The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #405 - Steven Pressfield, Aubrey Marcus

00:00:01.000 I like doing it this way.

00:00:02.000 We should do it this way more often, where we get the commercials out of the way before the guests arrive.

00:00:07.000 Otherwise, it's annoying.

00:00:18.000 We've already been busy without you people, ladies and gentlemen.

00:00:21.000 We're here.

00:00:21.000 We're live.

00:00:22.000 Aubrey Marcus is here.

00:00:23.000 Oh, look at that.

00:00:23.000 That's my laptop.

00:00:25.000 Old school.

00:00:25.000 Making noise.

00:00:26.000 Again, not old school.

00:00:27.000 It's this week.

00:00:28.000 I've done it three times.

00:00:29.000 Aubrey Marcus is here, my brother.

00:00:32.000 And Mr. Pressfield.

00:00:33.000 Thank you, sir.

00:00:34.000 Thank you so much for being here.

00:00:35.000 It was very exciting for me.

00:00:36.000 We've tried to do this a few times.

00:00:37.000 I have been giving out your book for years.

00:00:40.000 I found, you know that sexy beast John Mayer?

00:00:42.000 You know who that singer is?

00:00:43.000 You know who that guy is?

00:00:45.000 John Mayer?

00:00:45.000 Mayer?

00:00:46.000 Whatever the fuck his name is. 1.00

00:00:47.000 Handsome bastard. 1.00

00:00:48.000 Uh-huh. 0.99

00:00:48.000 I was reading his Twitter, and he said a long time ago something about, if you're really into, for creative types, there's a great book called The War of Art. 0.99

00:00:56.000 And then someone else brought it up, too. 0.97

00:00:57.000 So I said, alright, let me check out this book and see what the fuck is going on. 0.99

00:01:00.000 And it's so good, I bought a stack of them, and I kept it in my office, and when podcast guests would come over, I would go, come here, you lazy bitch, take this. 0.99

00:01:09.000 And go write. 0.98

00:01:10.000 Go get something done, man.

00:01:12.000 Get something done.

00:01:13.000 Make it happen.

00:01:14.000 And the inspiration of that book, it really works, man. 0.97

00:01:18.000 Your book inspires me to get more shit done.

00:01:21.000 You have unwittingly or wittingly, knowingly or unknowingly, you've set an avalanche of creativity loose with your book. 0.91

00:01:31.000 Well, like I say, I brought you a half a dozen of these jokes so you can give them out to deserving, worthy recipients.

00:01:37.000 I was one of those recipients from the early days.

00:01:40.000 Yeah, I gave Aubrey one.

00:01:42.000 Yeah, it was before on it I gave Aubrey one.

00:01:45.000 Coincidence?

00:01:45.000 I don't know, man.

00:01:46.000 How long ago was that?

00:01:48.000 That was about three years ago.

00:01:49.000 Yeah, I gave it to every comedian I know that doesn't write new jokes.

00:01:55.000 Everyone that I know.

00:01:56.000 I bought it for my family for Christmas after you gave it to me last Christmas.

00:02:00.000 Well, you know what?

00:02:01.000 It's applicable even to non-artists.

00:02:04.000 I think there's a lot of lessons in that about...

00:02:07.000 What you talk about, the term resistance, is a great way of describing it because it sort of names this fog that a lot of people have gone through.

00:02:17.000 This weird thing that people have where sometimes I wake up in the morning and I'll just, I'll get online and then I'll say, what do I have to do today?

00:02:25.000 I gotta work out eventually.

00:02:27.000 So from between now and when I work out.

00:02:29.000 What should I do?

00:02:30.000 Should I go watch TV? I know the remote is right there, and I know I really should get something done.

00:02:34.000 I should just sit in my fucking office, close the door, and start writing. 0.99

00:02:37.000 But there's this weird thing that happens where all these other options come up, and it's just so easy to just fuck off. 0.99

00:02:45.000 Let me ask you, Joe, because I don't really know about how comedians work. 0.96

00:02:49.000 What is the thing that resistance stops you from doing?

00:02:53.000 Writing jokes?

00:02:54.000 Sitting down and writing jokes?

00:02:55.000 I would say writing material is the big one.

00:02:58.000 Because it doesn't stop you from performing.

00:03:00.000 Performing is really fun.

00:03:02.000 Performing as a stand-up is something that we all look forward to.

00:03:05.000 And it's a great exchange with the audience.

00:03:07.000 This is a great time.

00:03:08.000 So that's not something that anybody resists, but they do resist the writing.

00:03:13.000 The solitary sitting by yourself with your thoughts, the going over the ideas and trying to make them work and trying to restructure stuff to make it quicker or have more impact.

00:03:27.000 Sometimes you go over a bit and you'll practice it on stage and you'll try to work it out on stage and you'll eventually get there, but really what you need to do is do the real work.

00:03:38.000 Sit by yourself in front of a computer or a notepad, whatever you prefer, and actually write.

00:03:43.000 You know, it's interesting to me as just an audience member, because when you watch a comic that's really rolling, you figure they're just winging it.

00:03:50.000 It's just coming out of the moment, but it's not true, is it?

00:03:54.000 I mean, it's really hard work behind the scenes doing it.

00:03:57.000 There's actually both.

00:03:59.000 There's definitely a lot of hard work behind the scenes, but there's also a lot of winging it.

00:04:03.000 And when you get good at winging it, it sort of comes from already having put in the work.

00:04:10.000 Uh-huh.

00:04:10.000 And also, having your mind free.

00:04:13.000 If your mind is troubled, that's another thing that I've found as I matured as a man, especially over the last 10-15 years, I realized the less clutter I have in my life, the better my mind works. 0.97

00:04:28.000 It's a very valuable thing to keep your mind free of bullshit.

00:04:33.000 So whether it's people, or things you do that you don't like that you do, or habits that you can't break, If you can get rid of those, your whole thing will work better. 0.96

00:04:43.000 Like, your mind will actually function better.

00:04:46.000 It'll function without the regret of not being able to take care of whatever it is, whether it's a gambling issue or...

00:04:52.000 I think I've heard you describe, too, when you're in the zone and doing your best comedy, it's like the comedy goes through you.

00:04:58.000 You're just a passenger, and that's very much how you describe the muse in many of your books.

00:05:03.000 Yeah, that's very important.

00:05:04.000 Stepping outside of the...

00:05:05.000 getting out of the way, basically.

00:05:06.000 Yeah, that's a very important thing that you brought up in that book, and you said it in sort of a matter-of-fact way about what's this ethereal sort of whimsical topic, the topic of a muse.

00:05:19.000 But my best stuff, I have no idea where it came from.

00:05:22.000 Everything that I've ever written, every time I've ever been on stage, at my best, I'm like a passenger.

00:05:28.000 It's like the muse takes you over when you're actually on stage.

00:05:32.000 Do you find, Joe, over time, when you look back on what you did, a set here or a set a year ago, that you're discovering who you are as you go along?

00:05:43.000 Yeah, sort of. 0.99

00:05:44.000 And sometimes I'm like, where the fuck is that even coming from? 0.94

00:05:47.000 There's definitely a where did that come from element that can creep in. 0.98

00:05:51.000 But yeah, if you pay attention, but a lot of comedians don't like to listen to themselves, me included.

00:05:56.000 Don't like to.

00:05:57.000 But that's also part of the job, though.

00:06:00.000 You feel embarrassed when you see your stuff?

00:06:02.000 It's weird.

00:06:02.000 First of all, you're weird if you like it.

00:06:04.000 You're some weirdo listening to yourself. 0.97

00:06:07.000 Some guy gets off and hearing his own voice.

00:06:10.000 Yeah, I'm awesome!

00:06:12.000 And then it's also, it's like, if you're self-critical, which I'm very self-critical, it can be agonizing. 0.94

00:06:18.000 You know, there's parts of it that you don't like, that just like drive you fucking crazy.

00:06:22.000 But it's a good way to, for creative, for like structuring acts, it's a really good way to realize what bits are working and what bits aren't working.

00:06:32.000 It's to listen to them without having to do them so you can actually hear them take place in front of an audience.

00:06:38.000 It's actually an invaluable resource that a lot of comedians don't take advantage of for just the reasons I stated.

00:06:44.000 They get embarrassed or they get weirded out.

00:06:47.000 But there's that thing that you talked about in your book.

00:06:49.000 It's the muse.

00:06:51.000 And the muse exists on stage.

00:06:53.000 The muse exists in front of your keyboard or notepad or whatever. 1.00

00:06:57.000 The muse is some real shit, whatever it is. 0.99

00:07:00.000 Well, I'm from the school of trying to demystify it. 0.99

00:07:06.000 Because it is as everyday as, where do you get an idea from?

00:07:11.000 You know, when you're in the shower, you're driving on the freeway, where does it come from?

00:07:14.000 And the point is, you know, to just get out of the way and let those things come.

00:07:20.000 Yeah.

00:07:20.000 And not forget them when they do come.

00:07:22.000 Well, what was interesting about the way you wrote about it as well is it was very easily digestible to people.

00:07:27.000 Because there's some people that talk about the muse and I just want to smack them.

00:07:32.000 Uh-huh. 0.76

00:07:32.000 I just want to throw them off cliffs. 0.76

00:07:34.000 Just shut up. 1.00

00:07:36.000 Like, you're killing me with your nonsense talk. 1.00

00:07:39.000 Because there's people that...

00:07:40.000 Obviously I'm joking, but there's people that go so far into the whimsical that it becomes this self-indulgent, artistic expression dance.

00:07:50.000 You know, it's like this, you know, their whole thing about the muse, she comes to me in the night, I leave the window open.

00:07:58.000 Shall she grace me with her presence?

00:08:01.000 In front of my keyboard, I await her arrival. 1.00

00:08:03.000 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

00:08:05.000 You know, Jesus Christ. 0.99

00:08:06.000 But what you were being honest about is, I believe, a psychological or a mental state that you're in when creativity, whatever that is, Well,

00:08:39.000 you, like him, are dreamy, so you might as well be.

00:08:41.000 Oh, shucks, shucks.

00:08:44.000 So, you know, whatever it is that creative people, when they read your book, they go, that's it.

00:08:50.000 This guy nailed it.

00:08:51.000 You know, that's very important.

00:08:53.000 What you did was very awesome.

00:08:55.000 I haven't even read your fiction.

00:08:56.000 I've been privileged to watch some of your movies that people have turned into your fiction, but...

00:09:00.000 I'm just a big fan of your non-fiction.

00:09:02.000 I'm going to have to start reading your fiction now.

00:09:03.000 Well, I brought a couple here.

00:09:04.000 What do you got there?

00:09:05.000 I think that you'll like these.

00:09:07.000 One is Gates of Fire and the other is Tides of War. 0.99

00:09:09.000 That sounds like some manly shit. 0.99

00:09:10.000 Yeah, I read Tides of War. 0.99

00:09:13.000 What is it about?

00:09:14.000 Yeah.

00:09:15.000 What is it about?

00:09:16.000 Gates of Fire is about the Battle of Thermopylae.

00:09:20.000 It's not 300. It's not that movie.

00:09:23.000 Right.

00:09:23.000 But it's like a good version of that.

00:09:26.000 Oh, okay.

00:09:28.000 And Tides of War is also set in that era.

00:09:31.000 It's a different story about...

00:09:34.000 Alcibiades, Socrates.

00:09:36.000 Oh, wow.

00:09:37.000 Cool, powerful figures from history.

00:09:38.000 It sounds daunting, Joe, but it's not.

00:09:41.000 No, it sounds awesome.

00:09:42.000 I'm a huge fan of history over the last few years, especially, but I'm a big fan of history podcasts now, and we had Greg Proops here yesterday that schooled us on Columbus. 0.97

00:09:53.000 Proops is a huge history buff, especially when it comes to Columbus, and he's a brilliant guy, so he's rattling off the history of what an asshole Columbus was. 0.78

00:10:02.000 It's really embarrassing that there's still a Columbus day. 0.99

00:10:06.000 Who knew?

00:10:07.000 I didn't know.

00:10:08.000 What a bad guy.

00:10:10.000 He was really a bad guy.

00:10:12.000 But I'm a huge, huge fan of that stuff.

00:10:16.000 It's so fascinating to me that there was only a few hundred years ago that people were living this outrageously.

00:10:22.000 Yeah.

00:10:23.000 And you've got to read some more of his nonfiction, too.

00:10:25.000 I just finished The Authentic Swing.

00:10:27.000 Really cool book, especially for writers, I think, because it really goes through his process of writing The Legend of Bagger Vance and talking about that.

00:10:35.000 Really cool to see you kind of refine some of those same, you know, concepts.

00:10:39.000 And for me, as you were talking about the muse and getting really ethereal, for me, one thing that you kind of drove home here is that the muse can be that higher part of ourself that we're just tapping into.

00:10:50.000 And for me, that's been one of the key things in my life is finding the ways to tap into that, you know, and I have a bunch of tricks and tools like, you know, crazy psychedelic medicine in the jungles of South America.

00:11:01.000 Things like that that helped me get there.

00:11:02.000 But really, the muse can be finding that highest part of yourself, that part of yourself that's tapped into everything else around you and that kind of quantum soup, as you call it, the magic, the source of the universe itself.

00:11:15.000 And I thought that was a really kind of cool way to draw that in.

00:11:17.000 Well, maybe we'll get Joe to read that and he'll still get it.

00:11:20.000 I'm sure he will.

00:11:20.000 Yeah, I would love to.

00:11:22.000 The idea of getting out of your own way, that's a big one.

00:11:25.000 How'd you figure that out?

00:11:27.000 I mean, probably the same way you did.

00:11:29.000 I think it's anybody that's trying to do anything in art or filmmaking, painting, whatever it is, or sports, or golf particularly.

00:11:42.000 You find that the tendency is to try too hard, right?

00:11:47.000 You want it so bad.

00:11:48.000 You don't want to screw up.

00:11:49.000 You want to get it right.

00:11:51.000 You want to not embarrass yourself.

00:11:53.000 And so you wind up Trying, trying, trying so hard that nothing comes, you know?

00:11:58.000 And finally, like over time, I'm sure this is the same for everybody, you kind of say to yourself, man, I just have to lighten up a little bit because when good things happen is when I'm not trying so hard.

00:12:09.000 And in many ways, I think that's the hardest thing of all.

00:12:12.000 I mean, Aubrey, what you're saying about being in the jungle, you know, a psychedelic jungle, what that's really all about is not trying.

00:12:19.000 It's like the hardest thing in the world is to say, somebody says to you, relax.

00:12:24.000 Or, be yourself.

00:12:26.000 Just be yourself, Joe.

00:12:28.000 And yet, I think as we become more professional and better at what we're doing, when somebody says to you, be yourself, you can.

00:12:39.000 You're not burdened by these false selves and these things that you think you ought to be or what you ought to say or how you ought to look or what you ought to be.

00:12:48.000 You've kind of gotten rid of those over time Deliberately, very deliberately, and I certainly have, you know, I mean, I've very deliberately tried, you know, when I feel myself going that way, to pull back and let go.

00:13:04.000 But, and I think in many ways, that's what any artist does as they become a professional at what they do.

00:13:10.000 They learn to kind of get out of their own way, and it's the hardest thing of all, I think.

00:13:14.000 And the people, we talk about resistance or the way people screw themselves up, right?

00:13:19.000 That's how they screw themselves up, is they're getting in their own way, right? 0.99

00:13:24.000 They're listening to their own bullshit, they're believing it, and they're blocked from whatever they're trying to do. 0.99

00:13:32.000 I'm sure that's with the comics, right? 1.00

00:13:34.000 When they get on stage and they bomb, right?

00:13:35.000 That's what's happening.

00:13:36.000 Yeah, that definitely is a big part of it.

00:13:40.000 What I think you're doing that I think is really cool is that by living your life and figuring things out and then documenting and sharing them, sharing them in a really honest way, we are all providing together what's basically a direction manual on how to live your life And avoid a lot of bullshit that most people get involved with.

00:14:00.000 This is the stuff they don't teach you in school.

00:14:03.000 Exactly.

00:14:03.000 Because they don't know it.

00:14:04.000 That's what we're trying to do now.

00:14:05.000 The real problem is the human body and the human mind is probably the most complicated vehicle That the world has ever seen. 0.99

00:14:15.000 Forget about all the rocket ships and all the different things that you have to go through years and years of school before they let you fuck with. 0.98

00:14:23.000 Whether it's F.A. 18 fighter jets or helicopters. 0.98

00:14:27.000 I watched a friend get his pilot's license just studying all aerodynamics and all these different things you have to know to take the test and winds and... 0.99

00:14:36.000 You don't have to do shit to be a person. 0.96

00:14:38.000 You're just a person. 0.99

00:14:39.000 I mean, it's way crazier to operate this thing.

00:14:41.000 I mean, it has emotions attached to it. 1.00

00:14:43.000 It can make other people with its penis, which it likes rubbing. 1.00

00:14:48.000 This is ridiculous. 1.00

00:14:49.000 This is a ridiculous animal. 1.00

00:14:50.000 And it's a ridiculous sort of a thing to try to manage with no help. 0.96

00:14:55.000 And by you writing this book and people sharing their own personal experiences and I mean, that's one of the things that young men appreciate the most about old men, is an old man who will tell you what he did wrong.

00:15:07.000 Like, when I meet young kids, I'm always like, dude, listen to me. 0.57

00:15:10.000 I'm not going to bullshit you, but don't do that. 1.00

00:15:13.000 Whatever you do, don't do this one, because that one's stupid. 1.00

00:15:16.000 And, of course, nobody listens. 1.00

00:15:18.000 Nah, people do.

00:15:19.000 But there's that old expression that a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

00:15:24.000 Right. 1.00

00:15:25.000 A fool makes his own. 1.00

00:15:26.000 From his own, yeah. 0.97

00:15:27.000 I thought one of the concepts that you brought up that I really like as well is that, you know, it's not so much learning new things, it's remembering what we've decided to forget upon, you know, upon birth.

00:15:38.000 You know, you come from, if you have that kind of paradigm of belief, I don't even think you need it, though.

00:15:42.000 So let's say you come from source, some kind of near-perfect knowledge, and then you're born, and through whatever reason you decide, all right, I'm going to forget the rules of this game.

00:15:51.000 And Alan Watts talks about it in a really interesting way of You know, if you did have omnipotence, what would become interesting?

00:15:57.000 Well, interesting would be to figure it out all over again.

00:16:00.000 Because any known future is a past.

00:16:03.000 You know, if it's a perfectly known future, it's already happened.

00:16:05.000 It's happened in your mind.

00:16:06.000 It's happened there.

00:16:07.000 So you make this pact to forget.

00:16:09.000 And you forget everything upon birth.

00:16:11.000 And then as you go through life, you try to remember again as much as you can by tapping into that eternal part of ourselves.

00:16:18.000 And that's a little bit...

00:16:19.000 I might have gone a little astray with what you were saying, but there's a lot of that that you talk about.

00:16:24.000 Not at all.

00:16:25.000 With the authentic swing.

00:16:26.000 I mean, it sounds airy-fairy, but it isn't.

00:16:29.000 I mean, there's the various myths.

00:16:31.000 You know, this thing on our upper lip, this little indentation, where does that come from?

00:16:35.000 The myth is that before birth, we knew everything, and an angel, just before we were born, touched us right there, and nothing came out again.

00:16:43.000 Or the other myth...

00:16:44.000 Makes sense.

00:16:45.000 That's what we call an angel. 1.00

00:16:47.000 We're a bunch of self-hating assholes. 0.99

00:16:49.000 In the Greek world, there's the thing that when you had to cross the... 0.99

00:16:54.000 Into the underworld, you had to cross the river that the ferryman took you across.

00:16:58.000 And when you were born again, you had to drink of the river, the river Lethe, L-E-T-H-E. And from that, where lethargy, the word comes from, as soon as you drank that, you forgot everything.

00:17:09.000 It was like men in black when they flashed a little thing in front of your eyes, you know?

00:17:12.000 Well, that's probably analogous to psychedelic experiences, because certain psychedelics, especially DMT, one of the aspects of it is that your memory of it goes away almost instantly.

00:17:24.000 You have this incredible trip, and then trying to remember it is really difficult.

00:17:28.000 And one of the ways you remember it is actually you remember the way you described it before.

00:17:32.000 You don't necessarily even remember the experience itself, which is one of the most incredible experiences of your life.

00:17:37.000 But there's some mechanism that's erasing that memory in the human mind.

00:17:41.000 It's the same one that works on dreams.

00:17:44.000 Yeah, dreams.

00:17:45.000 You forget dreams like that, right?

00:17:47.000 And there's a way to help retain some of that.

00:17:50.000 One of the things that we sell is a supplement called AlphaBrain.

00:17:53.000 It's a nootropic.

00:17:54.000 And nootropics are essentially vitamins and nutrients that have been shown to have a positive benefit on cognitive function.

00:18:00.000 And this AlphaBrain stuff, one of the things that it works great on is lucid dreaming.

00:18:04.000 They found that people...

00:18:06.000 That are practitioners of lucid dreaming, this interesting combination of nutrients.

00:18:11.000 You can control your dream as it's happening?

00:18:12.000 Yeah, apparently they say that what they can do, that lucid dreamers say that what they can do is when they get in a dream, then it's like, the people that are really good at it, they're basically in a movie.

00:18:23.000 They can fly, they're one of the Avengers, they're fighting off aliens, they control the entire show.

00:18:28.000 It sounds amazing.

00:18:29.000 It seems like something I should probably look into, but for whatever reason, I haven't been drawn to it.

00:18:36.000 Yeah, there's definitely resistance on that, because it's a really fascinating idea.

00:18:39.000 I've had lucid dreams, and the ones that I had once I started fucking around with nootropics, they got a lot stronger.

00:18:48.000 Choline, which is one of the ingredients A lot of those are still working on the acetylcholine mechanism,

00:19:06.000 which kind of controls the REM state, and that's your dream state.

00:19:09.000 You guys are into this deeply, huh?

00:19:12.000 We like messing with our minds in a healthy way.

00:19:16.000 Once you find out that there's stuff that actually allows you to think a little crisper.

00:19:20.000 I started looking into it many years back because I read about Bill Romanowski, who's a football player, who was getting a lot of concussions, obviously, when he was playing football, and then he was having issues afterwards.

00:19:31.000 And he developed this supplement called Neuro One, and that's his supplement.

00:19:34.000 It's added to water, and it's this interesting mixture of things.

00:19:39.000 And I took it, and I was like, wow, this is kind of crazy.

00:19:41.000 Like, this is really having some sort of an effect.

00:19:43.000 But the point being that that's the only thing that I've ever found that can counteract that sort of legendary thing of erasing the memory of the fantastic event.

00:19:55.000 Because that's a theme.

00:19:57.000 The erasing the memory of the fantastic event The erasing the memory of the brilliant knowledge by the angels.

00:20:02.000 You knew everything.

00:20:03.000 When you're on DMT, you know everything.

00:20:05.000 You figured it all out.

00:20:06.000 You've got it.

00:20:07.000 I got it.

00:20:08.000 I got it.

00:20:08.000 You sure you got it?

00:20:09.000 I got it, dude.

00:20:09.000 I got it.

00:20:10.000 Woo! 0.99

00:20:11.000 Let me back down to earth.

00:20:12.000 I swear to God, I'm a different person.

00:20:13.000 I get it.

00:20:15.000 But that goes away.

00:20:17.000 And it all goes away, yeah.

00:20:18.000 And it seems like this touch of the lip and the drinking of the water, it's almost like they're trying to...

00:20:26.000 Mythologize this chemical process of the mind.

00:20:29.000 I think Aldous Huxley did a really good job explaining what's going on.

00:20:32.000 We have this cognitive filter that decides what is useful to not get eaten by tigers and to procreate the species.

00:20:39.000 It's like this gate.

00:20:40.000 He calls it the doors of perception or cognitive filter.

00:20:43.000 It's this gate and it only lets in What is best for the animal to survive?

00:20:48.000 Anything else outside of that, the brain says, ah, we don't need this.

00:20:52.000 Get rid of this.

00:20:54.000 Deprioritize this because this isn't important.

00:20:56.000 What psychedelics do, what dreams do, is they open up the walls of this filter.

00:21:01.000 You look at the mechanism of action of something like psilocybin.

00:21:04.000 It's not adding something to your brain.

00:21:06.000 It's actually shutting down certain parts.

00:21:08.000 Shutting down the default mode network, it's called, which is one of the filtering devices in the brain.

00:21:13.000 So just more comes in.

