The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #464 - Robert Greene, Aubrey Marcus

00:00:01.000 Hello, freaks. 1.00

00:00:03.000 That's right, we're back.

00:00:05.000 Just when you thought you had had enough of us, you will listen to this one as well.

00:00:10.000 Some of you out there will say this is the last one.

00:00:14.000 Other ones, this will be your first one.

00:00:16.000 So for you...

00:00:17.000 One day you'll get sick of me.

00:00:19.000 It happens.

00:00:20.000 Everybody gets sick of everything, folks.

00:00:22.000 Eat meatloaf every day. 1.00

00:00:23.000 It fucking tastes like shit. 1.00

00:00:24.000 But if you were lost in the woods and you hadn't seen meatloaf for months, and you'd be living off frogs, fucking pond water, meatloaf would be awesome. 1.00

00:00:33.000 That's not a good way to start a podcast. 0.98

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00:05:01.000 There you go.

00:05:02.000 We're also brought to you by Onnit.com.

00:05:04.000 What a coincidence today.

00:05:06.000 We happen to have Aubrey...

00:05:09.000 The CEO of Onnit.com with us.

00:05:12.000 What up? 0.99

00:05:13.000 So he could tell us lots of groovy shit about Onnit. 0.99

00:05:16.000 I am on Onnit right now. 0.98

00:05:17.000 I'm wearing an Onnit t-shirt and I'm hopped up on AlphaBrain. 0.99

00:05:20.000 I had some fucking AlphaBrain dreams last night, son. 0.99

00:05:24.000 Oh, good googly moogly. 0.99

00:05:26.000 I took AlphaBrain with dinner and I went to bed about four hours later and had Paula Deen wrestling dreams. 0.71

00:05:34.000 Wow.

00:05:35.000 I was wrestling Paula Dean on a psychedelic rainbow. 1.00

00:05:39.000 It was the most bizarre shit. 0.99

00:05:41.000 There were skateboards involved. 1.00

00:05:45.000 That's epic.

00:05:46.000 You're going to get an animation of that now.

00:05:50.000 You just birthed that into the ether.

00:05:52.000 One can only hope.

00:05:53.000 Even if Alpha Brain didn't... 0.97

00:05:56.000 It didn't enhance your cognitive function, which it does, and now it's been clinically proven to do so. 0.99

00:06:02.000 It's worth taking just for the fucking dreams, man. 0.99

00:06:04.000 I believe it's choline. 1.00

00:06:06.000 Is it choline that causes those dreams?

00:06:07.000 Yeah, acetylcholine helps regulate the REM state in your sleep, and REM state is the dream state.

00:06:12.000 So the more acetylcholine you have, generally, the longer and deeper your REM state's going to be, so the crazier your dreams can get. 0.97

00:06:19.000 So whether or not you even want to take alfabrine, double up on that acetylcholine and go for a fucking wild ride. 0.92

00:06:26.000 And it's a safe ride, folks, okay? 0.99

00:06:28.000 You're not going to die.

00:06:29.000 You might think you're going to die, but I'm pretty sure you can't die in your dreams.

00:06:32.000 Has that ever been proven?

00:06:34.000 You can't die in your dreams, right?

00:06:35.000 You just wake up.

00:06:36.000 I don't know if that's a fact.

00:06:38.000 Yeah.

00:06:38.000 How would anybody ever know?

00:06:40.000 Yeah, because you could lie about it.

00:06:42.000 I died in my dream.

00:06:43.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:06:43.000 People would be like, well, the fucking... 1.00

00:06:44.000 But if you died, nobody would ever know. 1.00

00:06:46.000 Well, usually the adrenaline of the pre-death moment usually wakes you up, I think.

00:06:50.000 Yeah.

00:06:50.000 You know, you're like, ah!

00:06:51.000 Yeah.

00:06:52.000 Yeah.

00:06:52.000 The other thing I found with AlphaBrain that's really interesting is that lucid dreams are much more...

00:06:57.000 They're much more durable.

00:06:59.000 Like, I've always found that whatever...

00:07:01.000 I've never taken any lucid dream courses.

00:07:04.000 I've never read any books on lucid dreams.

00:07:06.000 Apparently, there's a lot of...

00:07:08.000 There's strategies that you can use, and one of them I've done that I saw in one of those silly movies, like The Secret, one of those movies, The Rabbit Hole or What the Bleep Do We Know, I think it was, where a guy was saying, go to every door that you walk through, and before you walk through it, knock on the wall and say,

00:07:24.000 am I dreaming?

00:07:25.000 And do it as a habit, so that every time you go through a door, you go, am I dreaming?

00:07:29.000 One time I did it in my dream, and it was like, whoosh, whoosh. 0.99

00:07:32.000 I go, oh, fuck, I'm dreaming. 0.94

00:07:34.000 And so I really did wake up in the middle of a dream, but it was very, very durable. 0.99

00:07:40.000 It was really interesting.

00:07:41.000 Yeah, you can stay in it and play with it and see where you can take it.

00:07:45.000 Yeah, that's not normal.

00:07:46.000 Usually, I go, oh my god, I'm dreaming, and I wake up, and then it's gone.

00:07:50.000 Party's over.

00:07:51.000 Yeah, instantly.

00:07:52.000 Like, I've had a few where I was flying for like 15 seconds or something like that, but the alpha brain dreams.

00:07:58.000 How long does it take for you to turn a lucid dream into sex? 0.89

00:08:01.000 Oh, instantly. 0.89

00:08:02.000 Instantly. 0.94

00:08:02.000 I find someone and just start a rape fest. 0.94

00:08:07.000 No. 1.00

00:08:07.000 You know, in their dreams, they all want to fuck, which is weird. 1.00

00:08:11.000 Because it's your mind. 1.00

00:08:13.000 It's my dreams.

00:08:15.000 Very exciting.

00:08:15.000 Since you've been here last, we were finally able to publish some of the first of a series of clinical tests, the first one on AlphaBrain.

00:08:24.000 So tell some people about that, because it's pretty exciting.

00:08:27.000 Yeah, we did a pilot study just to kind of prove the concept with the Boston Center for Memory.

00:08:31.000 And Double-blind, placebo-controlled study.

00:08:34.000 People took two alpha brain pills, which was kind of hard to figure out because we did a survey and a lot of people take three, but the majority still take two.

00:08:41.000 I take four.

00:08:42.000 Some people take one.

00:08:43.000 A few savages take four. 0.71

00:08:44.000 I can't get hurt by it.

00:08:45.000 You and A.J. Hawk take four.

00:08:47.000 Fuck yeah, A.J.! A few savages take four. 1.00

00:08:49.000 So we went with two and did a study testing a bunch of cognitive markers.

00:08:54.000 And even with the small sample size, we had 17 people total go through.

00:08:58.000 We were able to achieve statistical significance in a couple key tests.

00:09:01.000 Stroop inhibition tests, executive cognitive functioning, some verbal memory tests.

00:09:07.000 So some really good indications that the alpha brain is having the desired effect that all the people who take it and everybody...

00:09:14.000 Who likes it, has been talking about, now we have some science to back it up.

00:09:18.000 So we're currently in a follow-up study with about 80 patients that's halfway through right now.

00:09:24.000 It's kind of a rolling enrollment.

00:09:25.000 And so hopefully we'll get some of that data.

00:09:27.000 At least to us by the summer and then look at the publication and presentation schedule.

00:09:32.000 But they're stoked.

00:09:33.000 I actually found out after the results came out that they didn't expect it to work. 0.98

00:09:38.000 The people who were doing it, they're like, whoa, oh shit, this really worked.

00:09:42.000 Well, for folks who don't know, before we did any studies on it, there have been studies done on the individual...

00:09:50.000 Individual ingredients of AlphaBrain. 0.98

00:09:53.000 And that's something like people go, oh, there's no fucking, this is snake oil. 0.96

00:09:56.000 It's not at all snake oil. 0.91

00:09:58.000 The concept behind AlphaBrain was just that they would work synergistically, which has proven to be correct.

00:10:04.000 But the ingredients, the individual ingredients, there is science behind it.

00:10:09.000 There's research and references.

00:10:10.000 All of it's available at Onnit.com.

00:10:12.000 So go there if you're interested. 0.97

00:10:14.000 What Onnit is, even if you go there, you're like, what the fuck are these guys doing? 0.99

00:10:17.000 They're preparing for war. 0.97

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00:10:22.000 And what that means is we're trying to sell you things that can enhance your cognitive function, enhance your mood, enhance your physical fitness, enhance your body's ability to do work, enhance the way your body functions.

00:10:35.000 And there's a lot of stuff out there that does that.

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00:11:00.000 You got it.

00:11:01.000 Stephen Shubin Jr., this fucking awesome artist, has made us these incredible kettlebells that are also works of art. 0.98

00:11:06.000 I know people that have these that don't even work out. 0.99

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00:11:28.000 Go to Onnit.com.

00:11:29.000 I'm O-N-N-I-T. If you use the code word ROGAN, you will save 10% off any and all supplements.

00:11:35.000 Alright, ladies and gents, Robert Green is here, and we're going to get busy. 0.99

00:11:39.000 We're going to talk about some shit, we're going to enhance your life, we're going to get you fired up, and you're going to fucking get shit done. 0.99

00:11:44.000 Cue the music, Jamie! 1.00

00:11:46.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:11:48.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:11:50.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:11:57.000 First of all, Robert Green, thank you very much for doing the podcast.

00:12:00.000 I really appreciate it.

00:12:01.000 It's a pleasure to meet you.

00:12:02.000 Pleasure to have you in here.

00:12:03.000 I've heard many, many, many fantastic things about you, but this guy over here raves, rants and raves, and I know you were recently on the Warrior Poet Project podcast, which is his podcast, and he couldn't say enough good things.

00:12:16.000 So, had to have you in here, man.

00:12:18.000 Thank you. 0.91

00:12:18.000 Have to learn some stuff, have to figure out what you've accumulated for all your years of research and writing books and Your books all seem to be about getting your shit together, about producing results. 0.91

00:12:32.000 Yeah, starting with the 48 Laws of Power. 0.99

00:12:36.000 I basically decided to enter the self-help genre with a lot of trepidation because I think it's full of a lot of bullshit. 0.99

00:12:43.000 Wait a minute! 1.00

00:12:44.000 Hold on! 0.98

00:12:45.000 What are you saying?

00:12:47.000 I'm saying that it's filled with a lot of triacly stuff that's going to make you feel good about yourself.

00:12:55.000 It's going to boost your ego a bit but doesn't get anything.

00:12:59.000 There's nothing real behind it.

00:13:01.000 There's some things about life that are harsh.

00:13:04.000 There are people out there that are dirty and mean that you need to know about.

00:13:09.000 There's...

00:13:12.000 All sorts of things that aren't being discussed in these books.

00:13:15.000 I know, for instance, when I started out in Hollywood, I used to work in Hollywood, I was really shocked by all of the power maneuvers and the passive-aggressive games that were going on.

00:13:29.000 What did you do in Hollywood?

00:13:31.000 I wasn't horribly successful.

00:13:33.000 I was a writer.

00:13:34.000 I was assistant to a producer, assistant to a director, a researcher, a story developer.

00:13:39.000 I basically did everything.

00:13:41.000 But you were connected to the machine.

00:13:43.000 Very much so.

00:13:44.000 You got to see the gears spin.

00:13:45.000 Very much so.

00:13:46.000 And nobody writes about what really goes on in the world.

00:13:49.000 I got so sick of it.

00:13:51.000 I see all sorts of weird games being played.

00:13:54.000 One director, this one producer who wanted to direct his first film and basically it would look bad if he was the director of something that he had Sort of put together, just wouldn't look good politically.

00:14:08.000 So what he did is he hired somebody he knew would do a terrible job, a director, a first-time director.

00:14:14.000 He knew the guy would fail, and then he could go in and rescue him and become the director on the project.

00:14:19.000 But in the meantime, totally destroying this other person's reputation.

00:14:23.000 On and on.

00:14:24.000 I could list a hundred other sort of games like that.

00:14:26.000 That's a quite clever move.

00:14:28.000 All sorts of things right out of The Art of War.

00:14:31.000 That's just so I can jump in here and give a bit of my story.

00:14:34.000 I found that book, Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power, before I had met you.

00:14:38.000 And I was in kind of a dark time in my own work climate.

00:14:42.000 And I started reading it, and I started realizing all of the things that were happening. 0.99

00:14:47.000 Like, oh shit, that's what's going on. 0.99

00:14:50.000 That's why. 1.00

00:14:51.000 This bad shit is happening. 0.99

00:14:52.000 That's why I'm being thwarted in this goal that I have, you know? 0.99

00:14:57.000 Because you go in with these good-natured intentions thinking, I'm just going to do my best, I'm going to wear my heart on my sleeve, and it's all going to work out. 1.00

00:15:04.000 Bullshit! 1.00

00:15:04.000 It doesn't work out, you know? 1.00

00:15:06.000 It can!

00:15:07.000 It's all his book.

00:15:08.000 It can.

00:15:08.000 You got to get lucky and get in touch with the right people.

00:15:11.000 Or be in the right situation. 0.94

00:15:13.000 But a lot of times, if you're in a kind of politically charged situation or a situation with a lot of ego, his book was like this wake-up call of just sheer, unabated truth about what the fuck is going on.

00:15:26.000 It's not so that I could do it myself, but at least so I could protect myself and see it and identify it.

00:15:32.000 So this move that this producer did, did that surprise you at all? 1.00

00:15:38.000 Were you like, oh, you motherfucker? 1.00

00:15:41.000 Completely, because he never told me. 1.00

00:15:43.000 Obviously, he wasn't going to confide that this was going on.

00:15:45.000 That's my interpretation later on.

00:15:47.000 So you're sure that that's what happened?

00:15:49.000 Oh, completely, 100%.

00:15:51.000 And I've seen him do other things, so I saw...

00:15:54.000 What's his name? 1.00

00:15:54.000 What's his fucking name? 1.00

00:15:55.000 I can't do that. 1.00

00:15:57.000 You shouldn't.

00:15:58.000 He's no longer among us, so I don't want to...

00:16:00.000 Oh, he's dead?

00:16:01.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:16:01.000 Fucker. 1.00

00:16:03.000 You got off light, pal. 1.00

00:16:05.000 And he wasn't a totally awful person.

00:16:07.000 You know, he had a good side to him.

00:16:09.000 That business is ripe with that stuff, though.

00:16:12.000 But what really annoyed the hell out of me about the Hollywood business is that people would pretend to be so liberal and wonderful and good.

00:16:18.000 I love your project.

00:16:19.000 You're wonderful.

00:16:20.000 You're great. 0.99

00:16:21.000 But at the same time, they were so fucking power hungry. 0.98

00:16:24.000 And nobody really talks about the power hungry side and about what people are really up to. 0.98

00:16:30.000 I worked with a guy on my very first sitcoms, the first time I ever did any acting at all.

00:16:34.000 Oh, I didn't know about this.

00:16:35.000 I was young.

00:16:35.000 I was like 20-something, 25 I guess, or 26. And I was on this show on Fox called Hardball.

00:16:43.000 And there was a guy that was on the show that would insult people right before it was their time to perform. 0.98

00:16:51.000 Like, you would say something about, what are you fucking gaining weight here? 0.93

00:16:54.000 Like, something? 0.99

00:16:55.000 What's going on with the gut?

00:16:55.000 And the guy would be like, what?

00:16:57.000 And then you'd see the guy perform with this, like... 1.00

00:17:00.000 He would fuck with you. 1.00

00:17:02.000 That's pretty good. 1.00

00:17:03.000 It was really interesting to watch.

00:17:06.000 It was bizarre.

00:17:08.000 But it wasn't pretty good. 0.94

00:17:09.000 It was really shitty of him.

00:17:11.000 He did it to me once, and I went, what? 0.99

00:17:13.000 What the fuck did you say? 0.99

00:17:14.000 And then I cornered him, and I said, dude, I go, don't insult me. 1.00

00:17:18.000 I go, because you're an ugly fuck. 1.00

00:17:19.000 Do you understand how ugly you are? 1.00

00:17:21.000 I go, we could just start talking about what's wrong with you. 1.00

00:17:23.000 Fuck this! 1.00

00:17:24.000 And the guy would go, come on, we gotta film the scene. 1.00

00:17:26.000 I go, no! 1.00

00:17:26.000 I go, this guy's a dick. 1.00

00:17:28.000 This guy likes to talk shit to people right before the... 1.00

00:17:30.000 And everybody was like, what is he doing? 0.99

00:17:31.000 He's calling out the thing that, you know, this guy's doing.

00:17:34.000 Like, you're not supposed to do that.

00:17:35.000 But he would be, like, really subtle about it.

00:17:37.000 You know?

00:17:38.000 He'd be like, who picked out that shirt? 1.00

00:17:39.000 Like weird shit. 1.00

00:17:41.000 Girls, too, man. 1.00

00:17:42.000 It wasn't just the guys.

00:17:43.000 But this was his thing.

00:17:44.000 He would be really catty.

00:17:45.000 He was always reading Entertainment Weekly. 1.00

00:17:48.000 He was always reading what I would call the Devil's Rag, the Hollywood Reporter, all that shit. 0.99

00:17:52.000 He would read those things. 1.00

00:17:53.000 You could see the little fucking power wheels spinning in his devious mind. 1.00

00:17:57.000 Luckily, he's dropped off the face of the planet. 1.00

00:17:59.000 Fortunately.

00:18:00.000 So you could read some of Robert Greene's books, like Strategies of War, maybe, and probably find some tactic in there that this guy was applying in order to weaken his people to gain power, probably, right?

00:18:11.000 I mean, does anything come to mind, Robert?

00:18:13.000 Oh, several come to mind.

00:18:14.000 Mostly passive aggression.

00:18:16.000 Creatively, though, that stuff is very ineffective.

00:18:19.000 Because I firmly, absolutely, wholeheartedly believe that if you put your effort into diminishing others creatively, it diminishes your own creative ability.

00:18:27.000 I really do believe that. 0.73

00:18:28.000 I also believe that performance-wise, if you try to diminish someone's performance, like as an actor, this is one of the reasons why this guy sucked. 0.93

00:18:35.000 He was so transparent. 0.99

00:18:36.000 Like, he's just a shitty person, you know? 1.00

00:18:39.000 The guy that he did, the guy he's called fat, too, wanted to kill him. 1.00

00:18:42.000 I had to talk the guy out of killing him. 1.00

00:18:44.000 This is a big fucking guy. 1.00

00:18:46.000 I shouldn't call him fat, even if he is fat. 1.00

00:18:48.000 He was doing it to fuck with the guy right before his scene because he wanted to shine. 0.99

00:18:53.000 He wanted to be the guy in the scene that was really on top of the ball. 0.99

00:18:58.000 Yeah, so the key thing is to know these strategies so you can do what he puts in there is called the reversal.

00:19:03.000 How to be aware of it and then reverse it.

00:19:06.000 Well, the main thing is to never get emotional in these situations.

00:19:09.000 If you're in control of yourself, And you can do like Joe did, you can sort of see the game behind the game, then you're in the position to do something that's strategic, like he did, to play the same game back at him.

00:19:22.000 It's mostly like a warrior, I call it kind of a warrior pose, where if you're calm and centered...

00:19:28.000 And you're aware and in the moment of what the other person is doing, then you've got strategic options to play the game back.

00:19:34.000 But if you get emotional, you get angry, you get intimidated, then forget about it.

00:19:39.000 Yeah, I would probably today respond very differently, but when I was in my early 20s, it was scorched earth.

00:19:45.000 It was every time.

00:19:46.000 I was going to DEFCON 9 every time.

00:19:48.000 I'm like, let's see who can hold our breath the longest.

00:19:50.000 I'll drag you in a pool. 1.00

00:19:51.000 That was always my strategy.

00:19:54.000 Because I was always nice to people, but as soon as people weren't nice to me, I just had a very...

00:19:59.000 That's a good way to be.

00:20:00.000 Very bad way of handling it.

00:20:02.000 But that thing that people do seems to be not just calculated, but it seems to be something that's been going on since the beginning of time.

00:20:13.000 As soon as people invented language and they invented the ability to deceive.

00:20:17.000 You're touching upon the subject of my next book.

00:20:19.000 That's why I'm smiling.

00:20:20.000 What is that?

00:20:21.000 It's tentatively called The Laws of Human Nature.

00:20:24.000 And essentially I'm saying that somewhere around 10,000 years ago, maybe 6,000, Our nature was set because we started living in groups that were larger than 10, 20, 30, the size of a tribe.

00:20:37.000 And once you put 100 people together, all sorts of political games start happening.

00:20:42.000 And things like envy and passive aggression and basic irrational responses, they already occurred in the time of the Bible.

00:20:52.000 And so there are these laws of human nature that are so deeply ingrained in us.

00:20:56.000 They're ingrained just like I'm going to show you where these laws come from, why people are envious, why people are insecure, why somebody who has a certain exterior, a face that they present to the world,

00:21:13.000 why it's generally hiding the opposite, on and on and on.

00:21:16.000 So you have You can understand where people's behavior comes from and not be surprised by it anymore. 0.96

00:21:22.000 So what you present is steps to recognize cunts. 0.99

00:21:28.000 Yeah, but you know what? 1.00

00:21:29.000 There's a little bit of cunt in everyone, in all of us, including myself. 1.00

00:21:32.000 All of us, though? 1.00

00:21:33.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:34.000 And those who deny it, and hopefully you're not one of them.

00:21:37.000 Deny! 0.99

00:21:38.000 Are actually crypto cunts. 1.00

00:21:43.000 A new word has been formed! 0.98

00:21:45.000 I'm so excited. 0.99

00:21:47.000 Crypto cunts. 0.98

00:21:48.000 That's the greatest word. 0.97

00:21:49.000 That's a great band name, by the way.

00:21:50.000 You can use it. 0.99

00:21:51.000 Crypto cunts. 0.98

00:21:52.000 Yeah, if I was going to start a band, it might be the crypto cunts. 1.00

00:21:54.000 Okay. 0.99

00:21:55.000 And get arrested, just so they'd have to talk about it on CNN like they did Pussy Riot. 1.00

00:21:59.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:22:00.000 Free crypto cunt. 1.00

00:22:01.000 Yeah, it's my favorite thing about Pussy Riot. 1.00

00:22:03.000 The name is just great. 0.76

00:22:04.000 Them talking about it on CNN. What a name, I know.

00:22:06.000 Pussy Riot. 0.99

00:22:07.000 The members of Pussy Riot. 1.00

00:22:08.000 I was like, stop! 0.98

00:22:10.000 This can't be real.

00:22:11.000 This is a beautiful time.

00:22:13.000 A beautiful time in history. 0.99

00:22:14.000 Those girls are fucking badass, man. 1.00

00:22:16.000 Not just badass for their ability to come up with an awesome name, but they get arrested. 0.99

00:22:21.000 They spend fucking how many months in Siberia? 0.88

00:22:24.000 They get out and start protesting at the Olympics. 1.00

00:22:26.000 Get horse whipped. 1.00

00:22:28.000 Those chicks are fucking gangster. 1.00

00:22:29.000 They're so gangster. 1.00

00:22:31.000 I love Pussy Riot. 1.00

00:22:32.000 I'm a huge fan. 0.99

00:22:33.000 Even if their music sucks, and I don't even know if it does. 0.93

00:22:35.000 It probably does, though. 0.98

00:22:36.000 Live performance on JRE. Pussy Riot. 0.98

00:22:38.000 Make it happen. 0.99

00:22:41.000 That's just my next book. 0.99

00:22:44.000 Does everyone have cunt in them because they're reacting to other cunts or do you think that everyone has a selfish aspect to them that's undeniable? 1.00

00:22:55.000 What is it about people that you think everyone has a little bit of cunt in them? 1.00

00:22:59.000 Is it reactionary or is it actionary? 0.99

00:23:02.000 It's both.

00:23:04.000 I suppose there might have been One saintly figure in our history who doesn't have any of this, maybe a Jesus or somebody.

00:23:12.000 But pretty much the underlying philosophy of all my books, particularly the 48 Laws of Power, is that human beings have a primal need for power.

00:23:21.000 And we've used that word power in the wrong way.

00:23:24.000 When we think of power, we think of white men up in the White House controlling the world. 0.84

00:23:29.000 I try and bring power down to an everyday level and say, The feeling that you have no control over your life, over your destiny, over the people around you, your children, your wife, is the most miserable feeling that any human can have, that you have no power over them, no ability to influence them.

00:23:45.000 And so from the age of one, two years old, we have had this feeling of insecurity, of weakness, and we want to have control and power over the people around us, the events that go on in life.

00:23:58.000 And that is the source For a lot of our manipulative behavior.

00:24:04.000 Some people are overtly manipulative and very dangerous that way, but all of us, all of us engage at some point or another in something that teeters on manipulation.

00:24:14.000 And my books are about, let's just be honest about who we are instead of trying to imagine that we were somehow descended from angels instead of primates.

00:24:22.000 No, we're descended from chimpanzees.

00:24:24.000 If you study chimpanzees, they're pretty Machiavellian creatures.

