The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 166. Writer of Braveheart

00:00:00.940 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:06.480 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:12.740 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:20.100 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:27.400 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:35.360 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:41.800 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:00:47.460 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:00:50.980 Welcome to the JBP Podcast Season 4, Episode 19, recorded March 9th, 2021.

00:00:59.940 I'm Mikayla Peterson. This episode features Jordan Peterson and Randall Wallace.

00:01:04.200 Randall Wallace is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and songwriter best known for writing the historical drama Braveheart,

00:01:11.120 which earned him a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay and an Academy Award nomination in the same category.

00:01:17.820 He has since directed The Man in the Iron Mask, We Were Soldiers, Secretariat, and Heaven is for Real.

00:01:24.640 Mr. Wallace and Dad discussed the power of art, music, and story, Randall's stint writing songs,

00:01:30.880 the influence of biblical stories on his work and thought, depression, sacrifice,

00:01:35.820 the general development of his career as a writer and director, and his new action movie about the Pope.

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00:02:47.120 I hope you enjoy this episode.

00:02:48.980 Hello.

00:02:50.440 If you have found the ideas I discuss interesting and useful,

00:02:54.840 perhaps you might consider purchasing my recently released book,

00:02:58.400 Beyond Order, 12 More Rules for Life,

00:03:02.560 available from Penguin Random House in print or audio format.

00:03:07.980 You could use the links we provide below or buy through Amazon or at your local bookstore.

00:03:13.800 This new book, Beyond Order,

00:03:16.840 provides what I hope is a productive and interesting walk through ideas

00:03:20.740 that are both philosophically and sometimes spiritually meaningful,

00:03:25.200 as well as being immediately implementable and practical.

00:03:31.660 Beyond Order can be read and understood on its own,

00:03:34.660 but also builds on the concepts that I developed in my previous books,

00:03:38.940 12 Rules for Life,

00:03:40.760 and before that,

00:03:42.520 Maps of Meaning.

00:03:45.000 Thanks for listening,

00:03:46.880 and enjoy the podcast.

00:03:48.040 I'm pleased today to be able to talk to Mr. Randall Wallace.

00:04:12.000 He's an American novelist,

00:04:14.760 screenwriter,

00:04:15.680 director,

00:04:16.120 producer,

00:04:17.660 and songwriter,

00:04:19.160 who came to exceptional prominence,

00:04:21.560 above his normal prominence,

00:04:23.180 let's say,

00:04:23.860 by writing the screenplay

00:04:25.060 for the historical drama film Braveheart in 1995.

00:04:29.340 His work on that film earned him a nomination

00:04:31.420 for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay

00:04:34.400 and a Writers Guild of America Award

00:04:37.320 in the same category.

00:04:39.260 He has since directed films such as

00:04:41.260 The Man in the Iron Mask in 1998,

00:04:43.300 We Were Soldiers 2002,

00:04:45.920 Secretariat 2010,

00:04:48.380 which I just watched with my wife last night,

00:04:51.120 and Heaven is for Real 2014.

00:04:54.120 He's also written seven novels,

00:04:56.600 including the New York Times bestseller,

00:04:59.040 Pearl Harbor,

00:04:59.920 and has founded Hollywood for Habitat for Humanity.

00:05:03.720 And one of the things I'd like to point out to everyone

00:05:06.520 who's watching or listening to begin with is

00:05:08.560 it's really easy to list off

00:05:10.760 achievements in a row,

00:05:15.260 novelist, screenwriter, director,

00:05:17.440 producer, songwriter,

00:05:19.220 but what's quite remarkable and worthy of note

00:05:22.680 is that each of those is very difficult and unlikely.

00:05:25.980 So it's very hard to be a novelist.

00:05:28.360 You have to be able to write well,

00:05:30.480 and then you have to be fortunate

00:05:32.040 and you have to have the right connections

00:05:33.620 and you have to time the market properly.

00:05:35.560 And then to repeat that seven times

00:05:37.640 is quite a spectacular and unlikely feat.

00:05:42.040 But then to combine that with success as a screenwriter,

00:05:45.540 which is perhaps, if anything,

00:05:47.420 even more difficult than writing a novel that's successful,

00:05:51.140 because so many people have to participate

00:05:53.300 in moving an idea from its initial inception

00:05:57.220 through the screenwriting process to full production

00:06:00.640 as a movie and then release,

00:06:02.580 it's an unbelievably complicated and unlikely affair.

00:06:06.600 Director, that's impossible.

00:06:08.720 Producer and songwriter as well.

00:06:11.260 And so the conjunction of all those things,

00:06:13.340 the conjunction of seven rare events

00:06:15.120 is an extraordinarily rare event.

00:06:16.780 And one of the things that really made me interested

00:06:19.380 in talking to Mr. Wallace today

00:06:22.100 is I'm very curious about how he managed that,

00:06:27.180 what his life, how his life has been set up

00:06:29.380 so that that became possible.

00:06:31.500 So welcome.

00:06:34.040 And thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me.

00:06:36.860 Thank you, Jordan.

00:06:37.820 I'm absolutely thrilled to be with you.

00:06:40.480 Thank you.

00:06:41.300 Let me start by asking you what you're working on now.

00:06:44.920 Everyone's locked down with COVID.

00:06:46.440 And what are your plans for now in the future?

00:06:52.100 About two years ago, because I'm a workaholic,

00:06:57.240 the ism in my family is workaholism.

00:07:02.680 And I have that burden.

00:07:06.220 It produces a lot of help and advantage sometimes,

00:07:10.680 but it's also a burden.

00:07:14.320 And about two years ago,

00:07:16.220 I decided to take a sabbatical,

00:07:17.860 the first one in my life,

00:07:19.040 and go to Rome for five weeks.

00:07:22.100 I wanted to see what it was like

00:07:23.740 to be in a place long enough.

00:07:25.840 I've lived in Paris for a while,

00:07:27.840 but working on a film,

00:07:28.920 which is 16-hour days for months on end.

00:07:32.560 And I've lived in a couple of different,

00:07:35.340 visited a number of foreign countries,

00:07:37.360 but I wanted to be in a place with some room,

00:07:41.180 with some time to reflect and get away.

00:07:46.620 And I thought Rome would be perfect.

00:07:48.140 And we went to Rome and I have three sons.

00:07:52.720 And at one time or another, all three were there.

00:07:55.440 But we were sitting together on the Piazza Navona

00:07:58.980 and looking at a fountain.

00:08:03.620 And I said to one of my sons,

00:08:06.040 wouldn't it be cool if the Pope could escape

00:08:09.080 through some of the secret tunnels

00:08:10.600 that we know are in the Vatican

00:08:12.040 and get out and walk around Rome

00:08:15.300 as a normal citizen?

00:08:17.300 And one of my other sons said,

00:08:19.760 yeah, and maybe kick ass.

00:08:23.640 And then my other son said,

00:08:26.280 you mean the Pope is Batman?

00:08:28.560 And I went, wait a second.

00:08:30.740 And suddenly an idea was born.

00:08:34.060 And out of a kind of a fun exchange,

00:08:37.740 I had friends who are members of Opus Dei,

00:08:40.820 the ultra-Orthodox Catholic organization.