00:21:15.000 And if you let more in, more of that stuff from the beyond, the quantum soup, as you say, you let more of that in, well, you can get a little bit closer. 1.00

00:21:23.000 That's because you guys are shutting off your brain like a bunch of fucking morons. 1.00

00:21:27.000 What you're doing is you're still listening to you over there. 1.00

00:21:29.000 You're taking this fucking mushroom and shuts your brain off and you think that's good. 1.00

00:21:34.000 You think that's a good thing. 1.00

00:21:36.000 Well, that's what the science is saying.

00:21:37.000 What do you think, Aubrey, about the idea or the theory that when we're children, when we're infants, we're seeing all that?

00:21:45.000 It's like an acid.

00:21:46.000 If you look in a kid's eyes, right, they're not the same as our eyes.

00:21:51.000 When they're looking at the room, God knows what they're seeing, but it's not what we're seeing.

00:21:55.000 And the process of growing a little bit older is a kind of a throttling of that Aperture, right?

00:22:02.000 A closing of that aperture.

00:22:03.000 We're building the walls every year that we live.

00:22:06.000 We build more and more filters, more and more walls.

00:22:08.000 And we accelerate whatever we do.

00:22:10.000 We're trying to push for a promotion at work, so we're putting in extra hours, and I've got to bring home some of my projects, and your kids are growing older, and they're in daycare, and you don't see them.

00:22:19.000 But you gotta, you know, eventually we're gonna get that vacation house and then everything's gonna come together.

00:22:23.000 And we complicate our lives deeper and deeper and deeper as we get older, almost as if to avoid silence.

00:22:30.000 You know, we claim to all be looking for it. 0.94

00:22:33.000 But we're just fucking avoiding it at all costs.

00:22:36.000 You feel so much lighter after a flotation tank experience. 0.95

00:22:39.000 It's just like you can peel off some of these layers and recover just a fragment of those child's eyes, that kind of light-hearted sense of the soul.

00:22:48.000 In a way, to me, this is sort of what...

00:22:54.000 It's a long story, but...

00:23:05.000 I had to come up with an idea for a book, and so I wrote Gates of Fire, which was about ancient Greece.

00:23:10.000 The next thing I knew, I had done five books about ancient Greece.

00:23:13.000 I had never in my life thought about that.

00:23:16.000 It wasn't like I was obsessed with it or anything.

00:23:19.000 I didn't know anything about it.

00:23:20.000 But something sort of pulled me into it and kept me going.

00:23:24.000 So I think, in a way, if you're painting or you're making a film, you're discovering what you already know.

00:23:34.000 Right?

00:23:35.000 And it's like it was in you, but you didn't know it was in you.

00:23:39.000 And you don't know it's in you until you see it on the page or it's on a song or something like that.

00:23:44.000 And what's kind of weird to me here, I've written like, whatever, five or six books about ancient Greece, but yet I'm not remotely interested in ancient Rome. 0.99

00:23:53.000 I just don't give a shit, you know? 0.98

00:23:55.000 So why? 0.99

00:23:56.000 Is it a previous life?

00:23:59.000 What is it?

00:23:59.000 Some people love the Civil War.

00:24:01.000 They love, you know, ancient...

00:24:03.000 Rednecks. 0.99

00:24:03.000 Ireland, whatever, right? 0.99

00:24:04.000 Almost all.

00:24:05.000 Nobody wants to play the North in the Civil War.

00:24:08.000 They're always playing the South.

00:24:09.000 But it's like, why are we drawn to whatever it is we're drawn?

00:24:14.000 There's a reason.

00:24:14.000 It's not just nothing.

00:24:16.000 Yeah.

00:24:17.000 I don't know about that.

00:24:18.000 It might be an incredible combination of your genetics, your life experiences, your atmosphere, your personal experiences that you've Sort of developed your personality around.

00:24:30.000 There's so many different variables that could lead you to be really...

00:24:34.000 Like, I love werewolves. 0.99

00:24:36.000 What the fuck is that all about? 0.99

00:24:39.000 Yeah, I got a four-foot-tall werewolf in my lobby. 0.99

00:24:42.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:24:43.000 Like, what's wrong with me?

00:24:44.000 I don't know. 0.99

00:24:45.000 I don't give a shit about the mummy. 0.99

00:24:47.000 I'm not scared of Frankenstein. 0.99

00:24:49.000 It's not really...

00:24:50.000 It's just a guy who came back to life.

00:24:51.000 And what's even crazier about that, Joe, is that there is no such thing as a werewolf.

00:24:54.000 Exactly. 1.00

00:24:55.000 So stupid. 1.00

00:24:55.000 So it's not like I could see being obsessed with wolves, but werewolves? 1.00

00:24:59.000 So that tells me that on some level, there is such a thing as a werewolf.

00:25:04.000 Really? 0.98

00:25:04.000 It tells me I'm a retard. 0.98

00:25:06.000 At least.

00:25:06.000 Well, you're You're not alone, because there are a lot of people watching Werewolf.

00:25:10.000 At least some archetype that's represented by the Werewolf.

00:25:13.000 Right.

00:25:13.000 You know, some itch that that's scratching.

00:25:15.000 Yes.

00:25:15.000 It's a deeper, you know.

00:25:17.000 I think there's also, we know that humans vary.

00:25:20.000 We vary radically.

00:25:21.000 We vary in our own lives.

00:25:23.000 We're not like beetles, where we essentially move the same way, and there's no explosive, weird actions. 0.99

00:25:29.000 Humans are constantly varying, varying whether or not you're enjoying your interactions with other people or in pain because of them, varying whether or not you're in ecstasy because of your movements or just terribly stressed out and stuck in traffic and coming from a job that sucks to a marriage that's fucking poisoning you. 0.96

00:25:50.000 The variations are massive.

00:25:52.000 So because of that, the possibilities of each individual interaction that you have with people It's crazy.

00:25:58.000 So you could run into someone that feels like a wild animal, and you know that that's a part of people, and you know that you vary, and that if someone threatens your children or something, shit does come out of you that's so primal that it doesn't even have a language attached to it.

00:26:13.000 The movements have nothing to do with morality or ethics or law. 0.76

00:26:17.000 They have to do with primal DNA seeking to stay around, seeking to stay alive.

00:26:23.000 And that's a wolf.

00:26:24.000 That's a wolf.

00:26:25.000 That's what a wolf is.

00:26:27.000 I mean, a wolf is prime. 1.00

00:26:28.000 If you've ever had an interaction with an animal, a real interaction, even if it's a fucking squirrel that wants to kick your ass, it's scary as shit. 0.99

00:26:35.000 Because we were talking yesterday about baboons and about how evil baboons are, and Greg Proops is saying that they'll rush women in Africa where they're local. 1.00

00:26:47.000 And they'll rush women at the grocery store and just fucking steal their shit and look at them. 1.00

00:26:52.000 And like, you're looking at a monster. 1.00

00:26:55.000 And just because it hasn't decided to kill you and eat you doesn't mean it's because it can't.

00:26:59.000 It certainly can. 0.99

00:27:00.000 It's much stronger than you, it has a face of a dog, it's got a brain of a monkey, and it's stealing your groceries. 0.98

00:27:07.000 I mean, that's a werewolf.

00:27:09.000 That's this thing of having this interaction with something that has no law to it, and that it comes out of a person. 0.99

00:27:17.000 I've seen that sort of anthropomorphic side of a thing, like we have this idea that the wolves are clever like a person as well, because wolves are really fucking smart. 0.99

00:27:26.000 And they do a lot of creepy shit. 0.90

00:27:27.000 Like they set up people, like one wolf will come out and actually walk with a fake limp so they can get other people or predators close to it. 1.00

00:27:37.000 Yeah, they're creepers, man.

00:27:39.000 They're really smart.

00:27:39.000 So you're a student of this stuff, Joe.

00:27:41.000 Of wolves, yeah.

00:27:42.000 Wolves, yeah.

00:27:43.000 I'm fascinated by anything that can kill me.

00:27:45.000 Have you ever done any vivid dreaming on the subject of wolves?

00:27:49.000 Well, I've had some nightmares.

00:27:51.000 Yeah, definitely.

00:27:52.000 I had one really weird dream that wasn't a nightmare.

00:27:55.000 Wolf and a gorilla, right?

00:27:56.000 Yeah, the werewolf and a gorilla were having sex, and I was trying to get out of the room before anybody noticed, and I was creeping around the edge of the walls really slowly. 0.75

00:28:05.000 And then someone actually sent me a wolf and a gorilla having sex. 0.71

00:28:10.000 They put it together in this structure.

00:28:14.000 But the weirdest dream that I ever had...

00:28:17.000 It was, I don't know if I was a wolf or some sort of an animal, but there was some sort of another animal next to me.

00:28:23.000 You know, it's weird to try to remember exactly what it looked like.

00:28:26.000 It was like something canine, something like canine, not a cat.

00:28:30.000 And we're walking through this rainforest and water's dripping everywhere and water's like hitting my nose. 0.97

00:28:36.000 And I can smell shit that I have never smelled before. 0.96

00:28:39.000 And I can smell fear. 1.00

00:28:41.000 I can smell this deer.

00:28:44.000 Sounds like Game of Thrones.

00:28:45.000 The deer hears a stick snap.

00:28:48.000 And the deer's fear comes out like a puff of mist.

00:28:53.000 And then I wake up.

00:28:54.000 It's a weird dream.

00:28:57.000 It happened a couple of times where I had this...

00:29:00.000 This glimpse of an animal stalking things and smelling things.

00:29:05.000 But it's most likely just my imagination with all the things that I've read about dogs.

00:29:09.000 Sounds like Brandon Stark.

00:29:10.000 I wonder if there's a part of us that's kind of repressed in the society we live in now.

00:29:17.000 Apart?

00:29:18.000 Yeah, a good amount.

00:29:19.000 There's a huge part of us, perhaps, that we're keeping under wraps and saying, no, no, no.

00:29:23.000 You can't come out and play.

00:29:24.000 You can't come out and play.

00:29:25.000 That kind of savage beast of the animal that's inside of us that not many of us get to explore at all or release at all.

00:29:34.000 Years ago, as you know, in these tales, there was opportunity for almost every adult male to enter this hand-to-hand combat where you could unleash this whatever beast was inside of you.

00:29:44.000 You got to let it out.

00:29:46.000 And perhaps they didn't really care that much about werewolves at that point because they got to itch that scratch directly.

00:29:52.000 A sword.

00:29:52.000 So do you think that there's something, you know, if you're going to diagnose the male species in particular, and then probably another one for the female, that's kind of we're struggling with because we don't have that outlet in our society?

00:30:05.000 Absolutely.

00:30:06.000 I mean, I think, and that...

00:30:08.000 I'm just reading a book about the Comanches, you know, and whatever it was, 1860 in Texas.

00:30:15.000 And the incredible horror that these cruelty and also incredible endurance, cleverness, cunningness, rapaciousness, you know, that they exhibited...

00:30:29.000 And that's like 150 years ago.

00:30:31.000 It is so far gone.

00:30:33.000 The world that we live to drive into Santa Monica, get a caramel macchiato, you know, come back, whatever you do, right?

00:30:41.000 And, I mean, I can see just sitting here in this room with you four guys.

00:30:45.000 There's tremendous testosterone hanging around in this room. 0.99

00:30:48.000 I feel like I want to put an M4 in everybody's hand until you go out and start killing people. 0.99

00:30:53.000 And you'll be not here, of course. 0.99

00:30:55.000 But...

00:30:56.000 I think it's, and I really think you see this dark side, to me, everywhere.

00:31:02.000 In marriages, in kids to parents, in the dysfunction of the government.

00:31:08.000 Look at the government now with the shutdown and all this stuff.

00:31:11.000 You can't tell me that that's not some kind of force that found expression a few hundred years ago and doesn't find expression anymore.

00:31:23.000 Right.

00:31:24.000 You know, Norman Mailer had this idea years ago that to help stop crime, he had this idea of an adventurer corps.

00:31:32.000 Have you ever heard about this?

00:31:33.000 One of his deals was, you know the old windjammer ships that like would require a crew of 150 to go up in the sails and sail around Cape Horn and it was like, you know, adventure, wild. 0.63

00:31:46.000 He had an idea to have like a hundred of these ships And just get young, testosterone-crazed kids out of the bad environments that they were in and get them, you know, facing real shit out there in the real world.

00:31:59.000 And he thought that, you know, that would be very interesting for them and for everybody. 0.57

00:32:03.000 And I think there's a lot to that.

00:32:05.000 Why do people join the Army now?

00:32:07.000 Why do they want to volunteer for Afghanistan?

00:32:09.000 Because they care about bringing peace or the American way? 0.98

00:32:13.000 Well, there's also people don't know what the fuck to do.

00:32:15.000 There's also that it's a job that people can get in places where there's no jobs. 0.90

00:32:19.000 It's a guaranteed living.

00:32:21.000 You have family that's been in the military.

00:32:23.000 For the people that I know that joined the military, it's usually those things.

00:32:27.000 And it's a poor substitute for a rite of passage, too.

00:32:32.000 Because I have a lot of people that read my books are in the military.

00:32:36.000 They write to me and da-da-da.

00:32:38.000 And I can tell you that they...

00:32:41.000 They respond to the concept of a code of honor, the concept of the warrior ethos, and in fact what's frustrating to them about the military, unless they're in really elite units, is that they don't get that. 0.94

00:32:54.000 It's just the bullshit of, you know, whatever it is.

00:32:57.000 And they're not called on to really perform at the high, high level that they know they wish they could. 0.97

00:33:04.000 And you guys are into that with your supplementation and the stuff that you do.

00:33:07.000 You're trying to get to some level that's, you know, beyond...

00:33:11.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:33:12.000 I think to summarize what we're saying here is that the problem with the world is weak bitches. 1.00

00:33:17.000 There's a lot of dudes out there that are weak bitches. 1.00

00:33:19.000 And we all could have been a weak bitch or could have been at one point in our lives a weak bitch. 1.00

00:33:24.000 And the lack of discipline, the lack of quality character... 1.00

00:33:30.000 That's the one thing that we find most distasteful in other people.

00:33:34.000 When you see some weaselly guy that's gonna sell his friends down the river.

00:33:37.000 I remember I was watching Punk'd once, and we don't have to say anybody's name, but somebody got Punk'd and they sold their friends out to this fake FBI guy. 1.00

00:33:47.000 And I watched that and I go, that guy is a bitch! 1.00

00:33:50.000 To this day, if I ever see that guy, I don't say hi to him. 1.00

00:33:54.000 I avoid him.

00:33:54.000 I'm like, that's a weasley dude.

00:33:57.000 That's a weak bitch. 1.00

00:33:58.000 Violated the code of honor. 1.00

00:33:59.000 There's no character there. 0.99

00:34:01.000 What you're supposed to do, it's a fucking card game. 1.00

00:34:05.000 What's the worst thing that's going to happen to you, you dummy? 1.00

00:34:07.000 The FBI comes and they tell you they're storming. 0.96

00:34:10.000 You go, what?

00:34:11.000 I've got to talk to my lawyer. 1.00

00:34:12.000 I don't know what the fuck you're saying right now. 0.99

00:34:14.000 I'm talking to my lawyer. 1.00

00:34:15.000 I'm done.

00:34:15.000 We're done talking.

00:34:17.000 As soon as you say you're the FBI and you're breaking up a card game, I'm like, what?

00:34:20.000 Yeah, okay.

00:34:21.000 Take care.

00:34:22.000 Good luck with that.

00:34:22.000 I don't know what you're talking about.

00:34:23.000 I'm not going to give up my fucking friends like a bitch. 1.00

00:34:26.000 But those people that do do that, they're scary. 1.00

00:34:29.000 They're creepers.

00:34:30.000 They're around us all the time.

00:34:31.000 And that comes from a lack of doing the work.

00:34:35.000 It comes from a lack of self-analysis, objective thinking.

00:34:41.000 It comes from a lack of meditation.

00:34:44.000 It comes from a lack of being actually aware of the true nature of your actions, the true nature of your behavior.

00:34:51.000 Let me change the subject slightly, although it's not really changing the subject.

00:34:54.000 But to ask you a question, Joe, why did you start this podcast?

00:34:58.000 And what is your intention, your long-term intention here?

00:35:02.000 There's zero.

00:35:03.000 Zero long term.

00:35:04.000 This is one of those things that sort of made itself.

00:35:07.000 We knew of a few friends that had a podcast that they did.

00:35:12.000 My friend Anthony Cumia, who's on the show Opie and Anthony, he has a basement in his house where he set up a full studio with HD professional cameras and a green screen.

00:35:23.000 And he'll put space behind him or New York City behind him.

00:35:26.000 It's amazing.

00:35:27.000 It's really cool.

00:35:28.000 Which, by the way, we're going to get one of those things.

00:35:29.000 It's called a TriCaster.

00:35:31.000 And my friend Justin, who was in the other day, he uses him for the action report.

00:35:35.000 But he did it, and it looked cool.

00:35:38.000 It looked like fun.

00:35:39.000 He would just have a couple of drinks with his buddies and do karaoke while holding a machine gun. 1.00

00:35:43.000 He's fucking crazy. 1.00

00:35:45.000 So Brian and I started it. 1.00

00:35:47.000 It'll be four years ago, December.

00:35:50.000 No, Christmas.

00:35:51.000 That's crazy.

00:35:52.000 Did you have a plan?

00:35:54.000 Did you sit down and say, we want to do this?

00:35:57.000 Nah.

00:35:58.000 We were looking for something to do for Joe's fans.

00:36:03.000 Because Joe had so many fans and we would make these videos.

00:36:05.000 They were nice, but it was so hard to edit all this video and it only came out once a month.

00:36:09.000 So we were kind of looking for something so Joe could interact with his fans faster.

00:36:13.000 For someone who's on the outside looking at the podcast, because you guys are right in it, and I've obviously been a part of it, I think what has happened there is Joe is one of the best examples I've ever seen of somebody living his authentic self.

00:36:27.000 In all of my travels and journeys everywhere, have I ever met a person who I could count on to be 100% Joe fucking Rogan, himself, always, at any point in time.

00:36:40.000 And so I think even without a plan, his authentic self, what he was bringing, what's inside his heart and his spirit, was going to play out on this stage regardless.

00:36:50.000 He couldn't help it.

00:36:51.000 You know, he couldn't strategize or plan what was going to be.

00:36:54.000 He could just be himself and do the podcast, and then here you go.

00:36:59.000 Here it is.

00:36:59.000 Here's the manifestation.

00:37:00.000 And that in itself was, you know, in lieu of a plan.

00:37:03.000 I mean, I could tell this sort of embarrasses you, Joe, for me to ask you this stuff.

00:37:08.000 But bear with me, because it certainly seems...

00:37:11.000 I'm from the outside coming here.

00:37:12.000 It certainly seems like, in a way, you're a teacher.

00:37:16.000 And this environment here definitely has to do with maleness, right? 0.99

00:37:22.000 So it seems to me like...

00:37:23.000 I'm the male Oprah.

00:37:23.000 Asking the question.

00:37:25.000 He was on Oprah, by the way.

00:37:26.000 You know, you're joking about that, but you are.

00:37:30.000 They need it. 1.00

00:37:31.000 A bunch of weak bitches out there. 1.00

00:37:32.000 Well, there it is. 1.00

00:37:33.000 Chuffing up, son.

00:37:35.000 Like Chopper would say, hot enough.

00:37:39.000 Yeah.

00:37:40.000 So you might not have known that when you and Brian started this, but I think it was kind of oozing out of your pores, you know?

00:37:48.000 It could be.

00:37:49.000 That's why, let me ask you this, let me put it a different way.

00:37:53.000 What characteristics do you look for in guests that you invite onto the show?

00:37:57.000 Oh, they're so varied.

00:37:59.000 Funny, either Joey Diaz-type dudes who are just funny.

00:38:02.000 You know, I have friends that are just funny.

00:38:04.000 I just want them to be funny.

00:38:06.000 We have just laughs.

00:38:07.000 And then there's other people who are very philosophical.

00:38:10.000 There's people that I don't necessarily even agree with, but they have a very well-thought-out opinion, and I like to explore other opinions.

00:38:16.000 What I think happened is...

00:38:20.000 Because of what I do, because I'm a professional comedian, I'm always looking at things.

00:38:25.000 But it's also that that's who I was anyway.

00:38:28.000 And it's just I found a good job for trying to analyze.

00:38:31.000 When I was a young boy, my parents split up when I was about five years old.

00:38:36.000 And it was a really bad breakup with a lot of domestic violence.

00:38:40.000 And if I had to pinpoint A moment.

00:38:43.000 That, like, that part of my life made me go, you know what?

00:38:48.000 I have a feeling that I've just been shit out into this world that no one knows how the fuck anything works, and everybody's just bumping into walls, and as a five-year-old, I remember looking around, because I just... 0.98

00:39:01.000 I just started going to Catholic school, which I realized was utter horseshit. 0.99

00:39:04.000 I'm like, oh great, religion's not real either. 0.99

00:39:06.000 And then my family's not real, religion's not real.

00:39:09.000 So being like five, six years old, I think it made me just start thinking about things constantly.

00:39:14.000 My brain is never rested.

00:39:16.000 It's very rare that I can just chill out.

00:39:19.000 Even when I'm watching something, I'll have two things going on in the background.

00:39:23.000 I'll start playing games with myself in the back of my mind.

00:39:26.000 It's a weird thing.

00:39:28.000 There's too many things going on in my head all the time.

00:39:33.000 Because of that, the best way to exercise that... 0.92

00:39:36.000 Is to find something like a podcast where you can have a conversation with people for three hours and just sit down and shoot the shit about things and then explore subjects and no one looks at their phone.

00:39:48.000 No one takes any emails.

00:39:51.000 That's a rare thing in this society today.

00:39:54.000 And to be able to do that and to have that sort of an environment, for me, is perfect.

00:40:02.000 So it's being a student as well as being a teacher, in a way.

00:40:05.000 You know, you're learning.

00:40:06.000 Being constantly fascinated.

00:40:08.000 And I think if you're paying attention, how can you not be constantly fascinated?

00:40:11.000 The world is just, every day there's a river of slippery salmon of knowledge, and you can't even hold onto it all.

00:40:18.000 It's just too much is coming.

00:40:20.000 There's just too much going on right now.

00:40:22.000 And you look at like the scientific...

00:40:23.000 Just on the side of astronomy.

00:40:28.000 Just the new discoveries that they're showing every day where they just found a new planet.

00:40:31.000 It's floating in the middle of nowhere with no galaxy.

00:40:34.000 It's just floating around. 0.99

00:40:35.000 They're like, shit, this planet doesn't even have a solar system. 1.00

00:40:37.000 It's just fucking flying through the universe. 1.00

00:40:39.000 There's all kinds of stuff that could fill your day every day with information. 0.97

00:40:44.000 And so more than a teacher, what I'm as is like a portal.

00:40:49.000 I'm a portal.

00:40:50.000 I'm out there looking for it, but it's not me.

00:40:53.000 It's me going, hey, do you see that? 1.00

00:40:55.000 Holy shit. 0.99

00:40:56.000 And then someone else goes, do you see that? 1.00

00:40:57.000 And I go, fuck! 1.00

00:40:59.000 It's a portal thing. 0.99

00:41:01.000 And having a voice, like having a podcast, it allows people to all sink in.

00:41:07.000 And your fascination, what you describe, is key.

00:41:10.000 Because that enthusiasm that you bring to this is really important.

00:41:13.000 There's so many people who are no longer enthusiastic about anything.

00:41:16.000 The world does no longer hold wonder and awe and fascination.

00:41:20.000 How's that possible?

00:41:21.000 Who are these people?

00:41:22.000 Who are these people?

00:41:23.000 Where are their socks?

00:41:24.000 Do they have one sock on?

00:41:26.000 They just get numb.

00:41:27.000 You know, you get numb by the world.

00:41:28.000 You look at the world as this dark gray place and it kind of beats on them and it just wears them down until they can't see that anymore.

00:41:35.000 And then, you know, seeing that in someone that they look up to, like, whoa, Joe is really fascinated by this, maybe.

00:41:41.000 I think you can kind of inspire that back in there.

00:41:44.000 And you keep that going.

00:41:45.000 Just from your natural self, but you also work at it too.

00:41:49.000 Your meditation, your flotation, different things that kind of peel off the weights that can kind of hold you down and keep those perceptions there.

00:41:56.000 Keep that fascination alive.

00:41:57.000 And you never win.

00:41:59.000 You never win.

00:42:00.000 It's a swim.

00:42:01.000 It's not a climb.