00:24:29.000 That's where we come from.

00:24:30.000 Let's be honest about the human being instead of trying to pretend that we're all born like Gandhi.

00:24:36.000 Well, the chimpanzee has one thing that we don't, and that's language.

00:24:40.000 Or we have one thing that they don't, rather, which is language.

00:24:44.000 And language is where things get weird because you get deception.

00:24:47.000 Yes.

00:24:48.000 And you also get strategy.

00:24:49.000 Yes.

00:24:50.000 You know, where chimps have some strategy.

00:24:52.000 Like, have you ever seen the videos where they chase monkeys, where they corner them on the sides, and then other chimps rush them towards them, and they climb up and they eat them?

00:24:59.000 It's pretty radical stuff.

00:25:01.000 Yeah.

00:25:01.000 And until the 1990s, people didn't even know that chimps ate monkeys.

00:25:05.000 They thought, these beautiful berry-eating friends, they eat bananas like Curious George.

00:25:10.000 Nope, not really. 1.00

00:25:11.000 They fucking rip monkeys apart and eat them alive. 1.00

00:25:14.000 And they engage in warfare. 1.00

00:25:16.000 Yes, they do.

00:25:16.000 They engage in warfare against other chimps.

00:25:18.000 They engage in a very strategic sense.

00:25:22.000 They have lines where they're not allowed to cross, and when they do cross, they take action.

00:25:27.000 This is actually an interesting topic, because if you read Chris Ryan, he proposes a theory that this behavior that they've observed, the chimp warring, was created by the artificial... 0.83

00:25:43.000 We're good to go.

00:26:03.000 So this is a fact, right?

00:26:04.000 And after that, it created this zero-sum game where the chimps were competing for a limited resource of food, which actually goes to the argument that when you create a civilization, and it's not just tribal, and it becomes a zero-sum game, that's when the war and the strategy gets to a peak because you're creating a zero-sum game. 0.92

00:26:22.000 There's a limited amount of resource, a limited amount of crop, or in the case of the chimpanzees, a limited amount of food that was coming out of this box.

00:26:29.000 So only...

00:26:31.000 A certain number of the chimps would get the food.

00:26:34.000 So kind of interesting.

00:26:35.000 I just thought I'd bring that up.

00:26:36.000 And when Dr. Ryan's on here, you can certainly bring that up.

00:26:38.000 He'll be on next week.

00:26:39.000 He'll be on the 11th.

00:26:41.000 What was your issue with what he said?

00:26:43.000 Well, it's always a zero-sum game.

00:26:45.000 Why isn't it a zero-sum game in nature?

00:26:47.000 There's always limited food supply.

00:26:48.000 Right, but there's more resource you can go to.

00:26:51.000 You're not competing for one specific section.

00:26:55.000 You can go to more acres, more hectares of land and find the grubs or the fruits or whatever of that area rather than competing over one to find.

00:27:04.000 I don't want to argue with somebody I haven't read, so maybe he has a very valid point and I haven't read him, so it's not fair for me to...

00:27:09.000 But it doesn't affect your theory that once you're in civilization, these games begin, and the tighter the resources in that civilization, i.e.

00:27:17.000 bigger cities, and the more closely people are working together, the more fever pitch these games develop.

00:27:23.000 Well, I don't want to get on a...

00:27:25.000 On a tangent here, but there's a writer, a scientist named E.O. Wilson, a biologist, and he's pretty much demonstrated that our earliest human ancestors, going back to Australopithecines, were engaging in forms of warfare.

00:27:41.000 So he wants to sort of debunk the notion of the happy, peaceful savage that goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, etc., that we do have very violent roots.

00:27:52.000 And so maybe chimpanzees...

00:27:54.000 It becomes zero sum if there's overpopulation and they're fighting over smaller territories, which we humans were doing as we became more populous.

00:28:02.000 So he was trying to debunk the notion that it's only at the advent of agriculture, where we started living in settlements and became civilized, that warfare began.

00:28:11.000 And he shows very clearly that the beginnings of warfare go back hundreds of thousands of years.

00:28:18.000 Well, it seems unavoidable.

00:28:19.000 It seems like all animals who compete for breeding rights, who compete for food, they engage in some form of combat.

00:28:26.000 I mean, deers regularly kill each other.

00:28:29.000 You know, that happens with elk.

00:28:30.000 It happens with sables. 1.00

00:28:32.000 Sables with those crazy big horns that they have, they fucking, they spear each other and they kill each other. 1.00

00:28:37.000 I had Louis Theroux on the podcast yesterday and he, one of his documentaries, he had this African hunting camp. 0.99

00:28:46.000 Where they, there's sort of these canned hunts where they have these high fence operations and they breed all these animals and they have these sables and they're fucking murdering each other.

00:28:54.000 They just run into each other and gouge each other when, you know, when the females are in heat. 1.00

00:28:59.000 What are sables? 1.00

00:29:00.000 It's one of those crazy fucking deer things. 0.99

00:29:02.000 You pull up a picture of a sable, Jamie. 1.00

00:29:04.000 It's one of those African deer-like creatures with big crazy horns. 1.00

00:29:10.000 They have these, you know, fucking murder weapons is what they have built in their face. 1.00

00:29:15.000 I mean, that's really what they have. 1.00

00:29:17.000 But the point being is that, yeah, there they are.

00:29:20.000 Those guys murder each other.

00:29:21.000 Looks like an oryx. 0.82

00:29:23.000 Similar.

00:29:24.000 Yeah, there's a lot of those different types of antlered, horned, you know, animals.

00:29:32.000 They clash heads.

00:29:34.000 That's what they do.

00:29:35.000 They go to war with each other.

00:29:38.000 It's also a part of genetic selection.

00:29:40.000 It seems to be unavoidable.

00:29:42.000 I've always felt that when we look at the time frame between now and 6,000, 10,000 years, whatever it was, when we started having these civilizations, We're in a very small window between then and now,

00:29:57.000 and such radical change has taken place between then and now, but yet genetically, not much.

00:30:05.000 A few variations have been observed between us and people that lived thousands of years ago, but God, not that much when it comes to...

00:30:13.000 When it comes to need, when it comes to sexual desire, when it comes to greed, when it comes to all the motivating factors and all the reward systems that are in place.

00:30:23.000 The other thing being that we don't have release anymore.

00:30:28.000 The physical release.

00:30:29.000 That a human being is essentially hardwired.

00:30:32.000 Every chimp, they're swinging from branches and they're working out all day. 1.00

00:30:36.000 I mean, they're constantly getting this release of energy.

00:30:40.000 And they're also getting release of some of their aggressive energy as well, which we don't seem to have a lot of.

00:30:45.000 Exactly what I'm talking about.

00:30:46.000 I think people are essentially leaky batteries of aggressive energy. 0.94

00:30:50.000 I mean, when someone's in their car and they start fucking freaking out because you got in front of them and fucking honking their horn, that's a leaky battery of aggressive energy. 0.96

00:30:58.000 The other day, this mild-mannered woman in her 40s or 50s cut me off and she just turned around. 1.00

00:31:04.000 I'd never seen a woman show that kind of absolute chimp-like, aggressive, burying my teeth at me in a car. 1.00

00:31:11.000 It was shocking.

00:31:12.000 You haven't been to the post office very often.

00:31:14.000 Stamps.com.

00:31:17.000 Yeah, it's a weird thing.

00:31:20.000 The car is a very unique environment in that because of the fact that even though you see people, you don't feel them.

00:31:28.000 You know, you're not in front of them.

00:31:30.000 Like, I'm looking at you right now, and if I said something that hurt your feelings, it would bother me. 1.00

00:31:33.000 But if I didn't know you and you were in a car, I'm like, fuck you, dude. 1.00

00:31:36.000 Fuck you. 1.00

00:31:38.000 Honk honk. 1.00

00:31:38.000 Fuck you. 1.00

00:31:39.000 You know, people do that all the time. 1.00

00:31:41.000 I've seen people cut in front of each other and race down the street and get in front of each other and just madness that you wouldn't see in a line.

00:31:48.000 You wouldn't see if you were waiting in line to go to a movie.

00:31:51.000 It's very rare.

00:31:52.000 But you see it there because this...

00:31:55.000 All the social cues are missing.

00:31:57.000 That's right.

00:31:57.000 All the human interaction is missing.

00:31:59.000 It's like there's this wall and this filter up.

00:32:02.000 Same thing on the internet.

00:32:03.000 Yes.

00:32:04.000 More so on the internet because you don't even see the person. 0.96

00:32:07.000 They're hiding behind, you know, dickfuck69 is their name. 0.96

00:32:10.000 You know, whatever it is. 0.95

00:32:11.000 They're not real. 1.00

00:32:12.000 And so they can reach out to Robert Greene and go, you're fucked. 1.00

00:32:15.000 Fucking books are for faggots! 1.00

00:32:17.000 You know, they just post YouTube comments and go fucking crazy on your blog. 1.00

00:32:23.000 A friend of mine writes a blog, and someone's like, why don't you have comments on your blogs? 0.87

00:32:28.000 I'm like, what?

00:32:29.000 Do you read comments?

00:32:30.000 Do you read comments on blogs?

00:32:32.000 Why would you want anybody to write where you're writing?

00:32:35.000 If you had a painting, would you allow people to paint underneath your painting what they think about your painting? 1.00

00:32:41.000 It would be a lot of dicks pointing to your painting, piles of shit with flies. 0.99

00:32:46.000 That's what they would draw. 1.00

00:32:48.000 Not all people, but enough people to where it's a problem.

00:32:52.000 Because they haven't earned the ability to communicate with you like that.

00:32:56.000 You choose who you communicate with in real life for the most part, especially who you surround yourself with on a regular basis.

00:33:02.000 But online, you choose nothing.

00:33:04.000 Online, it's the beautiful thing about being online is that everyone gets to say something, and it's the horrible thing about being online is that everyone gets to say something and do so anonymously, which is another part of what's weird about our progression from this ancient society Where,

00:33:20.000 you know, we hunted and gathered to eventually agriculture and then civilization, in quotes, to where we find ourselves today.

00:33:27.000 So your books essentially, and this new book especially, is sort of recognizing these traits so that you can move away from them?

00:33:38.000 Well, you're talking about my new book that hasn't been written yet?

00:33:41.000 Yeah.

00:33:43.000 The point of the book is that this is human nature and it's an animal nature.

00:33:48.000 And to be truly human, we have to overcome these traits in us.

00:33:53.000 To be truly rational, reasonable, empathetic creatures, we have to overcome these various aspects of our own nature, which are embedded in each one of us biologically, genetically, such as our propensity to feel envy.

00:34:09.000 The propensity to feel envy is basically at its root the fact that we humans are constantly comparing ourselves to other people.

00:34:16.000 Look at your own life on a day-to-day basis and be honest with yourself and try and calculate how many times during a day you're actually comparing yourself to another person.

00:34:26.000 He's got more money.

00:34:28.000 She's prettier.

00:34:29.000 He's got a better job.

00:34:31.000 That's like so completely human for various reasons, which I'll explain in the book.

00:34:37.000 To reach a higher nature, which is the goal of my book, you have to be aware that that's happening in you.

00:34:42.000 And you have to find a way to disengage yourself from that need, to constantly compare yourself to others, to find your own Your own self-worth from within.

00:34:52.000 These are all kind of cliches, but I'm going to show you in a very real fashion how you can overcome them once you're aware that they're inside of you.

00:34:59.000 But the book is not written yet.

00:35:01.000 It's a beautiful point, though.

00:35:02.000 That's the beautiful point, being aware of them.

00:35:05.000 Instead of denying them, instead of getting all foo-foo chimes and Indian chants, being aware of them.

00:35:13.000 Yes. 0.74

00:35:14.000 So when you started reading all of these self-help books and started recognizing that there was all this horse shit going on, was your immediate reaction to try to write something that you thought was more realistic and beneficial? 0.89

00:35:28.000 Or how did you deal with it? 0.95

00:35:32.000 Well, there was a lot of anger.

00:35:34.000 I have less now that I'm older, but I had a lot of anger back then because it really pissed me off that no one was talking about it.

00:35:41.000 People were pretending...

00:35:42.000 That this was the world we lived in.

00:35:44.000 There'd be books in the business section about management, how to manage people, which is a very primal topic of discussion.

00:35:52.000 You have a group of people and you're a leader.

00:35:53.000 How do you manage all of these insecure egos who are thinking of themselves?

00:35:58.000 And these books were essentially dishonest.

00:36:00.000 They weren't confronting the fact that when you put 10 people together, those people generally have their own agendas.

00:36:07.000 They're thinking first and primarily of themselves and their future and their careers and what they can get for themselves.

00:36:13.000 And if you start from a basic false premise, you're not going to get anywhere.

00:36:17.000 So I was dealing with, I wanted to cut my sword through all of this thick bullshit and say this is what really happens in business, in the music industry, in Hollywood, among lawyers, in politics, And if some of it was a little brutal,

00:36:34.000 maybe I gave myself a little bit of literary license to exaggerate ever so slightly. 0.81

00:36:39.000 But for instance, I have a chapter in there about how to create a cult.

00:36:43.000 And it's obviously ironic.

00:36:45.000 I'm not telling you you need to go out there and create a cult.

00:36:49.000 What I'm saying is we humans are very gullible and we're very easy to mislead and we're very easy.

00:36:55.000 We want to believe in something.

00:36:57.000 We want to believe in a cause.

00:36:59.000 These are the strategies that people have used in history to create a cult-like following, and I'm going to sort of reveal that to you.

00:37:08.000 These are things that just aren't in self-help books, at least in 1998 when the book came out.

00:37:13.000 So when you're writing about creating a cult, what are your strategies?

00:37:19.000 How do you go about doing that?

00:37:23.000 Well...

00:37:24.000 You're trying to wrap yourself up in this sort of mystical veil.

00:37:28.000 The chapter originally...

00:37:29.000 I already fucked that part up.

00:37:31.000 You probably haven't, because you have a cult-like following. 0.58

00:37:35.000 Isn't cult-like different, though?

00:37:37.000 From what?

00:37:38.000 Than cult.

00:37:39.000 Cult-like is different than cult.

00:37:42.000 Because there's no organization whatsoever.

00:37:45.000 I'm not trying to get anything out of anybody.

00:37:47.000 I'm trying to tell them what to do.

00:37:48.000 It's different.

00:37:49.000 I'm not trying to benefit from it.

00:37:51.000 Well, you'd want to have as many followers as possible.

00:37:53.000 You shouldn't have as many as possible.

00:37:56.000 Quality over quality is very important in the cult business.

00:37:59.000 Well, I don't know you well enough, and I'm sure you're right, though. 0.99

00:38:01.000 I keep hearing you saying cunt and cult. 1.00

00:38:03.000 Oh, cult. 1.00

00:38:04.000 We're done with cunt. 1.00

00:38:06.000 What was your term again? 1.00

00:38:08.000 Crypto cunt. 1.00

00:38:09.000 Crypto cunt. 1.00

00:38:09.000 Yeah, you fucking knocked it out of the park with that. 1.00

00:38:14.000 If somebody is using numbers – now, I know I have the 48 laws of power, so I could be guilty of it. 0.98

00:38:20.000 33 strategies anymore.

00:38:22.000 50th law.

00:38:23.000 They're probably starting to create a cult because that goes back hundreds and thousands of years.

00:38:31.000 Not hundreds of thousands.

00:38:32.000 Right.

00:38:33.000 Hundreds and thousands.

00:38:34.000 Thank you.

00:38:35.000 Yes.

00:38:36.000 Giving a sort of mystical edge to what you're doing.

00:38:40.000 You're trying to make people think that you're creating a religion without a religion.

00:38:46.000 I show you the steps that people go through, five steps in order.

00:38:52.000 And you can pretty much, if you see those steps happening, you know that this person is creating a cult-like following.

00:38:56.000 And one of the steps towards near the end is creating an us versus them dynamic. 0.57

00:39:01.000 It's us 1,000 followers against the whole world that doesn't believe in our theory of how aliens landed on the planet and started the human race.

00:39:12.000 So whenever they're creating this false dichotomy of us versus the non-believers, then you know that you're on your way to a cult. 0.65

00:39:19.000 Yeah, that cult of thinking is very common, isn't it?

00:39:22.000 Yes.

00:39:23.000 The us versus them is really, that's the big one. 0.99

00:39:26.000 That is the big one.

00:39:26.000 And that goes back, I'm going to say in my new book, which hasn't been written yet, that that goes back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors where we're separating ourselves very violently from us, from them.

00:39:38.000 That tribe over there, they're evil. 1.00

00:39:40.000 They don't believe in the same gods that we believe in. 0.84

00:39:42.000 They don't practice the same rituals. 1.00

00:39:44.000 We have to go kill them. 1.00

00:39:45.000 It's a very primal human thing. 1.00

00:39:47.000 Yeah, people have this really seems inescapable need to be a part of a group.

00:39:52.000 Yes. 0.99

00:39:53.000 Whether it's a group of Mac users or, you know, whether it's whatever the fuck it is. 0.98

00:39:57.000 I like Ford. 0.96

00:39:58.000 I like Chevy.

00:39:59.000 You know, people get really crazy about that.

00:40:02.000 And it's a very weird aspect of human nature.

00:40:05.000 Yes.

00:40:06.000 Like, people want you to be on the same cell phone provider as them.

00:40:10.000 Like, what are you doing with T-Mobile, man?

00:40:12.000 Come on over to AT&T. Like...

00:40:14.000 Well, the companies have used some of those strategies.

00:40:17.000 They've created this us versus them mentality to help make people feel like that.

00:40:23.000 All of these advertising practices that you see, generally you can find a lot of their roots in some of these practices.

00:40:30.000 Larger scale strategies.

00:40:32.000 Like, look at this map versus this map, creating this antagonism that actually probably helps both sides.

00:40:38.000 And they're all just shaking hands like that plane ride where the Republicans and Democrats were playing Yahtzee with each other and having a big laugh.

00:40:45.000 I remember the Think Different ads.

00:40:48.000 Do you remember the Think Different ads for Apple?

00:40:50.000 Where they used all these dead people.

00:40:52.000 I was like, does that guy even know he's in an ad?

00:40:54.000 He's dead.

00:40:55.000 This is weird.

00:40:56.000 You know, Think Different with the Apple logo and everybody wanted to think different.

00:41:01.000 It was a very effective ad.

00:41:02.000 Very effective.

00:41:03.000 But almost, you know, kind of deceptively so.

00:41:07.000 Yeah.

00:41:07.000 In some weird sort of a way, you know.

00:41:11.000 It's a fucking computer, man. 1.00

00:41:13.000 What you have is a computer. 1.00

00:41:14.000 It's not thinking for you. 1.00

00:41:16.000 You could write the most racist, horrible shit on a Mac, and it doesn't stop you. 1.00

00:41:22.000 You could totally plot your agenda against whatever. 1.00

00:41:26.000 Fill in the blank.

00:41:27.000 Anti-homosexual, anti-woman, anti-whatever. 1.00

00:41:30.000 You could just write the worst shit ever on a Mac. 1.00

00:41:32.000 It doesn't discriminate. 1.00

00:41:34.000 It doesn't have any effect on how you think. 1.00

00:41:36.000 Like, it's such a dumb ad. 0.99

00:41:39.000 Think different. 1.00

00:41:40.000 Think different how?

00:41:41.000 I'm sitting in front of this thing going, I'm not thinking any different.

00:41:44.000 I think it's also grammatically incorrect.

00:41:46.000 It is, differently, yes.

00:41:47.000 I think you're right. 0.91

00:41:48.000 Yeah, it's fucking dead wrong. 0.57

00:41:50.000 But yet effective. 0.90

00:41:52.000 Yeah.

00:41:54.000 The need to be a part of a group, it's one of the things that people definitely play against.

00:42:00.000 Well, we're complete social animals.

00:42:02.000 Mm-hmm.

00:42:04.000 That's the source.

00:42:06.000 If you think about the human being, go back a million years ago, we were incredibly one of the weakest animals on the planet.

00:42:15.000 We were just barely learning how to stand up on our two legs.

00:42:18.000 We were slow, couldn't run very fast, didn't have teeth to kill another animal with, no poison, no claws.

00:42:25.000 We were maybe one of the weakest animals in Africa, and yet look at us now.

00:42:31.000 It was from becoming the preeminent social animal.

00:42:35.000 We learn how to work in groups, to hunt in groups, to cooperate.

00:42:39.000 Out of that came language eventually.

00:42:41.000 So you can't divorce our extreme social nature from who we are.

00:42:47.000 And because of that, we have a tremendous propensity to conform, to want to think like other people.

00:42:55.000 I don't know if you're familiar with the Milgram experiments.

00:42:59.000 About authority and obedience.

00:43:01.000 It was in the 60s.

00:43:02.000 A Yale professor had people come in for an experiment where they were made to give electric shocks to other people if they didn't answer a question correctly.

00:43:11.000 They weren't really giving a shock.

00:43:13.000 It was all a plant.

00:43:14.000 But he was trying to see how they would respond to authority.

00:43:18.000 And the most mild-mannered housewife would be giving those shocks to people when they gave the wrong answer. 1.00

00:43:23.000 And he was showing how inbred our...

00:43:26.000 We are all wired to obey authority.

00:43:30.000 So these are things embedded deeply in us as a social animal for a good thing, our ability to cooperate, but also it's a very dark and negative side, which is our ability to engage in groupthink and our...

00:43:45.000 Mindless obedience to authority.

00:43:47.000 Is that where that's coming from?

00:43:49.000 When the mild-mannered housewives are hitting that button and shocking people? 1.00

00:43:53.000 Is that where it's coming from?

00:43:54.000 Or is it they finally have some power over something?

00:43:57.000 Because I feel like there's a lot of people out there that feel incredibly powerless and frustrated, and they feel like they have this backlog.

00:44:04.000 They have a leaky battery for that. 0.99

00:44:06.000 They want to have some fucking power over people. 0.99

00:44:08.000 And when you finally do, what was the Stanford prison experience? 0.99

00:44:11.000 Yeah, that's the same thing.

00:44:12.000 Was it the same thing?

00:44:13.000 No, there were two professors who were friends and they kind of did. 1.00

00:44:16.000 Oh, bullshit heads. 1.00

00:44:17.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:44:19.000 Pointing out how to make people evil.

00:44:21.000 The Stanford prison experiments, I mean, they cut them off after, they cut the experiment short because people were being so evil.

00:44:27.000 They had fake prison guards and fake prisoners.

00:44:30.000 I personally experienced that on a personal level when I was a security guard.

00:44:36.000 I worked as a security guard at Great Woods, which is a concert center for the performing arts in Massachusetts.

00:44:42.000 It's in Manfield, I think? 0.99

00:44:46.000 Where the fuck it is? 0.99

00:44:47.000 Manfield Mass, I think it is. 1.00

00:44:48.000 It's this outdoor venue, and there was a lot of crazy shit going on. 0.97

00:44:54.000 They had all these nutty concerts there, and all these fights would break out, and it became us versus them. 0.98

00:45:00.000 Us as a security guard versus them. 0.99

00:45:02.000 And I saw some really mild-mannered people do some mean shit to the people that were guests there. 0.98

00:45:08.000 Very interesting, you know? 0.99

00:45:09.000 Yeah.

00:45:10.000 I saw a guy that would never hurt anybody punch somebody in the stomach.

00:45:15.000 I forget what the guy did, but I remember watching him hit this guy going, wow, this is crazy.

00:45:20.000 Yeah.

00:45:20.000 And it was because of that.

00:45:21.000 It was because he was wearing a security jacket.

00:45:23.000 He was security. 1.00

00:45:24.000 The guy was a drunk asshole. 1.00

00:45:26.000 But where he would normally, if he ran into this guy in the street, would never hit him. 1.00

00:45:30.000 But because he was in this position of power, in quotes, he hit this guy.

00:45:35.000 I mean, I don't know if the guy pushed someone or something, but it was avoidable.

00:45:39.000 He didn't have to hit him.

00:45:40.000 Yeah.

00:45:40.000 And I remember that mentality, being very clear, the us versus them mentality.

00:45:46.000 The key to avoiding these dark characteristics is you have to be honest, number one, which I think he's very good at doing, but then also understand and identify them, not be able to look and say, I think?

00:46:14.000 They give you the power back by saying you're not just a leaf at the mercy of the wind of these forces of human nature and the forces of other people wielding these power games and the forces of seduction by these people you're desperately trying to date and how they've got you all wound up inside.

00:46:30.000 You're no longer powerless because you can see, aha, this is what's happening.

00:46:35.000 And you can take some of that back and then chart your course with your own intent, with your own morality, how you want to do it.

00:46:41.000 Thank you, Aubrey.

00:46:42.000 That was very well put.

00:46:44.000 I have a book.

00:46:45.000 I should have you just answer all the questions.

00:46:47.000 I think he's busy.

00:46:51.000 I did a book with 50 Cent, the rapper, called The 50th Law.

00:46:57.000 And basically what I did in that book was I wanted to figure out what made 50 so interesting, so powerful.