00:08:44.200 And they took us through the Vatican

00:08:46.940 and introduced us to the Swiss Guards.

00:08:49.840 And I began to think about

00:08:52.560 how profound an experience it is

00:08:56.100 that a man would be deemed by his church

00:09:01.440 to be the Holy Father,

00:09:04.840 the representative of God on earth.

00:09:07.440 What kind of crushing weight would that be?

00:09:11.360 What kind of humility would it require?

00:09:15.420 And a story began to spin its way into my life.

00:09:21.640 I have a friend who's a devout Catholic

00:09:24.400 and he won't take communion

00:09:28.380 because he can't make perfect contrition.

00:09:31.900 I'm not a Catholic, by the way.

00:09:33.240 I grew up a Baptist.

00:09:35.460 But he can't fulfill the requirements

00:09:39.660 to take communion

00:09:41.760 because he can't honestly say

00:09:44.660 he's going to refuse to stop living in sin

00:09:48.820 with the woman he's with,

00:09:50.700 who he has a child with.

00:09:52.080 So he's cut off from communion.

00:09:56.740 And no matter how much I say to him

00:10:00.300 about the Protestant view of

00:10:02.240 none of us deserve God's love,

00:10:06.060 we're saved only by grace,

00:10:10.100 it doesn't penetrate his sense of obligation

00:10:14.580 and requirement and insufficiency

00:10:17.180 to take communion.

00:10:19.380 And I began to think about

00:10:21.580 what if you had a Pope

00:10:23.800 who was absolutely committed

00:10:25.760 to the reformation of the church,

00:10:29.660 but he believed that maybe God

00:10:32.260 was not going to bless his efforts

00:10:33.920 unless he became a better man.

00:10:37.280 And to become a better man,

00:10:38.800 he had to own his own sins.

00:10:40.800 And his deepest sin,

00:10:44.200 his greatest guilt pertains to a young woman

00:10:47.220 who was the child of one of the Swiss guards

00:10:50.920 who tried to protect the Popes

00:10:54.800 when John Paul II was shot four times

00:10:58.380 in the stomach in Vatican Square.

00:11:01.180 Other Popes have died under mysterious circumstances.

00:11:03.780 And the idea that these two people come together

00:11:08.140 on the night when assassins stormed the Vatican

00:11:11.900 to kill the Pope

00:11:12.820 and they have to try to escape

00:11:16.500 through the bowels of the Vatican

00:11:17.900 while they're confronting their darkest secrets

00:11:20.940 and their darkest fears and faith,

00:11:23.660 that just sounded like the kind of movie I want to do.

00:11:27.040 And for the first time in my career,

00:11:29.660 I felt comfortable in saying to people

00:11:33.020 who have the financial means to invest in movies

00:11:37.460 that I was willing to let them invest.

00:11:40.720 As one of my sons said,

00:11:41.880 I could never let friends invest in movies

00:11:44.460 because it would destroy me

00:11:46.980 the sense of responsibility

00:11:48.260 to get their money back to them.

00:11:51.500 But in this, I had every confidence

00:11:53.380 that this was the kind of movie

00:11:55.840 the audience throughout the world

00:11:57.420 really wants to see,

00:11:58.740 the kind of theme that pertains to everyone,

00:12:02.760 that it would be the classic thing we want,

00:12:06.640 a hit movie that really meant something.

00:12:09.320 And that's the movie I'm preparing now.

00:12:12.100 Planning to shoot in Rome in September,

00:12:15.280 have an incredible team assembled,

00:12:18.200 still assembling other people to do it.

00:12:20.540 But that's what's right in my sights right now.

00:12:23.800 Well, in a thousand years,

00:12:26.060 that isn't a plot that I would have guessed.

00:12:29.880 Well, Jordan, here's another thing that pertains,

00:12:33.060 and it's another of the reasons

00:12:34.600 I'm so enriched by your experience,

00:12:40.980 by your journey,

00:12:41.980 which I feel is just starting.

00:12:46.940 And it's that when you start to direct,

00:12:53.100 there's the metaphor for me

00:12:56.120 is like you're crawling into a pipe,

00:12:58.080 and that pipe is 18 months long,

00:13:00.880 and you're going to crawl through sludge

00:13:04.840 and sometimes even sewage,

00:13:06.680 and there's no turning around.

00:13:08.460 And it's all on your shoulders,

00:13:10.840 and you have to keep going

00:13:13.120 and to stay connected

00:13:15.100 with what I need to stay connected with

00:13:18.500 to survive,

00:13:20.180 which begins with my family.

00:13:22.900 It's extremely difficult.

00:13:26.400 You're in a war.

00:13:28.140 You're in a battle.

00:13:30.280 And I've done a number of movies

00:13:33.220 about fighting,

00:13:34.780 about men who lead other men in battle.

00:13:37.420 And it's consuming.

00:13:39.740 It's all consuming.

00:13:42.060 General Moore,

00:13:43.260 the man that we were soldiers,

00:13:45.080 was about Mel Gibson portrayed him.

00:13:47.720 He led the air cavalry

00:13:49.620 in the largest battle in Vietnam.

00:13:52.120 And he loved his family profoundly.

00:13:55.260 But from the moment he left

00:13:57.200 Fort Benning, Georgia,

00:13:59.200 to go to Vietnam

00:14:00.560 till the day he returned

00:14:01.800 more than a year later,

00:14:02.860 he never wrote a single letter

00:14:04.300 except to one daughter.

00:14:06.180 He wrote her a letter back

00:14:09.080 because she had written him.

00:14:11.160 But other than that,

00:14:11.800 he never called his wife.

00:14:13.140 And he loved his wife

00:14:14.240 with every fiber of his being.

00:14:16.680 But he felt he had to keep

00:14:18.580 every second focused

00:14:20.460 on how he kept his men alive.

00:14:22.960 And in that sense

00:14:24.740 of how responsibility

00:14:27.820 can crush us

00:14:29.960 is profound for me.

00:14:32.320 Well, I've suggested to people

00:14:36.780 quite constantly

00:14:38.620 and generally

00:14:39.860 it's been a suggestion

00:14:41.440 that people take to heart

00:14:43.640 that the sustaining meaning

00:14:46.160 in life is to be found

00:14:47.660 through the adoption

00:14:48.380 of responsibility.

00:14:49.180 But that is the flip side of it

00:14:51.440 is that there's always

00:14:52.780 the possibility

00:14:53.460 that you pile on too much

00:14:55.120 and that you don't manage

00:14:56.580 to move forward

00:14:57.560 under the load.

00:14:58.300 And that's a danger.

00:15:01.480 And I've seen people

00:15:03.920 who are talented

00:15:04.940 fall prey to that.

00:15:06.740 Talented and hardworking

00:15:07.800 fall prey to that.

00:15:09.960 And it is definitely

00:15:11.340 a great advantage

00:15:12.860 to be surrounded

00:15:13.540 by people that love you

00:15:14.720 and to have a family

00:15:15.740 and all of that

00:15:16.760 so that you can take

00:15:17.720 some comfort

00:15:18.200 when you have the

00:15:19.140 opportunity to do that.