00:42:03.000 You don't get to the top of the mountain and plant the flag. 1.00

00:42:05.000 No, you keep your head above water and you keep moving, bitch. 1.00

00:42:08.000 And you have to, because if you stop, you're going to drown. 1.00

00:42:10.000 And that's just a fact. 1.00

00:42:11.000 No matter who you are, no matter what you do, if you stop working on everything, if you stop being aware, if you stop being present, it'll all go away and you'll be a shithead again. 0.98

00:42:23.000 I think we all battle with finding our optimum self. 0.72

00:42:30.000 And I think, for me, having things like the podcast, having things like stand-up comedy, having things like martial arts, There have all been these avenues where I can figure out how to channel my energy to be my optimum self.

00:42:44.000 There's a quote that I read when I was a young boy when I was doing Taekwondo.

00:42:49.000 Because they had like a little pamphlet they gave out at the school.

00:42:52.000 I got really lucky and I went to this Jae Kim Taekwondo Institute in Boston, which is like one of the best Taekwondo schools nationwide ever.

00:43:00.000 It was a really amazing school because this one guy who was the main instructor, he was this brilliant guy, Jae Hun Kim, and that's where I got my black belt from.

00:43:13.000 He was a brilliant guy.

00:43:16.000 He had several degrees outside of being a martial arts instructor.

00:43:19.000 He went to Harvard, graduated from Harvard Business School.

00:43:21.000 He was a super smart dude.

00:43:23.000 Incredible hard worker, but he broke down martial arts in this pamphlet that they would hand out.

00:43:29.000 I'll never forget reading it.

00:43:30.000 It said that martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential.

00:43:36.000 And that stuck in my head when I was like 14 or 15, whatever I was.

00:43:40.000 And I've carried that with me my whole life, that quote.

00:43:43.000 Because that's what it is.

00:43:44.000 It's something you can plug yourself into to find out what you're capable of.

00:43:49.000 And to find out how to optimally be yourself.

00:43:52.000 And to do battle with your own resistance on a microcosmic level.

00:43:58.000 You're going to have so many things weighing on you the day before a match.

00:44:01.000 All these different voices and doubts and superstitions and fears and things that you can battle and try to overcome so that when it really matters in life, you get these bigger challenges ahead.

00:44:12.000 You got practice.

00:44:13.000 You know how to defeat it.

00:44:14.000 You're like, oh, I've seen that old foe and I slayed him a hundred times.

00:44:18.000 What's great about something like that, I think, like martial arts, is it's a structure.

00:44:23.000 It's an entire culture that has rules, rituals, orders, and a young man or a boy comes into that with just this amorphous energy exploding out of his ear, his eyeballs and everything,

00:44:40.000 and suddenly he's given a structure.

00:44:42.000 This is how you learn.

00:44:44.000 You start here.

00:44:45.000 Learn to do this one move and then when you've learned that I'll teach you the next move and it kind of channels everything and I think We don't get that in society these days.

00:44:56.000 Certainly young men don't get that, you know?

00:44:58.000 You go to school, it's basically a kind of a feminized environment, right? 0.98

00:45:02.000 Other than the football team or whatever that is, which is, again, a structure.

00:45:07.000 And again, that's why people join the army, I think, because they're young guys, because they're desperate for some kind of a way to channel that into something that means something, that kind of provides significance to something.

00:45:23.000 And I think, like it or not, and most people I would say not, we have caveman DNA. I mean, it's just in our system, period.

00:45:31.000 Absolutely. 0.96

00:45:32.000 And you either accept that and manage it, or you deny it and go fucking crazy in traffic and wonder why you're screaming and sticking your finger at somebody.

00:45:40.000 Because their car got in front of your car. 0.79

00:45:42.000 Like, you find yourself lost in the wave of rage.

00:45:46.000 That's possible, too. 1.00

00:45:48.000 I saw this woman screaming at some woman of some sort of a traffic thing, just going, I'll never forget her face, going, fuck you! 1.00

00:45:57.000 Just, fuck you! 1.00

00:45:58.000 I don't know what happened. 1.00

00:46:01.000 Yeah, we've all seen that. 0.99

00:46:02.000 But that fucking blind... 0.99

00:46:04.000 When you're just zero, and you see that blind rage, it's... 0.99

00:46:08.000 Here's the other side of that, at least what I was just saying about a structured thing like learning martial arts, is something that an individual can join, and there are others who are also students, and there's a teacher who's teaching them and telling them what to do.

00:46:24.000 But the other side of that is art.

00:46:27.000 Is trying to produce whatever it is you're trying to produce, a movie, a painting, a book, or something like that.

00:46:35.000 This is where, at least in my opinion, you go as an individual and where there are no rules.

00:46:44.000 Or there are rules, but you have to discover them yourself.

00:46:48.000 And so this is what we're talking about before, about entering into another dimension of reality or tapping into another dimension of reality, which is the dimension of potentiality.

00:47:00.000 Like this podcast existed before you and Brian put it together.

00:47:04.000 It just existed on another level in potentiality.

00:47:08.000 And on it and the stuff that you guys do, that also existed.

00:47:12.000 Or a book that I might write or a movie that somebody might do.

00:47:16.000 And so I think that is a kind of, without trying to sound too phony baloney here, it's a warrior pursuit.

00:47:24.000 It's something that taps into that wolf energy or that pure testosterone energy, only it's not channeled In a path that already exists, you, the artist or the comedian or whatever,

00:47:41.000 discover that path one footstep at a time.

00:47:45.000 And you sort of put your foot out and you go wrong.

00:47:48.000 You go into a puddle or you step on a punji stake or something. 1.00

00:47:51.000 You go, well, shit, wait a minute. 1.00

00:47:53.000 Over here, this is solid ground. 1.00

00:47:55.000 And, you know, this got a laugh.

00:47:57.000 This made people... 0.56

00:47:58.000 I killed when I did this, right?

00:48:01.000 And so...

00:48:02.000 You are kind of in the dark, like somebody moving through the dark, trusting your instincts, trusting whatever little starlight you can see.

00:48:11.000 And when you finally get to the end of that forest, you turn around, you look back at the path you took.

00:48:16.000 For a writer, that's a book. 0.99

00:48:18.000 And you look down and you say, where the fuck did that come from? 0.99

00:48:22.000 And you realize that that was you all along. 0.99

00:48:28.000 But you had no idea when you started.

00:48:30.000 I remember reading that Jackson Brown says that he writes a song to figure out what he thinks about something.

00:48:37.000 Yeah, but he had sex with Linda Rodstadt, right? 0.92

00:48:39.000 Back in the day, he was a stud. 0.97

00:48:42.000 That guy, you know.

00:48:42.000 I'm only a John Merrill.

00:48:43.000 Well, what's wrong with that?

00:48:44.000 That's a very studly thing to do.

00:48:45.000 He's very studly.

00:48:46.000 That's what I'm saying.

00:48:47.000 He's not a regular dude.

00:48:48.000 Singing those beautiful songs up there on that stage.

00:48:52.000 So, anyway.

00:48:53.000 Carried away by magic.

00:48:55.000 I... You know, I think what you're saying is also like what Michelangelo said about creating sculpture, is that he finds the sculpture in the thing.

00:49:07.000 It's not like he makes it.

00:49:08.000 He removes all the stuff that's hiding the sculpture.

00:49:11.000 That's how he looked at it.

00:49:13.000 I think so many people that I get questions that they don't know what to do.

00:49:17.000 They're just trying to figure it out.

00:49:18.000 And I always give them the same advice.

00:49:20.000 I say, practice being excellent at something you love.

00:49:24.000 It could be trivial.

00:49:25.000 It could be darts.

00:49:26.000 I don't care.

00:49:27.000 Whatever it is, just be excellent at it.

00:49:29.000 Put yourself into it.

00:49:30.000 I think you're right on target, Aubrey.

00:49:32.000 And you'll discover something about yourself, whatever it is.

00:49:34.000 A lot of people will look to me to see if they can get a job.

00:49:38.000 And my question is always the same.

00:49:39.000 What are you excellent at?

00:49:41.000 Because if they can show me two random things that they're incredible at, they're excellent at, I know that they've learned to apply their authentic self.

00:49:48.000 Because you can't truly be excellent at anything without tapping into that aspect.

00:49:53.000 Or even less than that, just what do you love?

00:49:56.000 What makes you happy?

00:49:57.000 What's fun?

00:49:58.000 Well, that's the great Miyamoto Musashi quote.

00:50:01.000 Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things.

00:50:03.000 Exactly.

00:50:04.000 That idea that there's something that you tap into, and it manifests itself in a number of different ways, in athletics, in artistic, whatever it is.

00:50:13.000 But what you're doing is you're tapping into the same thing, and that is excellence.

00:50:16.000 You're tapping into the real thing, the way.

00:50:19.000 And then when you're on the path that's going to give you the fruits of your destiny, so to speak, whatever it is that's that channel that's going to bring you to the ultimate higher level, you already have practice being excellent.

00:50:29.000 You know how to do the work.

00:50:30.000 And that's another key thing that I love about that you always go back to is just you know how to do the work.

00:50:35.000 You know how to take the initial steps, that one foot in front of the other, to get there and to see progress and to apply yourself in that way.

00:50:43.000 Yeah, I'm definitely a believer in just doing the mundane thing.

00:50:48.000 Walk into the room, sit down at the keyboard, or walk into the dojo, start to do whatever the first thing is.

00:50:57.000 It's the same thing.

00:50:59.000 Yeah.

00:51:01.000 But just something is occurring to me as we're talking here.

00:51:05.000 I haven't even thought about this in a million years, but you were talking about, Aubrey, about people that...

00:51:11.000 Don't seem to care or don't have the enthusiasm for something.

00:51:16.000 The wonder and awe in the world, yeah.

00:51:17.000 I can remember that I used to be, for years I struggled like that, where I was bored with things.

00:51:22.000 I was bored with myself.

00:51:25.000 I was beating my brains out saying, why don't I love something?

00:51:29.000 What is missing?

00:51:31.000 And sort of my conclusion...

00:51:34.000 Was that I really did have tremendous ambition and tremendous aspiration, but I had buried it under layers of fear, you know, as if if I would ever admit to myself that I wanted to be excellent at something,

00:51:50.000 that that would be more than I could I could take.

00:51:53.000 Failure would be more than I could take.

00:51:55.000 And so When I finally sort of admitted to myself—and actually it's in the authentic swing, I think, or maybe it's not—but when I admitted to myself that I did have ambition, I did want to do something, suddenly everything changed.

00:52:10.000 And then enthusiasm did come, but it was fear.

00:52:14.000 So I think when we're running into people that are not—don't have enthusiasm, don't have that fire— I don't believe it's not there.

00:52:24.000 I think it's buried under fear. 0.95

00:52:25.000 And I think that's why great teachers, coaches, will put a young person in a position where they can exceed their expectations or their belief about themselves, where they thought they couldn't do it, and then the guy kicks them in the ass enough time they actually do it, 0.95

00:52:42.000 and they go, wow, how did that happen?

00:52:44.000 And then that's the spark that can then burst into flame if it's guided properly.

00:52:51.000 And I see that everywhere, I'm sorry to say.

00:52:54.000 You know, in this country, it's everywhere.

00:52:55.000 Well, I'm glad that you brought up that it was you at one point and you passed it because one of the really important things about your book, I think, is your really objective assessment of your own life at one point in time when you were like 40 years old.

00:53:11.000 You know, you were talking about this...

00:53:13.000 That was a long time ago. 0.97

00:53:14.000 Yeah, this script that wasn't working, and you were like, what the fuck am I doing?

00:53:19.000 And then, how did you go from that to completely getting it together?

00:53:24.000 Enough to write these books about getting it together, how to get it together.

00:53:27.000 How did you get over that fear?

00:53:31.000 I think at that time...

00:53:33.000 You mean the fear that I was just talking about?

00:53:34.000 Yeah, well, same thing, same question.

00:53:35.000 Yeah, how did you figure it out?

00:53:38.000 I think once I realized...

00:53:42.000 That there was something I wanted, that I wanted to be a writer, which I had refused to admit to myself because I was so afraid of failing at it.

00:53:51.000 Then I just sort of said, well, you know, there was a moment, it's actually in The War of Art, where I just sort of realized the way you get there is one step at a time.

00:54:02.000 You know, like an alcoholic, you know, one day at a time.

00:54:06.000 And that it was a...

00:54:09.000 A process that could be demystified.

00:54:13.000 It wasn't airy-fairy waiting for inspiration. 0.96

00:54:16.000 It was just sit the fuck down, put a piece of paper in a typewriter and start, you know, and then do that the next day and do it the next day. 0.94

00:54:24.000 And the other aspect for me was... 0.97

00:54:29.000 I had no choice that anytime I would try to stop and try to sell out, I was like so depressed.

00:54:37.000 So I just had no choice to just keep going, going, going.

00:54:41.000 But before I wrote The War of Art, I probably had been writing for at least 30 years or at least trying to do that.

00:54:47.000 That book came out in about two months just because it was so clear in my mind that that's what I had been fighting.

00:54:56.000 All these years.

00:54:57.000 Did you find that putting it down on paper helped you?

00:55:01.000 Very much, because it became very clear to me.

00:55:03.000 Like a law, almost.

00:55:04.000 Yeah.

00:55:05.000 I mean, for me, you know, it's like the way The War of Art kind of started for me was that, and I'm sure you guys get this too, is like friends will come to you and they see that you're getting it together.

00:55:17.000 You're doing something, you know, and they'll say, you know, I've got a business in me or a book in me or a movie in me.

00:55:24.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:55:25.000 I found myself sitting up with friends, you know, until 2 in the morning, kind of psyching them up, saying, you know, you can do it, you know, and explaining what the negative force was of resistance and how it was all bullshit. 0.96

00:55:36.000 It was all in your mind. 0.98

00:55:37.000 You could overcome it, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:55:39.000 And after doing that about 10 times, and of course, nobody listens to you, finally, I just said, I had like a two-month break, and I just said, I'm going to write this down on paper, and then when somebody comes to me, I'll just say, here, read this, and, you know, shut up, you know?

00:55:53.000 So...

00:55:54.000 That's sort of how that came out, but it was very clear in my mind from experiencing it and talking about it for years.

00:56:03.000 I don't know if that answers your question.

00:56:04.000 No, I think you're honest with yourself and anyone who's honest with themselves, after enough information comes in, that's sort of the conclusion they all draw. 0.95

00:56:12.000 Like, I'm kind of fucking myself here. 0.97

00:56:14.000 I'm sabotaging myself. 0.99

00:56:15.000 I know what I need to do.

00:56:17.000 If I had to give myself advice, what advice would I give? 1.00

00:56:19.000 Just do it, bitch. 1.00

00:56:20.000 Just get working. 1.00

00:56:21.000 Do what you've got to do.

00:56:22.000 I can't lose the last 10 pounds. 1.00

00:56:24.000 Will you please shut the fuck up? 1.00

00:56:25.000 Because that's not true. 1.00

00:56:27.000 If you were in a wheelchair from the neck down, paralyzed, you're right. 0.99

00:56:30.000 You can't lose that.

00:56:31.000 Okay, that's out of your control.

00:56:33.000 But that's not what's going on here.

00:56:34.000 This is weird.

00:56:35.000 Like, with this thing, it's a weird little struggle you've got going on.

00:56:38.000 There's people out there that are struggling for real, and I think in the absence of that, you know, there's something to be said about these hunter-gatherer cultures and the happiness in the hunter-gatherer cultures.

00:56:50.000 It's very strange.

00:56:51.000 It's like almost devoid of insanity.

00:56:54.000 Almost completely cured of mental health issues.

00:57:00.000 It's really weird.

00:57:02.000 They have alcoholism, if alcohol is introduced into their environments.

00:57:06.000 But other than that, when they don't have that, like Happy People, Life in the Taiga, did you ever see that documentary?

00:57:12.000 No.

00:57:12.000 It's Werner Herzog's documentary on these people that live in Siberia.

00:57:16.000 And all these guys do is live off the land.

00:57:18.000 All they do is hunt and fish and trap.

00:57:22.000 And they're trapping furs, and that's how they buy snowmobiles. 0.97

00:57:25.000 And, you know, hatchets and shit like that. 0.99

00:57:28.000 But the majority of their time is just shooting animals, eating them, fishing, and everybody's happy as fuck. 0.99

00:57:34.000 There's a whole village of people that are so happy. 0.99

00:57:37.000 They're just smiling and laughing.

00:57:39.000 There's, like, no disputes.

00:57:40.000 Everybody's just working together to try to get meat.

00:57:42.000 You know, they're showing how to, like, the craftsmanship involved in making these snowshoes and sleds.

00:57:49.000 They make their own skis.

00:57:50.000 I mean, it's really, really interesting because... 0.99

00:57:54.000 In the absence of that real day-to-day struggle that these people have, we're like waiting for something to come along and kick us in the ass. 0.98

00:58:04.000 It's almost like we only react by nature instead of act in some ways. 0.97

00:58:08.000 Well, you know, I'm actually fascinated by that stuff too, Joe.

00:58:12.000 I'm fascinated by tribal cultures.

00:58:14.000 Yeah.

00:58:16.000 But, you know, there's no going back to that.

00:58:19.000 No, no, no.

00:58:20.000 And at some point, there was an invention happening.

00:58:22.000 The invention was the individual.

00:58:24.000 And once that was invented, I think the ancient Greeks invented it somewhere around, you know, the time of Socrates and before that.

00:58:32.000 And at that point, we no longer had the tribe.

00:58:37.000 You know, we no longer had that wonderful thing enveloping us.

00:58:42.000 Right.

00:58:43.000 But the other...

00:58:45.000 Also, if you look at Afghanistan, which is a great place for us to study because we see it in the news and we've had seen it, which is like in Pashtunistan, you get kind of pretty much tribal culture the way it was way, way, way back when.

00:58:59.000 And I'm also, like when I was reading about the Comanches a little while ago, the other thing, one of the things about tribes is they are unbelievably cruel to whoever, if they capture anybody else or if there's anyone who violates the tribe,

00:59:15.000 It's not such an idyllic world when you get into that side of it.

00:59:19.000 Wait a minute, you mean it's not like Avatar?

00:59:22.000 Yeah, that was the side they left out of in Avatar.

00:59:25.000 Of course.

00:59:26.000 It's almost a cheat code to happiness, that kind of simple life where you're doing, you're constantly out there doing.

00:59:33.000 This world where it's just, we don't know what the hell to do, and we don't have action as this kind of through line in our life of, okay, got to go achieve that next goal, which is meat, that next goal, which is fish, that next goal, which is shelter.

00:59:45.000 It's just this amorphous world, and we got to figure it out.

00:59:48.000 And I think one of the things you said is really important is you've got to just do the work, but at the start, it's always a leap of faith, whatever that is.

00:59:57.000 You don't know exactly how it's going to turn out, but you know you take that first step and then just trust that if you stay and you show up and you do that every time, then some momentum is going to start going.

01:00:10.000 It's...

01:00:11.000 It's kind of a cliche.

01:00:13.000 It's that old Maslow pyramid, you know, of where the basic needs of hunger or, you know, clothing, da-da-da.

01:00:19.000 And then when you get to the top, which is where we are, the needs become, you know, because we have grocery stores, you know, there's no bombs going off in the street.

01:00:27.000 So now it becomes self-actualization or asking the questions, you know, who am I, why am I here, da-da-da-da, all those tough questions, right, that the tribesmen don't have to ask because they're too busy.

01:00:37.000 Too busy fighting off grizzlies.

01:00:38.000 Right.

01:00:39.000 And...

01:00:40.000 To me, this is where something like martial arts or any kind of a discipline or art, period, the production of art, this podcast, your comedy, whatever it is, is...

01:00:51.000 And I can't really put my finger on why, but I think it's an answer to this...

01:00:58.000 The thing of being alone, being an individual, being unfettered from the tribal structure or from any structure where we're kind of floating in space, you know, like George Clooney and, you know, trying to figure out, you know,

01:01:15.000 who am I? Why am I here?

01:01:16.000 What do I want?

01:01:19.000 Tough, tough questions, you know?

01:01:20.000 Yeah, very tough questions.

01:01:22.000 Very interesting questions.

01:01:23.000 I think that what you said is really important, the thing of cheat code, that it's almost like a cheat code to life.

01:01:30.000 I think what's going on is that's how we're designed.

01:01:33.000 We're designed to live that.

01:01:35.000 The variables that we encounter on a day-to-day basis are so beyond our genetic capabilities.

01:01:41.000 The idea of keeping track of seven billion people's lives, that's insane, but that's where we're headed.

01:01:47.000 And I feel like in the industrial age, from the creation of the machines to today, we're essentially entering into, slowly but surely, into a completely new dimension of reality.

01:02:00.000 It's like what we've created in just this short amount of time that we've had electricity, is staggeringly crazy.

01:02:07.000 The idea of the internet, the idea of computers, big-screen TVs, projections, the things that we can do today, Wi-Fi in a plane, Insane, insane stuff.

01:02:18.000 And it's just begun.

01:02:19.000 And I think that what we're facing and what we're gonna face over the next hundred years, two hundred years, is essentially gonna be like a new dimension.

01:02:27.000 Like some sort of a virtual reality where we exist symbiotically with computers and the internet and with each other.

01:02:33.000 I think that our puny brains, the three or four or five of us in this room, we're not designed for this new world. 0.98

01:02:40.000 Our brains are gonna have to catch up, just much like The apes who spoke in grunts had to catch up with these clever motherfuckers that figured out how to talk with a slippery tongue and actually say names. 1.00

01:02:52.000 I think it's all a part of growth. 0.99

01:02:55.000 We're not done.

01:02:56.000 The human race, this is not the finished product.

01:02:59.000 This is one step on a long road, probably an infinite road, and our creations are a part of what's enhancing or changing or altering the world itself.

01:03:11.000 I think you're absolutely right, Joe.

01:03:12.000 You were saying before that we're cavemen.

01:03:15.000 It's true because if you think about...

01:03:17.000 The history of human beings from the time we were hominids to today.

01:03:22.000 You do that long line, right?

01:03:23.000 You find that like only the last one-tenth of an inch is when we were civilized.

01:03:28.000 And it's like, you know, 8,000 miles, the rest of it, when we were tribal people.

01:03:33.000 So we come into this world, I believe, with this tribal template in our mind, you know, where it's important to us what our friends think of us.

01:03:43.000 We act to please others, like in high school where you have to be in the right clique and this and that.

01:03:49.000 And it's only in these last few seconds before midnight that we discover that we're individuals and we're not wired to be individuals.

01:04:00.000 And that's where, to me, resistance and stuff like that comes in.

01:04:05.000 That's what sort of pushes back to being in the tribe, in the mass mind and that kind of thing.

01:04:13.000 As opposed to going forward each morning one step at a time in that dark forest, finding out where we are, what we think, what we believe.

01:04:24.000 I think it's a very important point you said about people not being designed to be individuals.

01:04:28.000 And it's very ironic that the people that live in cities are way lonelier when there's 20 million people around than the people that live in a tribe where there's 20 people around.

01:04:38.000 That's so ironic and so strange.

01:04:40.000 The loss of community.

01:04:42.000 Like, I keep saying with my friends, like, why don't we just buy houses on the same street?

01:04:46.000 Like, what are we doing?

01:04:47.000 Like, why do we live so far from each other?

01:04:48.000 Wouldn't it be cool if you were right there and I could just knock on your door?

01:04:51.000 Like, why don't we figure that out?

01:04:53.000 But we're so used to this idea of cars driving to homes that no one lives next to their friends anymore.

01:04:59.000 And our sense of community, depending upon where you live, can get, like, really sketchy.

01:05:04.000 Like, I was talking to my friend Jim Norton, who lives in a giant apartment building in New York City. 0.97

01:05:09.000 It's fucking huge. 0.96

01:05:10.000 And he doesn't know anybody. 0.99

01:05:12.000 There are all these compartments in this giant cement box that he shares with all these people.

01:05:18.000 I mean, literally, if he could walk through a wall, he could touch someone while they're peeing.

01:05:24.000 I mean, they're right next to his head.

01:05:25.000 Yet he doesn't know that guy at all.

01:05:28.000 That's a weird thing that we've created, and I don't think we're designed for it.

01:05:31.000 I don't think we're designed for it, but I think there's hope.

01:05:33.000 And the hope is that we're kind of like this meat vehicle with a computer.

01:05:38.000 A meat vehicle with a computer, and then out there somewhere is new source code.

01:05:43.000 And just like the iPhone will just...

01:05:46.000 Plug in new software and new operating system when you plug it back in.

01:05:51.000 I think that's what's going to help us navigate this path.

01:05:54.000 We've got to plug back into the mother code, the source code, and then download new instructions for this meat vehicle that we're all walking around in.

01:06:02.000 I think you're right.