00:47:04.000 And after hanging out with him, I decided that the guy was fearless.

00:47:07.000 He had just an incredible fearless quality and philosophy of life.

00:47:12.000 So the book that we wrote together was sort of a meditation on fearlessness. 0.98

00:47:16.000 And the whole point of the book was, being fearless isn't a question of just going out there and saying, fuck you, I don't care what anybody does, I'm gonna, you know, push you around and I'm not afraid. 0.98

00:47:28.000 That's not fearlessness. 0.99

00:47:29.000 Fearlessness is first coming to terms with the fact that you are afraid.

00:47:34.000 You are afraid of death.

00:47:36.000 You are afraid of other people getting one up on you.

00:47:40.000 You are afraid of being alone.

00:47:42.000 You are afraid of people thinking that you're different.

00:47:45.000 Okay, look at it in yourself.

00:47:47.000 Be aware that that's existing, that it's happening in your body before it even hits your mind.

00:47:55.000 Now that you're aware of it, now you can start conquering your fears.

00:47:59.000 So we say it in that book, for instance, Napoleon Bonaparte or General Patton, two men who were incredibly brave, who would be on the front line of battle, take bullets flying past them.

00:48:10.000 These were men who were very afraid in the beginning when they first went into battle and were quite ashamed of the fear that they saw in themselves.

00:48:18.000 And they became aware of it, and then slowly they overcame it by exposing themselves to the very thing that they were afraid of.

00:48:24.000 So that's sort of the paradigm you're talking about.

00:48:26.000 Becoming aware of the process of these sort of qualities we don't want in ourselves.

00:48:33.000 Seeing how they operate inside of you.

00:48:35.000 Instead of saying, oh, it's always the other person.

00:48:38.000 It's not me.

00:48:39.000 I'm not afraid.

00:48:40.000 I don't have these problems.

00:48:41.000 No, you do have them.

00:48:43.000 Let's confront it and let's show you how you can rationally and in an intellectual and mindful way overcome them.

00:48:52.000 Yeah, because there truly is no managing of anything that you're denying.

00:48:55.000 If you're denying that it exists, you cannot manage it.

00:48:58.000 Well, that was well put, too.

00:49:00.000 You guys are much more eloquent than I am.

00:49:02.000 Well, we take a lot of mushrooms, Robert Green.

00:49:04.000 That helps us confront these inner fears.

00:49:06.000 Have you ever taken mushrooms, Robert?

00:49:09.000 Yes?

00:49:10.000 A big, deep breath.

00:49:11.000 Of course he has.

00:49:12.000 But...

00:49:13.000 But I took a lot of peyote.

00:49:14.000 That was my drug of choice.

00:49:16.000 Just as good.

00:49:17.000 Talk about a way to show you the fears that you didn't realize you have and help you confront them.

00:49:24.000 These things, they're really a great mirror to reflect upon yourself.

00:49:28.000 Oh, hallucinogenics?

00:49:29.000 Yeah, hallucinogenics.

00:49:30.000 I think that's one of the great values that it brings.

00:49:33.000 You don't know exactly what your deepest fear is until you do ayahuasca.

00:49:37.000 And then it's like, oh yeah, that's it.

00:49:39.000 The thing that you've been showing me for the last three hours.

00:49:41.000 I guess I'm most afraid of that.

00:49:42.000 Well, the thing with peyote is you never knew what was going to happen.

00:49:46.000 One trip was never the same as another, so you always had trepidation, like, whoa, this could be really ugly.

00:49:52.000 I don't know what's going to happen, and you had to deal with it and confront it.

00:49:55.000 How did you do it?

00:49:56.000 Did you do it in a traditional Native American setting?

00:49:59.000 No, no.

00:50:01.000 I was in Berkeley going to college.

00:50:04.000 We would take the buttons, and you'd take off all the little white, stringy, poisonous bits.

00:50:12.000 And then you cut it up and you either put it in a shake or in a peanut butter sandwich.

00:50:17.000 And then you go find a nice safe place.

00:50:19.000 The traditional peanut butter sandwich.

00:50:20.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:50:21.000 I mean, they would eat it.

00:50:22.000 The Cherokee people.

00:50:23.000 They would eat it.

00:50:24.000 They taste horrible.

00:50:26.000 It's not just the taste, it's the consistency.

00:50:29.000 And unless you're a Native American, it's hard to stomach it. 1.00

00:50:32.000 You're just going to vomit it straight up.

00:50:34.000 And you don't want to vomit it because then you're not going to get the trip.

00:50:36.000 So you've got to trick your body into like digesting it.

00:50:40.000 And so you have to Put it in a smoothie.

00:50:42.000 If you vomit it, it doesn't work?

00:50:44.000 No, you're vomiting out immediately all of the stuff you just digested.

00:50:48.000 It's interesting because it works with ayahuasca.

00:50:50.000 Well, if you vomit based on the taste, it hasn't had a time to assimilate.

00:50:53.000 Oh, I see.

00:50:53.000 But if you vomit later in the trip based on it trying to clear your body, that's a different...

00:50:58.000 It's already assimilated. 0.77

00:51:00.000 So, um...

00:51:01.000 Anyway.

00:51:02.000 So, do you feel like those peyote experiences help form your view of things?

00:51:07.000 Very much so.

00:51:09.000 Um...

00:51:11.000 You know, it just made you, it kind of connects you to reality, where there's things where you're just in a fog all the time because we're so conditioned to think in certain ways and to have something that draws you out of the same rut of thinking and confront you with really the real world,

00:51:29.000 this amazing world that's around you, has had a huge influence on my writing.

00:51:35.000 And I know This next book hasn't been written, but I have another book after that that has not even begun to be even thought of as written, and that's going to bring together all of my experiences on that level, a book on what I call The Sublime, which I've written about in The 50th Law and will write a whole book about at one point.

00:51:54.000 So The 50th Law is the one that you wrote with 50 Cent?

00:51:57.000 Yes, sir.

00:51:58.000 Now, what was the motivation behind that?

00:52:01.000 Well, basically, my early books, meaning the 48 Laws, Seduction, and War, to some extent, were very popular among hip-hop artists.

00:52:09.000 Really?

00:52:10.000 Yeah.

00:52:11.000 Basically, because, you know, the music industry...

00:52:14.000 I described you Hollywood.

00:52:15.000 Well, Hollywood is kind of like kindergarten compared to the music business.

00:52:20.000 The real sharks are in the music business.

00:52:24.000 They are pretty nasty, pretty Machiavellian.

00:52:28.000 And people like 50, Jay-Z, and their managers in the late 90s, early 2000s were coming to grasp with the fact that they wanted to control their own work.

00:52:41.000 To have some power and some money and become entrepreneurs.

00:52:44.000 And dealing with these sharks in the music business was something that not even any kind of street life prepared them for.

00:52:51.000 50 would tell me he hustled on the streets dealing crack, saw people being knived and killed and dealt with a lot of danger, and nothing prepared him for the sharky, horrific games that he saw in the music industry with Columbia and Interscope, etc.

00:53:06.000 So they were reading my book to help them deal with this.

00:53:09.000 These are not people who went to Harvard Business School.

00:53:12.000 They didn't have a book out there to help them understand how manipulative these people could be.

00:53:18.000 And so they gravitated to the 48 laws of power.

00:53:20.000 50 was one of them.

00:53:22.000 And he contacted me at some point, I think about 2005, 2006. He wanted to meet me because he liked the book a lot.

00:53:29.000 And then we met.

00:53:30.000 And we had a really interesting synergy.

00:53:32.000 Obviously, we don't come from similar backgrounds.

00:53:35.000 We don't look alike.

00:53:36.000 You're not from the street?

00:53:37.000 I'm from a street.

00:53:41.000 Everybody is.

00:53:42.000 Were you born in a field?

00:53:44.000 Everybody's born from a street. 0.62

00:53:46.000 I come from a middle class Jewish background, so I'm not quite the same as Southside Queens.

00:53:54.000 But we had a really nice energy together.

00:53:57.000 Like we think alike.

00:53:58.000 Like I told you about that Hollywood director.

00:54:00.000 Most people in Hollywood were getting so angry with him and so angry about the games that they never took a step back to figure out, oh, this is the strategy that this guy applied.

00:54:10.000 And 50 was the same way.

00:54:11.000 He said, I took a step back and said, this is what...

00:54:14.000 The guy at Interscope is really doing.

00:54:16.000 So we thought alike, and we thought, let's bring two minds together that think alike but from totally different backgrounds and see what happens.

00:54:24.000 That's fascinating.

00:54:26.000 The music business, for folks who don't know, has been...

00:54:30.000 It's really a fascinating operation.

00:54:33.000 And it's kind of been gutted because of the MP3 influx and Napster was the first blow.

00:54:41.000 And then from there, it's like really...

00:54:43.000 Now it's kind of interesting because the performers actually make their money from performing more than anything else.

00:54:49.000 It's very difficult to make the millions and millions of dollars that the Rolling Stones and...

00:55:01.000 Courtney Love wrote a piece about it.

00:55:04.000 I'm sure she probably didn't really write it.

00:55:05.000 They said it was ghostwritten.

00:55:08.000 I agree. 0.98

00:55:08.000 It's pretty fucking smart. 0.98

00:55:10.000 She's a smart woman. 0.99

00:55:11.000 Yeah?

00:55:12.000 Okay, I believe you.

00:55:12.000 But I don't know.

00:55:13.000 Maybe not.

00:55:14.000 Anyway, let's say she wrote it.

00:55:17.000 Let's say she wrote it.

00:55:18.000 It's insane.

00:55:19.000 If you've ever read it, that piece that she wrote on the music business and how it really works and how they extract...

00:55:27.000 Everything from your profits, everything, promotion, expenses, all these different things, by the time the artist gets paid for the records, they have all this weird way of doing math where it shows no money.

00:55:41.000 It shows no money's been made.

00:55:43.000 They use that for not just the music business, but Hollywood.

00:55:47.000 Sure does.

00:55:48.000 I have a friend who produced a television show.

00:55:50.000 It's a very successful television show.

00:55:52.000 Can you stop doing that for a second?

00:55:54.000 The crunching thing?

00:55:56.000 Sorry, it's very distracting.

00:55:57.000 The television show is not just successful nationwide.

00:56:01.000 It's syndicated across the world.

00:56:03.000 And the company that made this show, the production company, is claiming that it doesn't turn a profit.

00:56:10.000 I mean, I'm not talking about one country.

00:56:12.000 It's in 16 different countries, and there's like several versions of it with different hosts all throughout the world.

00:56:19.000 And they're trying to tell him that it's not. 0.97

00:56:20.000 And so he's suing them, and there's like this crazy fucking lawsuit right now. 0.97

00:56:23.000 Lawsuits are just course for business. 0.98

00:56:25.000 You know, that doesn't even scare.

00:56:27.000 It doesn't even make people bat an eye in those industries.

00:56:29.000 But it's weird.

00:56:30.000 Like, how is it not making a profit?

00:56:32.000 Did you get paid?

00:56:33.000 Did you get paid?

00:56:34.000 Is that a profit? 0.99

00:56:37.000 There's got to be a fucking profit here because there's all this money. 0.99

00:56:40.000 A movie that can make $100 million can be said to have turned no profit. 0.99

00:56:45.000 Yeah.

00:56:46.000 Wow!

00:56:47.000 That's bizarre.

00:56:49.000 Where's that money going to? 0.95

00:56:51.000 But this fuckery, these shenanigans are sort of a lot of the stuff that you're talking about in 48 Laws. 0.94

00:56:59.000 Yeah. 0.92

00:57:00.000 Yeah, Courtney Love was a big reader of the 48 Laws of Power.

00:57:04.000 She used it in one of her lawsuits against the music industry.

00:57:07.000 She held up a copy of the book and said, this is what you guys are using against us. 1.00

00:57:11.000 Look at you, you bad motherfucker. 1.00

00:57:12.000 You're helping out Courtney Love. 1.00

00:57:14.000 Did you ever see that documentary that claims that she killed Kurt Cobain or had Kurt Cobain killed?

00:57:18.000 No. 0.98

00:57:19.000 One of the most fucking bizarre documentaries ever. 0.98

00:57:23.000 Like, someone fucking set out to prove that Courtney Love was responsible for Kurt Cobain's death. 0.97

00:57:29.000 I was like, oh, alright. 0.98

00:57:30.000 Are you sure?

00:57:31.000 Yeah.

00:57:31.000 Because if you're not sure...

00:57:32.000 Take your sources. 0.98

00:57:33.000 Yeah, that's a pretty fucking crazy statement. 0.99

00:57:35.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:57:36.000 You know?

00:57:36.000 How can you just...

00:57:37.000 You can just do that?

00:57:38.000 You can just say that?

00:57:39.000 Yeah.

00:57:39.000 You know, nobody tried her for that.

00:57:40.000 Like, can you sue someone who says that you're responsible for the suicide of your fucking husband? 1.00

00:57:46.000 Awful. 1.00

00:57:47.000 Off track, obviously.

00:57:50.000 Back to the book.

00:57:51.000 So this business, this music business, is just an example, really, of what happens when power structures are created, when people who are in these power structures understand the game, and then take these people that are just coming into it fresh,

00:58:08.000 and especially artistic types, People who are creative, people who are artistic types, oftentimes not very good with money.

00:58:16.000 Not sound financial thinkers and just the opposite of these business sharks that are involved in Interscope or whatever the labeling.

00:58:26.000 Well, they've dedicated themselves to the mastery of their craft.

00:58:29.000 And this whole other craft, this business sharkiness, is this other whole skill set that it's challenging to be able to master both.

00:58:37.000 So getting the cliff notes is awfully helpful to be able to sort that out.

00:58:43.000 Because to be where they are at that point, and obviously he'll go into his book Mastery, but...

00:58:50.000 That is a relentless pursuit of excellence in a well-defined niche that doesn't allow for a lot of time to explore these other things unless, you know, you're forming some bridge.

00:59:00.000 If you were going to recommend your books to someone, what order would you recommend them in?

00:59:05.000 Well, it depends on what business you're in and what point you are in life.

00:59:08.000 Okay, how about me?

00:59:09.000 How about me?

00:59:09.000 I'm a comedian.

00:59:10.000 Yeah, what should I do?

00:59:12.000 You?

00:59:12.000 You who are already so successful?

00:59:16.000 Well, probably mastery in some ways, maybe to take you to the next level.

00:59:20.000 But I don't know if you're dealing with a lot of political stuff.

00:59:23.000 If you are, then you're going to want 48 laws or maybe the strategies of war.

00:59:28.000 It depends on who you are, what your weaknesses are, what your strengths are, where you are in life.

00:59:33.000 If you're 22 years old and you're just graduating college and you're about to enter the real world, I'd say mastery for reasons that maybe hopefully we'll get into.

00:59:44.000 But if you're 25 and you're now working at Goldman Sachs, God bless you if you are.

00:59:49.000 God save you, I think.

00:59:51.000 You're going to probably want the 48th Laws of Power because, man, that's a power-hungry, nasty, manipulative Machiavellian environment if you're in the music industry as well.

00:59:59.000 If you're someone who's very afraid, you've got all sorts of great creative ideas, but you're never going to the next step and starting that great movie or project you have, maybe the 50th Law would be good for you so you can get over some of those fears that are holding you back.

01:00:12.000 If you're some guy who just can't find a, you know, is really bad with women, Art of Seduction, obviously, would probably be your choice. 0.99

01:00:21.000 So it depends a little bit on who you are.

01:00:23.000 Now, you wrote The Art of Seduction to help people get laid.

01:00:25.000 Is that the idea behind it?

01:00:26.000 No, I didn't.

01:00:27.000 No?

01:00:27.000 I know it would sound great.

01:00:28.000 I know I'd probably have 8 million people buying the book tomorrow, and now I'm only going to get like 15. But the truth of the matter is The Art of Seduction is about how to seduce people, how to get them to like you or love you.

01:00:40.000 It's all about creating a spell.

01:00:42.000 So if you want to just get laid, you know, maybe Neil Strauss or the pickup artist, that's probably more your speed.

01:00:49.000 They've got all sorts of gimmicks about...

01:00:51.000 How to tell a woman something in a bar and melt her resistance, etc.

01:00:56.000 I'm more about the long term, how you can take that woman, or it can be a woman seducing a man, obviously, and get and play a mind game on her. 0.99

01:01:04.000 So in the course of three months...

01:01:06.000 She doesn't want to just sleep with you. 1.00

01:01:08.000 She wants to give you everything she has.

01:01:11.000 So you're creating stalkers?

01:01:13.000 Could be.

01:01:14.000 And I have.

01:01:14.000 And I'm ashamed of it.

01:01:16.000 But more likely...

01:01:18.000 I don't believe you at all. 1.00

01:01:20.000 When you say I'm ashamed of it, you're fucking proud of that shit. 1.00

01:01:23.000 I see it. 1.00

01:01:24.000 No, I don't like stalkers.

01:01:25.000 Because really the book is about casting a spell.

01:01:29.000 Let's say this is the goal of seduction.

01:01:32.000 When that woman leaves you after whatever night you had together, the date or whatever, or just an encounter, she's going home and thinking about you.

01:01:41.000 Okay, now you're starting to seduce her. 0.69

01:01:43.000 It's a mind game.

01:01:44.000 It's a mental thing.

01:01:45.000 We humans, our sex drive and our mental process are really interconnected.

01:01:51.000 And I'm getting you to play on that.

01:01:53.000 I'm getting you to play on psychology and melting other people's resistances, getting them to lower their guard because everybody's very...

01:02:00.000 Got their guard up constantly, particularly in this modern world.

01:02:04.000 Nobody is opening up to you or nobody wants to show vulnerability.

01:02:08.000 You're just dealing with a million porcupines out there.

01:02:11.000 I'm showing you how to get those resistance levels down and give room to...

01:02:17.000 Finagle your way into their head.

01:02:19.000 And the converse, of course, too, which is a lot of people are getting these things played upon them constantly.

01:02:25.000 And again, it goes back to the same thing.

01:02:27.000 If you're not aware of the tactics that somebody's using, you're defenseless against them.

01:02:32.000 You're just completely vulnerable, and you'll get sucked into this lure, this spell that they're creating by this push-pull tactic that they're using.

01:02:41.000 Whatever strategy that they're using...

01:02:42.000 And you'll just be helpless to it.

01:02:45.000 And you see guys fall for these all the time.

01:02:47.000 You know, it's something that bums me and you out personally a lot when we see friends and people we love caught in this spell that someone's woven where they can't let go despite so many other things going bad in their life.

01:03:00.000 They're just trapped in it.

01:03:01.000 And reading something like The Art of Seduction says, oh, she's using Law No. 1.00

01:03:06.000 7 as her primary means and 13. And 17. And now I see you.

01:03:11.000 Now I got you, bitch. 1.00

01:03:13.000 And it's like you can switch it back and say, okay, now what do I want? 1.00

01:03:17.000 Do I want to keep you around?

01:03:18.000 Or do I want to just release myself, remove these hooks, these invisible hooks that you've created, and just be free to chart my own course?

01:03:27.000 Wow, thank you, Alfred.

01:03:28.000 I find that a lot of people enjoy the struggle of relationship struggle because it distracts them from their own life.

01:03:36.000 Distract them from their shortcomings and achieving their goals.

01:03:40.000 They put up obstacles almost on purpose.

01:03:43.000 They create these interpersonal relationships that are going to ensure conflict so they don't have to deal with success.

01:03:53.000 They have a built-in excuse for failure.

01:03:57.000 That's very common.

01:03:59.000 Freud called that Erfolgangst.

01:04:04.000 And basically, that means fear of success, which is something I talk a lot about in my books.

01:04:09.000 That's real, right? 0.90

01:04:10.000 It sounds ridiculous. 0.95

01:04:12.000 It sounds like an oxymoron, but it's real. 0.97

01:04:15.000 Yeah.

01:04:16.000 That's one of the main points in Mastery.

01:04:20.000 Mastery is basically a book that's...

01:04:23.000 I'm trying to get away from all of the political stuff I've described in my previous books, and here I'm going to show you how we humans can attain excellence in this world, how we can...

01:04:32.000 Be really, really the best at what we do because I think that's the highest form of power we humans can reach.

01:04:39.000 When we're so good at what we do, then all the political games in the world can't topple us from where we are.

01:04:45.000 And what holds a lot of people back is that they're really self-sabotaging.

01:04:51.000 They're finding all kinds of excuses why they can't go through this process.

01:04:56.000 They believe in the myth that people are born talented or geniuses are simply born that way, or that they didn't get to go to the right school, or their parents were mean to them, or yada yada yada, or my girlfriend is, you know, whatever.

01:05:11.000 As you said, they get involved in drama games and That so fill up their mind they can't think of anything else.

01:05:16.000 So I'm going to make you, in this book as well, aware of what's holding you back and these fears that you're using to sabotage yourself.

01:05:24.000 That is one of the most frustrating things to me when I'm talking to someone and they have these built-in excuses for why they can't do what they want to do.

01:05:31.000 Like, give me some of these excuses that you hear.

01:05:34.000 Well, I have a friend who wanted to be a comedian.

01:05:37.000 He wound up not being a comedian.

01:05:39.000 He doesn't have children.

01:05:39.000 He doesn't have a wife.

01:05:40.000 He doesn't have a mortgage.

01:05:41.000 So it's not like he has this job that he has these responsibilities to feed his family, so he's stuck in this job.

01:05:47.000 But he was like, well, you know what, man?

01:05:50.000 I'd miss the boat with comedy.

01:05:51.000 If I had started in the 90s, everything would be great.

01:05:53.000 I go, what are you talking about?

01:05:55.000 There's people that start right now.

01:05:56.000 There's open mics right now.

01:05:58.000 Tuesday night to the Laugh Factory. 1.00

01:06:00.000 There's a fucking line around the block. 0.99

01:06:01.000 They get there at 9am and they wait in line. 1.00

01:06:02.000 You should do that too if you want to do comedy.

01:06:04.000 Oh man, I can't do that.

01:06:05.000 I'm 30 years old. 1.00

01:06:06.000 Do you think the fucking line gives a shit at how old you are, man? 1.00

01:06:10.000 The line has no idea about your age. 1.00

01:06:12.000 The line is there.

01:06:13.000 The microphone is on for an 80-year-old man.

01:06:15.000 If an 80-year-old man talks in that microphone, it makes noise just like a baby.

01:06:20.000 If a baby cries into that microphone, it also makes noise.

01:06:23.000 Like, what are you talking about?

01:06:24.000 Like, he and I got into this crazy debate about it.

01:06:27.000 He's like, look, man, it's easy for you to say.

01:06:28.000 You're already successful.

01:06:29.000 I'm like, look, dude, it's not easy for me to say. 1.00

01:06:32.000 It's hard for me to hear because you're fucking yourself. 1.00

01:06:35.000 You want to be a comedian. 1.00

01:06:37.000 And if you think you're funny...

01:06:39.000 And by the way, you don't even really have to be funny.

01:06:41.000 You just have to have the ability to figure out how to become funny.

01:06:44.000 And that's self-analysis, objectivity, and work.

01:06:47.000 That's what it is.

01:06:48.000 But you're already creating this insurmountable barrier.

01:06:52.000 You didn't start in the 90s. 0.99

01:06:53.000 What are you fucking talking about? 0.99

01:06:55.000 In the book, Mastery, I interviewed nine... 0.99

01:07:00.000 Modern masters to sort of embed them in amongst all the ancient masters that I talk about.

01:07:05.000 And one of the nine modern masters I interviewed is a woman named Temple Grandin.

01:07:08.000 I don't know if you've heard of her.

01:07:10.000 Temple Grandin is like a very famous animal behavior scientist.

01:07:14.000 And she was born with autism.

01:07:16.000 And at the age of two, was basically going to be put in a mental institution for the rest of her life because she was severe autistic.

01:07:24.000 She couldn't learn language.

01:07:25.000 She was just The kind of kid you see who's just banging their head against a wall.

01:07:30.000 She was severely autistic.

01:07:32.000 And through a process I describe in the book, with her mother's help and a speech therapist, she slowly got at the age of four to be able to start speaking and going to schools.

01:07:43.000 And I show the process that eventually led her to become a great scientist.

01:07:47.000 Now, if somebody born with severe autism at the age of two is going to be institutionalized for their whole life, can become a master, then there's no fucking excuse for some 30-year-old who has nothing, no barriers like that at all to ever get to that point.

01:08:02.000 That's really the reason I put it in there.

01:08:04.000 If somebody like that can overcome their limitations, then there's no more excuses allowed.

01:08:09.000 Well, there is one excuse. 1.00

01:08:10.000 He's a weak bitch. 1.00

01:08:12.000 That's the excuse. 1.00

01:08:13.000 And my advice, don't be a weak bitch. 1.00

01:08:15.000 It's so simple. 1.00

01:08:17.000 Break it down to that.

01:08:18.000 Yeah.

01:08:19.000 My other advice that I always give out is be the person that you pretend to be when you're trying to get laid.

01:08:25.000 Whoa.