00:15:21.520 So that screenplay

00:15:23.440 that you're describing

00:15:24.260 that's going to be

00:15:25.040 you said that'll start

00:15:25.820 filming in the fall

00:15:26.760 assuming that we defeat

00:15:28.340 COVID and all of that.

00:15:30.080 Yes.

00:15:31.040 And so what

00:15:33.760 what drew you to the idea

00:15:35.920 in some sense

00:15:36.980 of putting the Pope

00:15:38.020 in an

00:15:38.880 what sounds like

00:15:40.300 an action movie?

00:15:41.720 I mean I have a friend

00:15:42.560 who writes action

00:15:43.580 novels

00:15:45.240 and he's quite interested

00:15:47.080 in using

00:15:47.780 all of the

00:15:49.420 elements

00:15:51.420 plot development

00:15:53.800 in particular

00:15:54.360 but also character development

00:15:55.560 that are part of

00:15:56.880 mass entertainment

00:15:58.500 in say in the

00:16:00.220 thriller genre

00:16:00.920 which is very close

00:16:02.620 to the superhero genre

00:16:03.740 I suppose

00:16:04.220 to investigate

00:16:05.520 thoughtful matters

00:16:07.520 in depth

00:16:08.240 to marry

00:16:08.900 what's entertaining

00:16:11.060 and gripping

00:16:11.680 which always has

00:16:13.160 an archetypal

00:16:14.200 element

00:16:14.940 otherwise it wouldn't be

00:16:15.800 entertaining and gripping

00:16:16.720 to

00:16:17.460 to something

00:16:18.600 that's serious

00:16:19.380 and

00:16:20.080 I suppose

00:16:20.960 and so it sounds like

00:16:22.340 there's something like that

00:16:23.480 well I could see that thread

00:16:24.500 running through all of your work

00:16:25.880 that the marriage of

00:16:28.560 mass attraction

00:16:29.900 which is certainly

00:16:30.640 necessary

00:16:31.400 for the success

00:16:32.660 of a movie

00:16:33.260 but also the exploration

00:16:34.780 of deeper themes

00:16:36.040 and ethical themes

00:16:37.440 yes

00:16:38.900 and I

00:16:39.520 I feel that one

00:16:40.800 without the other

00:16:41.760 is pale

00:16:42.580 an abstract

00:16:46.080 discussion

00:16:47.220 of values

00:16:48.080 is interesting

00:16:50.100 to me

00:16:50.500 intellectually

00:16:51.080 but I want to know

00:16:52.960 how it's defined

00:16:54.060 in action

00:16:55.140 and

00:16:57.460 an action movie

00:16:58.460 in which

00:17:00.780 no one learns

00:17:01.880 anything

00:17:02.240 and no one's

00:17:03.080 required to

00:17:03.960 to grow

00:17:04.620 and sacrifice

00:17:05.400 is empty

00:17:06.820 I've been asked

00:17:09.940 why I make

00:17:10.960 war movies

00:17:11.960 and I

00:17:12.460 always say

00:17:13.380 I don't

00:17:13.960 I make love stories

00:17:15.040 I want to know

00:17:16.180 what you love enough

00:17:17.260 to sacrifice

00:17:17.980 your life for

00:17:19.000 if necessary

00:17:20.280 it's funny

00:17:23.300 Jordan

00:17:23.660 in high school

00:17:24.700 of all the things

00:17:27.180 you know

00:17:27.460 when

00:17:27.740 when the seniors

00:17:29.120 at least in America

00:17:30.780 I assume in other places

00:17:32.060 but

00:17:32.420 they're voted

00:17:33.720 different superlatives

00:17:34.920 and

00:17:35.500 I was voted

00:17:36.960 most responsible

00:17:38.060 and I found

00:17:39.820 that

00:17:40.180 the

00:17:41.380 the least sexy

00:17:42.760 title

00:17:44.080 you could possibly

00:17:45.220 have

00:17:45.700 I

00:17:45.920 I once said

00:17:47.260 to

00:17:47.580 a woman

00:17:48.800 I was dating

00:17:49.560 that

00:17:49.960 that in high school

00:17:51.180 I was

00:17:51.760 voted most responsible

00:17:53.900 and she laughed

00:17:54.780 and said

00:17:55.320 I was voted

00:17:56.640 best legs

00:17:57.680 and

00:17:58.600 and I thought

00:18:00.640 well

00:18:00.960 maybe that's the way

00:18:02.280 it works

00:18:02.700 the most responsible

00:18:03.680 guy is supposed

00:18:04.340 to get the

00:18:05.000 the girl

00:18:05.580 with the best legs

00:18:06.560 but

00:18:07.020 but for me

00:18:09.080 it's like

00:18:10.180 well

00:18:11.840 I'm sorry

00:18:13.560 this is sort of scattered

00:18:14.560 but

00:18:14.920 whenever I'm listening

00:18:17.820 to you

00:18:18.460 I'll find

00:18:19.520 unexpected

00:18:20.540 treasures

00:18:21.420 you'll say

00:18:23.260 something

00:18:23.720 in your

00:18:24.600 in your lectures

00:18:25.340 that will cause

00:18:26.820 me to

00:18:27.720 to see

00:18:29.380 some aspect

00:18:30.100 of my life

00:18:30.740 that I hadn't

00:18:32.500 interpreted

00:18:33.180 fully

00:18:33.800 and one

00:18:35.660 for me

00:18:36.060 was

00:18:36.540 when I was

00:18:37.560 in high school

00:18:38.240 I was younger

00:18:39.700 than most

00:18:40.340 of my

00:18:40.840 classmates

00:18:41.520 and

00:18:43.020 and I saw

00:18:45.060 a lot of

00:18:45.460 bullying

00:18:45.800 and I experienced

00:18:46.980 some

00:18:47.660 and when I went

00:18:49.460 to college

00:18:49.940 and there'd be

00:18:50.960 incidents like