01:06:03.000 That's the only way to do it.

01:06:04.000 In doing so, you'll have all kinds of ancillary benefits, not only of how to fit into society, but as you said, define your authentic swing, your authentic self.

01:06:13.000 You know, because that's there in that code, too.

01:06:15.000 And you've just got to find the ways to plug back in.

01:06:18.000 I mean, the flip side to what you were saying, Joe, is like you were saying that isn't it a shame that we're all isolated?

01:06:24.000 We can't live with our friends.

01:06:25.000 We can't have kind of the tribe.

01:06:27.000 And, you know, there's a big element of truth in that in our heart.

01:06:31.000 But the flip side of that is, and I feel this a lot, is I want to be alone. 0.99

01:06:37.000 You know, when I'm in a group and I got to do shit that other people want to do or I have to conform to what their expectations of me are, fuck that. 0.98

01:06:46.000 You know, I don't want that at all. 0.99

01:06:48.000 And the other thing is, and I'll just blow it up if I have to, you know, and the other thing that's really a mystery, kind of what you were saying, Aubrey, is nobody's ever figured out why we have this big brain.

01:07:02.000 Right?

01:07:02.000 We never...

01:07:03.000 It's not like we incrementally evolved it because we had to learn to throw a stone and then we had to learn to shoot a bow and arrow.

01:07:09.000 It's like all of a sudden, this is why they have all these crazy sci-fi movies, you know, that talk about, you know, whatever.

01:07:15.000 But where did it come from?

01:07:17.000 And I know, I mean, I can feel it in my own head right now.

01:07:19.000 I'm using like one 0.00 of what's up there.

01:07:24.000 And I know we all are.

01:07:25.000 So...

01:07:26.000 Who knows what's out there?

01:07:28.000 We got the hardware, we just don't have the software yet.

01:07:31.000 Right, yeah.

01:07:32.000 And we don't, I mean, it's obvious, too, that there's ways to maximize this hardware.

01:07:37.000 Absolutely.

01:07:37.000 And some of us have grasped certain areas of it.

01:07:41.000 Some of us have grasped it athletically.

01:07:43.000 Some of us, like yourself, have done it creatively.

01:07:46.000 There's all, like, this weird little, like, this guy's figured out this thing.

01:07:50.000 Now you know how to work your this, you know?

01:07:52.000 It's like, But the thing is so complicated.

01:07:55.000 The brain, the body itself, it's such a weird vehicle.

01:07:58.000 It's so complicated.

01:07:59.000 It's almost impossible in this day and age to get it right. 0.98

01:08:02.000 But back in the happy, the Taiga days, you know, if you were one of those crazy guys living in Siberia, I mean, there's some shit you gotta learn. 0.95

01:08:09.000 Yeah, don't go in the river when it's frozen. 0.98

01:08:13.000 Don't fall through the ice.

01:08:14.000 Don't do that.

01:08:15.000 When a moose comes, run.

01:08:16.000 What else?

01:08:18.000 This is how a saw works. 1.00

01:08:20.000 There's a lot of shit you don't have to know. 1.00

01:08:21.000 But if you were there, Joe, they would kick you out of the tribe. 1.00

01:08:23.000 And if they didn't kick you out, you'd leave yourself.

01:08:26.000 No, you know what I would do? 1.00

01:08:27.000 I would just manipulate those fools. 1.00

01:08:29.000 I'd figure out a way to start my own cult, and I'd just make up a bunch of shit and see who's with me. 0.99

01:08:33.000 You know, speaking of tribes, it's a little off-topic, but one of the coolest collections of photographs I've ever seen, it's from this artist called BeforeThey.com, and check it out.

01:08:44.000 It's like all the tribes, and the idea is BeforeThey.com.

01:08:48.000 BeforeThey.com.

01:08:49.000 BeforeThey.com.

01:08:50.000 Before they get assimilated into society. 0.71

01:08:53.000 The photographs are stunning.

01:08:54.000 You know, they have the eagle hunters in Mongolia and the different tribes from Africa.

01:08:58.000 So if you want to kind of take a look, I think the book is about to go on sale.

01:09:01.000 Here's another kind of fascinating part about tribalism.

01:09:06.000 If we were to really insert ourselves into that world, they live in dimensions beyond reality.

01:09:15.000 We like to think of these primitive tribes as just these guys, you know, pounding stones onto, you know, acorns. 0.99

01:09:21.000 But in fact, there are things like, well, whatever tribe it is where...

01:09:27.000 You need to know where the deer are so you dream.

01:09:30.000 And in the dream, you're told where the deer are.

01:09:33.000 Or take Combo, this frog medicine where they burn themselves and take this poison and put it on their skin. 0.99

01:09:39.000 It's this frog toxin.

01:09:41.000 And then apparently they can see all the animals in the forest.

01:09:44.000 That's what they do.

01:09:44.000 I believe it.

01:09:45.000 It's the same sort of thing as psychedelics.

01:09:47.000 And then they just start running.

01:09:47.000 I want to do that.

01:09:48.000 It's like there's one two days away if I run this way.

01:09:51.000 And then they find it.

01:09:52.000 That should be an episode of Joe Rogan Questions Everything.

01:09:54.000 We should take that frog toxin and see if we can find it.

01:09:57.000 How dangerous is it? 1.00

01:09:58.000 Does it kill your dick or anything? 1.00

01:10:00.000 You go to Suriname and it's dangerous to the frog. 1.00

01:10:04.000 Only to the frog.

01:10:05.000 The frog does not have a good go of it.

01:10:07.000 It's harvesting the toxin.

01:10:09.000 But as far as the humans, it's perfectly safe. 1.00

01:10:12.000 So that, you know, when the Native Americans would look at the white man, they thought we were just a bunch of idiots because we were not tapped into that other dimension at all. 1.00

01:10:23.000 If I was a dick, I'd go, how'd that work out for you? 1.00

01:10:25.000 Yeah, that's because of the invention of the Winchester rifle. 0.98

01:10:28.000 But other than that...

01:10:29.000 Yeah, and polio.

01:10:31.000 And the smallpox, yeah.

01:10:31.000 And the smallpox and everything else we brought over.

01:10:33.000 But that was to show you there's no justice in the world.

01:10:36.000 Yeah.

01:10:36.000 Because they would have won if there had been any justice.

01:10:38.000 I learned that from Ice Cube.

01:10:40.000 No justice, no peace.

01:10:41.000 Yeah, I was in Peru, and some of the old shamanistic traditions, those cultures still exist, and they still have the words for the Spaniards and the people that came.

01:10:51.000 And in their mind, part of the reason for the rainbow flag is that's the colors of the chakras that they see, like visually see inside a person who's connected. 0.98

01:11:00.000 And then these other people came in and invaded their culture, and they called them the gray ones because they didn't see that shit. 0.99

01:11:06.000 It was like, whoa, whoa. 1.00

01:11:07.000 What is this human walking around that has no colors?

01:11:11.000 And for them, it was because all of that was blocked up and they weren't kind of tapped in and connected.

01:11:16.000 So for them, it's a very visual thing.

01:11:18.000 And you ask him, like, well, why?

01:11:20.000 What are you talking about?

01:11:21.000 He's like, what are you talking about?

01:11:23.000 Because I see it. 0.99

01:11:24.000 What kind of psychedelics were they fucking around with? 0.99

01:11:26.000 Ayahuasca. 0.99

01:11:26.000 Yeah, see, there's a different reality when you're consistently altering your neurochemistry with psychedelic drugs. 0.99

01:11:35.000 I've had moments, there's the last moment that I did DMT where I said, yeah, time to take a break, where reality got super slippery for about two weeks.

01:11:46.000 And when I say by slippery...

01:11:47.000 The psychedelic experience was so profound and it was changing my regular everyday mind so much that I felt like a different person who had to relearn life.

01:11:58.000 Like I was thrown into this life with a manual of this is what you've done so far. 0.99

01:12:03.000 Why the fuck did I do that? 0.99

01:12:04.000 It doesn't matter, that's what you did. 0.99

01:12:05.000 And this is who you are now and ready, go.

01:12:08.000 Like it felt so unreal for a while that I'm convinced that there was some sort of a permanent change In the structure of my brain, or the way my brain accepts certain chemicals.

01:12:20.000 It seems like it produces ones in a different way now.

01:12:23.000 And I think that if you're doing that on a regular basis, every day, day in, day out, these people are almost unrecognizable.

01:12:32.000 I mean, their reality is they're probably seeing flow.

01:12:36.000 We had David Cho in here.

01:12:38.000 David Cho recently did ayahuasca, and now he says he trips every day.

01:12:41.000 He says, I don't have to do anything.

01:12:42.000 They're all in front of me right now.

01:12:43.000 I see a dragon in front of you.

01:12:44.000 It's flying through the air.

01:12:45.000 He sees flying snakes.

01:12:47.000 He goes, I can just see them.

01:12:49.000 They're around us all the time.

01:12:50.000 Yeah, you're normally used to seeing one layer of the onion, and then all of a sudden you get to pierce through all the layers and see all these layers. 0.96

01:12:58.000 But David's not an idiot. 0.99

01:13:00.000 He's a brilliant guy, and he's cool as shit, and he's not a liar. 0.98

01:13:02.000 So if he tells me he's seeing those things, I believe him 100%.

01:13:06.000 So what happened to him?

01:13:08.000 What changed his mind?

01:13:11.000 What did that to his mind?

01:13:12.000 It's fried.

01:13:13.000 Well, I don't know.

01:13:14.000 It's not fried because you're only putting something in that already exists.

01:13:19.000 The real issue with psychedelic drugs or anything that's a non-native chemical that you're introducing into your body, you have LD50 rates.

01:13:30.000 You have rates of toxicity where it becomes deadly to 50% of the people that take it.

01:13:34.000 What is it for DMT? No one even knows because it's a human neurotransmitter.

01:13:39.000 It's a part of your natural human brain chemistry.

01:13:41.000 That's what they're doing when they're doing ayahuasca.

01:13:43.000 They're doing an orally active version of this DMT. So if he's seeing fucking floating snakes, maybe they're there, we're just not seeing them. 0.99

01:13:51.000 Maybe we're not getting enough DMT on a regular basis. 0.99

01:13:54.000 Yeah, but if you take...

01:13:55.000 If you drink blood, or if you put stuff in your body that...

01:13:58.000 Here comes a really bad analogy.

01:14:00.000 No, I mean, like, you're saying because it's from your body, it's not bad, because you're putting something that's already in your body back in your body.

01:14:06.000 Well, that's, you know, more than you had before, you know?

01:14:11.000 I know what you're saying.

01:14:12.000 Like, if you add estrogen, if you eat too many soybeans, it's bad.

01:14:17.000 Right, well, you're not taking out something and putting more in.

01:14:20.000 You're adding more to it than you're supposed to have.

01:14:25.000 Or if you have too much, you know what I mean?

01:14:28.000 Anything that's in your body doesn't mean it's healthy if you put it back in your body.

01:14:32.000 That's a good point, but it's not like blood, and it's also the most transient thing ever observed in the body.

01:14:38.000 Your body brings it back to baseline in like 15 minutes.

01:14:41.000 From a full-blown trip into another dimension to back to completely sober, 15 minutes.

01:14:46.000 It's because your brain knows how to handle it.

01:14:48.000 Your brain knows what it is.

01:14:50.000 It's there all the time.

01:14:51.000 But you've got a good point, though.

01:14:53.000 It's a really good point as far as hormones go.

01:14:56.000 That's a very big point.

01:14:57.000 What happens with guys when they do steroids, if you see bodybuilders, after they stop doing steroids, they usually have to take a bunch of different drugs to try to boost back up their body's production of testosterone.

01:15:10.000 Because they just shoot themselves up with so much, and they become the Hulk.

01:15:15.000 They're taking hyperhuman levels, 10, 15 times what a person would be You know, putting into their, or just having their body grow. 0.99

01:15:24.000 They're just pumping this shit into their body all the time, all sorts of different. 0.99

01:15:27.000 So the balls just go, you don't need us. 1.00

01:15:29.000 And the balls just check out. 0.99

01:15:31.000 So, obviously, putting too much testosterone into your body is dangerous. 0.99

01:15:35.000 Putting too much estrogen has consequences as well.

01:15:38.000 So, in that sense, you got a good point.

01:15:39.000 You know, I, I think we've talked a lot about the drug way to do it, but there's so many non-drug ways to do it.

01:15:45.000 I mean, I've had visions as intense as, you know, some of the visions on psychedelics in, you know, deep meditation.

01:15:51.000 You know, when I went and floated, I had really deep visions.

01:15:54.000 When I do a breathwork ceremony where you do the shamanic breathing, where you kind of hyperventilate yourself.

01:16:00.000 And get to a state of heightened awareness.

01:16:02.000 You start to see some of the similar things.

01:16:05.000 So for me, you know, I hear David Cho's story and he's already taken care of all of his needs.

01:16:10.000 That guy has no Maslow 1, 2, 3, 4 are taken care of.

01:16:14.000 And he's a visionary artist already.

01:16:17.000 And then he takes something that pries open his door's perception temporarily, you know, turns the Venetian blind sideways for a while.

01:16:24.000 And then all of a sudden, maybe his brain decides, you know what?

01:16:28.000 I don't really need to turn them back closed again.

01:16:31.000 I can leave them open just a little bit, because I'm going to be fine, and there's a lot of cool information and visions and things out there.

01:16:37.000 So I think, to me, that's the alternate explanation.

01:16:40.000 That's a possible explanation, but he might be right, too.

01:16:42.000 He might have fried his brain.

01:16:44.000 He might have gone too far, and the brain's just not...

01:16:47.000 It's just...

01:16:48.000 Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

01:16:49.000 The other aspect of this is if we...

01:16:52.000 If we're trying to imagine ourselves into tribal cultures that are seeing visions on a regular basis, like if it happens to you, Joe, you're just an individual without any structure around you.

01:17:03.000 There's no teacher, there's no shaman, there's nobody who can guide you.

01:17:08.000 How do we know that in these tribal cultures, I mean, for hundreds and hundreds, thousands of years, you know, the elders have known how to navigate it.

01:17:16.000 Here's how you do it.

01:17:17.000 And, you know, when you enter that crazy space, you know, if your uncle is there and he can teach you and show you how to do this and your brother, maybe that's the way it goes.

01:17:28.000 And maybe they're living in that world all the time.

01:17:31.000 And seeing the dragons and seeing all that stuff, you know, it wouldn't surprise me.

01:17:35.000 I know my ayahuasca shaman pretty well, Maestro Orlando Chuandama down from Peru.

01:17:40.000 And he drinks ayahuasca in ceremony probably five, six nights a week.

01:17:45.000 Tell me what is ayahuasca.

01:17:46.000 I don't know what that is.

01:17:47.000 It's crazy.

01:17:48.000 It's a psychoactive oral tea that they brew from DMT, which comes from the chacruna leaf, which is like 0.27% DMT or whatever.

01:17:57.000 And they brew that with an MAOI, which is a vine.

01:18:00.000 That allows it to be orally active.

01:18:02.000 And so they drink this brew and you have a DMT experience that lasts for, you know, four to six hours.

01:18:09.000 DMT is killed in the gut by monoamine oxidase.

01:18:12.000 So when you take, like if you're eating grass, like Phalaris grass, it has DMT in it.

01:18:18.000 And if you were eating that grass, you would just start tripping your balls off if your stomach didn't produce this stuff, this monoamine oxidase that keeps the DMT from being orally active.

01:18:30.000 So when they combine the two of them, when they combine the harmine and the...

01:18:33.000 The inhibitor of that compound that breaks it down. 1.00

01:18:36.000 You guys are deep into this shit, huh? 0.99

01:18:40.000 It's one of my tools in the show that I use to tap into my authentic self. 0.99

01:18:45.000 To me, it almost makes me sad when someone doesn't know about it because it's so crazy and it's so real and so vivid and so memorable and so life-changing.

01:18:58.000 Amber Lyon, who is our friend, she used to work for CNN and now she's become a crazy psychedelic adventurer, from the podcast.

01:19:07.000 We were on the podcast and she asked me about ways to change the world. 0.94

01:19:10.000 She's seen a lot of shit and she's been all over the world and been involved in covering some intense conflicts. 0.99

01:19:19.000 And I said psychedelics. 0.99

01:19:21.000 I think that psychedelic drugs could change the world.

01:19:23.000 I think that, you know, for some people it doesn't.

01:19:26.000 For some people it just gets them high.

01:19:28.000 For some people they don't want to change.

01:19:30.000 They don't want to explore. 0.98

01:19:31.000 But if you want to really see some shit that you didn't even think could be possible in a movie... 0.98

01:19:38.000 There's some ways out there. 0.99

01:19:40.000 There's some methods.

01:19:41.000 You can find those methods.

01:19:42.000 And like Aubrey said, a lot of them aren't even drug-related.

01:19:45.000 You can have a naturally occurring psychedelic trip in an isolation tank.

01:19:49.000 And that's what Terence McKenna believed when we were talking about the growth of the human brain.

01:19:54.000 The doubling of the human brain size over a period of two million years.

01:19:57.000 Terence McKenna had a whole theory about that, having to do with climate change and primates experimenting with psychedelic mushrooms. 0.97

01:20:06.000 That the rainforest receded into grasslands and that these chimps started following around, or our ancient hominid ancestors, started following around these cows And the wild cows and eating the mushrooms that grew on their shit. 0.67

01:20:20.000 And they're prevalent in that area. 0.92

01:20:23.000 And he had it broken down.

01:20:25.000 He died.

01:20:26.000 But he had it broken down in terms of the time of the climate change.

01:20:31.000 It's a very controversial theory.

01:20:33.000 One of the best ones.

01:20:35.000 And it's poo-pooed because it involves psychedelic mushrooms.

01:20:38.000 But the reality is anybody who poo-pooed psychedelic mushrooms has simply not done psychedelic mushrooms.

01:20:45.000 Because if you've done them and you blow your mind out and have this crazy Egyptian icons dancing in front of your eyes in fluorescent colors and explaining to you the nature of life through a voice that you can understand but you know isn't English. 0.96

01:21:00.000 Once that experience has happened, you'd go, okay, that exists.

01:21:03.000 That exists.

01:21:04.000 How many people have experienced this?

01:21:06.000 How many people have this?

01:21:07.000 If you gave that to monkeys, what would happen?

01:21:09.000 And I think that, without a doubt, that's the most likely candidate. 0.97

01:21:13.000 It just seems ridiculous because we've demonized all drugs. 1.00

01:21:17.000 We put them all under this big, stupid blanket. 1.00

01:21:20.000 And so things like psychedelics, which may very well be vehicles for evolution. 1.00

01:21:25.000 I mean, it might be there...

01:21:27.000 Looking like a big dinner plate sitting in the middle of a field because it wants you to eat it so you can tell you things.

01:21:33.000 And increasing visual acuity, he had a whole bunch of points that led to this idea.

01:21:40.000 The stimulation of male genitalia, increased erections when they're eating psilocybin mushrooms.

01:21:48.000 In small doses, measurable increase in visual acuity, which would lead them to be better hunters, which would lead them to survive better.

01:21:56.000 All these different points, besides the psychedelic experience, all these different points lead to this idea that the animals that embrace that into their diet would have a better chance of surviving.

01:22:07.000 You know, to bring this kind of back to some of the stuff that you wrote, I know for myself and the psychedelic experience for me, you wrote in your book, The Authentic Swing, if we find ourselves lost or tormented or in pain, the reason is that we have somehow become estranged from who we really are,

01:22:23.000 from the ground of our individual being.

01:22:25.000 And for me, when I find myself in those kind of states where I'm a little sad or a little lost or a little depressed, for me, the psychedelic experience, like I said, with or without drugs, could be a deep meditation, could be anything, It shows me back to my true self and then it can allow me to be happy again and fulfilled and full of life again.

01:22:45.000 Can you define, Aubrey, your true self?

01:22:48.000 Yes, I can.

01:22:49.000 What is it?

01:22:51.000 Well, I've seen it, and I've felt it, and I've been it.

01:22:55.000 I know when it's there.

01:22:56.000 I know when it's operating the ship.

01:22:58.000 I had a long experience that actually allowed me to see the differentiating parts of myself, the highest self, then the mind, which I called Mind Boy because it was very juvenile in the way that it loved puzzles.

01:23:10.000 It loved to figure things out.

01:23:11.000 And then there was the monkey part of me, you know, the monkey.

01:23:14.000 The flesh and blood and testosterone.

01:23:17.000 And all of those things were all kind of coalescing together.

01:23:20.000 But the highest self, that part of me, which is my authentic self, is very clear to me.

01:23:26.000 And it's something that I try to get it to run the ship as often as possible and push the mind out of the way because the mind constantly wants to take over. 0.99

01:23:35.000 It's, ah, I got this shit. 0.99

01:23:36.000 Leave it to me, buddy. 1.00

01:23:38.000 I can solve all these puzzles.

01:23:40.000 But then when the highest self is in charge, that's when you're doing your best work.

01:23:43.000 Tell me a little bit more about the highest self as you experience it in yourself.

01:23:46.000 I feel like you're in therapy.

01:23:48.000 Does it sound like it?

01:23:50.000 I feel like you're being analyzed.

01:23:52.000 You know, the highest self for me is very happy and it's very content.

01:24:01.000 It loves the creation that it's in, first of all, and it loves the people of this creation.

01:24:06.000 And part of what it's here for is, and I'm saying it, it's me, and it's kind of weird to separate it like that.

01:24:14.000 But part of what it's here for is to, you know, I had a vision of it being a nutcracker of sorts, to just kind of go through and roll along and spread ideas and tools and different tactics and things that people can kind of open their shells a little bit too.

01:24:30.000 So I saw myself, my highest self, cast like a bowling ball, just a bowling ball of light that just kind of rolls around through the earth and And that, to me, I know when I'm in that mode, not only can I feel it, not only can I see it, you know, visually in my mind's eye,

01:24:45.000 but I know that that's what I'm here for.

01:24:47.000 You know, that's my highest calling.

01:24:48.000 That's my authentic swing, is when I'm that bowling ball that rolls through and says, hey guys, have you heard about this thing called ayahuasca?

01:24:55.000 Hey guys, have you tried, you know, working out with a kettlebell?

01:24:58.000 Or whatever it is, you know, part of that opening up the horizons to other people is my highest self.

01:25:06.000 Is it content with the way the world is, or does it want to help it evolve to something else?

01:25:13.000 No, it wants to fight like hell to help it evolve.

01:25:15.000 It feels that it's off track a little bit.

01:25:19.000 And there's some beautiful things, and I'm not disparaging the world, but we've taken a veer to the wrong way, and it's ready to roll up.

01:25:27.000 The human race, you mean?

01:25:28.000 The human race, yeah.

01:25:30.000 Because the Earth itself is in natural harmony, but the human race puts the Earth's harmony out of balance as well as the harmony amongst it.

01:25:37.000 So to bring it back into balance, it wants to fight like hell.

01:25:41.000 And it's only happy when it's fighting like hell.

01:25:43.000 And when it doesn't want to fight, it's like, what the hell am I doing here?

01:25:47.000 I think we're in the middle of it, so we can't see it.

01:25:49.000 I think it's a giant mathematical equation.

01:25:51.000 The pros, the cons, the good, the bad, the...

01:25:54.000 The sucky, the awesome, it's all together and the resistance almost battles you to make you appreciate when you accomplish something even more so.

01:26:03.000 It almost motivates more movement.

01:26:06.000 The worst thing that can ever happen to you is you win the lottery.

01:26:10.000 Win the lottery at 21. Good luck, fuckface. 1.00

01:26:13.000 You're never going to figure out shit. 1.00

01:26:14.000 You have $500 million and you're 21. You're going to be a dummy for the rest of your life. 1.00

01:26:19.000 You have no opposing force to apply your strength against. 0.98

01:26:22.000 There was something I read yesterday or today earlier about the prince of one of those, Brunei or something like that, who pissed away $18 billion.

01:26:33.000 $18 billion.

01:26:35.000 $15 billion.

01:26:37.000 And that's what happens when you're born with all that cash. 1.00

01:26:42.000 You can't figure that shit out for yourself. 0.99

01:26:44.000 You're not going to. 1.00

01:26:46.000 You're not going to.

01:26:47.000 You're at least at a disadvantage.

01:26:50.000 Yeah.

01:26:51.000 It's life.

01:26:53.000 You need struggle.

01:26:54.000 You need all of it.

01:26:55.000 And I think that we, as a human race, in the macro, from the microcosm of the individual to the human race itself, it almost seems like all that stuff is necessary.

01:27:08.000 I don't like it.