01:08:26.000 If you can just do that, just be that guy.

01:08:28.000 What would that guy do?

01:08:29.000 Be that guy and let it become you.

01:08:31.000 That's something I never covered in the art of seduction. 1.00

01:08:33.000 Damn. 0.99

01:08:33.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:08:35.000 Be the hero in your own movie.

01:08:36.000 That's the other thing I say to people. 1.00

01:08:40.000 Pretend you're a fucking loser in a movie. 1.00

01:08:42.000 You woke up today. 1.00

01:08:43.000 The same scenarios you always see. 0.99

01:08:45.000 Guy wakes up, makes a fucking blender full of pizza or whatever they do. 0.99

01:08:49.000 Get their life together. 1.00

01:08:51.000 Smoke a cigarette. 1.00

01:08:51.000 Realize you're a failure. 1.00

01:08:53.000 The bills are piling up.

01:08:55.000 The phone's ringing off the hook from bill collectors.

01:08:57.000 What would the hero in the movie do right now? 1.00

01:09:00.000 Do that shit. 1.00

01:09:00.000 And it works. 1.00

01:09:01.000 It works with some people.

01:09:03.000 Other people, they find excuses to not do it.

01:09:05.000 I got that advice from a family friend one time, and I was terrible at dating until I was about 22 or so, 21. I was awful.

01:09:14.000 I was way too nice.

01:09:15.000 I was so doting.

01:09:16.000 And it wasn't even the real me.

01:09:17.000 I was just playing this over-nice person, and people hated it.

01:09:21.000 It was the most repulsive...

01:09:22.000 Isn't that weird?

01:09:23.000 They hate you being nice.

01:09:23.000 Yeah, it was the most repulsive thing I could have done.

01:09:26.000 And so he told me, he's like, just analyze your actions and what you're saying and ask, what would Bruce Willis do?

01:09:32.000 Because at the time, at the time, it was that's who was like the big, you know, action hero or whatever.

01:09:38.000 My advice...

01:09:39.000 That helped change the game for me.

01:09:40.000 Is stay nice, but be willing to walk away as soon as you expose that someone else is not nice back.

01:09:46.000 Be nice always, but then as soon as someone's not nice back, say, alright, good luck, take it easy.

01:09:50.000 Not need them at all, if you don't need them at all. 0.99

01:09:52.000 The problem with nice people is they're needy motherfuckers. 0.99

01:09:55.000 It's not just nice. 0.99

01:09:57.000 The reason why they're being nice is they need you to like them.

01:10:00.000 You can be really nice and not need people to like you.

01:10:03.000 And if they don't like you or they don't want to be around you, you're fine with it.

01:10:06.000 Then they freak out.

01:10:07.000 They don't know how to handle that. 1.00

01:10:09.000 They're like, shit, I missed the nice guy. 1.00

01:10:10.000 He was nice and it slipped through my fingers. 1.00

01:10:13.000 Personal sovereignty.

01:10:14.000 It's one of the most important things to have in this life.

01:10:18.000 The ability to be yourself, to be by yourself, and why would other people like you if you don't even like yourself?

01:10:26.000 You've got to do things in life that you would admire.

01:10:29.000 You've got to be the kind of person that you would like.

01:10:32.000 And if you're not, why would you expect anyone to like you? 0.98

01:10:35.000 I have this argument with guys all the time where they talk about women and, you know, fucking girls want money, they want this, they want that. 0.99

01:10:44.000 You know, women are always like, you know, I'm not so good with women. 1.00

01:10:47.000 I always say this, would you fuck you? 1.00

01:10:51.000 Would you? 1.00

01:10:52.000 Fuck you. 1.00

01:10:53.000 I don't think I would. 1.00

01:10:54.000 Who would want to?

01:10:55.000 Come on.

01:10:56.000 How dare you?

01:10:58.000 You know, it's not just physical.

01:11:00.000 It's mental.

01:11:01.000 It's the way you behave.

01:11:02.000 Are you a kind person?

01:11:03.000 Are you fun to be around?

01:11:05.000 There are people that are just genuinely great to be around.

01:11:09.000 They don't have to be good-looking.

01:11:10.000 They don't have to be intelligent.

01:11:13.000 They don't have to be well-read.

01:11:14.000 They just have a quality.

01:11:16.000 They have a quality.

01:11:17.000 And do you not have that quality?

01:11:19.000 And if you don't have that quality, can you acquire it?

01:11:22.000 What I try to do in artist seduction is...

01:11:24.000 I'm saying...

01:11:27.000 People who read a book and try to seduce are usually the worst seducers or who've taken some advice because they're not in the moment and they seem like they're kind of being cold and calculating.

01:11:39.000 And the trick to seduction is to appear or to be as natural as possible and to at least appear natural.

01:11:46.000 So everybody has a different style.

01:11:48.000 Some people are funny and great to be around, but maybe you're just not born that way.

01:11:52.000 Maybe you're just not witty.

01:11:54.000 But you have other strengths.

01:11:56.000 You have other qualities.

01:11:57.000 Something naturally seductive about you.

01:12:01.000 That could be you're very social and you can think about what the other person wants.

01:12:07.000 It could be, I have one of the types in the book, maybe you do have coquettish qualities.

01:12:14.000 What does that mean?

01:12:14.000 You can blow hot and cold.

01:12:16.000 Coquettish. 0.70

01:12:17.000 Ooh, new word.

01:12:18.000 Coquette?

01:12:19.000 Coquettish. 0.70

01:12:20.000 Never heard anybody say that before.

01:12:21.000 Sultry French coquette.

01:12:23.000 Isn't that amazing?

01:12:23.000 You could live 46 years in this world.

01:12:25.000 I've taught you several worlds today.

01:12:27.000 You have. 1.00

01:12:27.000 Thank you so much, crypto cunt. 1.00

01:12:29.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:12:30.000 That's my favorite word ever, I think.

01:12:34.000 You're free to use it.

01:12:37.000 Everyone's using it now.

01:12:38.000 What you're saying, it kind of reminds me of what you talk about.

01:12:43.000 Go ahead, it's alright.

01:12:44.000 No, go ahead.

01:12:46.000 Well, it reminds me a little bit of what you're talking about in mastery, of going with your natural inclination that is going to be the best thing, like going with that vocation.

01:12:55.000 Whatever makes you that unique individual, it's almost the same in seduction as it is in mastery.

01:13:01.000 Pursuing that channel, that venue of what is going to bring you out your highest qualities is going to lead to the greatest success, no matter what it is, seduction or mastery.

01:13:11.000 Yeah, I'm trying to make the point in mastery...

01:13:15.000 That you're born with a key to success.

01:13:18.000 Every single human being is born that way. 0.97

01:13:21.000 This isn't some new age bullshit that I'm trying to peddle here. 0.94

01:13:24.000 What that key is, is the fact that there's something unique about you. 0.99

01:13:30.000 Your DNA is unique.

01:13:32.000 Your brain is wired in a unique way.

01:13:34.000 They've done these really interesting studies on newborns, infants one month to six months, and they've been able to show that at the extremely early age, infants are already Distinguishing between things that they like and don't like on very particular levels,

01:13:50.000 like foods and colors and sounds.

01:13:54.000 So when you were really, really young, you had what Aubrey calls, and I call in the book, primal inclinations.

01:14:01.000 There were things you were attracted to that are very, very unique and distinctive about you.

01:14:07.000 It could be sports.

01:14:09.000 It could be competing and winning.

01:14:11.000 It could be working with people in social situations.

01:14:15.000 It could be music, whatever it is. 0.87

01:14:17.000 If you're able to stay true to that or rediscover it when you're older and mind what's unique about you in your tastes, in your way of thinking, in your whole spirit, you are going to fucking succeed in this life.

01:14:30.000 You're going to create a business.

01:14:31.000 You're going to create a book.

01:14:34.000 Have a podcast that reflects your weirdness, your uniqueness, and people will come to you because it's true, it's authentic, and there's nothing else out there like it.

01:14:44.000 How do you do that?

01:14:45.000 How do you stay true to that?

01:14:47.000 How do you figure out what your life's task is, as I call it?

01:14:49.000 How do you keep connected to those primal inclinations?

01:14:53.000 That's what the book Mastery is about.

01:14:55.000 But you first have to be at least aware of what the root of your possible success in life is.

01:15:01.000 And I try to make the point that if you aren't pursuing something that's personally and emotionally connected to you, you're never going to actually succeed in life.

01:15:10.000 If you go into law and you were meant to be a writer, you might be able to bullshit your way for 10 years or so and be a pretty good lawyer.

01:15:17.000 But eventually, because it's not something you were meant to do, you're going to disconnect.

01:15:22.000 You're not going to be into it.

01:15:23.000 You're going to emotionally disengage.

01:15:25.000 You're going to start drinking.

01:15:27.000 Your hair's going to fall out. 0.99

01:15:28.000 You're going to start seeing hookers and getting on drugs. 0.98

01:15:31.000 Wait a minute, wait a minute. 0.98

01:15:32.000 You were good up until that point.

01:15:33.000 I lost you.

01:15:35.000 Well, because you're not pursuing what you were meant to pursue and your life's going to fall apart. 0.97

01:15:39.000 So you're going to have a good time with hookers and drugs? 1.00

01:15:42.000 No. 0.98

01:15:42.000 Well, you can. 0.98

01:15:44.000 I see.

01:15:46.000 You're right.

01:15:47.000 I probably lost you there.

01:15:48.000 People are probably going, that's what I really want. 0.99

01:15:51.000 The plan to mastery is you become a lawyer when you're really supposed to be a writer, then you get hookers and drugs. 0.98

01:15:57.000 Yes. 1.00

01:15:57.000 I think hookers and drugs are fun. 1.00

01:16:00.000 All right. 0.98

01:16:02.000 No, no, I'm just playing.

01:16:03.000 I fully see what you're doing.

01:16:05.000 And I do think that that is a very important point, that people do sabotage when they're unhappy.

01:16:11.000 And I find a lot of people that tend to work jobs that they find very unrewarding to be exceptionally materialistic.

01:16:19.000 Because they're trying to reward themselves with these material items, and these material items become goals for plowing through another day doing this shitty job. 0.79

01:16:28.000 It's a real dead end.

01:16:30.000 That's like one of the worst traps that people fall into.

01:16:32.000 Now, I have nothing against money.

01:16:34.000 I like making money.

01:16:36.000 But the goal of your life when you're in your 20s, for instance, should be learning as much as possible, developing skills in different areas, and not worrying about how much money you're making.

01:16:48.000 Giving yourself the freedom to make mistakes, to explore, to have some adventures, to try things out that don't quite work for you.

01:16:56.000 And then when you reach your 30s, you've got all these skills and experiences, and you're going to make that money eventually.

01:17:02.000 But the path to mastery, you look at somebody like Steve Jobs, you can hate him or you can like him, you can think he's great or not.

01:17:08.000 But he ended up being one of the wealthiest men that ever existed on our planet.

01:17:13.000 He never thought about money.

01:17:15.000 He never cared about it.

01:17:17.000 He lived in a house that was hardly decorated.

01:17:20.000 He just was never on his hierarchy of values, to quote Maslow there.

01:17:26.000 So if you're obsessed with money, you're actually going to find all sorts of problems in life.

01:17:32.000 You're going to become hooked to that paycheck.

01:17:34.000 Let's say you're 32 years old and suddenly you're downsized or you're fired from your job and you've been addicted to that $80,000 or $100,000 years that you've been getting.

01:17:44.000 Now you don't have the mental freedom to take a job for half that price where you can now maybe start learning some skills and moving on and really finding your way because you're addicted to To all that luxury, into the things, into the ego that you have connected to that paycheck.

01:18:01.000 So money is one of the worst traps.

01:18:03.000 And the reason people get into that trap generally is because of their parents.

01:18:06.000 Their parents tell them, Johnny, Susan, whatever your name is, you've got to make a living.

01:18:11.000 You've got to go get a job that's lucrative.

01:18:14.000 You've got to become a doctor, a lawyer.

01:18:15.000 You've got to go to Yale and get this degree and go into the business school, etc.

01:18:20.000 You're not listening to yourself.

01:18:22.000 You're listening to other people and their values.

01:18:24.000 You call that a counterforce in the book.

01:18:27.000 It's things that work against you from finding what you call your vocation, which is what is going to make you the most happy in doing and being.

01:18:37.000 And when you're in your vocation versus just doing a work, when you're in your vocation, you're passionate about it.

01:18:42.000 You love what you're doing.

01:18:43.000 And so you're going to naturally be more inclined to be great at it because you're going to put way more energy, way more passion into it.

01:18:50.000 I mean, think about the people who have achieved, you know, greatness in any different field, all the people we know, you know, even the bow hunter, he loves it.

01:19:00.000 You know, he loves what he's doing.

01:19:01.000 Cameron Haynes.

01:19:02.000 Yeah, he's found success in doing it, but he found his vocation, and he's just stuck with it, and so he's become a master.

01:19:08.000 But if he was trying to do some legal job or some accounting job, he would suck at it, probably. 0.96

01:19:13.000 Well, he actually has a date job, which he fucking hates, and when he describes it, he talks about dying there. 0.98

01:19:18.000 He feels like he's dying every day when he's at work. 0.98

01:19:22.000 Yeah, you're absolutely right.

01:19:24.000 Is there a benefit in experiencing that resistance early in life so that you steal your resolve against it?

01:19:33.000 Which resistance?

01:19:34.000 The resistance to do what you actually want to do.

01:19:36.000 I mean, I feel like a big part of my motivation in life and the strength of my...

01:19:43.000 My resistance to getting other people happy or to doing what other people wanted me to do was that I was pressured in a way that I didn't...

01:19:53.000 towards a direction that I didn't want to go in.

01:19:55.000 Of course.

01:19:56.000 Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I would hear all the time when I was starting out in stand-up comedy is my mom telling me that I wasn't funny.

01:20:04.000 My mom was like, why are you doing this?

01:20:06.000 You're not funny.

01:20:07.000 Like, this is not a smart... 1.00

01:20:08.000 And I would bite down on my mouthpiece and fucking plow forward because of that. 0.99

01:20:13.000 Because I didn't want to hear that. 0.99

01:20:16.000 I didn't want to hear, finish your college degree, get a normal job, stop being a dreamer.

01:20:21.000 I didn't want to hear that because I had heard it.

01:20:23.000 And it strengthened my resolve.

01:20:25.000 Yeah, very much so.

01:20:26.000 That's definitely a theme in the book.

01:20:28.000 I mean, if your path is too easy, if you just fall out of the womb and suddenly...

01:20:33.000 You know this is what you were meant to do, and at 18 you're doing it.

01:20:36.000 You're going to have other problems down the road.

01:20:38.000 It's good to have resistance. 0.99

01:20:39.000 It's good to have people fucking with you and saying you're not good at this, etc. 0.84

01:20:44.000 I know, for instance, in my path to writing the 48 Laws of Power, I kind of knew I wanted to be a writer, but I went into forms of writing that didn't suit me. 0.97

01:20:55.000 I started off in journalism, did that for several years, and really kind of hated it.

01:20:59.000 And at one point...

01:21:01.000 An editor had lunch with me and he pointedly said, Robert, you're never going to be a good writer.

01:21:07.000 You just don't have the chemistry for it.

01:21:09.000 You're just all over the place.

01:21:11.000 You're not disciplined.

01:21:11.000 Maybe go to law school or something.

01:21:14.000 And that got me out of journalism because it made me realize I really hate the assholes who work there who just got to stick up their butt and can't think about what real writing might be like. 0.99

01:21:23.000 I got out of that and wandered around Europe and tried writing novels and all sorts of things that didn't work either. 0.99

01:21:28.000 Then I tried Hollywood and I tried television.

01:21:31.000 Through that process, I discovered what I loved.

01:21:35.000 When it came to the chance to do a book, I suddenly...

01:21:37.000 The heavens blew open for me.

01:21:39.000 Yeah, a book.

01:21:41.000 I have total control over it. 0.88

01:21:43.000 There are no assholes telling me coming in like in Hollywood and changing everything that I write. 0.88

01:21:48.000 There's no writing an article for one week that disappears. 0.98

01:21:52.000 I have a book.

01:21:53.000 But it was only through this process of finding what I hated.

01:21:57.000 So when people come and tell me...

01:21:59.000 I don't know what my vocation is.

01:22:01.000 I don't know what it is I should be doing.

01:22:03.000 I often say, well, what is it that you hate?

01:22:06.000 What are those things in life that you don't like?

01:22:08.000 What are those jobs that you've had that suck the life out of you?

01:22:13.000 They're sort of indications of maybe something that you should like.

01:22:16.000 You don't like working for large groups of people.

01:22:19.000 You should be an entrepreneur.

01:22:20.000 You should be working for yourself.

01:22:22.000 You're shaking your head.

01:22:23.000 You look very skeptical.

01:22:24.000 No, no, not at all.

01:22:25.000 I'm agreeing with you wholeheartedly.

01:22:26.000 The total opposite.

01:22:28.000 I'm like, no, please go on.

01:22:29.000 No, no, I'm just...

01:22:30.000 I love it.

01:22:31.000 You've got to have the resistance.

01:22:33.000 And the worst thing that happens are people who get successful at 25 and then think that they've got the golden touch.

01:22:41.000 And they don't realize that they don't have the golden touch, that maybe they were kind of lucky.

01:22:47.000 And then they keep thinking that they have to repeat the same thing that they did.

01:22:51.000 Let's say they became a comic at the age of 25, became...

01:22:54.000 Hugely successful.

01:22:57.000 But they didn't have the resistance that you had.

01:23:00.000 Now they start not listening to their audience or to other people or to their mother who says they're not really that funny.

01:23:06.000 And they just think everything they do, everything they should is just wonderful.

01:23:10.000 By the way, that's very common.

01:23:11.000 Very common.

01:23:12.000 That's a huge issue with comics.

01:23:14.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:23:14.000 A huge issue with comics is they become successful and then they start to suck. 0.99

01:23:17.000 It's a real issue. 0.94

01:23:19.000 Yeah.

01:23:19.000 Like with some of the greats.

01:23:20.000 I won't name names.

01:23:21.000 I think it happened to Woody Allen.

01:23:23.000 I mean, he's an older guy, but, you know...

01:23:25.000 I disagree with you there. 0.96

01:23:27.000 Some of his movies are fucking brilliant, man. 0.98

01:23:31.000 Blue Jasmine was great. 0.98

01:23:32.000 It was a great movie. 0.99

01:23:33.000 Midnight in Paris was fucking fantastic. 0.99

01:23:35.000 It was a really good movie. 1.00

01:23:36.000 I think he's just a crazy pervert. 0.99

01:23:38.000 I think that's the problem. 1.00

01:23:39.000 We don't like to admit it, but what fuels Woody Allen is he likes getting his dick sucked. 1.00

01:23:44.000 He's a freak. 1.00

01:23:46.000 You ever seen Woody Allen's young stand-up?

01:23:49.000 He was hilarious.

01:23:50.000 He was really good.

01:23:51.000 I thought he was much funnier back then than he is now.

01:23:53.000 Oh, he certainly is.

01:23:54.000 But he also wasn't exposed like you is now.

01:23:57.000 He isn't hated and vilified like he is now.

01:24:00.000 I mean, he became a pariah. 0.90

01:24:03.000 I mean, he became like a real freak.

01:24:05.000 You know, we were talking before the podcast.

01:24:07.000 I was saying that the sound of clicking, I was putting something on Twitter, and I was like, I'm going to miss that if they ever get rid of that.

01:24:14.000 The sound of clicking is so, I don't know, rewarding to me or something like that.

01:24:20.000 Woody Allen does all of his typing, all of his scripts on an old typewriter.

01:24:25.000 And the way he edits, he takes pieces of paper and if he changes a scene, he'll print it on a piece of paper and then cut it and then staple it to the other thing or tape it to the other thing.

01:24:37.000 He's so old school in his approach.

01:24:40.000 He uses the same typewriter that he's always used for everything.

01:24:44.000 Yeah. 0.96

01:24:45.000 Well, it's probably because he's fucking terrified to go on the internet. 1.00

01:24:48.000 If he Googles Woody Allen, I mean, is a, I mean, you know, whoever you are, Jesus is a, first word's going to be cunt. 0.99

01:24:55.000 You know, if Jesus ever gets online and Googles his name. 0.99

01:24:57.000 But for Woody Allen, I mean, the fucking hate and the vitriol that that guy must experience on a daily basis, just looking people in the eyes at a restaurant must be, like, really pretty fucking intense. 0.98

01:25:09.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:25:09.000 I think that phenomenon that you're talking about with comics, it applies to pretty much everything. 0.97

01:25:13.000 Athletes, entrepreneurs.

01:25:15.000 Because if you use this resistance of you're struggling, trying to get to the top, people telling you you're not going to make it, you'll never be a champion, you'll never start on the basketball team, you'll never do this.

01:25:26.000 And then once you get there and once you achieve that, that kind of opposing force that allows you to bring out the best can kind of go away.

01:25:33.000 It's why it's hard for teams to repeat championships and things like that.

01:25:38.000 It's an interesting phenomenon.

01:25:40.000 It's almost like you need this kind of heat and resistance to create the greatest out of yourself.

01:25:46.000 And when that goes, you have to look elsewhere and find it in other things.

01:25:50.000 Yeah, you can't make steel without fire.

01:25:52.000 That's right.

01:25:53.000 I have a story in the book of Freddie Roach.

01:25:56.000 He was one of the modern masters that I interviewed.

01:25:59.000 I love Freddie.

01:25:59.000 Freddie's an amazing guy.

01:26:01.000 And the story of Freddy's really kind of a model for mastery in a way.

01:26:06.000 And basically, I'll summarize it quickly.

01:26:09.000 His father was a fighter.

01:26:11.000 And he got all his boys into boxing at the age of four.

01:26:14.000 They were already in a ring, boxing away at the age of four.

01:26:18.000 And so from that age onward, Freddie was boxing on an amateur level.

01:26:22.000 And at one point in high school, just like your mom, his mom said to him, Freddie, you're not really very good at boxing.

01:26:28.000 Why are you doing this?

01:26:29.000 Your brother is so much better than you.

01:26:32.000 And that got him really pissed.

01:26:33.000 So he went back into the gym and he started training twice as hard.

01:26:36.000 And he suddenly got better than his brother.

01:26:38.000 And not only did he start getting really good, Got on the Olympic team, became a professional, I think, around the age of 18 or so.

01:26:44.000 And he had a boxing career as a professional for about eight years.

01:26:48.000 And he was good, but he wasn't great.

01:26:51.000 He was kind of slow, and he started taking a lot of punches, and it had an effect on him.

01:26:57.000 And finally, at the age of 26, people were saying, Freddie, you better retire.

01:27:00.000 Something really bad's going to happen.

01:27:02.000 And so he retires at the age of 26. And if you think about it, for 22 years, boxing was his whole life.

01:27:10.000 It's all he ever did.

01:27:12.000 And now it's finished.

01:27:13.000 It's over.

01:27:15.000 His career is over.

01:27:16.000 And it's just he's ready to go on a downward spiral to suicide or something bad.

01:27:22.000 And he gets a job in Vegas as a telemarketer because he'd been living in Vegas and fighting.

01:27:29.000 And he's drinking heavily in the daytime because his job's at night and then he goes, doesn't tell him.

01:27:34.000 He's on a fast track to suicide.

01:27:37.000 And one day, he decides to go back to the gym where he used to train under his old trainer, Eddie Fudge.

01:27:43.000 And he's just watching the fighters there like he used to be trained.

01:27:47.000 And he decides, hey, I'm going to maybe help this one guy out who's not getting any attention right now.

01:27:52.000 And in that moment...

01:27:54.000 He sort of realizes, wow, I like teaching.

01:27:58.000 Like, maybe this is what I was meant to be.

01:28:01.000 And he starts coming back every single day.

01:28:04.000 He's not getting paid.

01:28:05.000 The trainer isn't hiring him.

01:28:07.000 He comes on his own.

01:28:09.000 And he starts helping out the fighters.

01:28:12.000 And he slowly realizes that training is the ultimate job for him.

01:28:15.000 He loves competition.

01:28:16.000 He loves winning.

01:28:18.000 But he doesn't have to take a punch as the trainer.

01:28:21.000 He can in the training area with his large mitts.

01:28:24.000 But no punches to the head.

01:28:25.000 He can strategize.

01:28:27.000 He can win.

01:28:27.000 He can compete.

01:28:28.000 He can do all the mind games that he loves.

01:28:30.000 And he can give these years of experience.

01:28:33.000 The reason why I consider this a model is it took him a path where he sort of looked like he was going downhill, where there was nothing left for him to do.

01:28:44.000 And suddenly, just a chance encounter made him realize what his real task in life was.

01:28:51.000 And all that experience that he had Now could be applied to becoming the greatest trainer, boxing trainer of our era and also a mixed martial arts trainer.

01:29:01.000 And so people always say, well, you know, I can't make it.

01:29:06.000 I don't know what my path is.

01:29:08.000 I can't figure it out.

01:29:10.000 I'm too old, etc.

