relationship, to speak truth into your life and hold you accountable.
00:23:18.740 That's all I got for you.
00:23:19.680 If you have somebody who's struggling in some way, maybe it's like Shia or somebody else, please let me know.
00:23:24.940 Connect with me.
00:23:26.840 Share a podcast with them.
00:23:28.900 Shoot them a text.
00:23:30.320 Share us on YouTube, Instagram, wherever.
00:23:32.260 Let's pay this forward to the guys who need to hear what we have to share.
00:23:36.900 And you have systems and they need to hear it.
00:23:39.740 All right, guys.
00:23:40.660 We'll be back next week for our interview.
00:23:42.480 Until then, go out there, take action, hold yourself and others accountable, especially your brothers.
00:23:47.540 And become a man you want to be.
00:23:50.040 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast.
00:23:53.000 You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.
00:23:57.040 We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.