01:27:09.000 I don't like it in myself.

01:27:10.000 I don't like it in other people.

01:27:12.000 But it exists.

01:27:13.000 It's always existed.

01:27:14.000 There's never been a day on this planet without war.

01:27:16.000 What is it?

01:27:17.000 What is it and what's going on really?

01:27:18.000 If you were objective and you weren't attached to the life and death of the individuals that were a part of this race we call humans, if you weren't a part of that and you were looking at it objectively, if you were an alien from another planet that wasn't even made of flesh, you might be going, oh, I see what they're doing.

01:27:32.000 They're forcing themselves to move.

01:27:34.000 They're forcing themselves to do things. 1.00

01:27:35.000 They're battling over the fucking blood of the earth. 0.99

01:27:38.000 They're forcing themselves to accomplish more and more amazing technological feats so they can kill each other quicker. 1.00

01:27:45.000 They're doing these crazy fucks, and the whole while they're shitting out kids at an alarming rate, doubling, tripling the population like rats on a sinking ship, hanging onto every piece of floating wood. 1.00

01:27:56.000 They're nuts. 1.00

01:27:57.000 They're sucking all the fish out of the ocean, throwing all their shit into it. 1.00

01:28:01.000 They're fucking crazy. 1.00

01:28:02.000 What is that? 1.00

01:28:03.000 18-foot oarfish just found off of Catalina Island today.

01:28:07.000 Oh my god, it's dead?

01:28:09.000 Yeah, it died of natural causes.

01:28:11.000 What is that?

01:28:12.000 The previous one, longest one that they have found, was I think three foot.

01:28:16.000 Oh my god!

01:28:19.000 Yeah.

01:28:19.000 Is it radioactive?

01:28:21.000 Do they check it for Fukushima?

01:28:22.000 I don't know. 0.99

01:28:23.000 Holy shit, that's incredible. 0.99

01:28:26.000 Well, they say there's a lot of fish that just grow until something meets them. 0.99

01:28:29.000 They don't really necessarily have a lifespan.

01:28:32.000 They just keep going.

01:28:33.000 It's not built in there because you've got no chance.

01:28:35.000 Like, good luck. 0.99

01:28:36.000 You know, there's leopard seals out there that are looking for your ass seven days a week. 0.99

01:28:40.000 You're not going to make it. 0.99

01:28:41.000 So here, live forever if you can.

01:28:43.000 And some of them live forever, I guess.

01:28:45.000 That guy did.

01:28:46.000 That guy's a badass fish.

01:28:48.000 Warfish.

01:28:49.000 Are you writing right now?

01:28:50.000 Yeah, I never stop.

01:28:53.000 You don't take a day off after you complete a book?

01:28:56.000 I take days off, but I have a theory about finishing a book, and that is that you should start the next one.

01:29:02.000 You should already have the next one or the next two going.

01:29:06.000 Otherwise, you fall into the abyss.

01:29:09.000 You need nothing to talk about abyss.

01:29:12.000 Yeah, well, I mean, what I mean by that is resistance and negativity will come up and you'll get over to your worst side, you know?

01:29:20.000 So, to me, I've always got something going.

01:29:24.000 And only when I've kind of established a beachhead in a new project, when I kind of know I'm okay, then I'll take a little time off.

01:29:31.000 That's exactly the same with stand-up comedy.

01:29:33.000 When you produce a CD or a DVD or a new special is what we call it.

01:29:38.000 We call it specials because they used to be an HBO comedy special.

01:29:43.000 Once it's over, you throw that out.

01:29:45.000 I don't do any of that material anymore.

01:29:47.000 I might do one or two bits on a request or if it's poignant, I'll point it out.

01:29:52.000 But I'll even point it out that it's an old bit.

01:29:53.000 But from then on, it's all new stuff.

01:29:55.000 So when I go into a new hour, if I have to scrounge up all the shit that I'm ready to piece together, I have to have something already.

01:30:07.000 So I have to have something that at least I've attempted on stage or worked out on paper.

01:30:12.000 I can't just go up raw and clean and then finish my hour special and then go, okay, now all that material's done.

01:30:19.000 I have no idea what I'm going to talk about next.

01:30:21.000 I always have a few things ready.

01:30:23.000 Same thing is what you're saying.

01:30:26.000 How do you ration your time off when you're writing?

01:30:32.000 Do you just write until you feel like you don't want to do it anymore?

01:30:35.000 Do you have a specific amount of time?

01:30:37.000 Do you make yourself work every day?

01:30:39.000 I do work every day.

01:30:41.000 You know, within reason.

01:30:42.000 I mean, maybe I won't work one day a week or something like that.

01:30:45.000 So six days a week.

01:30:46.000 I've found, yeah.

01:30:47.000 If I could do seven, I would do seven.

01:30:49.000 Sometimes I can do maybe 25 in a row or something like that, even if I only do a little bit one day.

01:30:55.000 But I always try to do something.

01:30:57.000 What's a little bit?

01:30:57.000 No, an hour or something like that.

01:30:59.000 But I max out at about four hours.

01:31:01.000 At that point, when I start making mistakes, when I start making typos...

01:31:05.000 Then I know it's time to stop.

01:31:07.000 And it's kind of like working out at the gym.

01:31:09.000 You can push it too far and then you just, you know, diminishing returns start to kick in.

01:31:13.000 But I do think, you know, physical fitness, I think, is a real parallel to that, to my experience of how I work.

01:31:20.000 You know, that you can get out of shape and you can work yourself back into shape.

01:31:26.000 And when I've been, when I'm working steadily on something, I can work longer each day.

01:31:32.000 You know?

01:31:33.000 And when I haven't When I haven't been working, it's just like going to the gym or trying to run or something.

01:31:39.000 You poop out.

01:31:41.000 You just don't have enough.

01:31:42.000 But I'm definitely a believer that the muse comes around every day and she wants to see you ready to rock and roll.

01:31:51.000 Even if it's only for an hour.

01:31:54.000 What you're saying parallels comedy in so many ways, because you get in comedy shape as well.

01:32:00.000 Like stand-up comedy shape, it's really critical to get to.

01:32:03.000 You can get along without it, but I've had periods where I've gotten out of comedy shape, and even though I'm capable of killing still, there can be a moment where it just, ooh, this is a little off, and it's because I'm not in comedy shape, because I'm not doing comedy four or five shows a week.

01:32:19.000 And if you're not doing four...

01:32:21.000 You don't want to do too much, because if you do too much, it gets boring.

01:32:24.000 And you don't want to ever get to that part.

01:32:26.000 So you want to keep the fun alive with it, but you definitely want to keep it sharp.

01:32:30.000 And when you want to keep it...

01:32:31.000 When it's sharp, then it's like a part of your natural consciousness.

01:32:35.000 Like you plug right into it.

01:32:37.000 You don't go, oh, this is that thing that I used to do.

01:32:39.000 How does this go again?

01:32:41.000 It's just your mind is firing.

01:32:44.000 And I think that applies to writing as well.

01:32:46.000 I think that getting into that mindset and when you're there on a regular basis, you get in writing shape.

01:32:53.000 You know, and I think that applies to jiu-jitsu.

01:32:56.000 I know it does to jiu-jitsu.

01:32:58.000 When I train, if I'm not training on a regular basis, then I go train.

01:33:01.000 Even if I'm physically in shape, all that extra thinking that I have to do, if it's not coming completely natural, It might look natural to someone who's watching it, but to me, I'm thinking like an extra one-eighth of a second more than I should be.

01:33:16.000 Whereas if I was in shape, I would be thinking it all.

01:33:19.000 When you're doing jujitsu, it's just like doing comedy, just like writing, where when you're in it, you're in it and you just flow.

01:33:26.000 Everything moves together and you're a passenger.

01:33:28.000 You're just letting it all happen.

01:33:30.000 All your training sort of manifests itself in the experience of rolling.

01:33:35.000 Going back to what you were saying, Aubrey, about seeing your higher self and then your mind boy, how would you apply that to what Joe just said?

01:33:43.000 Well, the mind boy wants to think about everything, wants to think about the moves, plan it out, think about your opponent, or just be distracted and think about what you're going to do when you're finished rolling or what you're going to do the next day or about some old injury or something like that.

01:33:57.000 And you need to kick that guy out and roll with that.

01:34:01.000 I play songs in my head when I'm rolling.

01:34:04.000 I'll sing the entire song.

01:34:05.000 Distract the mind boy.

01:34:08.000 Sometimes it's raining, man. 0.99

01:34:11.000 Sometimes they're ridiculously silly songs. 0.89

01:34:14.000 And they'll just start playing in my head and I'm going over it while I'm rolling. 0.85

01:34:18.000 Because I won't allow anything else in there.

01:34:20.000 I'm just like...

01:34:21.000 Especially if it's not a life or death struggle.

01:34:26.000 You mount someone and you got them pretty much.

01:34:28.000 You just gotta cook them.

01:34:29.000 You've got to wait until you can tap them.

01:34:31.000 When you're in that sort of a situation, you could lose track.

01:34:36.000 So I fill up the part of my brain that's not required with a song.

01:34:40.000 Yeah, that's a smart tactic.

01:34:43.000 It's a constant battle.

01:34:44.000 And to me, I'm a big proponent of the warrior kind of code, the warrior philosophy.

01:34:49.000 And, you know, people think about that in an external sense, like, oh, what are you fighting?

01:34:53.000 Who are you fighting?

01:34:53.000 Who's your enemies?

01:34:54.000 Well, that used to maybe make some sense, but to me, the warrior is, it's a constant battle with your own mind, with the parasite of that part of your mind that constantly wants to be active.

01:35:05.000 And that's why you're a warrior.

01:35:06.000 The mind boy, in other words.

01:35:07.000 Yeah, the mind boy. 0.96

01:35:08.000 The parasite is what the Toltecs call it.

01:35:10.000 There's a lot of different things.

01:35:11.000 The inauthentic self.

01:35:13.000 You know, you could put a lot of different names on that.

01:35:15.000 But a warrior is someone who fights against that resistance, which is another aspect of your mind.

01:35:20.000 Well, you know, that was the original term for jihad.

01:35:23.000 The real jihad originally was a fight against your own vices.

01:35:28.000 It was a fight against your own weaknesses.

01:35:32.000 It became a holy war.

01:35:33.000 It was somewhere around the...

01:35:35.000 They hijacked that.

01:35:36.000 Yeah, with the Mujahideen and the Soviet Union and the CIA. Somewhere around that area.

01:35:41.000 I don't know who caused it to change.

01:35:43.000 But then it became a term for a holy war.

01:35:46.000 But before it was a holy war, it was a war against your own self inadequacies.

01:35:51.000 And I think that's a war that we wage every day.

01:35:54.000 And that's the key.

01:35:56.000 The key is deciding that, okay, I'm going to be a warrior, and I'm not going to accept that part of myself that is deficient, that is lacking.

01:36:04.000 But still, and another concept that I think is important is to have what I call ruthless self-love.

01:36:10.000 And that's just not this coddling self-love of a spoiling grandmother.

01:36:14.000 Oh yeah, eat the candy, love.

01:36:16.000 It's that ruthless self-love.

01:36:17.000 Like, this is what's best for you.

01:36:19.000 I'm looking out for you long term.

01:36:20.000 I want you to thrive in your life.

01:36:23.000 And I'm going to give you what you need to thrive and nothing else.

01:36:26.000 My self-love does not talk that nice. 1.00

01:36:29.000 My self-love is the get up pussy. 1.00

01:36:31.000 Let's do this shit. 1.00

01:36:33.000 It makes a lot of noises. 1.00

01:36:34.000 Come on, bitch. 1.00

01:36:35.000 Don't be a bitch. 1.00

01:36:36.000 Don't be a bitch. 1.00

01:36:37.000 That's why it's ruthless. 1.00

01:36:38.000 But it's not cruel.

01:36:39.000 It's not going to be that.

01:36:40.000 It's not cruel.

01:36:41.000 It's not going to punish you unnecessarily. 1.00

01:36:43.000 Oh, you fucking fat slob. 1.00

01:36:45.000 You lazy piece of shit. 1.00

01:36:46.000 It can happen. 1.00

01:36:47.000 It can happen.

01:36:48.000 And that's what you've got to watch.

01:36:50.000 You've got to have that.

01:36:51.000 That's the self-love part of it.

01:36:52.000 The ruthless is that intense, like, come on, do it.

01:36:56.000 Get up.

01:36:57.000 Get yourself done.

01:36:58.000 This is what's best for you.

01:36:59.000 And then the self-love part is not to unnecessarily antagonize yourself because we can be brutal to ourselves. 0.99

01:37:05.000 I mean, who would we allow talk as much shit to ourselves as ourselves? 0.99

01:37:10.000 Right. 1.00

01:37:11.000 You know, nobody.

01:37:12.000 Yeah, I think the term self-love is a funny one because people do.

01:37:16.000 You love yourself, don't you?

01:37:18.000 You always knew you loved yourself.

01:37:20.000 You know, people, there's a weird thing about it. 0.99

01:37:22.000 Well, if you don't love yourself, why the fuck would anybody else love you? 0.98

01:37:24.000 You know, you should be a person worthy of your own love. 0.99

01:37:28.000 And if you're not, you're doing it wrong.

01:37:30.000 It's really that simple.

01:37:31.000 It doesn't mean worship yourself.

01:37:32.000 It doesn't mean pretend that you're something awesome if you're not.

01:37:35.000 It means let yourself know when you're not awesome.

01:37:37.000 Let yourself know everything you're doing wrong.

01:37:39.000 Be completely honest with yourself.

01:37:41.000 And until you do that, you're doomed.

01:37:44.000 You're doomed.

01:37:45.000 You're doomed.

01:37:45.000 You're never gonna get it right.

01:37:46.000 You're never gonna get it right. 1.00

01:37:48.000 If you don't look at yourself the way other people look at you, or even more harshly, you're fucked. 0.99

01:37:53.000 And then the other component is forgive yourself for these past deeds. 0.99

01:37:56.000 We'll rehash these old things that we've done so many times.

01:38:00.000 You are not the past.

01:38:01.000 Yeah, that becomes new resistance.

01:38:03.000 You know, these old past deeds that we're constantly lashing ourselves.

01:38:06.000 The way to look at it, in my opinion, is just let yourself know you are not the past.

01:38:12.000 You are who you are right now. 0.96

01:38:14.000 And you could have fucked up your entire life, but right now you wake up, and the way I always describe it to people, pretend that you are a hero in your own movie. 0.99

01:38:22.000 And the movie just started now. 1.00

01:38:24.000 Your life is in shambles.

01:38:25.000 What would the hero in the movie do?

01:38:26.000 A movie that you would want to go see.

01:38:28.000 What would happen? 0.99

01:38:29.000 How would you get your shit together? 0.99

01:38:30.000 How would the music start picking up? 0.93

01:38:32.000 How would it start sounding like, you know, good morning, waving at people, smiling.

01:38:37.000 All of a sudden, you know, you're at the gym, sweating it out. 0.98

01:38:39.000 You go through this whole montage of scenes where this guy gets his shit together. 1.00

01:38:42.000 Do all that, dummy. 1.00

01:38:43.000 Do all that. 0.89

01:38:44.000 Be the hero in your own movie.

01:38:47.000 And it starts now. 1.00

01:38:48.000 You could be a total loser. 1.00

01:38:49.000 It doesn't matter. 1.00

01:38:50.000 The movie will be even better when you turn it all around. 1.00

01:38:53.000 Yeah, you used to be a total fucking loser. 1.00

01:38:55.000 People love those movies. 1.00

01:38:55.000 And a liar and a piece of shit. 1.00

01:38:57.000 You were fat and lying about it. 1.00

01:38:58.000 You had a fucking belly sucker on. 1.00

01:39:00.000 There's a reason they like Jared from Subway. 1.00

01:39:02.000 Exactly.

01:39:03.000 It's not because he was skinny his whole life.

01:39:04.000 There's plenty of people skinny his whole life.

01:39:06.000 Yeah, it's not Michael Phelps.

01:39:07.000 No.

01:39:08.000 Jared from Subway used to be a fatso.

01:39:09.000 That's the whole thing.

01:39:11.000 And I think going back to you and your books, it's one of the things that I found really refreshing about your book is that you were really honest about how you felt about yourself at that time and that you knew you needed to make changes.

01:39:22.000 And when people read that, it inspires people to get things moving.

01:39:27.000 Did you know you were going to do that when you made that book?

01:39:29.000 Did you have any idea it was going to have the kind of impact that it's had?

01:39:32.000 No.

01:39:32.000 Not at all.

01:39:33.000 You know?

01:39:34.000 And the, uh...

01:39:36.000 Those little anecdotes that are sort of stories on myself of like, you know, the most excruciating moments, da-da-da-da, those are the things that people respond to the most, you know? 0.67

01:39:46.000 It's like the worst shit that you can tell on yourself, the more people can relate to it because we've all experienced that same thing ourselves. 0.94

01:39:57.000 But no, I didn't, Joe. 0.99

01:39:59.000 I didn't have any...

01:39:59.000 But this thing has been out since 2002, and it's just slowly...

01:40:04.000 One book at a time found its way into the world.

01:40:08.000 Well, now that you were just on Oprah, it's going to be on a lot of other people's radar.

01:40:12.000 That helps a little bit.

01:40:13.000 You're on the Oprah and the male Oprah. 0.86

01:40:15.000 I've got them both now.

01:40:16.000 I've got them both.

01:40:20.000 Yeah, I think that what you've done is so important and it's helped me tremendously.

01:40:25.000 It's helped a lot of people that I've put in contact with it.

01:40:28.000 And Aubrey, for sure, probably had something to do with him starting up on it.

01:40:32.000 So many of these.

01:40:33.000 I mean, even Turning Pro, which is very analogous to The War of Art.

01:40:36.000 And I actually wanted to ask you, when recommending between War of Art and Turning Pro, what are the distinctions?

01:40:43.000 But for me, that Turning Pro concept was something that I bring with me every day.

01:40:49.000 It's like, all right.

01:40:50.000 What does the pro do today?

01:40:52.000 The pro goes in.

01:40:53.000 He doesn't screw around and check his emails and look at his Facebook likes.

01:40:57.000 The pro goes in to the meat of the problem.

01:40:59.000 And that helps me kind of prioritize my day as CEO of the company and the other endeavors that I have to do.

01:41:06.000 It's like, what does the pro do right now?

01:41:08.000 Well, it's kind of like your warrior concept as well, right?

01:41:12.000 What would he do?

01:41:13.000 Yeah.

01:41:14.000 Do it right.

01:41:15.000 You don't have to do it wrong.

01:41:16.000 And that's one of the things that we see involved in politics. 0.96

01:41:20.000 It's one of the things that we see in the corporate world and the impact on the environment that corporations are having, the impact on societies that they're having by going into third world countries and setting up shop and, you know, what's going on in China where they're making iPhones in a factory that has nets around it to keep people from jumping off the fucking roof. 0.80

01:41:38.000 Like, there's gotta be a way to do this better.

01:41:41.000 Somewhere along the line, someone put humanity out of the picture, put morals out of the picture, and took advantage of the diffusion of responsibility that comes from people acting in gigantic groups, where they don't feel responsible for their actions.

01:41:53.000 Each individual feels like they're a part of something much bigger than them.

01:41:57.000 It's why people don't mind throwing cigarettes out the window.

01:41:59.000 They don't even feel responsible.

01:42:01.000 They're not throwing a cigarette in their own house.

01:42:03.000 They're not throwing it on the floor of their living room.

01:42:05.000 They're throwing a cigarette and someone else is going to deal with it.

01:42:07.000 There's plenty of people out there to do that.

01:42:08.000 It's diffusion of responsibility. 1.00

01:42:12.000 Too many fucking people! 1.00

01:42:14.000 It all goes back to that. 1.00

01:42:15.000 We're not designed for this shit. 0.99

01:42:17.000 So what do you think between The War of Art and Turning Pro when I'm recommending these books? 0.99

01:42:22.000 Do you still recommend The War of Art?

01:42:24.000 Or what are the distinctions for different people who want to read one of these books?

01:42:27.000 Well, I think The War of Art is probably the one to read first, because it was written first, for one thing, but also it really sort of explains the basic kind of principles of this theory, whatever it is, you know, what is resistance, what is...

01:42:43.000 And Turning Pro is sort of the answer, my answer, to how you deal with this negative force in your life, you know, rather than blaming yourself or, you know, passing judgment on yourself.

01:42:56.000 Switch from...

01:42:57.000 Being an amateur to being a pro, which sort of takes the judgment out of it all, the self-condemnation out of it.

01:43:02.000 So that, you know, Turning Pro would be kind of the second one to read, if anybody were asking me why.

01:43:09.000 Awesome.

01:43:09.000 Or what order.

01:43:10.000 What about these books that you gave me?

01:43:11.000 Which one of those should I read first?

01:43:13.000 Gates of Fire or Tides of War?

01:43:15.000 Gates of Fire.

01:43:16.000 Tides of War is a very difficult read.

01:43:19.000 What are you saying? 1.00

01:43:19.000 I'm stupid? 1.00

01:43:20.000 It's my favorite book. 1.00

01:43:21.000 Dude, how dare you?

01:43:22.000 But it's...

01:43:23.000 Why is it a difficult read?

01:43:26.000 Well, open it up and you'll see.

01:43:28.000 Okay.

01:43:28.000 Is it just because of the period it covers?

01:43:30.000 Or the...

01:43:31.000 Don't tell me.

01:43:32.000 The period that it covers is a really complex period.

01:43:35.000 And also it's a period...

01:43:37.000 It's like...

01:43:38.000 I don't know.

01:43:39.000 I feel sort of like blowing...

01:43:41.000 I don't know. 0.95

01:43:42.000 But Gates of Fire is a really simple story with good and evil, and it's the kind of story that psychs people up, and when you're done, you're ready to go out and kill somebody.

01:43:53.000 And it's a very popular book with the Marine Corps and with elite military units because it's about kind of the warrior ethos.

01:44:02.000 Whereas Tides of War is a story that's full of ambiguity, and the characters are not Yeah.

01:44:24.000 Yeah.

01:44:26.000 So read Gates of Fire first.

01:44:28.000 Let me ask you this then, as an author and as a creative writer, what is it about people that want that good guy, bad guy, all the Joseph Campbell stuff, the ancient archetype or the ancient structure of the hero tale?

01:44:46.000 I think that's exactly it, Joe, because each of us is in a battle With that internal monster, whatever it is, or in our real life, and we're usually being overwhelmed by that battle.

01:44:58.000 You know, we don't understand what's going on or we're flagging in our passion for it.

01:45:04.000 So if we can see a great movie, you know, where Rocky comes out, you know, hangs in there against Apollo Creed or, you know, you name it, we kind of come out at it.

01:45:12.000 It kind of encourages us.

01:45:14.000 We say to ourselves, you know, it is possible, you know.

01:45:16.000 If I can suck it up, if I can, you know, be like, you know, like you were just saying, be the hero of the movie of my life, you know, starting right now.

01:45:23.000 And that's why it's a harder sell to do something that's more ambiguous.

01:45:29.000 We like our fiction, like with tidy endings.

01:45:32.000 Like, No Country for Old Men pissed me off.

01:45:35.000 I really loved that movie.

01:45:37.000 In hindsight, I loved the performances.

01:45:39.000 I loved the story.

01:45:40.000 I loved Tommy Lee Jones.

01:45:42.000 And who's the guy's name who played the psycho?

01:45:44.000 That Spanish gentleman, whoever he is, he's awesome. 0.99

01:45:48.000 But it's an amazing movie, and in the end, you're like, what the fuck? 0.99

01:45:52.000 Why isn't the bad guy dead? 0.98

01:45:54.000 Why isn't the ending wrapped up dead?

01:45:56.000 Why isn't the good guy walk off with a girl? 0.99

01:45:57.000 What are you selling me?

01:45:59.000 I need to see happiness at the end.

01:46:02.000 I need it to be...

01:46:04.000 I think that's one of the reasons we like the Spartans so much.

01:46:06.000 It's because you know what the Spartan does at every choice.

01:46:09.000 There's those bracelets, WWJD, which is very ambiguous and confusing if you actually read the Bible.

01:46:16.000 Like, who the hell knows what he does?

01:46:17.000 Sometimes he brings a sword, sometimes he doesn't.

01:46:19.000 I don't know.

01:46:20.000 But if you said, what would a Spartan do?

01:46:22.000 The answer is simple. 1.00

01:46:24.000 Go fuck a guy. 1.00

01:46:25.000 That's what they do. 1.00

01:46:26.000 Yes.

01:46:28.000 Don't say that in the real Spartan today.

01:46:31.000 Why?