00:18:51.800 you know

00:18:52.160 a linebacker

00:18:52.900 from the football

00:18:53.540 team would get

00:18:54.200 drunk and

00:18:54.840 punch

00:18:56.080 some

00:18:56.980 some

00:18:58.340 sort of

00:19:00.240 scholarly

00:19:00.720 student

00:19:01.240 on the face

00:19:01.920 and crush

00:19:02.360 his jaw

00:19:02.880 and I decided

00:19:03.540 I was going

00:19:04.760 to really learn

00:19:05.260 to fight

00:19:05.720 and I

00:19:06.220 studied karate

00:19:07.220 and I became

00:19:07.980 a karate teacher

00:19:08.820 and I won

00:19:09.700 some championships

00:19:10.520 and when I

00:19:11.700 tried to

00:19:12.120 and I was also

00:19:12.960 in

00:19:13.400 I was a

00:19:14.040 religion major

00:19:14.860 and I went

00:19:15.640 to seminary

00:19:16.480 and I

00:19:16.980 put myself

00:19:18.400 through seminary

00:19:19.380 teaching karate

00:19:20.360 and that would

00:19:21.640 make people

00:19:22.180 laugh

00:19:22.720 and they

00:19:24.340 think it's

00:19:24.840 an anomaly

00:19:25.400 but I'd

00:19:25.920 say well

00:19:26.340 when you

00:19:27.780 were talking

00:19:28.160 about Nietzsche

00:19:28.940 saying

00:19:30.820 you know

00:19:31.300 if you make

00:19:32.300 a moral

00:19:32.700 choice

00:19:33.240 if you make

00:19:34.340 a choice

00:19:34.780 because you're

00:19:35.340 afraid to make

00:19:35.960 the other

00:19:36.320 choice

00:19:36.740 it's not

00:19:37.220 a moral

00:19:37.620 choice

00:19:38.280 now

00:19:39.440 I didn't

00:19:40.620 know much

00:19:41.760 about Nietzsche

00:19:42.420 when I was

00:19:42.940 in college

00:19:43.440 I just

00:19:44.480 thought he

00:19:44.760 was a

00:19:45.060 German

00:19:45.280 thinker

00:19:45.700 who didn't

00:19:46.380 know how

00:19:46.680 to spell

00:19:47.020 his last

00:19:47.600 name

00:19:48.040 I mean

00:19:48.520 I didn't

00:19:49.440 know

00:19:49.700 what's

00:19:50.500 this guy

00:19:50.900 doing

00:19:51.160 but

00:19:51.980 it was

00:19:53.540 that way

00:19:54.320 for me

00:19:54.800 I thought

00:19:55.400 if I walk

00:19:56.140 away from

00:19:56.640 a fight

00:19:57.180 I want

00:19:57.780 to know

00:19:59.440 as much

00:19:59.900 as I could

00:20:00.500 know

00:20:00.840 that it's

00:20:02.000 not because

00:20:02.620 I'm being

00:20:03.080 a coward

00:20:03.620 it's because

00:20:04.200 I'm choosing

00:20:04.900 to walk

00:20:06.120 away

00:20:06.480 that I'm

00:20:08.560 capable

00:20:09.280 of hurting

00:20:11.080 someone

00:20:11.580 and if I

00:20:13.540 have to

00:20:13.980 fight

00:20:14.260 I want

00:20:14.760 to be

00:20:15.140 capable

00:20:15.880 of doing

00:20:16.780 it

00:20:17.040 and that

00:20:17.660 to me

00:20:18.020 all ties

00:20:18.740 in with

00:20:19.060 the notion

00:20:19.500 of the

00:20:20.460 complexity

00:20:21.020 of

00:20:21.560 of a

00:20:22.580 choice

00:20:22.960 and

00:20:23.240 and we're

00:20:24.120 we're

00:20:24.460 entertained

00:20:25.100 in a

00:20:25.580 movie

00:20:25.840 we're

00:20:26.200 captivated

00:20:27.060 I should

00:20:27.500 say

00:20:27.760 more

00:20:28.040 by

00:20:28.720 by

00:20:29.840 seeing

00:20:30.440 the

00:20:31.000 the

00:20:32.480 connection

00:20:33.020 between

00:20:34.020 action

00:20:34.580 and

00:20:34.860 meaning

00:20:35.280 well

00:20:37.500 meaning

00:20:37.920 grounds

00:20:38.340 out

00:20:38.560 in

00:20:38.720 action

00:20:39.080 right

00:20:39.300 something

00:20:39.600 isn't

00:20:39.980 meaningful

00:20:40.400 as far

00:20:40.820 as I

00:20:41.080 can

00:20:41.220 tell

00:20:41.420 unless

00:20:41.680 it

00:20:41.860 has

00:20:42.040 implications

00:20:42.620 for

00:20:42.960 action

00:20:43.400 yes

00:20:44.120 and

00:20:44.460 or

00:20:44.760 or

00:20:45.320 the

00:20:45.620 alternative

00:20:46.020 is

00:20:46.340 that

00:20:46.460 it

00:20:46.560 has

00:20:46.700 implications

00:20:47.220 for

00:20:47.560 perception

00:20:48.120 because

00:20:48.500 something

00:20:48.840 meaningful

00:20:49.280 can

00:20:49.600 change

00:20:49.900 the way

00:20:50.200 you look

00:20:50.600 at something

00:20:51.100 but the

00:20:51.700 consequence

00:20:52.120 of that

00:20:52.640 is that

00:20:53.100 the framework

00:20:54.080 within which

00:20:54.980 you act

00:20:55.440 is going

00:20:55.780 to change

00:20:56.420 and so

00:20:57.100 it grounds

00:20:57.580 out in

00:20:57.940 action

00:20:58.340 and

00:20:59.160 and

00:20:59.880 I mean

00:21:00.920 I've

00:21:01.180 always been

00:21:01.960 what would

00:21:03.140 you

00:21:03.260 fascinated

00:21:04.000 I suppose

00:21:04.560 by the

00:21:05.160 the

00:21:05.900 parallelism

00:21:07.360 between

00:21:07.780 Nietzsche

00:21:08.180 and Dostoevsky

00:21:09.060 because they

00:21:09.800 thought along

00:21:10.540 very similar

00:21:11.260 lines

00:21:11.860 and

00:21:13.980 but Dostoevsky

00:21:15.700 has the