01:29:12.000 It's not a question of what age you are.

01:29:15.000 You can always take the experiences and mistakes that you've had in life, and if you've still got some guts and you're not a whiner, you can find a way to apply those skills in a new way That's going to be something that more engages you personally and emotionally.

01:29:30.000 Because, in fact, he really wasn't meant to be a boxer.

01:29:33.000 His father had pushed him into it. 0.98

01:29:34.000 What he was meant to be was a teacher, because he's fucking brilliant at it. 0.93

01:29:39.000 So that's sort of like the model of the path that is for you. 0.95

01:29:43.000 It's not all rosy.

01:29:45.000 It's not all instantly finding, you know, the perfect job.

01:29:48.000 It requires some pain, some defeat, some loss, some really tough moments.

01:29:54.000 And then it's going to click together as long as you don't give up.

01:29:57.000 Hear, hear.

01:29:58.000 And it is important to experience the loss.

01:30:01.000 It's very important to feel the lows.

01:30:04.000 If you don't feel the lows, you won't appreciate the highs.

01:30:07.000 Right.

01:30:07.000 People in this day and age, they want instant coffee.

01:30:11.000 They want instant gratification.

01:30:13.000 They want everything to come to them with very little work.

01:30:15.000 They want to win the lottery. 0.99

01:30:16.000 And winning the lottery is probably the worst fucking thing that could ever happen to you as a human being. 0.99

01:30:21.000 I think back. 0.99

01:30:22.000 I played the lottery once.

01:30:23.000 I won a free ticket.

01:30:24.000 I played it again.

01:30:25.000 I lost.

01:30:25.000 I'm done.

01:30:26.000 That was it.

01:30:26.000 I never played the lottery again.

01:30:28.000 I'm the same way. 0.99

01:30:28.000 But what if I fucking won, man? 0.99

01:30:30.000 What if I won $100 million when I was 21? 1.00

01:30:32.000 I would be the biggest fucking loser of all time now. 1.00

01:30:34.000 I probably would. 1.00

01:30:36.000 The money would be gone.

01:30:38.000 I'd be suicidal because I blew through $100 million, but it's what happens.

01:30:43.000 There's a reason why so many lottery winners burn through that money, and it's because you don't know what it is.

01:30:50.000 You didn't earn it.

01:30:51.000 It's not yours. 0.78

01:30:52.000 It's crazy.

01:30:53.000 What you've done is you've found a weakness in the system.

01:30:57.000 You've exploited it. 1.00

01:30:58.000 Because the system is designed to steal money from people and get those dummies to spend all this money on a fucking lottery ticket. 1.00

01:31:05.000 It's legalized gambling and the state profits from it not just once but twice because they don't just take the money, your tax dollars, okay, the money that you've, after you spent all your money on taxes and all that, what you've got left over, then you buy a lottery ticket. 0.98

01:31:21.000 Well, guess what?

01:31:22.000 All that money goes into a pool, the government takes a piece of it, always, and then when you get paid, They take half of that! 1.00

01:31:30.000 They fuck you every way, coming and going. 1.00

01:31:34.000 And you get all that money and you still blow it. 1.00

01:31:37.000 You still blow it.

01:31:38.000 You can't keep it.

01:31:39.000 Almost no one does. 1.00

01:31:41.000 You're going to have a million other fucking parasites trying to steal it from you because they know you don't deserve it. 1.00

01:31:47.000 It's a mad, mad pursuit. 1.00

01:31:50.000 The way you appreciate money, whether it's a dollar or a million dollars, is when you earn it.

01:31:55.000 You work hard, you experience the loss, you go through the trials and tribulations, and then you get it.

01:32:01.000 When I look back at my path, I'll just say real quick, when I look back at my path, I got out of school and I didn't know what the hell I was going to do and already felt terrible.

01:32:09.000 I had some idea that I was already going to be in my vocation doing something great by the time I finished college.

01:32:15.000 Well, that didn't happen.

01:32:16.000 I was successful in a A variety of different things.

01:32:19.000 I kept trying, but not really.

01:32:21.000 Nothing that I could really hang my hat on.

01:32:22.000 So I was really anxious and antsy, and I kept trying things.

01:32:26.000 I started a marketing company. 0.99

01:32:27.000 I sold fake vaginas. 1.00

01:32:28.000 I worked for a pharmaceutical company. 0.99

01:32:30.000 Wait, wait, wait, wait.

01:32:32.000 Fleshlight.

01:32:32.000 Yeah, Fleshlight.

01:32:33.000 The largest fake vagina company. 1.00

01:32:35.000 This is a tangent. 0.99

01:32:36.000 We don't need to go down. 1.00

01:32:36.000 Fake vaginas for what? 1.00

01:32:38.000 For fucking. 1.00

01:32:39.000 Stick your penis in them. 1.00

01:32:40.000 It feels better than jerking off. 1.00

01:32:41.000 And I was working with oil and gas companies. 0.98

01:32:44.000 But every single thing, it was like the universe came and just bashed me on the head.

01:32:49.000 Something didn't work out.

01:32:50.000 I'd even get options in this company that was going to strike.

01:32:53.000 They were fracking some gas or something like that.

01:32:56.000 I didn't really understand it at that point.

01:32:58.000 But if that would have been successful and worked, I would have made a huge amount of money.

01:33:01.000 And that would have deterred me from this path I am now, which now I truly feel I'm in my vocation.

01:33:08.000 But if I look back, all of these things that I was fighting for, for success, if they would have come, and they would have come lucratively, they might have deterred me from what my real vocation is. 0.98

01:33:19.000 So all of these things, all these bashes on the head, like the universe taking a fucking hammer and saying, whack! 0.89

01:33:25.000 Not going to work has kind of led me in this weird path to actually doing something that I truly now feel is my vocation. 0.97

01:33:32.000 But those things are blessings, those failures.

01:33:34.000 I think eventually you would have found your way because it's just who you are.

01:33:39.000 Maybe so.

01:33:40.000 Like maybe it would have taken you...

01:33:42.000 It's easy to say when someone's successful.

01:33:44.000 I know.

01:33:45.000 That's like the secret.

01:33:46.000 I know, I know.

01:33:47.000 My issue with the secret is they only talk to the ones who it worked.

01:33:50.000 Like, I was hanging out at the comic store once, and my friend Kelly Kirsten, a very funny stand-up comic, had a friend that came with her to the comic show.

01:33:59.000 She seemed like a very nice person, and she was talking about the secret.

01:34:03.000 And this is the first time I met her.

01:34:05.000 And she was going on about, you know, I'm going to have this, and I'm going to have that, and because I discovered the secret.

01:34:12.000 And, you know, that movie where it tells you to manifest your own destiny with your imagination, you can make things happen.

01:34:18.000 She had decided that because she had this belief in this system, this secret thing, that she was going to somehow or another be super successful and find the man of her dreams and be rich beyond her wildest imagination.

01:34:30.000 Then I ran into her many years later.

01:34:32.000 She came to another comedy show that I had at the UCB, and I remember she was very nice, so I was talking to her.

01:34:39.000 I was like, hey, how you doing?

01:34:40.000 I talked to her once, and then I talked to her twice.

01:34:43.000 This is the only two times I ever had interaction with this woman.

01:34:45.000 She seemed very nice.

01:34:47.000 But I'm talking to her and she's like, I don't know why it's not working.

01:34:51.000 My relationships are terrible.

01:34:53.000 I can't cut myself off of these bad relationships.

01:34:57.000 My father always wants money from me and he's always broke and he drinks.

01:35:02.000 She's like, I thought that I was going to be able to create my own life and it's just not working. 0.98

01:35:08.000 The secret, when you watch those fucking shows, it's only the people that succeeded. 0.98

01:35:13.000 They're like, I drew a picture of the house that I wanted. 0.99

01:35:17.000 And ten years later, I'm living in that house.

01:35:19.000 I set a goal.

01:35:21.000 My goal was ten million dollars.

01:35:23.000 I have ten million dollars.

01:35:24.000 The secret is real. 0.99

01:35:25.000 Well, there's a person out there that drew a picture of a fucking castle on the moon, and they're still in Pasadena. 0.99

01:35:30.000 They're like, where's my fucking castle on the moon? 1.00

01:35:32.000 You ain't getting there, bitch. 1.00

01:35:33.000 Okay, it's not that simple. 0.99

01:35:35.000 And when you're dealing with a very...

01:35:41.000 Yeah.

01:35:42.000 Well, I mean, one of the things in the laws of human nature coming up is this idea that if there's something that's easy, that someone's trying to peddle, it's a deception.

01:35:57.000 It's a con game.

01:35:59.000 We want to believe.

01:36:00.000 We humans want to believe in something quick and easy and simple.

01:36:04.000 And if we believe in something, that means it can't really be real, if we believe it because of that.

01:36:09.000 In other words, we want to believe that God will grace us if we perform certain rituals or that we can make a lot of money by just following the secret.

01:36:21.000 The truth of the matter is that to get really successful, to make money that lasts, it takes hours.

01:36:28.000 It takes 10,000 hours.

01:36:29.000 It takes 20,000 hours.

01:36:30.000 It takes a lot of work, tedious work, drudgery, boredom, moments of challenge, defeat.

01:36:38.000 That's the reality.

01:36:39.000 So anybody that's trying to tell you that that is not the case, that there are shortcuts, they're con artists.

01:36:45.000 That's just pure and simple. 0.56

01:36:46.000 They're con artists.

01:36:52.000 We humans are geared towards pleasure.

01:36:55.000 We don't want to do things that are naturally painful.

01:36:58.000 We are immediately attracted to things that offer us some kind of pleasure or reward.

01:37:04.000 And the problem is too many things nowadays offer pleasures that are immediate, instant rewards.

01:37:11.000 You know, a movie or a video game or something like that, or a drug, where without much effort we get a feeling of relaxation, pleasure.

01:37:21.000 And what I'm trying to show in mastery is that there's a different kind of pleasure that you want to train your body towards aiming at.

01:37:29.000 And that's a pleasure that comes from conquering yourself From learning something deeply.

01:37:35.000 You've been doing archery for some time.

01:37:40.000 It's probably not too satisfying the first few days that you were doing it or the first few weeks.

01:37:44.000 It was a challenge.

01:37:45.000 There wasn't much creativity involved, etc.

01:37:49.000 But if you keep doing this for five years, ten years, suddenly you reach a level of pleasure That no video game could ever, ever begin to supply you.

01:37:59.000 And I want to reorient your whole value system towards this other kind of pleasure that comes from conquering yourself, getting disciplined, getting skilled at something, becoming really good at it, and feeling incredible a sense of fulfillment,

01:38:16.000 as opposed to all those immediate rushes that our culture tries to peddle.

01:38:21.000 That's such a huge point for satisfaction in life.

01:38:25.000 I feel most relaxed after I've worked out really hard.

01:38:29.000 And not just physically because I've blown off all this steam, but because I did it.

01:38:34.000 I'm a big fan of being uncomfortable.

01:38:37.000 And I tell that to people and they go, what are you talking about?

01:38:39.000 Like, look, nobody likes sleeping in more than me.

01:38:42.000 I mean, maybe you do, but I doubt it.

01:38:45.000 I love it.

01:38:46.000 I love sleeping in, but I don't do it, okay?

01:38:48.000 I get up.

01:38:49.000 I get up when I have to get up, unless I can. 0.99

01:38:51.000 You know, I did all my shit. 0.98

01:38:54.000 My point is, when I have something that I have to do, when I do it, if I don't want to do it, it feels even better once I've done it. 0.99

01:39:02.000 Yeah, really.

01:39:03.000 And that's the fan of being uncomfortable.

01:39:07.000 I like that feeling.

01:39:09.000 I like that feeling because that feeling has shaped me.

01:39:11.000 It's rewarded me.

01:39:12.000 It's one of the reasons why I pursue so many things that I've never done before.

01:39:16.000 Why I got into archery.

01:39:18.000 Why I'm enjoying it. 1.00

01:39:19.000 Why I'm enjoying it because I fucking suck at it. 1.00

01:39:21.000 I like sucking at something, because you suck at it, and now I don't suck at it as much as I did three months ago, whatever the hell it is when I first bought a bow. 0.99

01:39:29.000 I'm better at it now, for sure. 0.98

01:39:31.000 I put pictures online of my patterns that I can hit. 0.99

01:39:36.000 My arrows in the bullseyes and shit. 0.98

01:39:41.000 Because I want to reinforce that in my head, to keep doing that. 0.99

01:39:44.000 And also, there's a discipline involved in something that's very difficult to do that requires all of your concentration that clears the mind.

01:39:54.000 And I think that you can get that in gardening.

01:39:57.000 You can get that in running up hills. 0.99

01:39:59.000 Whatever it is, when you're running up hills, you're not thinking about too much other shit. 0.82

01:40:03.000 When you're absolutely exhausted and your heart's pounding in your chest and you know you've got 300 yards to go and you don't think you can make it, there's a beauty in that. 0.82

01:40:12.000 Yeah, you're talking a lot about Zen philosophy almost, too, as well.

01:40:16.000 Using some modality of movement, which often it is, or anything, to find a...

01:40:21.000 A sort of presence of mind, you know, returning to that state of openness of consciousness.

01:40:27.000 And, you know, archery is one of those main channels.

01:40:29.000 Zen and the Art of Archery is a great book.

01:40:31.000 I've read that.

01:40:32.000 And, you know, you work for these moments.

01:40:34.000 They call it Satori, where it's these moments where you have this really mindless shot that you take in archery and everything is just...

01:40:43.000 Completely in the moment.

01:40:44.000 And I think the masters have found a way to duplicate that more often.

01:40:50.000 They have almost a formula that can allow them to get these moments where they're really in the zone, as you would call it.

01:40:57.000 Or flow, they call it flow.

01:40:58.000 Yeah, get in these flow states, which is really hearkening back to that old Zen philosophy of being of no mind.

01:41:05.000 Well, that is the experience that best describes martial arts at its best as well.

01:41:11.000 When you're fighting, when you're competing especially, if there's anything on your mind, anything else besides the task at hand, besides dealing with the other skilled person, you're gonna be diminished.

01:41:24.000 You will be diminished.

01:41:25.000 Your skills will be diminished.

01:41:26.000 Your mind will be diminished. 1.00

01:41:27.000 It's one of the reasons why so many people talk trash. 1.00

01:41:29.000 We're good to go. 0.98

01:41:52.000 You're going to expose yourself.

01:41:53.000 You're not going to fight with perfect strategy. 0.98

01:41:55.000 Unless you're Mike Tyson versus Michael Spinks, where Spinks is fucked no matter what he does. 0.96

01:42:01.000 Tyson could come into that fight on cocaine, angry. 0.99

01:42:04.000 It didn't matter. 0.99

01:42:05.000 He's going to kill you because he's just so much better.

01:42:07.000 But when you have two Mike Tysons, you get Mike Tyson versus Evander Holyfield.

01:42:13.000 You get a guy who's fighting with purity. 0.99

01:42:15.000 And a guy who's going to beat your fucking ass, you're not going to take him out of there with one big rush in the first round. 1.00

01:42:20.000 And, you know, you're going to wind up getting knocked the fuck out. 1.00

01:42:22.000 And that's what happened to Tyson when he fought Holyfield. 0.98

01:42:25.000 He fought a real master.

01:42:27.000 He fought a master when he wasn't a master anymore.

01:42:29.000 Yeah, I didn't include him in Mastery.

01:42:32.000 I'm going to include him in my next book.

01:42:34.000 But I was reading Phil Jackson's most recent book.

01:42:37.000 And he's a Zen master himself.

01:42:40.000 And he discovered...

01:42:42.000 In dealing with all these incredible egos on a team, as he did with the Bulls and later with the Lakers, that if he tried to get them all wired up before a game and emotional, which is what a lot of coaches would do, yeah, we're going to rip the guts out of them, let's go just kill the Lakers, whatever, that they would play much worse.

01:42:59.000 So his job was to imbibe in them incredible peacefulness and calmness, and they would meditate before a game, which no other coach ever did before.

01:43:09.000 Wow.

01:43:09.000 And he wanted them completely to be mindful in the game so that they could focus on the task and not use all that anger to push them.

01:43:18.000 And some players could use the anger a little bit, but most people, like Dennis Rodman, it would make them do all sorts of terrible mistakes.

01:43:25.000 And look at the results.

01:43:27.000 There's no coach who's had more championships or more success than someone like Phil Jackson.

01:43:32.000 But the thing that I try and show in Mastery, because I have a story of a great Zen master, a man named Hakuin, Because I myself practice Zen meditation, have been for many years.

01:43:43.000 This man, this was in 17th century, 18th century Japan.

01:43:49.000 He was reacting against all the Zen practices that were going on in Japan that were trying to promise you enlightenment Through something very simple.

01:43:58.000 All you had to do was sit in what's called Zazen, seated meditation, and enlightenment would come to you. 0.99

01:44:04.000 And he said, this is such bullshit. 1.00

01:44:06.000 I hate this. 1.00

01:44:06.000 This isn't the way to mass to enlightenment. 1.00

01:44:09.000 They've gotten away from the true essence of Zen.

01:44:11.000 You have to have pain. 0.99

01:44:13.000 You have to go through 10, 20, 30 years of torture, doubt, misery, the Zen master hitting you over a head with that stupid stick every time he saw that you weren't concentrating, and then you would be enlightened. 0.99

01:44:24.000 And so I'm trying to show you, even if it's enlightenment, which seems like the most unmaterial thing you could think of, requires the same process of going through a practice of having pain Of having resistance, of having a teacher tell you that you're fucked up, 1.00

01:44:42.000 you're wrong, hitting you on the head. 0.99

01:44:44.000 On and on.

01:44:45.000 And life is the greatest teacher of all.

01:44:48.000 Life will hit you on the head.

01:44:49.000 It sure will.

01:44:49.000 If you don't have any teacher with an actual stick, you better believe that, you know, life itself will handle that.

01:44:55.000 Go ahead.

01:44:56.000 No, I mean, what I try to say is I'm grounding you in what the human brain was evolved for, because our brains weren't wired for iPods and iPhones and Twitter.

01:45:09.000 They were wired over hundreds of thousands of years of hunting, Of dealing with extremely radical, dangerous situations in which one moment, if we're not careful, a leopard will come and eat us.

01:45:21.000 And early humans were being eaten quite often by large cats.

01:45:28.000 Very dangerous environment in which your awareness, your focus, your ability to understand your environment as if it were on your fingertips, to know every square foot of that very dangerous African savanna that you're on, that's what the brain was wired for. 0.90

01:45:45.000 Focus, seeing something deeply, understanding your environment, not being distracted here and there and looking over there.

01:45:52.000 That's not how the brain was evolved.

01:45:54.000 So all of these disciplines from boxing to Zen enlightenment to archery to music to whatever, They're all connected with the same brain process that we all have to go through in order to reach this point where we've mastered our environment,

01:46:11.000 whatever that might be.

01:46:13.000 Your work in meditation, what type of meditation do you practice?

01:46:20.000 Well, I've done mostly what's called Renzi.

01:46:24.000 There's Soto and Renzi.

01:46:25.000 I used to go to a place where I was trained, and now I do it on my own.

01:46:31.000 What's the difference between the two schools of thought?

01:46:33.000 One of them is more a passive process where you're just sitting there trying to completely empty your mind.

01:46:41.000 And that's sort of the easier, slightly easier path.

01:46:44.000 And the concept is if you're able to reach a state where you're not thinking at all and you've emptied your mind, enlightenment will come to you.

01:46:52.000 The other school is more active.

01:46:55.000 It's not just so passive.

01:46:56.000 You just can't empty your mind.

01:46:57.000 You have to do something else.

01:46:58.000 And that something else is...

01:47:00.000 I'm simplifying it, mind you, here.

01:47:02.000 But that something else is more disciplined and going through learning these various koans.

01:47:08.000 For instance, the most famous koan is...

01:47:10.000 These are usually a series of questions.

01:47:13.000 The sound of one hand clapping.

01:47:14.000 But the one that I've used for years is...

01:47:18.000 The question is, does the dog have Buddha nature?

01:47:21.000 And the answer from the Zen master is Mu.

01:47:24.000 Mu meaning no, but it means more than no. 0.94

01:47:28.000 It means like nothing, just nothingness.

01:47:31.000 And it's the most powerful Zen koan ever written.

01:47:34.000 If you ever try and think about it deeply, you will reach enlightenment.

01:47:38.000 The different school of thought is you meditate on that koan, almost like a mantra, and you try and figure it out until it opens up a gate in your head.

01:47:48.000 That's a simplified version of the two different types.

01:47:53.000 So the idea being that this preposterous question becomes sort of a pattern that your thoughts go into and you become empty because this pattern becomes, you say it over and over and over and over again,

01:48:08.000 you recite it, you think about it over and over again until you reach a state of mind.

01:48:14.000 Until it becomes so absurd that the words fall off of you.

01:48:18.000 Zen is trying to teach you something that's wordless.

01:48:21.000 We're so trapped in language and words and thinking that it separates us from our natural state of original mind, of the non-thinking mind.

01:48:34.000 I know that sounds a strange idea, but...

01:48:38.000 Through words, you're going to realize the absurdity of words, that they're disconnecting you from reality.

01:48:45.000 And so at that point, you realize that moo means everything. 0.52

01:48:49.000 There's absolutely nothing real in this universe that can be encompassed by a word.

01:48:55.000 My talking about it here is absolutely completely counterproductive and ridiculous because people are going to think, oh, I'll just repeat the word moo over and over again.

01:49:04.000 No, it takes...

01:49:05.000 Months of thinking very deeply about this is trying to cut you off from that chatter in your head, from thinking constantly linguistically about—it's a total physical form of enlightenment,

01:49:22.000 Zen.

01:49:22.000 It's the most physical form of enlightenment you could reach.

01:49:26.000 I'm getting reminded of that Bill Bradley story that you told, and kind of repeating the same thing.

01:49:31.000 Bill Bradley was a terrible basketball player at the start.

01:49:34.000 Big, gangly, slow, not terrible, but he wasn't good.

01:49:38.000 But he had the most relentless pursuit of improvement of anybody that I've ever read.

01:49:43.000 You can probably pick up the story, but he You know, just dribbling the ball, you know, constantly, eight hours, nine hours a day, you know, again, over and over and over again.

01:49:54.000 And that kind of repetition, you know, it's all part of this same pattern of doing the same thing over and over again.

01:50:01.000 Well, I'm glad you bring it up.

01:50:01.000 He's a great story.

01:50:03.000 It's kind of another like Freddie Roach type thing.

01:50:06.000 He's a white guy who happens to be tall, but he loves basketball.

01:50:11.000 He's like nine years old.

01:50:12.000 And I know this myself because I loved basketball when I was a kid.

01:50:15.000 Just the sound of the ball swishing through the net.

01:50:18.000 He just loved the sound of that, the feel of it.

01:50:22.000 So he had the sort of visceral love of the game, but he stunk at it.

01:50:26.000 He was tall, awkward, slow.

01:50:28.000 There's no way he'd become good at it.

01:50:30.000 So he decided he was going to train himself from a very early age.

01:50:35.000 And I call it, you know, they have a concept called deliberate practice, where you learn to practice what you're not good at.

01:50:43.000 Because we often, if we're taking up archery or basketball, We find something that we're good at, and we tend to just repeat that, and then our practice becomes very one-sided.

01:50:54.000 Deliberate practice is to practice on what you're not good at.

01:50:56.000 I call it resistance practice.

01:50:59.000 Actually practicing at what is painful, in enjoying the pain, and that's Bill Bradley.

01:51:05.000 He put these special glasses on his head that prevented him from looking down.

01:51:11.000 So he would dribble on a court for three or four hours and he couldn't look down at his feet, which trained him to dribble.

01:51:21.000 That's the worst thing you can have if you're always looking down.

01:51:23.000 You're not able to see what's going on on the court.

01:51:26.000 So he did that.

01:51:28.000 He went on a cruise with his parents across to England and he wanted to build a practice there.

01:51:35.000 He brought his basketball and below deck there were these incredibly long alleys that would go from one end of the ship to the other that were very narrow.

01:51:43.000 He would put on his special glasses and he would dribble back and forth In this narrow area so that he could dribble with absolute, complete control.

01:51:51.000 He devised all of these other exercises where he could train himself to see almost behind himself, or at least way over to the side, on and on and on until he became so good that by the time he got into college at Princeton,

01:52:07.000 and then later he played for the New York Knicks in the 70s with all the great championship teams, people would look at Bill Brown and go, my God, This guy was born with a basketball in his hand.

01:52:17.000 He's naturally gifted.

01:52:19.000 He is so graceful.

01:52:20.000 He has eyes in the back of his head.

01:52:22.000 He can make a pass to Walt Frazier without even looking.

01:52:24.000 They didn't realize that he had gone through the most insanely rigorous, painful, deliberate form of practice ever invented by a single athlete.

01:52:35.000 At a very early age.

01:52:39.000 And it made the game fun for him.

01:52:42.000 Sure, it was a lot of pain, but by the time he got good and he was in high school, all the girls were admiring him.