01:46:32.000 What happens?

01:46:32.000 They get mad at you?

01:46:33.000 Yeah, they don't like that.

01:46:34.000 They don't like to live in the reality of the past?

01:46:36.000 But, you know, for someone like you who knows the Spartan code, you know, the answer is pretty simple.

01:46:41.000 You could say what a Spartan would do in each one of these situations, and that's some part of us admires that, because we have such an ambiguous kind of life, that strict adherence to a code.

01:46:52.000 Well, we do respond in stories to archetypes, right?

01:46:56.000 To the knight or the Merlin-like character or something like that.

01:47:00.000 But of course, and that's why we love them in stories, the gunslinger, whatever it is.

01:47:05.000 But of course, in real life, you know, we're a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and, you know, it's not quite so simple.

01:47:10.000 Yeah, we respond to the samurai.

01:47:12.000 That's the one that everybody loves when it comes to martial arts, the ronin.

01:47:18.000 You know, the one lone person who lives by a very strict code, and we like to watch them practice because we like to watch their discipline.

01:47:26.000 Like in every Steven Seagal movie, there'd be a scene where he was practicing. 0.98

01:47:30.000 Like there's one where he's in a coma for seven years, and he gets out all of a sudden, he's fucking running up hills and throwing punches in the air, and you're like, damn, he's back, he's practicing. 0.95

01:47:38.000 Like leaving cigarettes out that burn more time underwater. 0.96

01:47:42.000 That samurai mindset that we know that the samurai will hold up in combat.

01:47:51.000 We know that their character will be bulletproof.

01:47:55.000 They're not going to crumble.

01:47:56.000 What is that?

01:47:57.000 It's an inspiration to us.

01:47:59.000 And I think why we like that samurai, I'm with you on that, Joe, is that samurai is an individual.

01:48:06.000 As opposed to the Spartans that are a group or any other kind of things.

01:48:10.000 Because we know that we're alone in the world.

01:48:13.000 At least that's how I experience the world.

01:48:17.000 When we can see the samurai train and have that discipline, when there's nobody cracking a whip over his head, nobody's paying him, nobody's patting him on the back, nobody's encouraging him.

01:48:26.000 He's doing it all entirely self-disciplined, self-generated, self-reinforced, self-validated. 0.98

01:48:32.000 That's very inspiring to us because we say, well, shit, maybe I can do it. 0.94

01:48:37.000 And I can tell from talking to you guys, that's how you live your lives. 0.99

01:48:41.000 Do you fight that internal battle from the morning you wake up and the minute you wake up through the whole day?

01:48:46.000 One of the things I like to do, I like to train myself.

01:48:49.000 I write down, like I have a workout routine, I write down all the things that have to get done.

01:48:55.000 You know, this is all that's going to get done today.

01:48:57.000 Period.

01:48:57.000 This is going to get done.

01:48:58.000 You know, X amount of kettlebell swings, X amount of chin-ups, X amount of squats.

01:49:02.000 And you're going to do all that.

01:49:04.000 You're not going to say, oh, enough already.

01:49:08.000 I don't allow myself.

01:49:09.000 So I train myself.

01:49:10.000 So I write all that stuff down and then I do it.

01:49:12.000 But I love that I can motivate myself, that I don't need anybody yelling at me to get all this stuff done.

01:49:18.000 That's very important.

01:49:19.000 And I think when you can do that, it's so daunting.

01:49:22.000 The beginning is so daunting.

01:49:24.000 You're like, ugh, looking at that piece of paper. 1.00

01:49:26.000 I gotta do all that shit. 0.99

01:49:28.000 Like, right now I'm comfortable. 0.99

01:49:29.000 I don't want to do that.

01:49:30.000 And then when you just say, ready?

01:49:32.000 Go.

01:49:33.000 And then force yourself.

01:49:34.000 It's the ability to create movement.

01:49:36.000 The ability to accomplish goals.

01:49:40.000 That's an exercise.

01:49:41.000 That's something that you exercise, just like creativity, just like your ability to write.

01:49:45.000 And the stakes are high, too, because when you actually succeed and you do it, you start to build that personal power and that knowing that you can put something down and you will do it.

01:49:54.000 But then if you pull up short or you cheat yourself a little bit, you start to build the other.

01:49:58.000 Ah, I didn't quite make.

01:49:59.000 Ah, it's okay.

01:49:59.000 You start to get that weaseliness about yourself.

01:50:02.000 Weaseliness.

01:50:03.000 Great.

01:50:03.000 That's a great way to describe it.

01:50:04.000 The stakes are higher than just that workout. 0.96

01:50:06.000 If you go out and set out to do something, you better damn do it. 0.54

01:50:11.000 I actually had an experience today, and I like to play these games with myself too. 0.95

01:50:15.000 Sometimes it's a full workout.

01:50:16.000 Sometimes it's just a set.

01:50:17.000 I know because we were doing this podcast, I was thinking back to the warrior ethos, and I know one of the things the Spartans had to do is they had to run a marathon with a mouthful of water, and then they had to spit the water back out at the end of the marathon.

01:50:30.000 And that was part of the training thing.

01:50:32.000 So I was like, I've never tried that.

01:50:33.000 That seems like it'd be really hard to do.

01:50:35.000 So I set up the treadmill at 8 and 8, and I was doing a Tabata protocol, which is 20 seconds of sprinting and then 10 seconds of rest.

01:50:43.000 You tried to do that with a mouthful of water?

01:50:45.000 That's not a marathon, though.

01:50:46.000 That's a totally different thing.

01:50:47.000 I couldn't do a marathon.

01:50:48.000 Well, I don't think the Spartans were running a full marathon.

01:50:50.000 No, I think the marathon would be way harder to do what you're doing.

01:50:54.000 Yeah.

01:50:55.000 Because you're sprinting.

01:50:56.000 Well, it was.

01:50:56.000 And it was.

01:50:57.000 And it was a real...

01:50:58.000 Mentally, it was...

01:50:59.000 Could you do it?

01:51:00.000 Yeah.

01:51:01.000 Well, I said I was going to do a round of...

01:51:02.000 I was going to do five.

01:51:04.000 And at three, I was like, well, if I just drink a little bit of this water, it would be more comfortable.

01:51:09.000 And I said, no, like, you can't.

01:51:11.000 You can't do that.

01:51:12.000 And then at the very end, though, so I finished my five, and the idea was to spit the water back out. 1.00

01:51:17.000 And then I thought to myself, ah, fuck it. 0.99

01:51:19.000 I don't want to spit the water back out. 1.00

01:51:20.000 I'll just drink it. 0.99

01:51:21.000 And as soon as I drunk it, I knew, like, damn it. 0.99

01:51:23.000 I missed that little bit of my regimen. 0.99

01:51:26.000 So I cheated myself of a little bit of what that goal was, was to run the five and spit the water back out.

01:51:33.000 This water that you're just craving to drink.

01:51:35.000 Let me help you out here. 1.00

01:51:35.000 That's silly shit. 1.00

01:51:36.000 You did what you're supposed to do. 1.00

01:51:38.000 The drinking the water at the end, you deserve that water.

01:51:40.000 Thank you. 1.00

01:51:40.000 You held that shit in your mouth. 1.00

01:51:41.000 That's what I thought. 1.00

01:51:42.000 That's what I was trying to tell myself.

01:51:43.000 You're absolutely right.

01:51:44.000 You're going to drink water eventually anyway.

01:51:46.000 That's what I was telling myself.

01:51:48.000 You're not depriving yourself of water.

01:51:49.000 The exercise is to get through the exercise with a mouth full of water.

01:51:54.000 So you're drinking the water when it's done.

01:51:55.000 I'll take the other side, Joe.

01:51:56.000 Really?

01:51:57.000 You had to spit the water out.

01:51:58.000 The next time when you do spit the water out, you'll feel a lot better.

01:52:01.000 Yeah, and then you're going to get another drink of water. 0.99

01:52:02.000 There's a fucking drought. 0.99

01:52:03.000 Why would you do that? 1.00

01:52:04.000 There's a drought going on. 1.00

01:52:05.000 Drink the fucking water. 1.00

01:52:06.000 That's ridiculous. 1.00

01:52:07.000 Unless you spit it in a glass, then just drink it, and then you're an idiot. 1.00

01:52:10.000 Why not just drink it? 1.00

01:52:11.000 It's already cut out the middleman.

01:52:12.000 It's in your mouth already.

01:52:14.000 As long as you get... 0.99

01:52:15.000 It's a silly argument. 0.89

01:52:16.000 As long as you get through it. 0.96

01:52:18.000 We could talk about this for a while.

01:52:19.000 But isn't it funny, though, that you recognize that there's a thing about cutting corners that's really dangerous. 0.99

01:52:26.000 Cutting corners in life, settling in life, is fucking dangerous. 0.97

01:52:30.000 It's the road to mediocrity. 0.99

01:52:33.000 Let me ask you guys both here.

01:52:34.000 Was there a moment for you at In your life, your lives, when you understood this?

01:52:41.000 Or is this, in other words, did you not understand this at a certain point or have this concept and then you suddenly learned it?

01:52:49.000 I learned it slowly but surely through a lifetime of struggle and failure and some success and every success cling to it like it's a new log that you found after you were swimming in the ocean to the point where you thought you were going to drown and boom you find a log.

01:53:05.000 Okay, we got something.

01:53:06.000 Okay, ready?

01:53:07.000 And then jump off that log and keep going and make yourself through another log that slowly but surely I accumulated all this information along with a lot of books, a lot of documentaries, a lot of talking to people that I found inspirational, a lot of martial arts, a lot of talking to instructors that explained what it's about to get through a hard training session,

01:53:27.000 what it's about to achieve your black belt, what it's about to be a champion, what it's about to To hit the highest levels.

01:53:33.000 And competing.

01:53:34.000 Competing was a big one.

01:53:35.000 Competing in martial arts as a boy shaped my brain.

01:53:38.000 Shaped who I am as a human being. 0.99

01:53:40.000 You cannot have any bullshit when you're throwing your bones at people. 0.99

01:53:44.000 When you're involved in whatever it is with some other trained killer and you're both really good at knocking people unconscious and you're planning on doing it to each other. 0.99

01:53:55.000 Ready?

01:53:55.000 Go!

01:53:57.000 Your brain does not accept any bullshit. 1.00

01:53:59.000 You have to know exactly who you are. 1.00

01:54:00.000 You have to have a very objective assessment of your abilities, otherwise you're going to get brained.

01:54:07.000 You're going to get a bone that's going to bounce off your head, and you're going to get concussed.

01:54:11.000 It's a very real consequence that very rarely faces you in everyday life.

01:54:15.000 The choices you make very rarely get you concussed.

01:54:18.000 But when the goal is for someone to knock you out, that's their goal.

01:54:21.000 They're trying really hard to do it.

01:54:22.000 And you know that that's the goal.

01:54:24.000 It's like one of the worst consequences you can get in everyday life other than dying.

01:54:29.000 You know, it's a really hard one.

01:54:31.000 Your own health, your own consciousness. 0.98

01:54:33.000 You're gonna get knocked the fuck out. 0.51

01:54:35.000 So that reality, I think, forced me at a very early age to just... 1.00

01:54:39.000 Cut the bullshit. 1.00

01:54:41.000 Don't cut corners. 1.00

01:54:42.000 Look at it exactly what it is.

01:54:44.000 Do everything you have to do.

01:54:46.000 And also along the lines, learning that every time I didn't, I felt terrible.

01:54:51.000 And that I felt weak. 0.98

01:54:53.000 If I wasn't in shape, I felt pathetic.

01:54:56.000 If I got tired in a match and that's why I lost, it was unbearable. 0.80

01:55:01.000 Unbearable.

01:55:02.000 Just the stink on me would never wash off.

01:55:05.000 So that's...

01:55:07.000 That's where I learn from.

01:55:08.000 Good answer.

01:55:08.000 For me, I'm still learning every day.

01:55:11.000 Oh, me too.

01:55:12.000 Definitely me too.

01:55:13.000 It's like you think you know and you think you get it, and then all of a sudden you'll be on this weird path and you'll be like, how did I forget so much just now?

01:55:21.000 Where am I? What is this strange place I find myself in?

01:55:25.000 This is not my beautiful house.

01:55:27.000 Exactly.

01:55:28.000 You have to retrace your steps back and realize that, you know, things go in cycles, you know, where it's at the top of the cycle.

01:55:34.000 You may feel like you have a good grasp, but then you'll swing back down again to some lesser state of forgetfulness, really, where you have to learn that, you know, relearn some things back and be reminded of some other things.

01:55:46.000 But for me, I think the process, one of the defining moments for me actually happened from a movie in this process.

01:55:52.000 It was actually when I saw Braveheart as a kid.

01:55:54.000 And I remember at that point, it really like struck me that the impracticality of going through all that torture just to say the word freedom, you know?

01:56:05.000 And I started, I kind of got, I was like, I kind of got that there was something, you know, something else that some other kind of level that you could push yourself through.

01:56:15.000 And I remember I would go running and before I would work out and stuff, I was an active kid.

01:56:19.000 I loved playing around, loved every sport I could.

01:56:21.000 Martial arts, whatever.

01:56:22.000 But I was running on the beach, and normally when I would have stopped, I just didn't stop.

01:56:27.000 And I was like, William Wallace wouldn't have stopped.

01:56:30.000 And some part of me then, some little inkling just planted.

01:56:36.000 And then I know many other things, many books, many teachers, many internal things.

01:56:41.000 Carlos Castaneda played a big part.

01:56:43.000 Some of the Toltec beliefs.

01:56:45.000 So many other different things.

01:56:47.000 Your book.

01:56:48.000 Meeting Joe.

01:56:48.000 Well, these kind of conversations too.

01:56:50.000 People right now, guaranteed, are listening to this and they're going, fuck, I gotta get my shit together. 0.99

01:56:55.000 And just that sometimes is all you need. 0.99

01:56:57.000 You just need a little spark and then nurture that spark, turn it into a fire.

01:57:02.000 And that's really what it is.

01:57:04.000 It's like we...

01:57:05.000 Hunter Thompson had a great...

01:57:07.000 I saved it on my phone because I read it online the other day and it's so poignant and beautiful.

01:57:14.000 But it was about...

01:57:15.000 His quote was about...

01:57:18.000 Music.

01:57:19.000 Some people say that music is inspiration.

01:57:24.000 But what he says, he says what they really mean is fuel.

01:57:28.000 And that I've always needed fuel.

01:57:30.000 I'm a serious consumer.

01:57:31.000 On some nights, I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about 50 more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.

01:57:40.000 And there's something about that. 0.73

01:57:43.000 I find that, not just in music, but in conversations like this, that if I could download this and listen to it as a podcast, if I weren't a part of it, I'd be so fucking psyched.

01:57:52.000 And the same thing about your book.

01:57:54.000 I found it through your book.

01:57:55.000 I found it through certain songs.

01:57:56.000 I found it through movies.

01:57:57.000 I found it through performances of musicians, comedians, everything.

01:58:03.000 It exists everywhere around us.

01:58:05.000 It's all sparks.

01:58:07.000 It's all sparks.

01:58:08.000 You grab those sparks and you make your own fire.

01:58:12.000 That's it.

01:58:12.000 What are you still learning, Steve?

01:58:14.000 Same stuff, you know?

01:58:15.000 Same stuff.

01:58:16.000 Never stops.

01:58:17.000 And I'm thinking, listening to you guys, I mean, my experience was not like in martial arts or something like that.

01:58:22.000 It was more in writing. 0.99

01:58:25.000 Day-to-day of, would I fuck off today? 1.00

01:58:29.000 You know? 1.00

01:58:29.000 Would I drop the ball today? 1.00

01:58:31.000 Would I stop?

01:58:32.000 You know?

01:58:32.000 Or like, Aubrey, you were saying you're running a little farther on the beach.

01:58:35.000 Like, what would William Wallace do?

01:58:36.000 Yeah.

01:58:36.000 You know?

01:58:37.000 Can I push myself a little farther?

01:58:40.000 Or even beyond the idea of like whipping yourself or anything like that, the idea of like being kind to yourself, being gentle to yourself.

01:58:47.000 Like if you're training a thoroughbred racehorse, you're not going to beat the crap out of that horse.

01:58:52.000 You're going to make it fun for that horse, right?

01:58:53.000 Right.

01:58:54.000 So to do that, like you were saying, Joe, you find a log that's floating.

01:58:59.000 You know, this worked.

01:59:01.000 Today I did this.

01:59:02.000 It worked.

01:59:03.000 Here it is at the end of the day.

01:59:04.000 I feel good.

01:59:05.000 So tomorrow, let me try to do that again, right?

01:59:08.000 And then you don't quite succeed, you know?

01:59:11.000 But then you find another log.

01:59:12.000 And little by little, you put those logs together and truths start to form in your mind.

01:59:18.000 This works.

01:59:19.000 This doesn't work.

01:59:20.000 And then also, like you guys say, you get it from other people, you get it from books, you get it from conversations, you get it from music.

01:59:25.000 It reinforces itself, like this conversation now is reinforcing it for me, and I'm sure it's reinforcing it for you guys, too.

01:59:32.000 It's like, what's interesting to me is it doesn't matter what pursuit you're in, the laws seem to be the same.

01:59:40.000 I'm sure that if we had a weaver in here or a potter or somebody that made furniture, they would say the exact same thing.

01:59:50.000 I get a piece of wood in and that piece of wood is telling me it wants to be a couch.

01:59:58.000 So it's interesting that there are laws, and we're just sort of learning them and uncovering them as we go.

02:00:05.000 And again, this is what Musashi spoke of, and this is one of the things that Musashi...

02:00:11.000 Put in his book where he described his pursuit of calligraphy, his pursuit of poetry, art.

02:00:18.000 They're all parallel disciplines.

02:00:20.000 In a pursuit of when you're writing poetry or when you're drawing something or painting something, you're still trying to get at that same source, that pure source.

02:00:30.000 Whatever it is, whether it's a cartoon or whether it's a Steven Pressfield novel about Greek history, whatever it is, it's the same thing.

02:00:39.000 It's like...

02:00:40.000 It's this weird creating energy that you're trying to tap into.

02:00:44.000 It's getting rid of that mind boy and getting into the higher, nobler self. 0.99

02:00:50.000 What the fuck is the mind boy there for, though? 1.00

02:00:53.000 Doesn't he do something good? 0.99

02:00:54.000 He's good at solving puzzles, is what he's good at.

02:00:56.000 Is he good at pool?

02:00:57.000 Is he what makes you play pool?

02:00:59.000 Nope.

02:00:59.000 He's not good at pool, but he's good at doing the mechanistic puzzle work of the human life.

02:01:06.000 Figuring things out, putting on different masks, socially adapting, modifying behavior in a certain way.

02:01:13.000 I would call it the ego as opposed to the self.

02:01:16.000 Self with a capital S. And maybe we're talking about tribal ways and seeing those mysterious worlds and all that other thing.

02:01:26.000 Maybe that's the self.

02:01:27.000 And somehow when we became civilized, we shrunk it down to the ego that knows how to build a wall or something like that but doesn't know how to access.

02:01:39.000 And then what you guys are talking about, what I'm talking about, is breaking through those walls and trying to get, even for just a minute at a time, To that.

02:01:50.000 That thing that's got some magic to it.

02:01:52.000 Yeah, creating.

02:01:53.000 I feel bad for people who don't get to create.

02:01:56.000 I really do.

02:01:57.000 I mean, even if it's creating at your job, whether you're a carpenter or someone who puts things together, there's something about making something that wasn't there before and now it's there.

02:02:09.000 There's something about that, whether it's even just a performance or a song or whatever.

02:02:13.000 There's something about that that's one of the few magical things in life.

02:02:16.000 Well, that's what God does, right?

02:02:19.000 Allegedly.

02:02:20.000 He creates.

02:02:20.000 So we as human beings, when we can do that, that's pretty cool.

02:02:24.000 Yeah, but he also creates nuclear bombs.

02:02:26.000 You know, creating also meant what Oppenheimer did.

02:02:29.000 You know, it's all creating.

02:02:31.000 That's creating as well.

02:02:32.000 So it's a very strange thing that what you drop out of the Enola Gay that kills a half a million people, that's creative too. 1.00

02:02:39.000 It's kind of fucked. 0.97

02:02:40.000 It's almost that destructive force is also part of the creation. 0.99

02:02:46.000 I was talking to someone who I really respect and I was asking him about the demon force, that purely destructive force.

02:02:56.000 And it doesn't have to be an actual angel or demon, kind of conceptualized religiously.

02:03:00.000 But whatever that destructive force is, it's tapped in.

02:03:04.000 And he's basically saying that when that's really high, it's just doing its job.

02:03:09.000 There has to be that opposing force from which creation can push forward its strength.

02:03:16.000 And so, yeah, these nuclear bombs do it in a dramatic and terrifying way.

02:03:21.000 But that's one opposing force by which you can try and flourish life in spite of.

02:03:28.000 So there's some kind of weird harmony in all of that that was created in the soup to begin with.

02:03:34.000 Everything has to find the balance.

02:03:36.000 But I do think that we get way off balance one way or the other in certain aspects.

02:03:41.000 And you see that in people.

02:03:42.000 And I think the key is...

02:03:45.000 There's only one corner of the universe you can be sure to change.

02:03:49.000 And I think that's a quote from Huxley, actually.

02:03:52.000 And that's yourself.

02:03:53.000 And that's what you can be sure to change.

02:03:55.000 So bringing yourself back into balance.

02:03:57.000 Everybody does that.

02:03:58.000 Guess what?

02:03:59.000 The world's back in balance.

02:04:00.000 So you can be sure.

02:04:02.000 Take that step to get yourself in balance.

02:04:05.000 And then slowly all these other things will start to lay out.

02:04:08.000 The dominoes will I want to ask you a question about writing.

02:04:12.000 Do you have, when you start writing, you have an idea?

02:04:16.000 Like, I'm reading Stephen King's book on writing.

02:04:19.000 It's really interesting.

02:04:20.000 Yeah, really good book, yeah.

02:04:21.000 And one of the things that he said that I found was incredibly fascinating is that he doesn't make a plot before he gets going.

02:04:27.000 He might have some ideas, but he creates the characters.

02:04:31.000 He starts writing their dialogue, and then what they do is up to them. 1.00

02:04:35.000 And then shit just goes down. 0.96

02:04:38.000 Which is incredible when you think about the plots of some of Stephen King's books, especially The Gunslinger. 0.99

02:04:44.000 Yeah, that was crazy.

02:04:45.000 What?

02:04:46.000 That just came out of your head?

02:04:47.000 You didn't even plot that out?

02:04:49.000 That's crazy.

02:04:50.000 Do you plot your stuff out?

02:04:52.000 Do you have a cork board where you put index cards on it and you move them around?

02:04:56.000 How do you write?

02:04:58.000 I do sort of.

02:05:00.000 I mean, you have to do that eventually.

02:05:02.000 Do you use Scrivener?

02:05:03.000 Do you ever try that?

02:05:04.000 No, I don't do that kind of stuff.

02:05:06.000 You don't do anything on...

02:05:07.000 It's one of those programs that shows you a corkboard and lets you move index cards around.

02:05:14.000 Virtual corkboard?

02:05:15.000 Yeah.

02:05:16.000 That's a little too mechanical for me.

02:05:18.000 But I do try to...

02:05:21.000 I mean, a lot of times I will start...

02:05:24.000 Purely on instinct and just take it from there.

02:05:27.000 But I think I'm always asking myself, what's the finish?

02:05:32.000 What is this going to?

02:05:34.000 You know, I'm always trying to get the final moment, the climax, and then work backwards from there.

02:05:40.000 Because within any idea...

02:05:43.000 How can I... Let's see.

02:05:47.000 One of the books I wrote was about...

02:05:49.000 It's called The Virtues of War.

02:05:51.000 It was about Alexander the Great.

02:05:53.000 And the way it kind of came to me was the first two sentences came to me.

02:05:57.000 And the first two sentences were, I have always been a soldier.

02:06:01.000 I have known no other life.

02:06:03.000 And when I heard those in my head, I said, oh, that's great.

02:06:06.000 But I had no idea who was saying it or where it went.

02:06:12.000 So in a way, it's like a...

02:06:15.000 Finding the tippy-top part of a buried asteroid or something.

02:06:22.000 So I sort of try to just partly follow instinct and say, well, okay, what's the next sentence?

02:06:27.000 You know, what's the next scene? 0.99

02:06:29.000 But then I'll kind of pull back out of it and say, what is this fucking thing about? 0.98

02:06:35.000 Why? 0.99

02:06:35.000 What is buried? 0.99

02:06:37.000 What idea is buried in those two sentences?