00:21:16.180 advantage over

00:21:16.900 Nietzsche

00:21:17.180 in some sense

00:21:17.840 because he

00:21:18.860 can embody

00:21:19.480 his

00:21:19.760 philosophy

00:21:20.240 and characters

00:21:21.040 and that

00:21:21.700 actually

00:21:22.020 allows him

00:21:22.560 to go

00:21:23.040 into more

00:21:23.940 depth

00:21:24.420 I would

00:21:24.860 say

00:21:25.100 than

00:21:25.340 Nietzsche

00:21:25.700 which is

00:21:26.280 really

00:21:26.500 saying

00:21:26.860 something

00:21:27.240 because

00:21:27.560 Nietzsche

00:21:27.900 went as

00:21:30.340 far down

00:21:30.920 in some

00:21:31.580 ways as

00:21:32.160 anyone I've

00:21:32.820 ever had

00:21:33.860 the misfortune

00:21:35.500 or pleasure

00:21:35.980 to have

00:21:36.440 read

00:21:36.880 but

00:21:37.800 and

00:21:38.440 it's so

00:21:39.640 interesting

00:21:40.040 how it

00:21:40.380 works

00:21:40.660 in the

00:21:41.560 brothers

00:21:41.860 Karamazov

00:21:42.560 Dostoevsky

00:21:44.700 pits Ivan

00:21:45.480 against

00:21:46.100 Eliosha

00:21:46.840 and Ivan

00:21:47.380 is handsome

00:21:48.500 and debonair

00:21:49.340 and he's

00:21:50.600 the warrior

00:21:51.540 type that

00:21:52.080 you just

00:21:52.420 described

00:21:52.960 he's very

00:21:54.540 atheistic

00:21:55.180 and he can

00:21:55.820 put up a

00:21:56.400 pretty good

00:21:56.820 argument

00:21:57.220 you know

00:21:57.800 he tortures

00:21:58.800 his brother

00:21:59.340 who's a

00:21:59.860 monastic

00:22:00.440 novitiate

00:22:01.120 with

00:22:01.840 stories of

00:22:03.520 children locked

00:22:04.340 in outhouses

00:22:05.000 overnight

00:22:05.440 and freezing

00:22:05.980 to death

00:22:06.520 they were

00:22:07.200 punished by

00:22:07.740 their parents

00:22:08.260 which Dostoevsky

00:22:08.980 took from

00:22:09.500 a newspaper

00:22:09.960 and said

00:22:11.080 I don't

00:22:11.960 I cannot

00:22:12.400 possibly imagine

00:22:13.600 how there

00:22:14.660 could be a

00:22:15.240 god who

00:22:15.700 is omniscient

00:22:16.820 and had

00:22:18.240 all the

00:22:18.560 other

00:22:18.740 classic

00:22:19.200 attributes

00:22:19.680 of god

00:22:20.080 who could

00:22:20.400 create a

00:22:20.780 universe

00:22:21.020 where that

00:22:21.500 was allowed

00:22:22.120 to happen

00:22:22.540 even once

00:22:23.460 and Ivan

00:22:24.760 can out

00:22:26.480 debate

00:22:27.000 Eliosha

00:22:27.840 consistently

00:22:28.740 but

00:22:29.060 Eliosha's

00:22:30.300 character is

00:22:31.000 such that

00:22:31.460 he wins

00:22:32.080 the argument

00:22:32.700 he loses

00:22:33.220 all the

00:22:33.660 battles

00:22:34.020 in some

00:22:34.440 sense

00:22:34.720 but wins

00:22:35.200 the war

00:22:35.740 and that's

00:22:36.540 something you

00:22:36.940 can really

00:22:37.300 portray

00:22:37.720 when you

00:22:38.520 clothe your

00:22:39.080 ideas in

00:22:39.660 characters

00:22:40.160 or when

00:22:41.540 the characters

00:22:42.080 are even

00:22:42.680 more I think

00:22:43.720 to the point

00:22:44.300 is when the

00:22:44.900 characters are so

00:22:45.760 profound that

00:22:46.400 they're acting

00:22:46.880 out ideas

00:22:47.480 that you

00:22:48.280 couldn't yet

00:22:48.980 make explicit

00:22:50.000 no and that

00:22:51.380 is one of the

00:22:51.980 things that

00:22:52.520 that narrative

00:22:53.280 does is that

00:22:54.180 it enables us

00:22:55.000 to play out

00:22:56.400 ideas that

00:22:57.040 we're not yet

00:22:57.760 intelligent enough

00:22:58.540 to understand

00:22:59.180 and sometimes

00:22:59.880 the gap between

00:23:01.440 the narrative

00:23:02.020 representation and

00:23:03.060 the explicit

00:23:03.560 understanding can

00:23:04.420 be thousands and

00:23:05.200 thousands of

00:23:05.680 years because

00:23:06.240 we're still

00:23:06.660 unwrapping

00:23:07.340 well we're

00:23:08.020 certainly still

00:23:08.520 unwrapping the

00:23:09.140 bible we're

00:23:09.720 we're unwrapping

00:23:10.540 we're still

00:23:11.040 unwrapping

00:23:11.540 Shakespeare

00:23:12.060 there's more

00:23:13.000 depth there

00:23:13.600 than we can

00:23:14.160 than we can

00:23:15.020 understand

00:23:15.920 explicitly

00:23:16.600 and so

00:23:17.700 anything that

00:23:18.260 uses character

00:23:19.040 has that

00:23:19.540 tremendous

00:23:19.980 advantage

00:23:20.680 and then

00:23:21.400 it also

00:23:21.880 there's also

00:23:22.760 this strange

00:23:23.500 ability that

00:23:24.340 some people

00:23:25.300 have in spades

00:23:26.340 to create

00:23:28.840 fictional worlds

00:23:29.800 that are of

00:23:30.560 unbelievable

00:23:31.200 profundity and

00:23:32.120 power and

00:23:32.780 I mean the

00:23:34.000 greatest example

00:23:34.960 of that in the

00:23:35.440 last 30 years

00:23:36.280 in terms of

00:23:37.120 sheer imaginative

00:23:38.040 power has got

00:23:38.780 to be J.K.