01:52:49.000 He got invited to go to Princeton.

01:52:51.000 I mean, it paid off and he got a huge level of pleasure and the game became incredibly fun.

01:52:57.000 But it was all based on these insane moments and periods of pain that he put himself through.

01:53:03.000 That's a beautiful story.

01:53:05.000 I love that story.

01:53:06.000 That's amazing.

01:53:07.000 That's such a huge lesson for young people coming up to learn and hear, to instill that into your mind and to use that as a template.

01:53:15.000 Yeah.

01:53:16.000 Particularly nowadays when you're just so inundated with immediate pleasures and so many young people are disconnected from what I call, you know, The pattern that our brains were built for, if you're going against that pattern and trying to get things quickly or immediately,

01:53:33.000 you're just going to fail.

01:53:35.000 You're just going to be a loser in life.

01:53:36.000 You, in your short life, can't suddenly move against 2 million, 3 million years of evolution. 0.79

01:53:44.000 I'm sorry, it just can't be done.

01:53:47.000 That's a beautiful statement, man.

01:53:50.000 What you said is so important, and that story, the Bill Bradley story, is such a powerful story, because anyone can do that with whatever you're trying to do.

01:54:00.000 Exactly.

01:54:00.000 I mean, he just happened to be born tall, so...

01:54:03.000 If he hadn't ended up being 6'6 or 7, he wouldn't know, but that's all he had.

01:54:07.000 What about Muggsy Bogues, who was 5'6, who was a great basketball player?

01:54:11.000 There's plenty of examples of people that they physically weren't built for.

01:54:14.000 I mean, Mike Tyson was one of the smallest heavyweight champions of that modern era.

01:54:18.000 You know, he was 5'10".

01:54:19.000 You know, he weighed 215 pounds in his prime. 0.97

01:54:23.000 You know, go back to Primo Carneiro, who was a heavyweight champion in the fucking 20s or 30s or whatever the hell it was. 0.88

01:54:28.000 He was like 300 pounds, you know? 0.83

01:54:30.000 I mean, Mike Tyson's, in my opinion, the greatest heavyweight of all time.

01:54:33.000 And he wasn't that big.

01:54:34.000 He wasn't a big guy.

01:54:35.000 And the cool part is that ultimately, we've talked about it before, any master that you meet, they're generally a real true pleasure to be around.

01:54:44.000 They've worked through all of these cunty, egoistic attitudes that they may carry along, and it's through this almost overcoming this physical resistance in the very art of the mastery that they're doing.

01:54:56.000 It doesn't matter, ping pong, bow hunting, comedy, basketball, whatever it is, You reach a certain place by pushing through that pain and going through those hours and doing those things that almost tempers your spirit as the main thing that's happening.

01:55:12.000 And the skill kind of comes along with it, even though you're focused on the skill.

01:55:16.000 Sometimes not though, unfortunately.

01:55:17.000 Sometimes focusing on that skill becomes to the detriment of all other aspects of your life. 1.00

01:55:22.000 And there are people that achieve mastery in very specific things that are fucking total shitheads. 1.00

01:55:28.000 Ty Cobb, great example, was a famous shithead. 1.00

01:55:33.000 There's a lot of people. 0.99

01:55:35.000 Mike Tyson in his prime, went to jail for rape.

01:55:39.000 I don't think he did it.

01:55:40.000 He says he didn't do it, and he's really honest about pretty much everything else in his life. 1.00

01:55:44.000 But the point being, you know, he was a wild, crazy fuck. 0.99

01:55:48.000 And that was one of the reasons why he was being successful. 1.00

01:55:51.000 There are very many examples of people who become so selective in what they're trying to do and so obsessed and focused.

01:56:00.000 To the detriment of personal relationships, to the detriment of their own personality.

01:56:05.000 I mean, Steve Jobs would definitely fall under that category.

01:56:07.000 I agree.

01:56:08.000 It doesn't have to be that way, though.

01:56:10.000 It doesn't have to be that way.

01:56:11.000 And then I always say, even with Ty Cobb or Steve Jobs, they were probably miserable to be around, but he had a pretty hugely satisfying life.

01:56:21.000 Maybe.

01:56:21.000 I don't know, man.

01:56:22.000 I don't know that guy.

01:56:23.000 No, I don't know.

01:56:24.000 I think it kind of goes to your...

01:56:26.000 I'm going to use the bathroom real quick, please.

01:56:27.000 It goes to kind of one of your final points, which is on that path to mastery, the final level is building bridges back to nature, back to different and making other connections.

01:56:38.000 So if you stay too focused in that one thing and never look to build a bridge to anything else, you can probably result in some of these issues.

01:56:46.000 Yeah, I mean, for those who don't know the book, essentially I've laid out kind of five or six steps towards this ultimate form of mastery.

01:56:54.000 It's like a path.

01:56:56.000 And it involves first discovering who you are, what you were meant to do, then going through what I call an apprenticeship in which you develop all of the proper skills.

01:57:07.000 Later in life you have like a real firm basis for becoming creative and part of that apprenticeship involves working with mentors and masters and it also involves learning how to work with other people and deal with their weirdness and their political games and then showing you then how you reach the creative level and then the mastery level and it's a loose path,

01:57:30.000 it's not like a straight line but I'm sort of showing you the various steps that get you there And as Aubrey points out, particularly nowadays, it involves a kind of a well-roundedness.

01:57:46.000 You're not just some Asperger's guy in Silicon Valley who's great at logarithms and creating the ultimate Facebook or whatever.

01:57:58.000 You also have to have social skills, and I have a whole chapter in mastery on social intelligence.

01:58:04.000 You have to learn how to deal with people.

01:58:06.000 You have to be socially fluid. 0.98

01:58:08.000 You have to know how to be empathetic, how to understand what other people's feelings are, how to handle the assholes that will inevitably cross your path.

01:58:19.000 Some of the people that Joe's talking about who are a little bit one-sided, they've kind of bypassed some of these other things that I'm talking about because I'm trying to get you to that well-rounded form of mastery. 0.65

01:58:31.000 Which is true mastery.

01:58:32.000 True mastery.

01:58:32.000 Mastery over your whole life, not just a specific task.

01:58:35.000 Very much so.

01:58:36.000 You were talking a lot about meditation.

01:58:38.000 Have you ever spent any time in an isolation tank?

01:58:41.000 I have.

01:58:42.000 Do you do it on a regular basis?

01:58:44.000 No.

01:58:45.000 When I was living in New York years ago as a journalist, They asked me to write an article about isolation tanks.

01:58:51.000 This was when they were just starting out, early 80s.

01:58:54.000 Oh, they were around before that.

01:58:55.000 They were, but they became a recreational thing in the early 80s.

01:59:00.000 They were around as a CIA experiment.

01:59:03.000 No, John Lilly, the guy who created it.

01:59:06.000 But for the general public, it really became like a fad in the early 80s.

01:59:13.000 So I was asked to cover it, and I got kind of hooked.

01:59:16.000 And I did it for a while.

01:59:18.000 I haven't done it since then, but it's a great experience.

01:59:21.000 I think that was because of the movie Altered States.

01:59:23.000 Yes.

01:59:23.000 When did that movie come out?

01:59:26.000 Because that was how I found out about it as well.

01:59:28.000 You're right, 81. No, 1980. 80. Altered States. 0.73

01:59:31.000 Exactly.

01:59:32.000 Yeah.

01:59:33.000 Isn't it funny how a movie can just start a trend like that?

01:59:36.000 Yeah.

01:59:37.000 I found out about Altered States when I was in high school.

01:59:40.000 I watched the movie in high school, or right after...

01:59:42.000 It came out.

01:59:44.000 Maybe I actually saw it in junior high because it was 80. I wasn't in high school yet.

01:59:47.000 But I got into isolation tanks when I first came to California because they had them here.

01:59:53.000 And I never knew that there was a place where you could get into one.

01:59:57.000 Through talking about it on the podcast, the entire industry has got this massive bump now.

02:00:03.000 And there's isolation tank centers opening up all over the world that credit me talking about it on the podcast and YouTube videos that I talk about it.

02:00:11.000 I have one in my basement.

02:00:13.000 How often do you do it?

02:00:15.000 All the time.

02:00:16.000 I was in yesterday.

02:00:17.000 I think it's the most important tool that I've ever discovered.

02:00:26.000 How long do you sit in it?

02:00:28.000 At least an hour.

02:00:29.000 I think an hour is the right amount of time.

02:00:32.000 Is there somebody that wakes you up and gets you out?

02:00:34.000 No, I have a timer.

02:00:35.000 You have a timer?

02:00:36.000 I set a timer if I have to, but sometimes I'll go in there if I don't have a time limitation.

02:00:42.000 You lose all sense of time.

02:00:43.000 You have no idea what an hour is.

02:00:46.000 Yeah, maybe.

02:00:47.000 I don't know.

02:00:48.000 My brain seems to know when two hours is.

02:00:51.000 Two hours seems pretty standard for me.

02:00:53.000 If I don't have any time constraints, two hours seems to be what I really, depending on whether or not I'm sober or not when I go into it, never drunk, but marijuana is usually the intoxicant of choice, especially edible marijuana, which provides a much more hallucinogenic effect.

02:01:10.000 I think it enhances the experience of the psychedelic state inside the tank.

02:01:14.000 You don't freak out or anything?

02:01:15.000 I like freaking out.

02:01:17.000 I like freaking out.

02:01:18.000 I think freaking out's important.

02:01:19.000 I'm a big fan of freaking out.

02:01:21.000 Because then, much like the stress of exercise or discipline, through the experience of complete freaking out, there's lessons to be learned.

02:01:31.000 Confront your demons and stuff. 0.93

02:01:33.000 Yeah, the psychedelic state that you can achieve inside an isolation tank on edible marijuana is pretty fucking intense. 0.96

02:01:40.000 Wow. 0.83

02:01:41.000 But it's just that environment for meditation.

02:01:46.000 I mean, there's no better environment ever created for meditation.

02:01:49.000 In fact, it's the only environment like it on Earth.

02:01:51.000 You're successful, man.

02:01:52.000 How come you don't have one of those?

02:01:54.000 I don't have a basement.

02:01:56.000 You don't need a basement.

02:01:57.000 Well, I don't know why my girlfriend would want that in our house. 1.00

02:02:00.000 Tough shit. 1.00

02:02:01.000 Get a new one. 1.00

02:02:01.000 Get a new girlfriend? 1.00

02:02:02.000 Moving on.

02:02:05.000 She tried to keep you from having an isolation tank. 0.98

02:02:07.000 What's she trying to do? 0.85

02:02:07.000 Keep you from enlightenment? 0.85

02:02:09.000 Yeah.

02:02:09.000 Alright, I'll try that on her.

02:02:12.000 But Zen Meditation...

02:02:13.000 You wrote the artist...

02:02:14.000 Yeah, come on, man.

02:02:15.000 You're talking about your own laws.

02:02:17.000 You're violating them right now by saying that.

02:02:19.000 Did your girlfriend tell you what kind of car you could drive to?

02:02:22.000 No.

02:02:23.000 No, but sometimes you've got to give in to the other person.

02:02:26.000 You know, a relationship's a little bit about compromise.

02:02:28.000 Not if it's about an isolation tank.

02:02:30.000 No, you're right.

02:02:31.000 You're right. 0.99

02:02:31.000 No fucking reason. 0.99

02:02:32.000 Oh, I'm sorry. 0.97

02:02:33.000 I'm sorry. 0.84

02:02:34.000 I'm beating you over the head with your own work. 0.88

02:02:36.000 That's all right. 0.99

02:02:36.000 Everybody does that. 0.99

02:02:39.000 But Zen meditation is sort of like the isolation tank because the point of it is to cut off all stimuli.

02:02:46.000 And you don't have to rely on this environment that you're putting yourself into.

02:02:51.000 So...

02:02:53.000 Your eyes are open when you're meditating, but you're not looking at anything.

02:02:58.000 And you're not getting in any stimuli at all.

02:03:02.000 So you're not hearing anything.

02:03:04.000 I mean, there can be sounds outside, but you're not paying attention to them.

02:03:07.000 And you enter the state that's similar to what the isolation tank is.

02:03:12.000 I can enter a state like the isolation tank without the isolation tank because I cut off all stimuli and I enter my own mental space and incredible things can happen.

02:03:22.000 So you just ignore the stimuli until the point where it's not reaching the mind?

02:03:26.000 Is that the idea behind it?

02:03:27.000 It's training.

02:03:28.000 It's years of meditation where you're not good at it and still to this day thoughts invade your head which probably don't so much...

02:03:34.000 Well, they do when you're in an isolation tank.

02:03:36.000 Of course they do.

02:03:39.000 But if you go, it's called Samadhi.

02:03:42.000 And Samadhi is the state where you're...

02:03:44.000 The Samadhi tanks?

02:03:46.000 Yeah.

02:03:46.000 Yeah, that's the name of the company.

02:03:48.000 Right, that's right.

02:03:48.000 I remember that.

02:03:49.000 I remember that.

02:03:50.000 Well, Samadhi is a kind of mindless state, or that's not exactly the word, but there's no thinking going on.

02:04:00.000 And it's just incredibly euphoric.

02:04:02.000 Mm-hmm.

02:04:03.000 You can reach that through meditation, but maybe after 20 minutes or 25 minutes you get to that state.

02:04:09.000 But you're cutting off all stimuli.

02:04:12.000 That's one of the reasons they founded yoga, was to make it so that there was less stimuli coming from your seated ass, you know, and the way that your legs were folded when you're meditating, because all of that noise that an isolation tank filters out, and I love the tank,

02:04:28.000 it's most effective for me, but, you know, they would do yoga so that they could sit in that pose and have less of that stimuli yelling for longer, so they could reach those states in which they could find that.

02:04:39.000 Well, I also personally find that yoga releases some form of psychedelic chemicals in the mind.

02:04:44.000 Yeah, it's its own practice.

02:04:45.000 I've gotten high, like legitimately high from yoga to the point where not, I want to say intoxicated, like I'm diminished in some way or affected, like I can't form sentences or anything like that, but I feel like a chemical effect or a biological effect,

02:05:05.000 some sort of a real tangible effect from yoga.

02:05:08.000 Definitely.

02:05:09.000 Which I've always wondered.

02:05:10.000 I mean, my thought process was, why would these people do all this for so long?

02:05:15.000 Like, why would they have this practice for thousands of years unless there was something to it?

02:05:19.000 And there's something to it.

02:05:21.000 I do a lot of swimming, and I find swimming the absolute ultimate form of exercise because...

02:05:29.000 There's no stimuli.

02:05:31.000 I mean, you're not sitting there thinking about the water anymore.

02:05:34.000 Your brain just zones out.

02:05:36.000 And if you do long-distance swimming, you can reach very interesting alpha states.

02:05:41.000 Yeah, I agree.

02:05:42.000 I find it incredibly...

02:05:44.000 Not just beautiful in that sense where you achieve states, but it's really taxing.

02:05:52.000 It's really hard to swim.

02:05:53.000 Most people think of swimming as a recreational activity.

02:05:56.000 I do a lot of swimming with my kids and we play around. 0.98

02:05:58.000 But when I do laps, it's fucking hard. 0.96

02:06:02.000 Swimming is hard to do, man. 0.98

02:06:04.000 You look at a dude like Michael Phelps, that's a bad man. 1.00

02:06:08.000 That guy has achieved this incredible ability to move through the water like a fucking fish. 0.99

02:06:13.000 That's not easy. 0.99

02:06:14.000 That is a real, legit, difficult accomplishment.

02:06:18.000 I like the mental pain involved in swimming because I like to swim long distances where you're like, I just can't do this anymore.

02:06:26.000 It's so boring and it's so painful and I'm going to drown.

02:06:32.000 I'm taking whatever and then you just push past that.

02:06:35.000 And you swim like two miles and you get out.

02:06:37.000 Oh man, what a great feeling.

02:06:38.000 So would you just do laps in the pool over and over and over again?

02:06:42.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:06:42.000 You're not one of those crazy fucks that gets in the ocean, are you? 1.00

02:06:45.000 I would love to, but I live... 1.00

02:06:48.000 Not close to the ocean, and it's cold and polluted.

02:06:53.000 If I lived in Hawaii, I'd be swimming in the ocean.

02:06:55.000 And then you'd get radioactive. 1.00

02:06:57.000 The shit coming from Japan. 1.00

02:06:58.000 You're right. 1.00

02:06:59.000 If I lived in the Yucatan, I'd be swimming in the ocean.

02:07:02.000 Ah, there you go.

02:07:03.000 That's it.

02:07:03.000 That's the spot.

02:07:04.000 The long ocean swims moved to the Yucatan.

02:07:07.000 That is a beautiful patch of water, though, by the way.

02:07:09.000 Tulum?

02:07:10.000 You ever been to Tulum?

02:07:11.000 No, I've been to Chichen Itza.

02:07:13.000 Oh, Chichen Itza, yeah.

02:07:14.000 That's amazing.

02:07:15.000 Yeah, incredible.

02:07:16.000 Yeah, that's a freaky spot, you know.

02:07:18.000 Being around those ancient ruins is one of the most bizarre moments I think I've ever had.

02:07:23.000 Just walking around knowing that people were playing football with human heads where I was standing.

02:07:28.000 This is a scant 1500 plus years ago or whatever it was.

02:07:33.000 So, these altered states that you achieve with Zen meditation, do you find them to be psychedelic?

02:07:42.000 Do you find that you can hallucinate?

02:07:45.000 Well, you're not supposed to.

02:07:47.000 That's not the goal.

02:07:48.000 They have this word called makyo, which means a demon.

02:07:53.000 And what it means is, after a certain point in meditation, demons start appearing in your brain, where you've cut out all sensory stimuli And suddenly, images start coming up that are just weird and random and somewhat frightening.

02:08:10.000 And that happens to me all the time.

02:08:13.000 You almost are like in a dream state.

02:08:15.000 You know how in dreams, there are thoughts and images that seem so random and sometimes scary by how random they are.

02:08:21.000 You're consciously getting that in your head as you're entering deeper and deeper into this state.

02:08:27.000 But you're trying to push past that.

02:08:29.000 You're trying to push to the state where there's...

02:08:31.000 Nothing coming in at all and you kind of transcend this sort of thinking state that you're constantly in.

02:08:40.000 I can't really put it in words.

02:08:42.000 I don't even want to try and put it in words.

02:08:43.000 So the goal isn't really to have these vivid hallucinations but they happen and they're very interesting.

02:08:51.000 That's fascinating though that it's thought to be demons.

02:08:54.000 Yeah, in the traditional Zen form, that's what they call them.

02:09:00.000 And I know that they have in Japanese iconography, these very frightening looking demon-like figures. 0.86

02:09:10.000 And then they do actually have a concept of hell in Japanese culture that came into Zen Buddhism.

02:09:18.000 I know Hakuin talks about these very vivid images of demons that he had when he was a child.

02:09:24.000 He was so afraid of them that he decided he had to get into Buddhism and Zen to overcome them.

02:09:30.000 So I don't know exactly.

02:09:32.000 I'm not going to be hallucinating these Japanese demons that were probably very much No, there's no getting away. 1.00

02:09:47.000 Okay, there's this concept in ancient times.

02:09:50.000 There's a great book called The Bicameral Mind.

02:09:52.000 I don't know if you're familiar with it.

02:09:53.000 I've heard of it.

02:09:54.000 I've never read it though.

02:09:54.000 The idea in this book is that for ancient people, consciousness was almost like a voice in their head and it flipped them out.

02:10:02.000 And they couldn't understand it and they were constantly like on drugs, hearing their own thoughts.

02:10:07.000 And that's why they had to project it onto gods and demons and other things that are out there in the world.

02:10:12.000 But literally hearing their own thoughts was almost like a continual trip for them.

02:10:19.000 It's hard for us to imagine because we're so used to the chatter in our minds.

02:10:22.000 But originally, according to this man, This was how they experienced consciousness.

02:10:28.000 Was this in the early days of language?

02:10:30.000 Yes.

02:10:31.000 So this was a fairly recent phenomenon?

02:10:33.000 Is that what the idea behind it is?

02:10:34.000 Yeah, I think 6,000, 7,000, 10,000 BC. I can't remember the writer's name, Julian something, or his last name is Julian.

02:10:44.000 Great book.

02:10:47.000 But if you read books like about Buddhism, which I do voraciously, the history of it, Early people in meditation and early adherence to Buddhism were constantly talking about that chatter in their mind as if it were hell.

02:11:01.000 It was like hearing this noise of thoughts was just awful.

02:11:05.000 It was claustrophobic and frightening and they had to get into meditation and Buddhism just to calm the mind down and not hear that voice in their heads.

02:11:15.000 Now this is a totally alien notion to us because we're so used to it and it's almost Not a good thing that we're so used to it.

02:11:23.000 But I think that that's sort of the idea of the demons.

02:11:26.000 Constantly hearing this voice, these things in your head that aren't...

02:11:30.000 You're not willing them.

02:11:32.000 You know?

02:11:33.000 Like, you're not willing these thoughts that are constantly coming up into your mind.

02:11:38.000 Where are they coming from?

02:11:39.000 There's a great Zen koan called, who is the master?

02:11:44.000 Where are your thoughts coming from?

02:11:46.000 Who is the master calling up these thoughts in your head, particularly in your dreams?

02:11:50.000 Or particularly when you're maybe tired and suddenly this image comes up, you're not calling it up.

02:11:57.000 Well, where is it coming from?

02:11:58.000 That's where I think this idea of demons is connected.

02:12:01.000 This reminds me a lot of going through a psychedelic experience like ayahuasca.

02:12:06.000 In that path, you reach this very visual point in the experience, which is generally, it can either be incredibly beautiful or it can be incredibly hellish.

02:12:16.000 Like with the example of what...

02:12:18.000 Well, incredibly hellish.

02:12:19.000 For example, I have different spiders going inside of me and laying eggs and exploding and bugs are coming out of me.

02:12:26.000 There's eels coming inside, eating through my intestines and eating all my organs coming out.

02:12:32.000 I'm sliding naked down a vine of thorns that's ripping up my flesh.

02:12:36.000 These are all images that happen in an ayahuasca trip.

02:12:39.000 Or incredibly beautiful, the most beautiful colors you've ever seen, the most beautiful lights, images.

02:12:46.000 I get a lot of people asking me about these trips, and for them, who haven't done it very much, they focus very much on those visions.

02:12:55.000 But those visions are almost like the fireworks and the chatter to what's going to come after.

02:13:00.000 And what comes after is this kind of oneness with your thoughts and your highest consciousness and your highest being that is past all that.

02:13:10.000 And maybe that brings up resistances, things you can overcome.

02:13:12.000 Maybe it helps you with some thoughts.

02:13:14.000 But the real value of it in ayahuasca or DMT or any kind of psychedelic is that period after where these demons or these visions or everything goes away.

02:13:23.000 And to me, that's the real end goal.

02:13:25.000 That's the real gem.

02:13:26.000 Well, that's really similar to the Zen meditation because you're going through...

02:13:29.000 Let's say I meditate for 35, 40 minutes.

02:13:32.000 The first 25, I'm having those demons.

02:13:35.000 I'm hearing my thoughts.

02:13:37.000 I'm trying to get over them.

02:13:38.000 And then I finally reach that state.

02:13:40.000 It only lasts for 15 minutes.

02:13:42.000 Oh, that's the best state at all.

02:13:43.000 So it's kind of a similar process.

02:13:44.000 That's it.

02:13:45.000 Yeah.

02:13:45.000 So it's not so much about the visions.

02:13:47.000 It's about what happens after the visions.

02:13:49.000 It seems to me very much like what you're saying.

02:13:52.000 Yeah, that state after very difficult yoga sessions, it doesn't last very long.

02:13:57.000 But there's a period of Intense relaxation and enlightenment that you achieve, where you kind of have a better perspective of things, but it only comes through this very difficult work of the hour and a half of yoga that you have to do to get to that spot.

02:14:12.000 And if you half-ass it anywhere along the way, you don't reach that spot.

02:14:15.000 I don't reach that spot every time.

02:14:18.000 I reach it a lot, but I don't reach it every time.

02:14:20.000 It's very tricky, isn't it?

02:14:22.000 Yeah, you never know.

02:14:24.000 I don't know if it's the same with archery or the things that you do like that, but When you start the meditation, you bring a mood and it's never the same.

02:14:33.000 Someday, for no reason, it just falls into place.

02:14:37.000 And some days, you don't know why, this anxiety is gnawing on your inside.

02:14:41.000 You never can figure out what you bring to it.

02:14:43.000 It's interesting.

02:14:45.000 It really is.

02:14:47.000 Do you have a very rigid schedule when it comes to your meditation and your discipline?

02:14:54.000 How do you structure your days?

02:14:56.000 You're obviously self-employed.

02:14:58.000 You're a writer.

02:14:59.000 So do you have a structure like, I must write for this amount of time, I must meditate?

02:15:04.000 How do you do it?

02:15:05.000 No, every morning I wake up and I meditate for 35 minutes.

02:15:10.000 And nothing will stop me.