02:06:40.000 And then I'll try to Is this making any sense, Joe?

02:06:44.000 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

02:06:44.000 And then I'll try to push it forward to the finish.

02:06:47.000 What's the climax of this thing? 0.98

02:06:50.000 Because otherwise, I think, maybe Stephen King is a genius and he can just kind of plunge in and just throw shit against the wall and it'll stick. 0.94

02:06:58.000 But I think most of us, for me, I'll get lost if I do that. 0.96

02:07:03.000 I'll just write this scene and that scene and the other scene and there's no...

02:07:07.000 I'll get lost in it.

02:07:25.000 But also then pulling back to the left brain and asking, what's this about?

02:07:30.000 Where's it going?

02:07:32.000 And then structuring it back from that.

02:07:35.000 I don't know if that answers your question.

02:07:36.000 I don't know.

02:07:38.000 It's interesting because he didn't go too far in a depth, as far as what I've read at least, that...

02:07:44.000 I don't know if along the way he writes things down or sets up an ending along the way. 0.95

02:07:49.000 He might fucking write the ending first. 0.96

02:07:52.000 I mean, who knows? 0.99

02:07:53.000 I have no idea.

02:07:54.000 But his point being is that when he's writing, he's not following. 0.99

02:08:00.000 Like, today he's going to write down that Sally meets Betty and Betty can light things on fire with her tits. 0.99

02:08:06.000 Well, that makes sense. 0.99

02:08:06.000 But if you have the idea of Carrie... 0.99

02:08:09.000 You know that the climax is going to be Carrie, you know, blows everybody away, right?

02:08:14.000 Right, right.

02:08:14.000 So you don't have to be...

02:08:18.000 Too analytic to figure that out.

02:08:19.000 So he kind of knows what's coming.

02:08:21.000 Maybe.

02:08:22.000 He might not have known that that was going to...

02:08:23.000 You know, the Carrie one's a really interesting one because he was throwing that away and his wife pulled it out of the trash.

02:08:29.000 Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it?

02:08:30.000 Yeah.

02:08:31.000 That was his first big break.

02:08:32.000 His wife pulled it out of the trash and was like, listen, don't quit this one. 1.00

02:08:36.000 But that goes to show you, though, how a lot of times we don't even recognize...

02:08:42.000 What great stuff we've done.

02:08:44.000 Well, it's also probably because he was drunk and on coke.

02:08:46.000 His dad as well.

02:08:48.000 Maybe the opposite.

02:08:50.000 Maybe he was sober.

02:08:51.000 He goes off about his massive amount of drug use when he was writing books.

02:08:56.000 He wrote entire books that he doesn't remember at all.

02:09:01.000 Cujo, apparently, doesn't remember at all.

02:09:04.000 He can read it for the first time.

02:09:05.000 What a joy.

02:09:06.000 It's awesome.

02:09:07.000 Whoa, this is great.

02:09:09.000 Boy, you talk about a movie that doesn't hold up.

02:09:11.000 I tried to watch Cujo the other day. 1.00

02:09:13.000 I was like, shut this fucking... 1.00

02:09:15.000 That dog's stupid. 1.00

02:09:16.000 Shoot that fucking dumb thing. 1.00

02:09:17.000 This movie sucks. 1.00

02:09:18.000 Like, it wasn't scary at all. 0.99

02:09:20.000 You've had quite a few of your movies, your books, rather, that have become movies.

02:09:24.000 Is that a frustrating process?

02:09:26.000 Well, not really, but...

02:09:27.000 Well, The Legend of Bagger Vance was a big one.

02:09:29.000 How many different books have you written that have become movies?

02:09:32.000 I think that's the only one.

02:09:33.000 I mean, I've written screenplays that became movies, but...

02:09:38.000 Let me put it this way.

02:09:39.000 I've never had a good experience yet.

02:09:41.000 Oh, wow.

02:09:41.000 You know, maybe I'm unlucky, but I've never had a good experience yet.

02:09:44.000 I'm sorry.

02:09:45.000 I thought you had at least two that had become...

02:09:47.000 Maybe it's just...

02:09:47.000 Maybe I'm forgetting something.

02:09:49.000 How many screenplays of you have been made from your books?

02:09:52.000 I'm not sure.

02:09:53.000 Maybe five or six or something.

02:09:54.000 Okay, that's what I read.

02:09:56.000 So you're...

02:09:57.000 All terrible.

02:09:59.000 What is it about that?

02:10:01.000 Is it because they're trying to condense it to an hour and a half, two hours?

02:10:05.000 I don't know. 0.71

02:10:05.000 Maybe I did a shitty job from the start, you know? 0.71

02:10:08.000 No.

02:10:08.000 Is it the Hollywood machine that takes something and can take your ideas, which are, like as you were talking about the tides of war, there's some ambiguous characters.

02:10:19.000 I wish I knew, Joe.

02:10:20.000 I think sometimes...

02:10:23.000 Writers get really lucky and, you know, The Godfather comes out fantastic, right?

02:10:27.000 You know, every scene is perfect, you know?

02:10:29.000 And other times...

02:10:32.000 And then there's the sort of the politics of Hollywood where, like, if you're casting the character of Bagger Vance, let's say, and you want to cast Morgan Freeman, who seems like he would be the perfect guy,

02:10:47.000 but they run the numbers and they say, well, Morgan Freeman is not going to justify a budget of X, Y, Z, so maybe we need to – so we can't cast him.

02:10:56.000 We have to cast – you know, in other words, decisions are driven by factors other than – Other than instinct, you know?

02:11:05.000 I would have to disagree, sir.

02:11:07.000 I think some of your movies are amazing, including King Kong Lives, Above the Law.

02:11:11.000 Please!

02:11:12.000 You made Above the Law?

02:11:14.000 Free Jack.

02:11:15.000 I was one of three people.

02:11:16.000 That was the only one I ever actually liked.

02:11:18.000 Above the Law was great.

02:11:19.000 Credit to Andy Davis, the director. 0.98

02:11:21.000 I mean, look, everybody goofs on Steven Seagal, but Above the Law was fucking great. 0.54

02:11:27.000 At the time, it was a great movie. 0.95

02:11:29.000 They all blend together.

02:11:29.000 It's a homogenous Steven Seagal movie that lasts 14 hours.

02:11:32.000 But it shouldn't, because there's the one that launched them.

02:11:34.000 That was the one that was the best.

02:11:36.000 Above the Law was the best one. 0.73

02:11:38.000 There's a lot of silliness to it. 0.99

02:11:39.000 Of course there is, but it's a goddamn cop movie. 1.00

02:11:42.000 It's about a badass guy who's kicking ass and, you know, fucking people up. 1.00

02:11:46.000 There's no way to do that where it's not silly. 0.99

02:11:48.000 Yeah.

02:11:48.000 And Army of One with Dolph London.

02:11:50.000 Did you really do that?

02:11:52.000 Oh, please. 1.00

02:11:52.000 Holy shit, man. 1.00

02:11:54.000 I knew you guys were going to do this. 1.00

02:11:57.000 Someone told a fib and Brian caught him.

02:12:00.000 Why is it about King Kong?

02:12:03.000 I mean, what is it about the...

02:12:05.000 Terrible, terrible.

02:12:06.000 That was the movie that was going on when you were 40 when you were talking about your life being in a shambles.

02:12:14.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:12:15.000 That was that movie?

02:12:16.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:12:17.000 What is it about King Kong that we keep making that fucking movie over and over again? 0.99

02:12:22.000 He's an archetype, the big, strong gorilla, right? 0.99

02:12:24.000 Same thing as the werewolf, I suppose.

02:12:26.000 But it's the same... 1.00

02:12:26.000 No, it's worse, because it's the same goddamn story. 1.00

02:12:28.000 He always falls off the fucking building. 0.99

02:12:30.000 The American Werewolf in London is different than Wolfman with Benicio Del Torre. 0.99

02:12:34.000 There's a lot more places to go. 0.99

02:12:36.000 When they keep redoing that goddamn King Kong movie, the same fucking thing happens every time. 1.00

02:12:41.000 It's like... 1.00

02:12:41.000 Nobody ever figures that they can make a King Kong movie where he doesn't die. 1.00

02:12:46.000 Do you understand that it was a movie that somebody made it to begin with?

02:12:51.000 Yeah, it's not written in a stone tablet.

02:12:52.000 Yeah, you can do a whole different King Kong story, but nope, nope.

02:12:55.000 Get a blonde girl, get a building, climb, shoot him down, done. 1.00

02:12:59.000 Does that frustrate the shit out of you as a creative guy? 1.00

02:13:02.000 Would they want to keep doing this same goddamn thing over and over again? 0.99

02:13:08.000 Well... 0.99

02:13:08.000 I'm not even sure how to answer that, Joe. 0.99

02:13:10.000 I mean, I want to do the same thing over and over again sometimes.

02:13:14.000 I mean, there are sort of principles of storytelling that you want to do, you know?

02:13:18.000 But, I mean, I know what you mean, and it is pretty frustrating.

02:13:23.000 You give a lot of advice for writing fiction in this, especially The Authentic Swing.

02:13:28.000 But what about some of your nonfiction works?

02:13:30.000 How is that process different than crafting a story and characters?

02:13:35.000 Because you've done an amazing job writing nonfiction as well.

02:13:39.000 Well, of course, the only nonfiction I've done is stuff about the writing process rather than something like...

02:13:46.000 You know, All the President's Men or something like that.

02:13:50.000 Right, right, right.

02:13:51.000 So that's kind of, it's sort of a specialized genre.

02:13:56.000 Yeah, but that kind of didactic kind of self-help.

02:13:57.000 But my theory is that it has to be a story anyway.

02:14:04.000 You know, my partner Sean Coyne is a big believer in Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, no matter what it is.

02:14:11.000 Even if it doesn't have any characters.

02:14:13.000 It's got to start somewhere, have a middle, and then have an end.

02:14:17.000 So I sort of try to follow the same process, make it a story a little bit.

02:14:24.000 Where the reader plays a role then.

02:14:27.000 So the reader is kind of the protege and you're the mentor?

02:14:31.000 Or the reader follows along rooting for you, even if your character is only salted in there a little bit here and there, going from one fiasco to another to another.

02:14:41.000 But it all sort of If you do it right, it has a flow to it and it builds to a climax.

02:14:47.000 The War of Arts starts kind of out with...

02:14:50.000 It's in three parts.

02:14:52.000 My partner Sean figured that out.

02:14:54.000 It's what is the enemy?

02:14:56.000 Resistance.

02:14:57.000 Second part is how do you overcome that enemy?

02:15:01.000 Turning pro.

02:15:02.000 And the third part is getting into the metaphysics of it.

02:15:05.000 What does it all mean?

02:15:06.000 And that's sort of a natural progression.

02:15:09.000 What's the metaphysical aspect of it at the end?

02:15:13.000 What's the spiritual side of it?

02:15:15.000 That's the aspect of what you've written in your book that makes it not really a book about writing.

02:15:22.000 It's not really a book about the creative process.

02:15:25.000 It's a book about achieving a mindset.

02:15:26.000 It's a book about achieving...

02:15:29.000 A victory over this resistance thing and achieving this state of mind that there's no nonsense, cut out all the nonsense and get to it, state of mind.

02:15:42.000 It's a psychological handbook.

02:15:44.000 The writing, as you know, I think you even point this out, it's just a metaphor for the process.

02:15:49.000 Same with golf in this.

02:15:50.000 Which I didn't even realize when I was doing it.

02:15:52.000 It kind of became clear afterwards.

02:15:53.000 Are you a big golf man?

02:15:55.000 Is that why you keep writing things about golf?

02:15:57.000 When I was a kid, I grew up as a caddy.

02:16:00.000 So from the time I was like 11 until all the way through college, back in the days where there were such things as caddies.

02:16:06.000 So I kind of grew up in the caddy shack, just like Rodney Dangerfield.

02:16:11.000 But since then, I haven't really been able to play.

02:16:15.000 Really?

02:16:16.000 Why's that?

02:16:16.000 I'm working for a living.

02:16:18.000 That's hilarious.

02:16:18.000 So you don't give yourself a chance to take a little day off and go play golf?

02:16:22.000 I mean, I do that every once in a while, but I'm so lousy, it's pretty depressing.

02:16:25.000 I remember when I graduated from college, moved to New York, got married.

02:16:30.000 First day we moved into the city, my car was vandalized and they stole my golf clubs.

02:16:35.000 I didn't play for another 20 years.

02:16:37.000 And then by the time I did then...

02:16:41.000 It was all in my memory.

02:16:42.000 Because the love for the sport seems to bleed out in this book.

02:16:45.000 Yeah, I love the game.

02:16:46.000 So you like watching it?

02:16:47.000 It's a great game.

02:16:48.000 You might be one of the weird people that like watching golf more than you like playing golf.

02:16:53.000 Well, I would love playing golf more if I played a little better than I play.

02:16:56.000 So do you get very self-critical on yourself when you play golf?

02:16:59.000 Does that bring up a lot of that?

02:17:01.000 I mean, I've been so bad for so long, but I kind of forgive myself now.

02:17:07.000 Isn't that part of golf?

02:17:08.000 Now my main goal is just not to hurt myself.

02:17:13.000 Get through it, try to enjoy it.

02:17:14.000 I'm not kidding either.

02:17:15.000 Do you walk it or do you take the cart?

02:17:18.000 Well, I try to walk when I can, you know, but pretty much carts are the way it is these days, you know? 0.99

02:17:25.000 I think people are being pussies. 1.00

02:17:26.000 I think if you're going to knock that ball that far away, you should go walk after that, you silly bitch. 1.00

02:17:31.000 I agree with you. 1.00

02:17:31.000 It's too bad that the gamers devolve to that point. 1.00

02:17:35.000 And you should carry your own fucking clubs. 1.00

02:17:35.000 We're cowards and pussies. 1.00

02:17:38.000 We have other people carry our clubs. 1.00

02:17:39.000 We get in a thing.

02:17:40.000 Yeah, but it's fun to drive those when you're drunk.

02:17:42.000 It is fun to drive those. 1.00

02:17:44.000 But if you're going to play some serious golf, you need to whack that fucker and then walk after it. 1.00

02:17:48.000 The problem when you really suck, though, is if you walk... 1.00

02:17:50.000 There will be people just so mad at you right behind you because you're taking forever. 0.99

02:17:55.000 You've got to walk to the left, and then you've got to walk to the right.

02:17:58.000 At least if it's me.

02:17:59.000 Then you walk to the left.

02:18:00.000 I'm all over the course.

02:18:01.000 It's so cool.

02:18:02.000 I was in, I guess it's like Beverly Hills, the other day at a meeting, and I'm at this network.

02:18:08.000 And I'm looking out the window, and they have this giant view of this golf course.

02:18:13.000 And just the mass of the golf course, I had to take it in in my head.

02:18:17.000 I'm like, how much is that worth?

02:18:19.000 I guess it was Beverly Hills Country Club or one of those big country clubs down there.

02:18:23.000 And I'm like, this is a giant piece of land in the middle of the most expensive real estate in the country.

02:18:30.000 This is crazy!

02:18:31.000 That's a $300 million plot of land.

02:18:34.000 It is amazing.

02:18:34.000 That's LA Country Club.

02:18:36.000 There's two courses there.

02:18:37.000 Yeah.

02:18:37.000 So, that's a lot of land, but imagine what that's worth.

02:18:40.000 It's nuts, but what a wacky sport. 0.99

02:18:43.000 You've got to walk around the land, you know, and if it rains, you're fucked, you know? 0.99

02:18:48.000 It's a crazy sport where you need a giant piece of land and so, like, influential as far as, like, business meetings and, you know, people that love to, like... 0.89

02:19:02.000 I think for business it reveals something about the person you're playing with that's pretty unique because it will bring to the surface those parts of themselves that are a little ugly or a little weird or noble and good.

02:19:15.000 When you play with somebody, you get to know more than just your conversation.

02:19:19.000 Because you see if they're going to fudge it, if they're going to cheat a little bit, if they're going to get really self-critical and get all mad at them.

02:19:27.000 Brian Callen had an instance when his father was playing golf with this man, and his mother was there, and his mother watched the guy playing golf with his dad cheat.

02:19:39.000 And then told him, do not go into business with this guy.

02:19:43.000 And she told him why.

02:19:45.000 And he was like, whoa.

02:19:46.000 And Brian, as a young man, remembers that.

02:19:49.000 It's just a game.

02:19:50.000 And she was like, no, it's not.

02:19:52.000 No, it's not.

02:19:53.000 It's just a game.

02:19:53.000 It is just a game.

02:19:55.000 So why did he cheat?

02:19:56.000 It's just a game.

02:19:57.000 Because that's what he does.

02:19:59.000 That's who he is. 1.00

02:20:00.000 That sleazy motherfucker. 1.00

02:20:03.000 So in that, yeah, you can learn. 1.00

02:20:05.000 But I've heard women complain. 1.00

02:20:07.000 It's an interesting argument that there's a patriarchy thing about these men's club meetings on golf courses that they could never get in on this.

02:20:15.000 And that they would never be, even if they were in that circle, they would almost be the white elephant in the room.

02:20:23.000 You know, and that they would have to learn how to play golf in order to have an equal stake in the companies and an equal stake in the future. 0.99

02:20:31.000 You have to kind of be a part of this little goofy club of these fuckers chasing after a ball. 0.99

02:20:36.000 It's very weird. 1.00

02:20:37.000 They can learn.

02:20:38.000 It's not MMA. Yeah, but why should they have to?

02:20:40.000 I mean, shouldn't it be ideally...

02:20:42.000 Yeah, the men don't have to either, though.

02:20:43.000 Right.

02:20:43.000 Well, some of them do, though.

02:20:45.000 That's the thing.

02:20:46.000 In order to be in that sort of...

02:20:48.000 There are people that in order to be in the group with them, you have to do the things they do.

02:20:53.000 You have to like the kind of music they like.

02:20:55.000 It's a part of the tribe thing.

02:20:57.000 It's a part of our tribal instincts.

02:20:59.000 You have to be...

02:21:00.000 Two people don't like working together if one's a Republican and one's a Democrat. 0.99

02:21:04.000 They fucking hate each other. 1.00

02:21:06.000 And I've seen it in offices, like this fucking liberal breeding heart over here. 1.00

02:21:11.000 This guy, everything about Obamacare. 1.00

02:21:13.000 And then there's another one, this fucking redneck asshole over here. 1.00

02:21:16.000 If he could have his way, we'd all have slavery again. 1.00

02:21:20.000 That kind of shit is so prevalent. 1.00

02:21:23.000 It's interesting that the game of golf sort of, like, it encompasses an aspect of that tribal behavior. 1.00

02:21:30.000 You know, I think you can probably do that with most sports, too, though.

02:21:33.000 I mean, how much do you learn about somebody when you roll with them, Joe?

02:21:35.000 Oh, you learn everything.

02:21:37.000 You learn everything, right?

02:21:38.000 You learn everything.

02:21:39.000 You learn who they are.

02:21:40.000 Especially when they're tired.

02:21:41.000 Yeah.

02:21:41.000 You learn a lot about a person when they're tired.

02:21:43.000 Some dudes can keep going. 1.00

02:21:44.000 Some dudes just fucking fall down. 0.99

02:21:46.000 They just flatten out. 0.99

02:21:48.000 Yeah, it's interesting.

02:21:51.000 You learn about pool, too.

02:21:52.000 Same thing.

02:21:53.000 Same thing.

02:21:54.000 Pursuit.

02:21:55.000 Any sort of a pursuit.

02:21:56.000 If it becomes hard, you learn.

02:21:59.000 Who can keep it together?

02:22:00.000 Who's going to fall apart?

02:22:01.000 And doing this, it's the practice for life.

02:22:05.000 I think that's why I always innately, people who've been in athletics, male or female, have such a much greater affinity towards and trust.

02:22:13.000 When they've been to a high level and they've felt that pressure of fans and obligations and expectations and pushed through.

02:22:20.000 I know the feeling when some days in these biggest games in high school we'd get a couple thousand people as Texas sports.

02:22:26.000 And it would be so intense.

02:22:28.000 I would just want to go to sleep before the game.

02:22:31.000 I just want to curl up.

02:22:33.000 I'm just really tired right now.

02:22:34.000 But then you get out there and you feel the rush and you put your forearm into somebody on that first play and get your first hard drive to the basket and then this feeling just kind of explodes in you and you're in it.

02:22:46.000 But making it through that process without folding. 1.00

02:22:48.000 There was also other games where I never got that kind of restrictive energy out and I played like shit. 0.99

02:22:54.000 You know, just terrible. 0.99

02:22:55.000 And you learn about that.

02:22:56.000 You learn how to deal with the pressure, not internalize it.

02:22:59.000 Push through.

02:23:00.000 And man, so many times in business, in these challenges, you know, it applies.

02:23:05.000 The only way you learn pressure is to deal with pressure.

02:23:08.000 Exactly. 1.00

02:23:08.000 You gotta get used to that bitch. 1.00

02:23:10.000 Gotta feel her. 1.00

02:23:11.000 Know what she does.

02:23:13.000 How she tricks you.

02:23:14.000 How she messes with your head.

02:23:15.000 That's it.

02:23:16.000 Messes with your head.

02:23:17.000 You gotta learn that, too.

02:23:18.000 That's the big one.

02:23:19.000 Just like, you know, essentially it's resistance.

02:23:21.000 It's the same thing.

02:23:22.000 That doubt, that creeping doubt makes its way.

02:23:26.000 You gotta figure out a way through that.

02:23:27.000 The mind boy.

02:23:28.000 Yeah.

02:23:29.000 And we're all contributing to this collective guidebook of how to be a human.

02:23:35.000 Yeah.

02:23:35.000 You know?

02:23:36.000 You know, one thing I've just recently started playing with that occurred to me that there's little fears that we think of as trivial.

02:23:42.000 And a trivial fear like a fear of spiders.

02:23:45.000 And there's also things like, for example, for me, I have this block about doing a backflip on a trampoline.

02:23:52.000 Even like a super safe, super big one.

02:23:54.000 And I can backflip into pools.

02:23:56.000 I can do, you know, I'm a fairly athletic guy.

02:23:59.000 But as soon as I go to do it on a trampoline, which is fairly soft, my body just freezes up and I lock.

02:24:04.000 And I was talking to my friend about it, and for me, you know, when you allow these fears that are disproportionate away from the actual danger to take hold, it's almost giving credence, you know, giving resistance like this little bit of victory that can apply to other things.

02:24:20.000 Or if you're, you know, so afraid of spiders you can't even look at it.

02:24:24.000 Just by doing that, it's acknowledging that you have some certain limitations, and it's giving that other force that's going to limit you in life and deny you from achieving your goal just a little bit more power.

02:24:36.000 So even for me, and this is something I'm just recently playing with, These little trivial fears that we just kind of avoid, like, ah, this doesn't matter.

02:24:43.000 You know, who cares?

02:24:44.000 When am I going to see a spider?

02:24:45.000 I don't know. 0.99

02:24:45.000 I'll fucking deal with it when it comes. 0.99

02:24:46.000 Or who cares if I do a backflip on a trampoline, you know? 0.99

02:24:49.000 In effect, practically, it doesn't matter.

02:24:52.000 But as far as doing the little things to battle against these forces that are constantly looking to confine us, I think maybe it matters.

02:24:59.000 You know, like maybe pushing through these seemingly trivial things, it counts, you know?

02:25:05.000 It's an exercise of the mind.

02:25:06.000 Set yourself the task, Aubrey, to do that.

02:25:09.000 Oh yeah, for sure.

02:25:10.000 I decided that like a few days ago.

02:25:12.000 I haven't been home yet.

02:25:13.000 I'm walking out to the trampoline and I'm pushing through that moment where my legs just say, uh-uh, nobody.

02:25:18.000 You're not doing this.

02:25:19.000 And I'm going to do it.

02:25:20.000 I hope.

02:25:21.000 I hope I can.

02:25:22.000 I don't know, but I'll see.

02:25:23.000 I'll video it or something.

02:25:24.000 I'll figure it out.

02:25:25.000 I would guess that the backflip is a metaphor for something else for you.

02:25:30.000 It stands for something, right?

02:25:32.000 I mean, we all have that stuff.

02:25:33.000 For me, it's like claustrophobia.

02:25:36.000 Certain elevators I can't get on, airplanes.

02:25:40.000 And I know that it relates to other stuff.

02:25:45.000 It's not isolated.

02:25:49.000 Have you ever done a sensory deprivation tank experience?

02:25:51.000 No, never have.

02:25:52.000 Will you do it if I hook it up for you?