00:23:39.580 Rowling and

00:23:40.200 the Harry Potter

00:23:41.140 series which

00:23:41.900 you know gripped

00:23:43.020 the imagination

00:23:43.700 of the entire

00:23:44.540 planet for

00:23:46.380 for a decade

00:23:47.220 and produced

00:23:48.160 untold wealth

00:23:49.580 and spread

00:23:50.260 literacy everywhere

00:23:51.280 as well

00:23:51.860 she had an

00:23:52.920 remarkably

00:23:54.840 creative

00:23:55.500 imagination

00:23:56.260 and something

00:23:57.900 quite mysterious

00:23:58.880 and so you're

00:24:00.280 you're fortunate

00:24:00.960 enough to work

00:24:01.700 at the marriage

00:24:02.320 of ideas

00:24:02.900 and and

00:24:03.880 and drama

00:24:04.680 yes and

00:24:05.900 and you know

00:24:06.380 it's it's really

00:24:07.000 interesting when

00:24:07.740 when you've

00:24:08.220 spoken about

00:24:08.820 Dostoevsky and

00:24:10.060 and others

00:24:10.780 in some of

00:24:12.240 your lectures

00:24:12.740 I'm fascinated

00:24:14.040 by him

00:24:14.940 and all the

00:24:15.340 Russians

00:24:15.600 I studied

00:24:16.180 Russian for

00:24:16.960 four years

00:24:17.800 in college

00:24:18.360 and and read

00:24:19.840 some of these

00:24:20.580 in the original

00:24:21.260 my Russian

00:24:21.880 wasn't fluent

00:24:23.400 enough for me

00:24:24.060 to really

00:24:24.640 I mean I had

00:24:25.360 to grind

00:24:25.980 through them

00:24:26.580 but Tolstoy

00:24:28.140 Chekhov

00:24:29.460 Chekhov who

00:24:30.220 was a doctor

00:24:31.680 a medical

00:24:32.340 doctor as well

00:24:33.400 as a writer

00:24:34.000 so that

00:24:35.600 that congruence

00:24:38.120 of of a

00:24:39.700 commitment

00:24:40.260 not just in

00:24:41.560 terms of

00:24:42.040 literature

00:24:42.460 but that he

00:24:44.260 used his

00:24:45.700 profession

00:24:46.320 as a doctor

00:24:48.180 to also

00:24:49.480 inform him

00:24:50.780 as a writer

00:24:52.640 he famously

00:24:53.980 said

00:24:54.540 medicine is

00:24:57.740 my is

00:24:58.660 my wife

00:24:59.580 and literature

00:25:00.320 is my

00:25:00.760 mistress

00:25:01.120 and when

00:25:02.160 I tire

00:25:02.600 of one

00:25:03.040 I spend

00:25:03.460 time with

00:25:03.940 the other

00:25:04.360 and

00:25:06.040 I and

00:25:08.240 Pushkin

00:25:08.760 who would

00:25:09.880 who would

00:25:10.880 write stories

00:25:11.680 that that

00:25:12.480 were full

00:25:13.080 of thought

00:25:14.000 but the

00:25:15.220 story itself

00:25:16.460 was bigger

00:25:17.880 than any

00:25:18.460 thought he

00:25:19.220 could put

00:25:19.640 around it

00:25:20.220 it was it

00:25:20.800 was more

00:25:21.320 resonant

00:25:21.860 it carried

00:25:23.060 more

00:25:23.460 by the

00:25:25.660 way

00:25:25.940 when I

00:25:26.920 listened to

00:25:27.440 your

00:25:27.900 your

00:25:28.400 biblical

00:25:28.960 series

00:25:29.540 it

00:25:30.540 caused

00:25:30.920 me

00:25:31.160 to

00:25:31.480 decide

00:25:32.180 to

00:25:32.800 read

00:25:33.240 through

00:25:33.480 the

00:25:33.720 whole

00:25:33.980 Bible

00:25:34.400 and

00:25:36.360 just

00:25:37.200 start to

00:25:37.680 finish

00:25:37.940 and I

00:25:38.240 grew up

00:25:38.780 Southern

00:25:39.100 Baptist

00:25:39.440 so

00:25:39.920 ever since

00:25:40.940 I could

00:25:41.340 read

00:25:41.860 I've

00:25:42.700 read the

00:25:43.000 Bible

00:25:43.400 virtually

00:25:44.520 every day

00:25:45.040 of my

00:25:45.360 life

00:25:45.780 but I'd

00:25:46.620 never

00:25:47.040 read the

00:25:47.600 Bible

00:25:47.960 start to

00:25:48.740 finish

00:25:49.000 and there

00:25:49.260 were some

00:25:49.660 books

00:25:49.920 that

00:25:50.100 even

00:25:50.840 when I

00:25:51.700 was a

00:25:51.980 religion

00:25:52.280 major

00:25:52.760 at

00:25:53.160 university

00:25:53.660 I would

00:25:54.880 get to

00:25:55.300 some of

00:25:55.600 the books

00:25:55.920 and go

00:25:56.300 I can't

00:25:57.420 stay awake

00:25:58.000 for this

00:25:58.760 book

00:25:59.260 I just

00:25:59.620 got to

00:25:59.940 move on

00:26:00.380 but when

00:26:01.240 you really

00:26:01.660 go through

00:26:02.380 it

00:26:02.680 and you

00:26:03.560 see the

00:26:04.180 the Old

00:26:05.240 Testament

00:26:05.740 as

00:26:06.980 this

00:26:08.120 this

00:26:09.200 incredible

00:26:10.000 saga

00:26:10.620 of a

00:26:11.520 people

00:26:11.860 trying to

00:26:12.760 find

00:26:13.280 the rules

00:26:14.220 that

00:26:15.240 that kept

00:26:16.200 them together

00:26:16.860 as a

00:26:17.260 people

00:26:17.560 and it

00:26:18.400 felt

00:26:18.680 if you

00:26:19.820 disobey

00:26:20.500 these rules

00:26:21.280 then

00:26:22.400 it's

00:26:22.880 going

00:26:23.020 to end

00:26:23.340 badly

00:26:23.720 for us

00:26:24.240 all

00:26:24.560 and

00:26:25.800 the

00:26:26.660 greatest

00:26:27.100 the greatest

00:26:28.440 violation

00:26:29.260 is to

00:26:29.880 erect

00:26:30.280 altars

00:26:30.920 to

00:26:31.260 other

00:26:31.820 gods

00:26:32.160 right

00:26:32.720 that's

00:26:33.100 worship

00:26:33.500 false

00:26:33.940 idols

00:26:34.300 yeah

00:26:34.660 that's

00:26:35.220 the worst

00:26:35.640 and then

00:26:36.680 along comes

00:26:37.500 Jesus

00:26:37.880 who is

00:26:38.300 completely

00:26:38.940 steeped

00:26:40.300 in all

00:26:40.840 that Old

00:26:41.340 Testament

00:26:41.740 I mean

00:26:42.220 he is

00:26:42.680 he is

00:26:43.480 profound

00:26:44.380 in his

00:26:44.760 knowledge

00:26:45.060 of it

00:26:45.460 and he

00:26:46.680 lives

00:26:47.360 and does

00:26:48.140 and says

00:26:49.260 these things

00:26:50.100 but it's

00:26:50.940 not like

00:26:51.440 it's a

00:26:51.760 philosophy

00:26:52.340 it's a

00:26:52.980 narrative

00:26:53.460 a narrative

00:26:54.460 which

00:26:54.900 I've

00:26:55.920 studied a

00:26:56.300 great deal

00:26:56.800 and I

00:26:57.200 believe

00:26:57.560 is

00:26:58.000 is largely

00:26:59.520 historical

00:27:00.420 or I

00:27:01.040 should say

00:27:01.400 significantly

00:27:02.360 historical

00:27:03.640 I believe

00:27:05.300 these things

00:27:06.120 did happen

00:27:07.220 and then

00:27:08.040 you have

00:27:08.640 Saint Paul

00:27:09.660 who's

00:27:10.680 trying to

00:27:11.380 make sense

00:27:12.040 of what

00:27:12.980 happened

00:27:13.400 and

00:27:14.720 and

00:27:15.220 and it's

00:27:16.220 mind-blowing

00:27:16.900 to me

00:27:17.600 it's mind-blowing

00:27:18.800 to to read

00:27:20.040 it as a

00:27:20.720 whole and

00:27:21.140 put it into

00:27:21.660 perspective

00:27:22.440 in that

00:27:22.940 having

00:27:23.420 having spent

00:27:24.500 my life

00:27:24.960 well what's

00:27:25.500 mind-blowing

00:27:26.000 about it