02:15:12.000 Really?

02:15:13.000 If I'm sick or even if I'm traveling or whatever, every day.

02:15:17.000 Do you sit a particular way?

02:15:20.000 I have the proper pillows and I have a little place and I have a little clock that goes off with bells.

02:15:28.000 And I sit in the lotus position until my legs are like screaming with pain.

02:15:32.000 So you can do that?

02:15:32.000 You can pull your legs up?

02:15:34.000 Yeah.

02:15:35.000 It's hard to do, huh?

02:15:37.000 I've been doing it for many, many years, but then I recently broke my foot and I couldn't do it for about three months.

02:15:42.000 So now I'm fine and I can do it.

02:15:44.000 So I'm back to having some pain again.

02:15:47.000 But the pain is good, as we all know.

02:15:49.000 And then I'm not usually writing because my books require so much research So right now I'm in a research period where I'm reading voraciously books about human nature, psychology, etc.

02:16:03.000 And then in about a year I'm going to start writing and then I go on to a kind of a different routine where I'm a little more crazed and hard to be around.

02:16:12.000 That's fascinating.

02:16:13.000 So you research for a full year before you write.

02:16:17.000 Do you discipline the research aspect of it?

02:16:19.000 Oh, man, I'm so disciplined.

02:16:21.000 It's probably bordering on OCD. I read, you know, 300, 400 books, and I read them.

02:16:28.000 I don't skim them.

02:16:29.000 And then I go back and I do these note cards, and it's the note cards that's excruciating.

02:16:34.000 That's like the Bill Bradley part.

02:16:35.000 I put every book onto maybe 10, 20, 30 cards, depending on how good a book it is.

02:16:41.000 And at the end, I'll have 2,000, 3,000 cards.

02:16:46.000 Handwritten.

02:16:47.000 And I can take these cards and move them around and the book is created out of the cards.

02:16:52.000 So the cards are the beneficial aspects of whatever book you're reading or what strikes you?

02:16:58.000 But I'm able to break a book down that can be chaotic.

02:17:01.000 So for instance, for this new book, I happen to love Nietzsche a lot.

02:17:06.000 I've never loved him since I was a kid.

02:17:08.000 The Ubermensch.

02:17:09.000 The Ubermensch.

02:17:10.000 This is a book about the Ubermensch, my next book.

02:17:12.000 And there's a book that I've read for him.

02:17:15.000 An early book called Human All Too Human.

02:17:18.000 It's just the most amazing book.

02:17:20.000 But it's chaotic.

02:17:21.000 It's all over the place.

02:17:22.000 He's got all these aphorisms and these thoughts.

02:17:25.000 It's just like entering a rat's maze. 0.94

02:17:28.000 I, with my cards, can organize all of his ideas and all of his thoughts and bring some order and show you the amazing pearls of wisdom this guy has gleaned out of his mad syphilitic brain. 0.99

02:17:41.000 Do you have syphilis? 0.98

02:17:42.000 Oh, yeah.

02:17:43.000 He went mad at the age of like 44. Too much pussy, huh? 1.00

02:17:50.000 You're crazy. 1.00

02:17:51.000 Well, he probably had not enough pussy. 1.00

02:17:53.000 Really? 1.00

02:17:53.000 So he got syphilis pussy. 1.00

02:17:55.000 He probably went to a prostitute when he was in the Prussian War and then got syphilis. 1.00

02:17:59.000 And then he didn't get laid enough. 0.97

02:18:01.000 That was certainly probably his problem.

02:18:02.000 That was why he was obsessed with the Ubermensch?

02:18:07.000 Syphilis is probably why he got obsessed with it.

02:18:10.000 Probably not the not getting laid.

02:18:12.000 What did they do back in those days when you had syphilis?

02:18:15.000 There was no cure, right?

02:18:17.000 Yeah.

02:18:18.000 Give you an apple or something like that?

02:18:19.000 Send you on your way?

02:18:21.000 That was before penicillin, right?

02:18:23.000 Yeah.

02:18:23.000 Yeah, nothing much to do.

02:18:24.000 I think some people were smart enough to start trying silver.

02:18:28.000 I think silver had some use in some of these things, but it's not very effective.

02:18:33.000 Not like an antibiotic.

02:18:35.000 Yeah.

02:18:36.000 It's fascinating because I was trying to explain to my kids the plague because we were reading a book and my five-year-old and my three-year-old were sitting in bed reading before bedtime and the story involved the plague.

02:18:47.000 A plague upon you was one of the lines in... 0.99

02:18:51.000 They were like, what's a plague? 0.99

02:18:53.000 I'm like, hmm, that's some shit before doctors. 0.99

02:18:56.000 When they didn't really have doctors, when all doctors could do was cut off broken limbs, they had diseases that would kill giant chunks of people. 1.00

02:19:04.000 My kids were like, what the fuck? 0.98

02:19:05.000 I'm like, yeah. 0.99

02:19:06.000 Not that long ago, by the way, they wrote about it, so they had language.

02:19:11.000 What we were talking about earlier about the evolution of civilization and the amount of time, the very brief window between us and when we were animals in relationship to the length of time that things have been alive on Earth.

02:19:26.000 Very small.

02:19:27.000 We're going through the most crazy and chaotic time pretty much ever when the wheel, you know, the description that McKenna used to use about the exponential growth of technology was about sending a ball around the top of a funnel, and that it takes a long time to get around the top,

02:19:45.000 but that we're somewhere towards the bottom of the funnel now, where that fucking thing is going around the tunnel, going around the funnel so quickly. 0.81

02:19:53.000 It's just... 0.97

02:19:54.000 It's hard for us to really wrap our heads around, but when we talk to children about it, when I talk to children about it, it really sends it home. 0.99

02:20:01.000 When I try to describe to my kids what a fucking plague is.

02:20:07.000 I just reminded myself of when you read actual accounts of the true pirates, like Blackbeard and things like that, one of the things that they would barter with for the most, like when they were making deals with the British ships or different things and striking deals, 0.97

02:20:24.000 Venereal disease medicine, like syphilis medicine.

02:20:27.000 It'd be like, we'll give you all the gold, but you have to bring over a chest of medicine to cure the venereal disease.

02:20:35.000 I think that was probably a much bigger problem in ancient history than, well not completely ancient, but in past civilization than we give it credit.

02:20:43.000 When was the first venereal disease?

02:20:46.000 I don't know.

02:20:47.000 I have no idea. 1.00

02:20:47.000 What a fucking dirty trick. 1.00

02:20:49.000 You know, I mean, think about how few diseases kill you that you catch just walking around, like the flu. 1.00

02:20:57.000 I think it might be nature's way to keep the population down a little bit.

02:21:00.000 Most likely, right?

02:21:01.000 Yeah.

02:21:01.000 I mean, it seems like what's going on.

02:21:04.000 There's always a battle, right?

02:21:05.000 Just like we were talking about the battle between discipline and success, the battle between being uncomfortable and doing things that are hard to do and reaping the rewards of that. 0.98

02:21:14.000 There seems to be a battle in nature of trying to fucking kill us so we get stronger.

02:21:18.000 We don't like to think that, but it's been directly proven that many plagues and many diseases, certain traits have risen through those diseases which have made the human race actually stronger. 0.92

02:21:31.000 Although they say our Cro-Magnon ancestors, for instance, lived longer than we do.

02:21:39.000 Really?

02:21:39.000 Yeah.

02:21:40.000 I've never heard that.

02:21:41.000 Wow, that's amazing.

02:21:42.000 I thought they died at like 12. I mean, I know in the Bible, but who believes the Bible?

02:21:49.000 Oh, 600 years.

02:21:50.000 Yeah, like Moses died at the age of 193. Yeah, that's a little shaky.

02:21:54.000 I know it is.

02:21:55.000 They didn't know what a year was back then, though. 0.99

02:21:57.000 They were just making shit up. 0.98

02:21:58.000 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

02:21:59.000 The calendar sucks. 0.99

02:22:00.000 It's written on a rock. 0.99

02:22:02.000 I mean, you can't really... 1.00

02:22:04.000 There's a lot of shit in the Bible. 1.00

02:22:06.000 It's fucking tough to swallow. 1.00

02:22:08.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:22:10.000 So where'd you read that Cro-Magnon lived longer than us?

02:22:14.000 Well, one thing that's for certain, they were...

02:22:17.000 Bigger than we were.

02:22:19.000 Really?

02:22:20.000 Yeah.

02:22:20.000 They were taller.

02:22:23.000 That's a known fact.

02:22:24.000 Before agriculture, we did not have certain diseases that we have now.

02:22:30.000 Talk to the paleo people and they can fill you within with all that stuff.

02:22:34.000 But before we started having grains and all that bad stuff, people were perhaps living longer.

02:22:41.000 They were certainly bigger.

02:22:43.000 Crown Magnum was 5'7 to 5'9".

02:22:46.000 Oh, you're showing me wrong.

02:22:48.000 But they were taller than the people that came after them.

02:22:52.000 Oh, okay.

02:22:53.000 Well, they say that that's the average, but large males stood as tall as 6'5".

02:22:59.000 Oh, okay.

02:23:00.000 So not really taller than us, but that's taller than me.

02:23:02.000 Okay, but taller than the people living than the humans of those heroes.

02:23:07.000 In ancient Greece or whatever.

02:23:09.000 Nothing like the internet to be able to show that I'm wrong about something.

02:23:12.000 Ten years ago, there was no way you would have been able to prove me wrong.

02:23:15.000 We've had so many examples of people stating, and I know you're not doing it, but there's been a lot of people that have bullshitted us, unfortunately, and I've spread information, so now I have to be diligent about that.

02:23:27.000 What is that, Wikipedia?

02:23:29.000 This is Wikipedia, but it has references.

02:23:32.000 If you'd like me to find the scientific references, they're in there as well.

02:23:35.000 Don't get crazy.

02:23:36.000 I think the path back between what we're talking about is that life itself needs resistance just as masters need resistance.

02:23:45.000 I mean, there is no...

02:23:46.000 There is no life that's worth living if everything is like that Alan Watts video, if we could make everything absolutely perfect and nothing is a surprise and there's no resistance out there.

02:23:56.000 It doesn't become what it is.

02:23:58.000 It's not as rich anymore.

02:23:59.000 It's not filled with the magic that life I mean, resistance is an intrinsic part of that.

02:24:04.000 And the fact that nature is constantly looking to, you know, pick us off is part of that resistance.

02:24:10.000 And the fact that all of these forces are aligned against someone who's trying to become a master, the pain, the sacrifice, whatever people are saying, all of that, that is required for a master to be created.

02:24:23.000 You know, that's...

02:24:24.000 It's all part of the same thing.

02:24:25.000 It's this kind of dualism of force and opposition.

02:24:29.000 The average life expectancy of Cro-Magnon was 35 years.

02:24:33.000 All right.

02:24:34.000 I'm at the height.

02:24:36.000 I'm at the height.

02:24:37.000 Sorry, dude.

02:24:38.000 Okay.

02:24:40.000 Well, then I've got something.

02:24:42.000 Maybe it's not Cro-Magnon. 0.98

02:24:44.000 I better shut up. 0.96

02:24:45.000 No, it's not right. 0.93

02:24:46.000 45 would be exceptionally old for Cro-Magnon, man. 0.98

02:24:49.000 So if I was Cro-Magnon, I'd be the fucking old wise man in the village. 0.96

02:24:52.000 I think it's compared to the people who got into agricultural settlements. 0.97

02:24:56.000 After Cro-Magnon.

02:24:58.000 They didn't live to be 35 years old?

02:25:00.000 Well, that age is also factoring in infant mortalities, war, things like that.

02:25:05.000 Things that don't happen.

02:25:06.000 Disease mortality.

02:25:07.000 It doesn't mean that the healthy Cro-Magnon wouldn't live longer.

02:25:11.000 That's the big thing.

02:25:12.000 It's factoring infant mortality.

02:25:14.000 That's a big one, right?

02:25:15.000 Yeah.

02:25:15.000 Mothers dying in childbirth.

02:25:17.000 Shit that doesn't happen anymore. 1.00

02:25:19.000 Or as much. 0.99

02:25:22.000 Getting back to what you were saying there, in the preface to mastery, I try and say...

02:25:28.000 First of all, I make the point that we need masters in the world now.

02:25:32.000 This is a time where we have incredible opportunity, largely through the internet, where access to information, the ability to learn things, to develop skills, to have an isolation tank, to learn archery, to do all of these things,

02:25:48.000 the world is open up and The ability to develop skills and master something and create something is just completely unprecedented.

02:25:57.000 At the same time, the distractions and the resistance that we have to go through is equally unprecedented.

02:26:04.000 With the internet, with iPhones, with all the other things that are making it so much harder for us to focus.

02:26:12.000 And I want you to think of all of these things as the kind of the water that you have to swim against.

02:26:18.000 And if you're able to swim against all of these distractions that the world throws at you, you're going to become a real kick-ass master in whatever it is because you've overcome Something that 90% of the people in this world just submerges them under because they're too weak.

02:26:35.000 There's also the cliche, and it's very important to point out, that there is no end result.

02:26:40.000 That it's a journey, and this journey does not...

02:26:43.000 I mean, becoming a master, there's no end point. 0.99

02:26:46.000 You continue to get better at everything you do, or you start to suck. 0.99

02:26:50.000 And that's what happens. 0.99

02:26:52.000 You will get better.

02:26:54.000 If you do not continue to get better, you are getting worse.

02:26:57.000 Yeah, it's true.

02:26:59.000 You know, you take someone like Einstein, one of the greatest masters, he discovers the second theory of relativity at the age of 26 and nothing after that.

02:27:09.000 You know, he tried to do his unified theory and it just never...

02:27:12.000 You know why?

02:27:12.000 Why?

02:27:13.000 Pussy. 1.00

02:27:14.000 Sorry, getting all that scientist pussy. 1.00

02:27:16.000 It was too much. 1.00

02:27:17.000 Oh, you mean he had too much pussy? 1.00

02:27:19.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:27:19.000 Einstein was a famous pussy hound. 1.00

02:27:21.000 A lot of people don't know that. 0.99

02:27:23.000 It's true.

02:27:23.000 It is true.

02:27:24.000 Yeah, Einstein loved it.

02:27:25.000 He was smart.

02:27:26.000 So was Feynman. 0.99

02:27:27.000 You know, two guys with the most brilliant minds of the 20th century loved pussy. 1.00

02:27:32.000 I don't think that's a bad thing. 0.98

02:27:34.000 You see that big old smile on Einstein's face? 0.99

02:27:36.000 Yeah, he's fucking wacky hair. 0.99

02:27:38.000 He had a fucking whole image going on. 1.00

02:27:39.000 Women loved him. 1.00

02:27:40.000 Of course.

02:27:41.000 He was like, yeah.

02:27:42.000 Why wouldn't you?

02:27:42.000 I mean, you talk about all the favorable traits for evolutionary success.

02:27:47.000 You're talking about one of the most brilliant men scientifically ever.

02:27:50.000 Yeah, I would think that a lot of women would want that seed inside of them. 1.00

02:27:53.000 You know, look at him.

02:27:54.000 He's like, see this?

02:27:56.000 Look at that, ladies. 1.00

02:27:57.000 Fuck Gene Simmons. 1.00

02:27:58.000 Look at that. 1.00

02:27:59.000 That's the tongue of a fucking super genius with his own hair. 0.98

02:28:03.000 That guy was a very unique individual, and that uniqueness, I'm sure there was some motivation behind that, not just the scientific motivation, but the actual natural motivation to be exceptional for breeding purposes, 0.99

02:28:20.000 that women would find him exceptional.

02:28:22.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:28:23.000 Yeah.

02:28:24.000 But you're right, it is a process so that you never can sort of rest on your laurels and say, ah.

02:28:29.000 So the way I do it, I'm not saying that I'm a master, so don't misinterpret me, but the way I do it for myself is every book that I write, I'm back at square one.

02:28:40.000 I'm nobody.

02:28:40.000 I have no history.

02:28:42.000 I have no readers.

02:28:43.000 I'm not successful.

02:28:46.000 It's death ground. 0.97

02:28:47.000 I have to make my next book work or I'm a total loser.

02:28:51.000 That's exactly the same process involved in stand-up comedy.

02:28:56.000 In stand-up comedy, you put out a new special and then once you have that new special, you throw all that material out and you start from scratch and you write all new material.

02:29:07.000 If you do it that way.

02:29:08.000 That's the only real way to do it in this day and age because too many people have the internet.

02:29:13.000 Everyone has the internet, obviously.

02:29:15.000 Too many people have access to your previous work, I should say.

02:29:17.000 And in comedy, you constantly need new material, unlike in music.

02:29:22.000 Must be rough.

02:29:22.000 It's not.

02:29:23.000 It's great.

02:29:24.000 It's rough, but it's great.

02:29:25.000 The roughness is the great part of it.

02:29:27.000 But that whole process of mastery, you say you're not a master.

02:29:33.000 I think you are, but I think there is none.

02:29:36.000 This is what I think.

02:29:37.000 You are a master, but there's no ultimate mastery.

02:29:40.000 A master is someone who is very good at the process.

02:29:45.000 But there's no end.

02:29:46.000 I think that's very right.

02:29:48.000 Yeah, the end doesn't exist.

02:29:49.000 There's no where it becomes easy.

02:29:51.000 There's no golden age of retirement. 1.00

02:29:53.000 That's a bunch of horse shit that they fucking sell you to keep you in your job. 1.00

02:29:56.000 There's no golden age. 1.00

02:29:57.000 You're fucking dying, man. 0.99

02:29:59.000 You're gonna get old and you're gonna reach that point where you can't really work anymore, so you don't have to work anymore, and then you gotta watch your money. 1.00

02:30:06.000 This selling point of one day you'll retire and everything will be groovy. 0.99

02:30:09.000 The fuck it will. 0.99

02:30:10.000 It's not going to be groovy. 1.00

02:30:12.000 There's a path.

02:30:13.000 Waiting for something to drop on you.

02:30:15.000 Even the religious belief that you go through this life and just do your work and then you get to heaven.

02:30:19.000 Yay.

02:30:20.000 Or you go through, if it's not religious, this capitalist belief. 0.99

02:30:23.000 You work in this job and it's going to suck. 0.59

02:30:25.000 But then you get to retire. 0.94

02:30:26.000 Yay. 1.00

02:30:27.000 Bullshit. 1.00

02:30:28.000 You've got to enjoy that every minute along that path that you're going on. 1.00

02:30:31.000 Or choose a different path. 1.00

02:30:33.000 Fuck the money. 1.00

02:30:33.000 Fuck everything else. 1.00

02:30:34.000 Do what you love to do the whole time, and you'll smile at the end when your time is up. 0.99

02:30:39.000 Yeah, and if you do use the wrong motivations, you will not get the results you desire.

02:30:45.000 I know a guy who has been trying to get famous forever, and he's...

02:30:51.000 You know, trying to do it in all the wrong ways.

02:30:54.000 You know, it's trying to become famous instead of focusing on whatever art form you choose to make you famous.

02:31:00.000 Just wants fame.

02:31:01.000 And it just escapes them, like sand through your fingers.

02:31:04.000 You just can't hold on to it.

02:31:06.000 You just can't get a quantifiable amount in your hands.

02:31:09.000 And the motivation's incorrect.

02:31:11.000 It's like, if the motivation was just on his art, I think probably he'd be far more successful.

02:31:18.000 But instead, the motivation is based on the green demon of looking at all these other people becoming successful and not being able to find out why he can't achieve it himself.

02:31:27.000 I mean, attention is never the goal in mastery, and it's actually a negative.

02:31:31.000 Yes.

02:31:32.000 But learning, learning is what gets you high.

02:31:34.000 Learning is what you love. 1.00

02:31:35.000 If you love the attention more than the learning, then you're fucked. 1.00

02:31:38.000 You're never going to make it. 1.00

02:31:39.000 Yeah, and that need, the need for acceptance.

02:31:44.000 It's the very opposite of what you should be striving for.

02:31:49.000 We were talking about people that become really successful and then lose their way, and how you can learn so much from that.

02:31:57.000 In comedy, my guide for that was always Sam Kinison, because I think that Sam Kinison was the greatest comedian of all time from 1986 to 1987. I mean, I'm not kidding.

02:32:09.000 I think maybe before that, you know, I found out about him in 86. I mean, probably he was the greatest in 85 and maybe even in 84. But that's it.

02:32:17.000 From then on, it's dog shit. 1.00

02:32:19.000 If you try to listen to Sam Kinison from 89 or 88, it's terrible comedy. 0.99

02:32:24.000 I went to see him live.

02:32:25.000 He was awful.

02:32:26.000 I saw him live several times because I was such a huge fan of his work in 86. But the drop-off was so...

02:32:32.000 There's guys who have good CDs and, you know, they'll have, like, hills and valleys.

02:32:36.000 Myself, I have stuff that I really love and then stuff that I was like, well, that wasn't my best one.

02:32:40.000 But then more motivation to do better in the next one.

02:32:43.000 There's just, you know, sometimes creative glitches or what have you, a part of the process. 0.99

02:32:49.000 But with Kinison, there's this fucking monster peak and then this crazy drop-off. 0.98

02:32:54.000 And what happened to him? 1.00

02:32:55.000 Coke and hookers. 1.00

02:32:57.000 Coke, a lot. 1.00

02:32:58.000 Booze, a lot.

02:32:59.000 You know, we had Marc Maron on the podcast who was palling around with Kinison in the heyday at the Comedy Store when Marc was a young kid.

02:33:07.000 And he told some amazing stories about just the amount of substances.

02:33:12.000 Marc hung out with Kinison.

02:33:14.000 And he had to escape.

02:33:16.000 He left LA, and he hit it so hard that he was hearing voices in his head for almost a year.

02:33:23.000 Literally, he was psychotic.

02:33:25.000 And I met Mark soon after that.

02:33:27.000 I met Mark in Boston after he had been hanging out with Kinnison, after Kinnison was riding the wave.

02:33:34.000 And, you know, I met Mark, I think, in 88 was when I started, and I met him soon after that.

02:33:38.000 So he had already gone through all this, and he was, you know, a young guy working at the Comedy Store.

02:33:44.000 And he got to see this overwhelming amount of substances that Kinison was consuming, just massive.

02:33:51.000 And it just destroyed him?

02:33:52.000 He never recovered from that?

02:33:53.000 Yeah, coke and alcohol.

02:33:55.000 Killed his brain?

02:33:56.000 It wasn't writing either.

02:33:57.000 His brother wrote about it.

02:33:58.000 There's a book called My Brother Sam.

02:34:00.000 It's a great book about Kinison, written by his brother, who was, I think, also his manager at the time, who wrote about how there was a...

02:34:08.000 He wrote about the tangible drop-off in his writing.

02:34:12.000 He didn't write new material anymore and was sort of like just partying.

02:34:17.000 I talk in the book about this myth that drugs will just instantly make you more creative.

02:34:23.000 In fact, it's often the opposite.

02:34:26.000 I have an example of Coltrane who is probably one of the greatest jazz artists who ever lived.

02:34:34.000 He got hooked on heroin for a while.

02:34:36.000 People have this myth that that's what made Coltrane so great was the drugs and the heroin and the coke.

02:34:42.000 And in fact, he said it was the worst.

02:34:45.000 He did his worst work in that period and he got off of it like in 58 and never touched drugs or drinking after that.

02:34:52.000 Did his better work after that.

02:34:53.000 Did his much better work.

02:34:54.000 That's interesting.

02:34:55.000 Because to create something requires so much discipline and so much mindfulness and focus that you just can't do it if you're constantly drugged out.

02:35:05.000 Yeah, especially those two.

02:35:06.000 Those very depressive ones.

02:35:09.000 Coke and heroin are probably two of the worst.

02:35:12.000 But there seems to be a connection between heroin and deep, soulful music.

02:35:16.000 Maybe it helps them for a small time reach a state, but then ultimately the abuse of it destroys your body so much that you can't keep it up.

02:35:26.000 Yeah, you mean like a Velvet Underground or something like that?

02:35:29.000 Yeah, like there's something...

02:35:30.000 Well, Hendrix... 0.89

02:35:31.000 Well, people will argue that Hendrix wasn't really into heroin, but if you look at that photo behind me of his mugshot, that is from the fucking Toronto Police Department when he was arrested for heroin. 0.93

02:35:42.000 So, there's a little problem with that. 0.96

02:35:44.000 A little heroin in his system.

02:35:47.000 I don't know what drugs.

02:35:48.000 I mean, I know he was also involved in acid and, you know, Morrison was into heroin.

02:35:52.000 There was a lot of alcohol involved with a lot of those guys as well.

02:35:56.000 But the ability to escape your inhibitions was, you know, they were chasing the dragon in a sense.

02:36:01.000 Yeah, but look how long it lasts.

02:36:02.000 27. Yeah.

02:36:04.000 Yeah.

02:36:04.000 They all died at 27. Janis Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison.

02:36:08.000 It seems to be the most dangerous path to embark upon if you're looking to gain something.