02:25:55.000 I don't know.

02:25:56.000 I get claustrophobic in there.

02:25:58.000 That's what I'm saying.

02:25:58.000 You can figure out a way through that.

02:26:00.000 Come on, man.

02:26:00.000 Well, tell me what it is.

02:26:01.000 Walk the walk, baby.

02:26:03.000 Come on.

02:26:04.000 It's a tank that's filled with water.

02:26:07.000 Have you ever seen the movie Altered States?

02:26:09.000 Yes.

02:26:09.000 That's it.

02:26:11.000 It's a tank filled with water.

02:26:12.000 The water's the same temperature as your skin, and it's filled with salt.

02:26:15.000 So there's like a thousand pounds of salt in the water.

02:26:17.000 I'm getting scared just to hear it.

02:26:19.000 You lie down in it, and you float.

02:26:21.000 You float.

02:26:22.000 You're above...

02:26:22.000 You breathe, because your body is half underwater.

02:26:26.000 But it's so dense with salt, you float.

02:26:28.000 You close the lid on the door, and you're in complete silence, complete darkness.

02:26:32.000 Your ears are actually underwater.

02:26:34.000 I'm panicking already.

02:26:34.000 You shouldn't panic.

02:26:35.000 It's amazing.

02:26:35.000 Can we leave the door open?

02:26:37.000 Nope, nope, nope.

02:26:38.000 How dare you?

02:26:38.000 How dare you not walk the walk?

02:26:40.000 What is going on here?

02:26:41.000 We're learning so much about Steven Pressfield.

02:26:44.000 Yeah, but if you really do have an issue with claustrophobia, that would be the place to cure it.

02:26:50.000 Great way to get through it.

02:26:51.000 Yeah, you'll get through it 100% because it's the most claustrophobic place in the universe.

02:26:54.000 Oh, it sounds great.

02:26:55.000 It separates you from your body.

02:26:58.000 But it's amazing.

02:27:00.000 How about a coffin underground?

02:27:01.000 Let me explain to you what the benefit is.

02:27:03.000 The benefit is when you're in that water, the water is the same temperature as your skin, so you don't feel the water.

02:27:09.000 You're floating, so it's a feeling of weightlessness.

02:27:12.000 Total silence, total darkness, a complete absence of sensory input.

02:27:15.000 So because there's nothing coming in, your brain is so much more powerful.

02:27:21.000 It's a weird thing.

02:27:22.000 The way I describe it is if we were having this conversation and there was a jackhammer next door, it would be very hard to concentrate.

02:27:27.000 We would want to move away from the sound of that jackhammer.

02:27:29.000 But life is a jackhammer. 1.00

02:27:30.000 It's a jackhammer on your ass when you're sitting on this chair. 1.00

02:27:33.000 As we're sitting, your ass is constantly sending signals like, yep, that's a leather chair under my ass. 1.00

02:27:39.000 Yep, these are things under my armpits. 1.00

02:27:41.000 Yep, there's Aubrey.

02:27:42.000 Yep, there's Steven Pressfield.

02:27:43.000 Yep, this is a wood table. 1.00

02:27:45.000 This shit's all coming in. 1.00

02:27:46.000 And we just completely take it for granted. 1.00

02:27:49.000 When you're inside that tank, Nothing comes in.

02:27:52.000 You're floating in space completely weightless and in the absence of sensory input the mind becomes supercharged because the mind has all these resources that all of a sudden are available that it thought it was going to have to deal with the weight of the body and moving along the ground and avoiding objects and Social cues and all that stuff that it doesn't have to deal with right now.

02:28:11.000 So the mind has all these resources free.

02:28:13.000 And it becomes a very self-examining, self-objective analysis of your life.

02:28:22.000 Almost like a seminar on your life.

02:28:24.000 And then it becomes a psychedelic experience.

02:28:25.000 The more comfortable you get with it, the more you have visions.

02:28:28.000 But I think for you creatively, man, the things that you would come up with inside of that Tank would be amazing.

02:28:34.000 Once you got over it, you got a couple of bucks.

02:28:36.000 Buy one, put it in your basement.

02:28:38.000 Have a panic button, put it in.

02:28:40.000 Muse is there, ready to visit you.

02:28:41.000 Let's start seeing Steve and see golf.

02:28:43.000 We're going to force you to walk the walk, sir. 0.98

02:28:45.000 This is ridiculous. 0.96

02:28:47.000 You need to get in there. 0.95

02:28:48.000 Aubrey's done it.

02:28:49.000 He loves it.

02:28:50.000 Yeah, it's a really interesting experience.

02:28:52.000 I think the same for these fears are superstitions, I've realized too, that you allow these superstitions to persist, and that's just another head on the resistance hydra.

02:29:02.000 You know what I mean? 0.95

02:29:04.000 Like obsessive compulsive shit that people do before they jump? 0.97

02:29:08.000 Today, it's a podcast where I'm reaching a lot of people, and so I'm kind of amped up. 0.97

02:29:13.000 And so I was picking my kombuchas, and I was like, which one should I pick?

02:29:17.000 And then all of a sudden, I was like, well, maybe I should pick this one over this one. 0.96

02:29:19.000 I was like, hey, dummy, stop being superstitious. 0.95

02:29:22.000 They're all the same. 0.97

02:29:23.000 It doesn't matter.

02:29:24.000 So you were thinking that if you got the wrong one, you'd have a bad time on the show?

02:29:28.000 Yeah, maybe not all that far, but I was like, this one has better juju than the other one.

02:29:32.000 And then I just stopped myself and I was like, just because there's a pressure to vent, all these little things will come out.

02:29:39.000 Normally, I just rip that thing off the shelf, never think about it. 0.99

02:29:42.000 But because, as you said, you're moving from lower to higher, and I'm trying to bring my best self to this show, I was stressed about these little things, and then I had to stop myself and say, hey, this is bullshit. 0.96

02:29:54.000 You can't allow these trivial things to bother you. 0.55

02:29:58.000 It's just another form of resistance in this point because the pressure's on. 1.00

02:30:02.000 So your mind's like, oh, there's luck and omens, and if the birds fly this way or that way, you got to get rid of that shit, too. 0.99

02:30:09.000 These trivial fears and these trivial superstitions, I really think that you got to cut those out, just ruthlessly. 0.99

02:30:18.000 But I'll take the other side of that. 1.00

02:30:20.000 Getting that tight, bitch. 1.00

02:30:21.000 I think there is luck. 1.00

02:30:23.000 Yeah.

02:30:24.000 I think there is feng shui or whatever it is.

02:30:26.000 I mean, if you think about people are getting married, right?

02:30:29.000 A couple's getting married.

02:30:30.000 That's not luck.

02:30:30.000 They put in tremendous thought.

02:30:33.000 Trust me.

02:30:34.000 No.

02:30:35.000 But doesn't everybody put tremendous thought into what day are we getting married?

02:30:39.000 Where are we getting married?

02:30:40.000 Are we going to get on a cliff in Malibu or whatever it is?

02:30:43.000 And why do they do that?

02:30:45.000 Because it's going to be either lucky, it'll be lucky for them, or like when you're naming a child.

02:30:50.000 And you're trying to say, well, what name am I going to give this child, right? 0.98

02:30:54.000 Don't you, whether you think so or not, you feel like, shit, if I give this, my daughter, the wrong name, it's going to fuck up her entire life. 0.99

02:31:02.000 Or she'll just change it to Aubrey. 0.99

02:31:03.000 Or vice versa.

02:31:05.000 The right name.

02:31:06.000 Yeah.

02:31:07.000 So, I mean, you're saying that- I never think like that.

02:31:09.000 We were saying before, right, that there are dragons possibly flying through the air that we just can't see right now because we're not in a psychedelic state.

02:31:16.000 Why isn't it true that there's luck?

02:31:19.000 And, you know, I mean, certainly the Chinese, Japanese believe in that, right?

02:31:23.000 You get with the flow.

02:31:24.000 I just think it's a slippery slope, and it can be a virtual form.

02:31:28.000 That's true.

02:31:28.000 It can get a little crazy.

02:31:29.000 Yeah, it can be a virtual...

02:31:29.000 You look like someone like Rafael Nadal.

02:31:32.000 Somehow he makes it work, but he's got to tie and retie his shoe, you know, 12 times to get it right, you know?

02:31:37.000 And if he doesn't get it right, he's not going to play that point right, you know?

02:31:40.000 And he's going to have...

02:31:41.000 You can bring it...

02:31:42.000 It's logical conclusion...

02:31:44.000 You can take it too far.

02:31:45.000 Yeah, it's logical conclusion is always in the realm of wackiness.

02:31:48.000 But I don't think that there's nothing there.

02:31:50.000 Sure.

02:31:50.000 I can't prove it, but I think there's something there.

02:31:53.000 But I think it has to do a lot more...

02:31:54.000 I mean, I think it has a lot more to do with your own kind of intent.

02:31:58.000 When I go to Vegas, the only game I like to play is craps.

02:32:01.000 So anybody who's played enough craps and rolled the dice, you've got to be a little bit...

02:32:05.000 You've got to believe in luck a little bit.

02:32:06.000 I mean, you'll feel these moments where you just feel invincible.

02:32:10.000 And then it goes out.

02:32:11.000 Pool too.

02:32:11.000 Pool as well.

02:32:12.000 There's some guys who, when you play nine ball, I play in a lot of tournaments, and nine balls, there's a lot of luck involved in nine ball.

02:32:19.000 There's a lot of skill because you play from one to nine, but any ball that goes in, even if you don't make it on purpose, it counts, including the nine ball, which is the game-winning ball.

02:32:29.000 So there's some guys that just ride the nine ball.

02:32:31.000 Like, they get ball in hand when they scratch, so they'll set up a ball behind another ball and just whack that ball into the nine ball.

02:32:36.000 Hoping it bounces around the table and falls in somewhere.

02:32:39.000 Because if it does, they win. 0.99

02:32:40.000 And there's this one motherfucker that I play in this tournament with that drives everybody crazy. 1.00

02:32:45.000 Because every time he gets cue ball in hand, it doesn't matter if there's three balls on the table, one of them is the nine. 0.99

02:32:50.000 He sends the ball into the nine and whacks it and lets it fly around.

02:32:54.000 But when he's on a hot streak, they fall.

02:32:58.000 They fall like rain. 1.00

02:32:59.000 And I've seen it happen, and I've seen this where people go, Motherfucker! 0.99

02:33:04.000 This guy just won again, and he won by just total luck, just crashing the balls together, and that nine ball finds a way into a hole somewhere. 0.99

02:33:13.000 And when he's on, it's tangible.

02:33:16.000 And to me, the distinction is you're putting out your own intent.

02:33:20.000 And I think there is a key in the universe there.

02:33:24.000 There's kind of an access point where if you put your intent and put your belief into that, whether you're rolling dice, I do, and it gets a little fuzzy here, but I believe that there are some forces at work, this kind of momentum force that causes seemingly chance events to more line up in your way.

02:33:40.000 And I know this is a very controversial topic, but it just feels, that's the way, I couldn't prove it, of course, but that's the way It feels to me when I'm in those moments, you know, where it feels like you can control things that you would think are out of your control by the will of your own intent and belief.

02:33:55.000 And that's, you know, not just my belief.

02:33:57.000 That's the belief of many of the shamanistic cultures.

02:34:00.000 Right.

02:34:00.000 Primitive cultures believe that, right?

02:34:02.000 You know what's really interesting?

02:34:03.000 That can't be statistically proven.

02:34:05.000 What's really interesting, I had Sam Harris on the podcast.

02:34:07.000 He's coming back again at the end of this month.

02:34:09.000 And he was talking about the hot hand phenomena of basketball, where guys just all net.

02:34:17.000 They just can't miss.

02:34:18.000 Statistically, it's not real.

02:34:20.000 Well, no.

02:34:20.000 That study, I have a big problem with that study.

02:34:23.000 Great.

02:34:23.000 Thank you.

02:34:24.000 Help me.

02:34:24.000 The way they did that study is they measured the hot hand by when three baskets in a row went in.

02:34:30.000 Well, anybody who's played basketball knows I can have my head in my ass and make three baskets in a row. 0.98

02:34:36.000 It doesn't mean I have the hot hand. 0.99

02:34:38.000 Only you know when you have the hot hand.

02:34:40.000 You feel it.

02:34:41.000 It feels sensibly different.

02:34:43.000 Same like in pool.

02:34:44.000 If you were going to measure people who are on the roll in pool and measuring it by, okay, the person who after they run four or five balls.

02:34:51.000 Well, it could have been an easy run that you just hit five balls.

02:34:54.000 When you're in the zone and you're really feeling it, it's a different thing.

02:34:58.000 You're absolutely right.

02:34:59.000 And so you would have to basically go to basketball players and say, you know, they'd have to hold up a little, push a little button.

02:35:05.000 And you know what the problem with that is?

02:35:06.000 Once they say that, it would fuck up their zone. 0.97

02:35:09.000 It would fuck them up. 0.89

02:35:09.000 There's moments that you have in pool. 0.89

02:35:11.000 There was a moment I was playing in pool.

02:35:13.000 It was me and my friend Eric Crisp.

02:35:15.000 Eric Crisp is a guy who, he's a cue maker, makes Sugartree cues.

02:35:19.000 We were playing and I was fucking running out like every time I got to the table.

02:35:24.000 If you left me a shot, I was running out like a pro. 0.98

02:35:27.000 We're playing on a tight diamond, but it was craziness.

02:35:29.000 I just couldn't miss.

02:35:30.000 I just had this feel of where the ball...

02:35:33.000 We had been playing for like seven hours, and I was just completely lubed up high as all hell.

02:35:39.000 And I just had this zone.

02:35:41.000 I had this feel for where the ball was going.

02:35:43.000 I knew exactly where it was going at all times.

02:35:45.000 I can't do it forever.

02:35:46.000 And then the next day I played again and I was terrible.

02:35:49.000 I only had two hours to play that time.

02:35:51.000 And I couldn't get it back.

02:35:52.000 It was gone.

02:35:53.000 But I know it was there the night before.

02:35:55.000 It was there, man.

02:35:56.000 It was there.

02:35:56.000 Because even he was going, Jesus Christ.

02:35:58.000 I've never seen you play this good before.

02:36:00.000 I've never played this good before.

02:36:01.000 It's never happened.

02:36:02.000 But I'm in that thing.

02:36:03.000 I know how to do it right now.

02:36:05.000 It's locked in.

02:36:07.000 It's a zone.

02:36:08.000 What is that?

02:36:09.000 And you only feel it.

02:36:10.000 What is that?

02:36:10.000 What's that zone?

02:36:11.000 Who knows, you know?

02:36:12.000 I mean, it's just what you're talking about, Joe.

02:36:14.000 You get into that place where the mind boy goes away.

02:36:18.000 That's not luck, though, right?

02:36:19.000 And you're tapping.

02:36:20.000 That's not luck.

02:36:21.000 No, I don't think it is luck.

02:36:22.000 I'm not sure what it is, but something lines up with something because we've all been there.

02:36:27.000 One way or another.

02:36:28.000 Stephen King saying that he didn't even remember certain books that he wrote because that's where he was.

02:36:34.000 Is that luck or is that cocaine?

02:36:37.000 That's the zone, whatever the zone is.

02:36:39.000 That's unluck.

02:36:40.000 Cocaine is never connected to luck.

02:36:43.000 Yeah, that zone.

02:36:45.000 It's your authentic swing.

02:36:46.000 It's when you're really doing what it is that you do and nothing else is blocking you.

02:36:51.000 Well, sort of.

02:36:52.000 It's also with pool.

02:36:54.000 It's processing information.

02:36:57.000 Because there's information that's coming back from the cue, there's information that's coming back from your arm, your hands, and then when you process that information over a long period of time, then you get so much data that you really understand the dynamics of the table.

02:37:12.000 You really understand the mechanics of your arm, You really understand how hard exactly you have to hit that ball to make it travel exactly as far as you want it to.

02:37:21.000 There's this weird thing that goes on.

02:37:24.000 But there's this tipping point moment where you're accumulating, accumulating, maybe it's gradual, more data, and then all of a sudden it hits a tipping point where you're there.

02:37:32.000 It's gone.

02:37:35.000 And that's where the weirdness happens.

02:37:37.000 That's where I think there's a little bit of magic.

02:37:38.000 But the thing about pool, much like everything else, is that there's this mindset that must be maintained. 0.99

02:37:45.000 And if you think you're going to miss, you'll fucking miss. 0.64

02:37:48.000 There's a weird thing about pool. 0.97

02:37:50.000 You could line it up right. 0.99

02:37:51.000 Everything's supposed to be like, fuck, I'm going to miss! 1.00

02:37:54.000 Blank! 1.00

02:37:54.000 And you miss. 1.00

02:37:55.000 It's weird.

02:37:56.000 It seems like it's such a straightforward thing.

02:37:59.000 The arm moves straight.

02:38:00.000 It hits into the ball.

02:38:01.000 The ball goes straight.

02:38:02.000 Nope. 0.99

02:38:03.000 If you think you're going to miss, if you decide right before you're doing it, fuck, I hope I don't miss. 0.99

02:38:07.000 You're going to miss. 0.99

02:38:08.000 So how do you diffuse that when that little nasty devil comes up, either in writing or in pool?

02:38:12.000 How do you diffuse that little voice that comes up?

02:38:15.000 I wish I knew.

02:38:17.000 Well, you've done it.

02:38:18.000 You've done it.

02:38:19.000 You know, I mean, there must have been voices at times that say, and it is a form of resistance, right?

02:38:23.000 Well, the thing about writing, of course, is there's always rewriting.

02:38:27.000 It's not like shooting pool and you have that one moment.

02:38:30.000 You can screw it up and then come back tomorrow and do it a little better.

02:38:35.000 That's the great thing about writing.

02:38:37.000 So what about when you're taking that shot, Joe, and you get that little nasty voice?

02:38:40.000 How do you reset yourself?

02:38:42.000 I stop.

02:38:43.000 I stop.

02:38:44.000 I stop the voice, first of all, and I usually sit up for a second, stroke my cue again, put it down.

02:38:50.000 I go through the whole reset.

02:38:52.000 That's a very important thing.

02:38:53.000 Professionals will tell you that.

02:38:54.000 People actually coach that, like Max Eberle coaches that, that when you're down a shot, if you don't like it, stand up.

02:39:00.000 And then begin your whole pre-shot ritual again.

02:39:02.000 Get back into position.

02:39:03.000 Make sure your arm's in line, your cue's in line.

02:39:05.000 Go back again and approach it the same way.

02:39:07.000 Don't ever take a shot where you think you're gonna miss.

02:39:09.000 But I've done it.

02:39:10.000 I'll do it tonight, you know?

02:39:12.000 I do it every time I play.

02:39:13.000 It's like I said, it's a swim.

02:39:16.000 It's not a mountain climb.

02:39:17.000 You don't get to the top and plant a flag.

02:39:19.000 You never win.

02:39:20.000 You never win.

02:39:21.000 You never win with anything.

02:39:22.000 You just gotta keep going.

02:39:23.000 You'll get way better than you used to be, but as long as you're pushing yourself, as long as you're still trying to create, as long as you're still trying to get movement going, it's not going to work all the time.

02:39:34.000 There's going to be flubs.

02:39:35.000 But those flubs, I love them, because those signal growth moments for me.

02:39:41.000 At least that's how I have managed to...

02:39:44.000 To navigate them. 0.99

02:39:45.000 Every time I fuck something up, like, I can look back in my career as a comedian, and my biggest growth periods came after I fucking ate a plate of shit on stage. 0.97

02:39:53.000 And I'm like, ooh, I don't want to do that ever again. 0.98

02:39:56.000 And then I figured it out.

02:39:57.000 And even, like, weird sets today, like, that are, it was, like, mediocre, or I don't like, things didn't come together right, or I was tired, or I wasn't in comedy shape.

02:40:05.000 Ooh, those things fucking fire me up, man.

02:40:08.000 Nothing makes me want to write more, nothing makes me want to perform more. 0.89

02:40:11.000 Yeah.

02:40:12.000 Now I hear you.

02:40:13.000 I hear you 100%.

02:40:14.000 Well, listen, man.

02:40:16.000 I think this is a long enough podcast.

02:40:18.000 It's an awesome one.

02:40:19.000 It's been an honor.

02:40:20.000 How'd you find out about us?

02:40:21.000 Who told you that we were talking about you?

02:40:24.000 Well, I run into people all the time who are big fans of your podcast, you know?

02:40:28.000 And they say, oh, Joe Rogan, he's fantastic, you know?

02:40:31.000 But also, I think we've been in touch via Callie Ottinger, right?

02:40:36.000 Yeah.

02:40:36.000 Who's my publicity gal?

02:40:37.000 Yes, yes.

02:40:37.000 And, you know, I think...

02:40:40.000 People have said to me, hey, Joe, he's always talking about your books you've got to get on the show, you know?

02:40:44.000 And then I think there have been a few times when we've sort of tried to or I've tried to reach out and something got in the way or something.

02:40:50.000 So finally...

02:40:51.000 Resistance.

02:40:51.000 Finally we did it, yeah.

02:40:52.000 We beat it.

02:40:54.000 Thank you very much.

02:40:55.000 It's a real honor, a real privilege to have you.

02:40:56.000 Thanks for having me, Joe.

02:40:57.000 It's a real pleasure to have you.

02:40:58.000 It's a pleasure to be here with the Werewolves, Aubrey.

02:41:00.000 If you ever have a book that's coming out that you want to promote, we would be happy to have you on again.

02:41:05.000 I would love it and we'll promote the shit out of it and I guarantee you a lot of people are going to buy them just from listening to this.

02:41:10.000 The War of Art is the one that I recommend if you're looking for a book that's a great book on motivation, a great book on overcoming resistance and the creative process.

02:41:19.000 I haven't read The Authentic Swing but I certainly will and I'm going to get into Gates of Fire tonight.

02:41:26.000 I'm going to get into that tonight.

02:41:28.000 Anything else people need to find you on Twitter, it's S Pressfield on Twitter.

02:41:33.000 Do you do that or do you have somebody else do that?

02:41:35.000 I don't know about that. 0.99

02:41:37.000 You don't fuck around with tweets. 0.92

02:41:38.000 But I do have a website and a blog. 0.94

02:41:41.000 Your blog is very good, by the way.

02:41:43.000 I've just been getting into it.

02:41:44.000 StephenPressfield.com.

02:41:46.000 Okay, so that's S-T-E-V-E-N, not like King.

02:41:51.000 Steven Pressfield with two S's, F-I-E-L-D. Thank you very much, man.

02:41:56.000 That was awesome.

02:41:57.000 I really, really enjoyed that.

02:41:59.000 Thanks a lot, you guys.

02:42:00.000 A real pleasure.

02:42:01.000 And thanks to our sponsors.

02:42:02.000 Thanks to LegalZoom.

02:42:05.000 Go to LegalZoom.com.

02:42:06.000 Use the code name Rogan and save yourself some money.

02:42:10.000 Thanks also to Stamps.com.

02:42:12.000 Go to Stamps.com.

02:42:14.000 Use the code word J-R-E and get yourself a $110 bonus offer.

02:42:21.000 Special offer, whatever the hell you want to call it.

02:42:23.000 And GoToMeeting.

02:42:27.000 GoToMeeting.com.

02:42:28.000 Use the code word J-R-E and try it free for 30 days. 0.70

02:42:33.000 Alright, we will see you guys tomorrow.

02:42:34.000 And we will see you also tomorrow night.

02:42:37.000 We're at the Ice House.

02:42:38.000 It's Brian Redband, Ian Edwards, Matt Fultron, Tommy Segura.

02:42:43.000 Me and Tony Hinchcliffe, too.

02:42:45.000 It's a hell of a show.

02:42:46.000 A hell of a show.

02:42:47.000 $15, 10pm.

02:42:49.000 Come on down, freaks. 1.00

02:42:50.000 And this weekend, Houston.

02:42:53.000 Friday night, I'm at the Bayou Music Center with the great Tom Segura.

02:42:58.000 And then, of course, Saturdays at UFC. Lots of good shit coming up, including lots of really cool podcast guests that we've got on the horizon.

02:43:08.000 Anna Kasparian from The Young Turks is going to be here next week. 1.00

02:43:15.000 And coming up soon, we have Sam Harris at the end of the month and a lot of other good guests as well.

02:43:20.000 Alright, we'll see you guys soon.

02:43:21.000 Much love to everybody.

02:43:22.000 Big kiss.

02:43:31.000 I think?

The Joe Rogan Experience - October 15, 2013

Joe Rogan Experience #405 - Steven Pressfield, Aubrey Marcus

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