00:27:26.520 in in

00:27:26.980 in part

00:27:27.580 I mean

00:27:28.740 and I

00:27:29.060 try to

00:27:29.420 speak of

00:27:29.840 the Bible

00:27:30.260 not from

00:27:31.680 the perspective

00:27:32.340 of a

00:27:32.860 committed

00:27:33.160 believer

00:27:33.640 and I

00:27:34.580 have my

00:27:34.920 reasons

00:27:35.240 for that

00:27:35.780 I guess

00:27:37.780 it's partly

00:27:38.440 because I

00:27:38.940 want to

00:27:39.380 concentrate

00:27:40.200 on

00:27:40.760 what

00:27:42.520 everyone

00:27:43.020 can come

00:27:43.500 to see

00:27:43.860 as true

00:27:44.420 I suppose

00:27:45.440 perhaps

00:27:46.020 that's

00:27:46.400 it

00:27:46.600 but

00:27:48.800 it is

00:27:49.880 remarkable

00:27:50.380 that the

00:27:51.620 Bible

00:27:52.320 does in

00:27:53.020 fact make

00:27:53.520 a coherent

00:27:53.960 narrative

00:27:54.460 because we

00:27:56.000 don't understand

00:27:56.620 that

00:27:57.180 it was

00:27:58.000 it was

00:27:58.760 written by

00:27:59.340 a very

00:27:59.760 diverse

00:28:00.200 range of

00:28:00.780 people

00:28:01.060 over a

00:28:01.720 span of

00:28:02.120 time that

00:28:02.540 we can

00:28:03.080 perhaps not

00:28:03.620 even imagine

00:28:04.220 it's very

00:28:05.560 difficult to

00:28:06.180 tell how

00:28:06.620 old the

00:28:07.140 the oldest

00:28:07.740 stories in

00:28:08.520 Genesis

00:28:08.900 particular

00:28:09.480 are the

00:28:10.020 the story

00:28:11.860 of the

00:28:12.200 fall

00:28:12.560 and of

00:28:13.720 Adam and

00:28:14.100 Eve and

00:28:14.400 Cain and

00:28:15.200 Abel

00:28:15.460 they bear

00:28:16.620 all the

00:28:17.120 hallmarks

00:28:17.940 of a

00:28:18.600 previous

00:28:19.000 oral

00:28:19.420 tradition

00:28:19.900 that

00:28:21.360 would have

00:28:22.080 existed

00:28:22.560 in relatively

00:28:24.320 unchanged

00:28:24.800 form for

00:28:25.900 tens of

00:28:26.400 thousands of

00:28:27.000 years and

00:28:27.540 perhaps even

00:28:28.160 longer than

00:28:28.700 that and so

00:28:29.480 they're

00:28:29.980 unbelievably

00:28:30.720 ancient and

00:28:31.740 then parts

00:28:33.300 of it

00:28:33.500 obviously are

00:28:34.280 newer and

00:28:34.760 the written

00:28:35.680 parts are

00:28:36.160 obviously newer

00:28:36.740 than any

00:28:37.200 tentative

00:28:38.100 oral

00:28:38.500 tradition but

00:28:39.380 you have

00:28:39.780 you have

00:28:40.840 at the

00:28:41.340 bare

00:28:41.680 minimum

00:28:42.160 an

00:28:42.720 unbelievably

00:28:43.360 deep

00:28:43.960 psychological

00:28:44.640 document

00:28:45.580 that

00:28:46.580 weaves

00:28:47.180 itself

00:28:47.760 over

00:28:48.700 centuries

00:28:49.300 into a

00:28:49.840 coherent

00:28:50.160 story

00:28:50.760 and

00:28:51.120 Northrop Frye

00:28:52.320 I would

00:28:52.620 say he's a

00:28:53.220 Canadian literary

00:28:53.920 critic has

00:28:54.880 did more for

00:28:55.920 me than any

00:28:56.520 other

00:28:56.820 particular

00:28:58.060 thinker

00:28:58.560 to help me

00:28:59.840 understand the

00:29:00.500 nature of the

00:29:01.020 narrative because

00:29:01.540 Frye I suppose

00:29:03.020 he did the

00:29:03.520 same thing

00:29:04.000 or I'm doing

00:29:05.260 the same thing

00:29:05.840 that he did

00:29:06.360 because he

00:29:06.720 preceded me

00:29:07.500 also at the

00:29:08.660 University of

00:29:09.180 Toronto

00:29:09.500 he assessed

00:29:13.020 the Bible as

00:29:13.800 a work of

00:29:14.360 literature

00:29:14.820 as a

00:29:16.260 narrative

00:29:16.620 and that

00:29:18.900 to me was

00:29:19.500 never any

00:29:20.380 denigration

00:29:21.300 because

00:29:21.840 narrative

00:29:23.420 a powerful

00:29:24.840 narrative and

00:29:25.480 you talk about

00:29:26.160 this when you

00:29:26.560 talk about

00:29:27.000 Braveheart for

00:29:27.720 example because

00:29:28.460 there isn't that

00:29:29.900 much known about

00:29:30.700 William Wallace

00:29:31.320 historically but

00:29:32.220 you crafted a

00:29:33.680 narrative

00:29:33.940 that was

00:29:35.380 true enough

00:29:36.380 let's say

00:29:37.080 to be

00:29:38.040 unbelievably

00:29:38.680 attractive to

00:29:39.500 people and

00:29:39.980 to motivate

00:29:40.560 them very

00:29:41.140 deeply because

00:29:41.940 it's an

00:29:42.280 affecting movie

00:29:43.200 well and if

00:29:43.680 it wasn't it

00:29:44.240 wouldn't have

00:29:44.580 been so

00:29:45.020 popular

00:29:45.460 and so

00:29:47.420 there's a

00:29:47.800 truth in

00:29:48.780 narrative that

00:29:49.400 I think is

00:29:49.960 even deeper

00:29:50.500 than historical

00:29:51.180 truth a

00:29:51.980 true like a

00:29:52.900 truly profound

00:29:53.960 narrative truth

00:29:55.160 is like the

00:29:56.680 average of a

00:29:57.920 whole variety

00:29:58.660 of historical

00:29:59.360 truths and

00:30:00.620 so it's the

00:30:01.240 essence of

00:30:01.960 historical truth

00:30:02.940 so it's

00:30:04.160 even more

00:30:04.640 true than

00:30:05.160 what we

00:30:06.320 would consider

00:30:06.900 say eyewitness

00:30:07.960 history because

00:30:08.700 eyewitness history

00:30:09.520 is just it's

00:30:10.680 one battle

00:30:11.520 you know and

00:30:12.940 there's maybe an

00:30:13.940 epic theme in

00:30:14.580 that battle but

00:30:15.140 then imagine that

00:30:15.880 you could look at

00:30:16.440 a thousand battles

00:30:17.560 and you could

00:30:18.220 extract out from

00:30:20.240 that what was

00:30:20.900 canonical about

00:30:22.040 heroic victory

00:30:23.120 across all

00:30:23.900 one thousand

00:30:24.560 battles you see

00:30:25.920 something like that

00:30:26.820 happening in the

00:30:27.520 old testament and

00:30:28.320 the narrative

00:30:29.220 the narrative

00:30:30.200 thread is really

00:30:31.020 quite deep

00:30:31.740 societies emerge

00:30:35.060 formulate fall

00:30:37.760 off the path

00:30:38.740 worship false

00:30:40.140 idols collapse

00:30:41.340 and then the

00:30:42.520 same thing

00:30:42.920 happens again and

00:30:43.640 the collapse

00:30:44.220 happens and the

00:30:44.880 collapse happens

00:30:45.500 because people

00:30:46.280 become too

00:30:47.540 prideful the

00:30:48.540 kings in

00:30:49.060 particular they

00:30:49.960 don't listen to

00:30:50.920 the voice of

00:30:51.520 conscience they

00:30:52.260 and a prophetic

00:30:53.540 voice arises and

00:30:54.780 says you're

00:30:55.800 wandering off the

00:30:57.500 tried and true

00:30:58.760 path and you're

00:30:59.840 going to be

00:31:00.980 punished terribly

00:31:02.180 for that and

00:31:03.000 generally speaking

00:31:04.540 the kings ignore

00:31:06.000 that and

00:31:06.600 catastrophe breaks

00:31:08.720 free and you