02:36:13.000 I think one of the things I got from one of your books was a story about Fyodor Dostoevsky.

02:36:17.000 Was that in 48 Laws of Power?

02:36:20.000 I think it's in the 33 strategies and in the 48 laws.

02:36:23.000 Well, basically, after he would be successful with the book, he would find that he was unable to really write and he didn't have that creative fire anymore to create another great work.

02:36:33.000 So he would take all of his life savings and go to the casino and just gamble it away in a night so that he was desperate and hungry again.

02:36:41.000 He was penniless.

02:36:42.000 Penniless.

02:36:43.000 And at that point, he had to write something great to get himself out.

02:36:47.000 So these people use these different strategies.

02:36:50.000 And he did that over and over again.

02:36:51.000 That takes guts. 1.00

02:36:53.000 You've got to be a fucking crazy person. 1.00

02:36:56.000 I call that death ground. 1.00

02:36:58.000 Putting yourself on death ground comes from Sun Tzu.

02:37:01.000 He says a general would deliberately put his army on death ground, meaning he would deliberately put their back against an ocean or a mountain.

02:37:08.000 And they either had to defeat the enemy that's confronting them or they would die because they had no escape route.

02:37:13.000 No safety net.

02:37:14.000 No safety net, no escape route.

02:37:16.000 Yeah, safety nets are something that I've argued against ever since I was a child, which was another thing that my parents instilled in me that I had to have a safety net. 0.97

02:37:23.000 And I've always told everybody who would listen, don't ever have a fucking safety net, because if you have a net, you will fall, all right? 0.79

02:37:29.000 You might not make it without the net, but you will not make it with the net. 0.98

02:37:34.000 So there's that.

02:37:36.000 Makes sense.

02:37:36.000 There's that.

02:37:38.000 I had an interesting experience with mastery where, in writing the book, where I had written four of the six chapters But I was getting really late in delivering the final result.

02:37:49.000 And the publisher basically said, you have like 11 weeks to finish the book or we're canceling the project or postponing it.

02:37:59.000 And the two chapters left were the longest, the hardest, the most abstract, and the most important.

02:38:06.000 And I was like, there's no way.

02:38:07.000 I'm exhausted.

02:38:08.000 I just can't do it.

02:38:10.000 But I had no choice because if they cancel or postpone it, all of my hard work would be thrown out the window.

02:38:16.000 So that was death ground.

02:38:18.000 And finally, after three days of torturing myself and whining and bitching at myself, I decided, all right, I'm going to do it.

02:38:24.000 I'm just going to try.

02:38:25.000 I'll just do what I can.

02:38:27.000 And it was the most incredible writing experience I've ever had in my life.

02:38:31.000 I had to work harder than I've ever had to work.

02:38:34.000 I got on this high where thoughts were just coming to me and my dreams and my, you know, I'm having sex.

02:38:41.000 It's just the most amazing.

02:38:42.000 And they worked.

02:38:43.000 And I was sitting there writing about creativity and intuition while this was happening to me.

02:38:50.000 And it just demonstrated to me that the limits that I thought I had are just sort of self-imposed.

02:38:56.000 And if I stopped complaining and stopped saying that I had these limits, I could explore beyond them and explore what I was capable of that I never thought I was capable of prior to that.

02:39:08.000 You know, Hunter Thompson wrote Hell's Angels.

02:39:10.000 He finished, like, the last X amount of chapters in, like, two days on cocaine.

02:39:16.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:39:17.000 Like, he just got coked up and fucking finished. 0.99

02:39:19.000 Like, he had a deadline. 0.99

02:39:20.000 Maybe I should have tried that.

02:39:21.000 Have you ever seen...

02:39:22.000 I could have written it in two days.

02:39:25.000 Maybe.

02:39:25.000 Maybe you need Adderall.

02:39:26.000 Have you ever seen the Hunter S. Thompson documentary?

02:39:31.000 Not Fear and Loathing.

02:39:33.000 What was it called?

02:39:34.000 Gonzo?

02:39:35.000 Gonzo?

02:39:35.000 Yeah, Gonzo.

02:39:36.000 Years ago.

02:39:37.000 What is it?

02:39:38.000 The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson?

02:39:40.000 Is that the name of it?

02:39:40.000 I got it saved on iTunes.

02:39:42.000 I should just pull it up on iTunes.

02:39:44.000 The documentary just from a couple years ago?

02:39:46.000 Have you seen that?

02:39:46.000 Oh, just from a couple years ago?

02:39:47.000 No, I haven't. 0.98

02:39:48.000 It's a fairly recent documentary, but God damn, it's good. 0.99

02:39:52.000 God damn, it's good. 0.99

02:39:53.000 I think it's Gonzo, the Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. 0.99

02:39:55.000 Is that it?

02:39:56.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:39:56.000 I watched it in a hotel in Seattle and fucking spent the... 0.98

02:39:59.000 That's it. 0.99

02:40:01.000 Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

02:40:02.000 It's so good.

02:40:04.000 It's so good.

02:40:04.000 A 7.8.

02:40:05.000 Get that fucking blast me off there. 1.00

02:40:08.000 It's not a 10. That just shows you there's cunts no matter what you do in this life. 1.00

02:40:12.000 That documentary is a goddamn 10. And incredibly inspirational. 0.99

02:40:16.000 And I watched it in Seattle at a hotel room.

02:40:18.000 And just on a whim.

02:40:19.000 Just, alright, we'll watch this.

02:40:20.000 I was alone.

02:40:21.000 I was doing some work. 0.99

02:40:23.000 I fucking wrote all night because of that documentary. 0.98

02:40:26.000 I just got on the keyboard and just smashed keys all night. 0.99

02:40:29.000 Oh, nice.

02:40:30.000 It's those things that, you know, you catch these bursts of inspiration.

02:40:35.000 And Thompson, who's a personal hero of mine, used to call them fuel.

02:40:39.000 You know, and he said that he personally believed that with the right song, you could drive further in your car.

02:40:46.000 Your car would figure out a way, if the right song was playing, to go miles past the E, theoretically, obviously.

02:40:54.000 Not even theoretically.

02:40:56.000 It was just...

02:40:58.000 It's a metaphor.

02:40:59.000 Metaphor.

02:40:59.000 Yeah, metaphor.

02:41:00.000 Thank you.

02:41:01.000 Metaphorically.

02:41:02.000 He was just great at figuring out how to put these abstract ideas into a tangible form that your mind accepted.

02:41:11.000 And never met a deadline! 0.99

02:41:14.000 And his whole thing was like putting things off until the last minute and then this fury of fucking teeth gnashing, you know, slamming against the keys and this fucking... 0.99

02:41:25.000 But it's almost like he forced himself into this back against the wall. 0.99

02:41:30.000 What would you call it?

02:41:31.000 Death ground.

02:41:33.000 He forced himself into a death ground.

02:41:36.000 Wow.

02:41:36.000 Oh, I wish I'd done that.

02:41:37.000 I would have included it in my book.

02:41:38.000 I know you talking about comedy.

02:41:41.000 You like following someone like Joey Diaz, who is hilarious, right?

02:41:46.000 Because you've talked about how that would make some people a little bit scared and a little bit nervous, but you like it because it's going to bring out your best following somebody that's that great.

02:41:57.000 You know what I mean?

02:41:58.000 Haven't you kind of mentioned, isn't there something there in that same philosophy with that?

02:42:02.000 Maybe, but my philosophy in that is that I think that not working with really, really funny people is a two-fold problem.

02:42:12.000 One, it's famine thinking.

02:42:14.000 They think that there's a lot of really...

02:42:18.000 Selfish comedians out there, and one of the things that they like to do is they like to stack the deck. 0.99

02:42:23.000 There's guys that are national touring headliners that bring the worst fucking comedians you've ever seen in your life to open for them. 0.99

02:42:29.000 Because these guys go up there and eat dick for half an hour, and then you go on stage, this crowd has been tortured, waiting for actual entertainment, and you're the hero. 0.99

02:42:37.000 You're the conquering hero. 0.99

02:42:38.000 So nobody outshines you.

02:42:39.000 Yeah, that's right. 0.88

02:42:39.000 It is incredibly common, and I think it's gross. 0.88

02:42:42.000 I think it disrespects the audience, first of all.

02:42:45.000 I think it disrespects the fact that these people have paid money to see you.

02:42:48.000 They deserve entertainment, not just from you, but from other people as well.

02:42:51.000 And you shouldn't be scared of other people being funny.

02:42:55.000 It doesn't take away from you being funny.

02:42:57.000 The only way it would take away is if the person on before you is stealing your material.

02:43:02.000 It's called stepping on your material.

02:43:04.000 Say if you had a very particular subject that you were famous for.

02:43:08.000 Jim Gaffigan likes to talk about Hot Pockets.

02:43:10.000 He does this whole Hot Pocket bit.

02:43:11.000 It's really hilarious.

02:43:12.000 If you went on before him and started talking about Hot Pockets, you would kind of step on his bit.

02:43:16.000 And people will do that. 0.99

02:43:19.000 The same shitheads like that actor that I told you that would go up to my friend and say he was fat right before he would go and read his lines. 0.99

02:43:25.000 That's that same sort of thinking, that same sort of famine thinking. 0.99

02:43:29.000 Another person's success should be inspirational to you.

02:43:33.000 It shouldn't be detrimental to you.

02:43:36.000 And then the other thing is, I'm a fan of comedy.

02:43:40.000 I want to laugh.

02:43:42.000 So I bring Joey Diaz, who I personally think is the funniest guy who's ever lived.

02:43:45.000 I bring him to open for me.

02:43:47.000 Because I want to be in a hilarious state before I go on stage.

02:43:51.000 I want to be laughing.

02:43:52.000 I'm not worried about not being funny because if I've done my job, I've done the work, it's going to be good.

02:43:59.000 You can't worry about that.

02:44:02.000 That worrying is the enemy of comedy.

02:44:04.000 Fear. 0.99

02:44:05.000 Yeah, it's pathetic. 1.00

02:44:06.000 I bring murderers with me, man. 1.00

02:44:09.000 Everywhere I go.

02:44:10.000 Duncan, Ari, Joey.

02:44:11.000 I just bring the biggest killers that I can find.

02:44:14.000 I take headliners with me.

02:44:16.000 I've taken Greg Fitzsimmons on the road with me. 0.63

02:44:18.000 I mean, I like doing shows with guys who are fucking awesome.

02:44:21.000 I think it's really important. 0.92

02:44:24.000 But it's not because I want to die.

02:44:27.000 It's not because I want to put my back up against the wall.

02:44:29.000 I want the audience to get their money's worth and I want to be around my friends.

02:44:33.000 And I also want to support my friends.

02:44:35.000 Part of the reason I'm bringing Joey and Ari and Duncan on the road with me all these years is it's selfish because I want to have a good time and I want to be with them and I want to enjoy myself.

02:44:44.000 So there's that.

02:44:45.000 But also I want people to know how good these guys are. 0.73

02:44:47.000 And a lot of these guys are good in a really fucked up way that's not It's not really palatable for Comedy Central.

02:44:55.000 It's really hard for them to get on HBO. You know, for a guy like Joey Diaz, the only way for that guy to get famous is the internet. 0.66

02:45:02.000 That's what made him famous.

02:45:03.000 And my help, you know, helping get him out there in front of thousands of people that would never have had an opportunity to see him. 0.95

02:45:11.000 And telling people as I introduce him, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the funniest motherfucker that ever stepped foot on earth, Joey Diaz. 0.91

02:45:18.000 And I would bring him on stage like that all the time. 0.98

02:45:20.000 I tell everybody he's funnier than me.

02:45:22.000 He's the funniest guy ever.

02:45:24.000 Doesn't mean I'm not funny, you know?

02:45:26.000 It's just, it's not bad for things to be great other than you.

02:45:29.000 It's good.

02:45:30.000 Yeah.

02:45:30.000 You should be inspired.

02:45:32.000 The greatest people want those people who are great alongside them to push us.

02:45:37.000 Although Bird and Magic were nemeses, you talk to them now how thankful they were that they had each other on opposing teams.

02:45:45.000 Oh, for sure.

02:45:47.000 All of these people.

02:45:48.000 You need greatness around you.

02:45:50.000 You need them.

02:45:51.000 You need yin to have yang.

02:45:53.000 Which one's good?

02:45:54.000 Which one's negative and which one's positive?

02:45:56.000 Yin is passive.

02:45:58.000 Yang is active.

02:45:59.000 You need that yang to have yin. 0.64

02:46:02.000 You need both, man.

02:46:03.000 Yang makes yang.

02:46:04.000 The universe has...

02:46:06.000 The tide comes in, the tide goes out, Bill O'Reilly.

02:46:09.000 There's something...

02:46:10.000 Don't talk to me about Bill O'Reilly. 0.99

02:46:12.000 Isn't that the greatest fucking... 0.99

02:46:13.000 You can't explain it. 1.00

02:46:15.000 Yes, you can, you fuck. 1.00

02:46:16.000 It's called gravity. 1.00

02:46:16.000 They figured it out a long time ago. 1.00

02:46:18.000 You ever seen that thing that he did where he was talking about God?

02:46:21.000 No.

02:46:22.000 The tide goes in, the tide goes out.

02:46:24.000 You can't explain it.

02:46:25.000 I'm going with God.

02:46:27.000 It's so disingenuous from a Harvard graduate. 1.00

02:46:30.000 He's such a fucking... 1.00

02:46:31.000 I have my own Bill O'Reilly story. 1.00

02:46:34.000 Really?

02:46:34.000 Please tell it to me.

02:46:36.000 Well, 48 Laws of Power just come out in 98...

02:46:39.000 And Bill O'Reilly decides to have me on the O'Reilly Factory, which was big then, but not as big as it became later on.

02:46:45.000 And so I'm like, this is like one of my first shows I've ever been on.

02:46:49.000 You know, nothing like this ever happened to me before.

02:46:54.000 And basically, you go to a studio in Los Angeles, where he's in New York, and you're in this room, and there's nothing around you, and they put an earphone in your head, and And you're staring at a camera.

02:47:08.000 You don't see anything. 1.00

02:47:09.000 You just hear Bill O'Reilly's stupid fucking voice in your ear asking you questions. 1.00

02:47:13.000 It's like you're on drugs and it's so disconcerting. 1.00

02:47:16.000 It's like the guy who's trying to put you off your game before.

02:47:19.000 You're already put off your game the moment you start. 0.93

02:47:21.000 Anyway, he interviews me and I prepared like shit for this interview because I knew the questions coming. 0.98

02:47:26.000 It was all about Monica Lewinsky and Clinton and the scandal and the 48 laws and I nailed it. 0.98

02:47:32.000 And he said, that was a great interview, Robert.

02:47:35.000 I'm going to have you on again.

02:47:37.000 Okay, wow.

02:47:38.000 And so I'm like feeling pretty good about myself.

02:47:40.000 So four weeks later, I trudge back to that office and I sit in that same chair with a little earphone in my head.

02:47:45.000 And he proceeds to just rip me to shreds.

02:47:49.000 About what?

02:47:51.000 Well, essentially, he hated the 48 Laws of Power.

02:47:54.000 He liked the writing or whatever, but he was just using it.

02:47:58.000 You're exposing his game.

02:47:59.000 He was just, oh, completely.

02:48:00.000 He was just using it as a way to attack What?

02:48:06.000 Why that?

02:48:07.000 So anyway, he was just like totally messing with me and I was so expecting the opposite that I was like.

02:48:14.000 Then he goes – and then he says, well, what about this law about use selective honesty?

02:48:20.000 I said, well, it's something that politicians and business people use all the time like Lyndon Johnson for instance.

02:48:26.000 And then I was about to explain how Lyndon Johnson is and he cuts me off.

02:48:29.000 He goes, yes, the same man who sent 58,000 men of our young men to death in Vietnam. 0.92

02:48:34.000 Let's break for a commercial.

02:48:36.000 And that was the end of the interview.

02:48:38.000 So he like made me look like I was supporting...

02:48:42.000 Lyndon Johnson.

02:48:44.000 Massacring 58,000 Americans in Vietnam.

02:48:47.000 He manipulated me and humiliated me and like...

02:48:53.000 The whole thing was he hates the 48 laws of power because it's all about manipulation and ugliness. 0.99

02:48:59.000 And he's the most fucking manipulative interviewer you could ever imagine. 0.98

02:49:03.000 Look how he manipulated me. 0.99

02:49:05.000 He completely set me up by making me think this was going to be like a softball interview where we were just, you know...

02:49:12.000 Well, he's a hater.

02:49:13.000 He just hated that someone else wrote something brilliant.

02:49:15.000 That's all it is. 1.00

02:49:16.000 That guy's a fucking hater. 1.00

02:49:17.000 He's the ultimate hater. 1.00

02:49:19.000 Well, and it was a special type of looking glass that allowed people to see Bill O'Reilly for the fucking monster that he was. 1.00

02:49:26.000 Yeah, and I find it... 0.99

02:49:27.000 It's not only just a book. 0.69

02:49:28.000 It's incredibly ridiculous that that guy got to interview Obama. 1.00

02:49:31.000 Not that I think Obama is a particularly unique and special human being, relatively to what his position is and what could have been done by a guy like that in that position, but I think that having Obama being interviewed by this fucking buffoon, 0.99

02:49:47.000 I think Obama has the most thankless job probably in the history of the world, and maybe the most impossible job. 0.90

02:49:52.000 I don't think he's done the best That he could with it, but I don't think anybody can.

02:49:56.000 I think you're set up. 0.99

02:49:59.000 The more I think about being a president, the more I think about dealing with the House and dealing with Congress and the Senate and all the fucking laws. 0.99

02:50:07.000 Just look at what's happened to his hair. 0.99

02:50:09.000 Yeah, the gray.

02:50:11.000 Yeah, well that happens to all of them.

02:50:12.000 Preceding and gray, but like in this course of like a year, it just suddenly turned gray.

02:50:15.000 I don't think we can even imagine the kind of pressure that you'd have to be to be the leader or the supposed commander-in-chief of the greatest superpower the world has ever known, which wants to consume the earth.

02:50:25.000 You know, this crazy superpower that literally thrives on consuming the earth.

02:50:29.000 I think we can gain so much from listening to Eisenhower's speech about the military-industrial complex when he was leaving office, that intense speech.

02:50:38.000 Warning the people about the military-industrial complex and the dangers of it and the influence of it.

02:50:44.000 I don't think we can even imagine what that is actually like when you're in office.

02:50:49.000 I mean, I'd like to think that Obama one day will write a book explaining everything and we'll be like, oh, I get it.

02:50:56.000 Because I don't get it.

02:50:57.000 I don't get how he could have made the decisions that he's made based on what he said before he got into office. 1.00

02:51:02.000 Unless he's totally full of shit, which I'd like to think that he's not... 1.00

02:51:06.000 That said, him getting interviewed by a fucking buffoon like Bill Reilly, it's just like, it's watching that and just like, why is that guy talking? 1.00

02:51:15.000 That he's one of the most popular people on television. 1.00

02:51:17.000 But it's so silly. 0.94

02:51:18.000 It's so silly that he's one of the most popular people on television. 1.00

02:51:21.000 It's so fucking silly. 0.99

02:51:22.000 It's just, it's just... 1.00

02:51:23.000 You'll get no argument from me.

02:51:25.000 Well, it's unnecessary, and I personally believe that that style of television is like fucking silent films, where you debate a very important issue on a split screen for six minutes, and people yell over, 0.65

02:51:40.000 yell, Oh, Bill, that's not the case! 0.92

02:51:43.000 Fracking doesn't produce any negative results!

02:51:45.000 The hippies and the liberals! 0.92

02:51:47.000 We'll be right back!

02:51:48.000 No, we won't be right back!

02:51:49.000 This is not the way to talk!

02:51:50.000 This is not the way to address complex issues!

02:51:52.000 This is not the way to have interesting discussions!

02:51:54.000 Did you ever see Jon Stewart on the firing line years ago?

02:51:57.000 We almost, five minutes, yeah.

02:51:59.000 Oh, okay.

02:52:00.000 You know what, I'm supposed to pimp something that I forgot to pimp.

02:52:05.000 What are you supposed to pimp?

02:52:07.000 Some special offers for getting the book Mastery.

02:52:10.000 Oh, yeah, that's right.

02:52:11.000 Didn't somebody email you that or something like that?

02:52:12.000 Is it too late to do that?

02:52:13.000 No, no, not at all.

02:52:14.000 We've probably lost everybody by now.

02:52:16.000 No!

02:52:16.000 Everybody's still here.

02:52:17.000 What are you talking about, man?

02:52:19.000 Everybody's still in.

02:52:19.000 You'd be amazed.

02:52:21.000 These people stick in to the end.

02:52:22.000 Most of the people listening to this are commuting or they're on the treadmill or they're on a plane or something like that.

02:52:29.000 But a huge majority of them are hanging out to the very end.

02:52:34.000 You'd be Completely shocked.

02:52:35.000 And it's like archived.

02:52:37.000 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:52:38.000 Forever. 0.86

02:52:38.000 This will reach fucking probably close to a million people. 0.86

02:52:41.000 Well, we have all sorts of offers for the book and for special bonus things that I used to give away when the book first came out. 0.95

02:52:47.000 And you need to go to Power, Seduction, and War.

02:52:52.000 The and is spelled out.

02:52:53.000 Power, Seduction, and War.

02:52:58.000 Yes, I got it right here.

02:53:00.000 I'll put this up on Twitter right now.

02:53:04.000 Copy link address.

02:53:05.000 And what is the special offer that people get?

02:53:09.000 There's some things that are not included in the actual book itself.

02:53:14.000 The full interviews that I had with some of the contemporary masters like Freddie Roach.

02:53:20.000 Some material that never got included in the book for reasons that don't have anything to do with the quality of it.

02:53:26.000 And then this kind of essay that I wrote about the writing of the book itself and things that I explained today about my deadline.

02:53:34.000 How would you explain in a tweet to give it to people?

02:53:36.000 Like, I'm writing a tweet right now.

02:53:38.000 How would you explain it?

02:53:39.000 Explain what?

02:53:40.000 Explain what this offer is.

02:53:42.000 You're getting free bonus material that's not in the book itself.

02:53:48.000 Okay.

02:53:50.000 It really gives insight into some of Robert's process.

02:53:53.000 I've looked at some of these.

02:53:54.000 It gives insight into his process, how he did this, plus bonus content and stories that almost didn't make the cut.

02:54:01.000 Kind of like the director's cut.

02:54:02.000 Thank you.

02:54:03.000 It just got out to 1.28 million people.

02:54:06.000 Oh, oh.

02:54:07.000 A little bit more than five.

02:54:09.000 For those of you thinking about reading Mastery, I've read it, and it's been an invaluable tool along with the rest of your books.

02:54:15.000 Really, you allow people to...

02:54:17.000 To get the best out of themselves.

02:54:19.000 And that's something that I'm incredibly passionate about.

02:54:22.000 And I think these are incredible tools to have.

02:54:24.000 And you decide what to do with these tools.

02:54:26.000 You're a unique individual.

02:54:28.000 But there's no doubt that knowledge is power in itself.

02:54:31.000 And you can use that power for however means you want to do it.

02:54:35.000 It's up to you.

02:54:36.000 But the books have knowledge.

02:54:38.000 And when you consume those books, that knowledge will translate into your own personal power.

02:54:43.000 Clichés are real, ladies and gentlemen. 1.00

02:54:46.000 Robert Green, you're a bad motherfucker. 1.00

02:54:48.000 Aubrey Marcus, you're a bad motherfucker. 1.00

02:54:50.000 Thank you, Joe. 1.00

02:54:50.000 You're a bad motherfucker. 1.00

02:54:51.000 This has been an enjoyable podcast. 1.00

02:54:52.000 I really appreciate having you on.

02:54:54.000 It's been a real treat to pick your mind.

02:54:56.000 Thank you very, very much.

02:54:57.000 Thank you very much.

02:54:57.000 I had a great time.

02:54:58.000 Sponsors, thanks to Stamps.com.

02:55:00.000 Go to Stamps.com.

02:55:02.000 Click on the microphone in the top of the page and enter JRE for your special $110 bonus offer, which includes a free digital scale and up to $55 in free postage.

02:55:13.000 Thanks also to LegalZoom.

02:55:16.000 Go to LegalZoom.com and use the code word ROGAN in the referral box at checkout for more savings.

02:55:25.000 Thanks also to Onnit.com.

02:55:27.000 Go to O-N-N-I-T. Use the code word ROGAN and save 10% off any and all supplements.

02:55:33.000 Tomorrow, Greg Proops will be on, one of the finest comedians in the land, in any land.

02:55:39.000 And the host of the Smartest Man in the World podcast.

02:55:43.000 Just a real treat having him on anytime he's on. 0.98

02:55:45.000 He's a fucking awesome dude and he's goddamn smart and hilarious. 0.97

02:55:48.000 And we'll be back tomorrow with big kisses for all. 0.98

02:55:50.000 Thank you.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 04, 2014

Joe Rogan Experience #464 - Robert Greene, Aubrey Marcus

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Summary

Transcript