00:31:10.100 see and in the

00:31:12.080 old testament in

00:31:12.940 particular there's

00:31:13.540 the promise of

00:31:14.360 the ultimate state

00:31:16.120 in some sense

00:31:16.940 there's utopian

00:31:17.720 promises that run

00:31:18.740 through it the

00:31:19.260 search for the

00:31:19.820 promised land and

00:31:20.540 then so strangely

00:31:22.260 you see that

00:31:22.960 transformed into

00:31:23.860 something that's

00:31:24.520 not really

00:31:25.040 political in

00:31:25.780 the new

00:31:26.100 testament you

00:31:27.080 see that the

00:31:27.780 promised land

00:31:28.680 becomes the

00:31:29.920 nature of

00:31:30.500 experience as a

00:31:31.400 consequence of a

00:31:32.260 particular form of

00:31:33.360 moral being and

00:31:35.380 and then perhaps

00:31:36.840 that has political

00:31:37.580 implications because

00:31:38.640 people who acted

00:31:39.460 like that would

00:31:40.020 produce a particular

00:31:40.780 state but it's no

00:31:41.760 longer it's it's

00:31:43.640 it's no longer the

00:31:44.700 dream of establishing

00:31:46.100 the state that

00:31:47.600 will solve all

00:31:49.280 problems it's

00:31:50.400 psychologized and

00:31:51.400 it's it's

00:31:51.880 unbelievably profound

00:31:53.220 and it it's and

00:31:55.380 that's i think you

00:31:56.160 can derive all of

00:31:57.020 that from from the

00:31:58.160 biblical writings

00:31:58.840 without even

00:32:02.140 starting to move

00:32:03.100 on to classically

00:32:03.940 religious territory

00:32:04.900 and and it's and

00:32:08.340 then that does beg the

00:32:09.340 question of course is

00:32:10.260 what does all that

00:32:11.020 wisdom point to in

00:32:12.060 the final analysis

00:32:12.900 and that's when the

00:32:14.320 questions start to

00:32:15.040 become religious

00:32:15.700 yes and well

00:32:18.340 jordan that's that's

00:32:20.060 that's the part to

00:32:20.820 me that it takes

00:32:22.780 it into a whole

00:32:23.540 whole different

00:32:24.440 realm as you as

00:32:25.500 you say there's a

00:32:27.980 quote from mary

00:32:29.300 oliver that a

00:32:30.220 friend shared with

00:32:31.320 me recently it's a

00:32:32.700 keep some room in

00:32:34.400 your heart for the

00:32:35.320 unimaginable and i

00:32:38.160 find that in in a

00:32:41.240 great story in any

00:32:42.340 or any great piece

00:32:43.920 of art that

00:32:45.700 surprise is the

00:32:47.080 central currency of

00:32:48.460 its power there's

00:32:50.100 an element of if

00:32:51.180 you will of

00:32:51.720 revelation if you

00:32:53.400 will and i i think

00:32:55.260 it was paul tillick

00:32:56.260 i'm not sure who

00:32:57.100 said that religion

00:32:58.620 is man's way to

00:33:00.600 god and it's always

00:33:01.660 erroneous but

00:33:02.520 revelation is god's

00:33:04.440 way to man maybe

00:33:05.120 it was carl bart

00:33:05.900 it's god's way to

00:33:07.260 man and it's always

00:33:08.120 perfect well there's

00:33:09.960 there's a revelatory

00:33:11.600 aspect to any great

00:33:13.380 story when you're

00:33:14.760 telling someone a

00:33:15.580 story and they

00:33:17.280 didn't see coming

00:33:18.620 what just happened

00:33:19.720 that's what makes

00:33:21.340 them awake that's

00:33:23.460 what stabs them

00:33:24.780 broad awake in

00:33:27.560 braveheart so many

00:33:28.980 people said to me it

00:33:30.120 was it was when the

00:33:32.700 woman that william

00:33:33.620 wallace loves when

00:33:35.400 her throat is cut

00:33:36.500 that's when suddenly

00:33:38.020 they knew they were

00:33:38.840 not in a typical

00:33:40.360 action movie even to

00:33:43.020 the very end of

00:33:44.920 of braveheart there

00:33:47.480 would have been many

00:33:48.180 people in hollywood

00:33:49.400 and were who thought

00:33:51.320 well that this movie

00:33:52.500 needs to end with his

00:33:54.360 friends swinging in on

00:33:55.640 vines and saving him

00:33:57.060 we we can't end a

00:33:58.340 an expensive historical

00:34:01.660 epic movie with a guy

00:34:03.640 beheaded and disemboweled

00:34:05.940 but that was where it

00:34:08.420 had to end for me but

00:34:11.180 but how we get there

00:34:13.820 and what it says

00:34:15.160 surprised me and

00:34:18.600 surprised the audience

00:34:20.580 too and in that i

00:34:22.420 would think is how it

00:34:24.340 becomes resonant i was

00:34:27.340 doing a charity

00:34:29.700 screening of braveheart a

00:34:31.260 few years ago for the

00:34:32.460 first time in oh two

00:34:35.000 decades to sit in a

00:34:37.420 theater and actually

00:34:38.720 see the movie screened

00:34:41.120 not on television but

00:34:42.380 projected in a theater

00:34:45.320 and doing it for a

00:34:46.400 charity in in austin

00:34:48.660 texas and at the end

00:34:50.540 of the movie i walked

00:34:52.680 up onto the stage to do

00:34:54.080 a q a and the first

00:34:56.420 person who stood up was

00:34:58.800 a young woman in the

00:34:59.800 front row 19 years old

00:35:01.640 so she wasn't born when

00:35:04.120 braveheart had come out

00:35:05.360 and i was surprised

00:35:07.960 that she stood up

00:35:09.420 first and she said

00:35:10.640 mr wallace i don't

00:35:11.940 have a question i just

00:35:12.940 want to tell you

00:35:13.540 something my fiancee

00:35:15.780 died six months ago

00:35:17.200 and before he died he

00:35:19.120 told me he wanted me

00:35:19.980 to watch braveheart so

00:35:21.300 i would understand the

00:35:23.100 way he loved me and i

00:35:26.140 did i i had to stop i

00:35:30.480 i couldn't go on for

00:35:32.780 several minutes it

00:35:34.100 it um it it shocked

00:35:38.400 me it moved me it

00:35:40.220 surprised me um you

00:35:42.900 said that you write

00:35:43.860 love stories and i guess

00:35:45.100 she put her finger on

00:35:46.080 that hey

00:35:46.560 yeah profoundly and and

00:35:49.500 the and the idea that

00:35:50.780 that men want to be

00:35:54.340 courageous they want to be

00:35:57.440 willing to sacrifice

00:35:58.900 themselves for what's

00:36:00.360 worth sacrificing for

00:36:03.140 and women want a man

00:36:04.960 like that and they went

00:36:07.100 women want to and they

00:36:08.700 they want to be

00:36:09.660 participants in that

00:36:10.940 story in in that same

00:36:13.080 journey for themselves

00:36:14.380 um and in to me it's

00:36:17.820 narrative can give you

00:36:19.320 that more than any

00:36:20.560 abstract explanation of

00:36:23.880 it um i mean i i don't

00:36:25.880 mean to there's a lot to

00:36:27.560 unpack in that i i want

00:36:29.000 to go back to your

00:36:29.880 your discussion of

00:36:31.280 surprise i mean among

00:36:34.740 people who assess

00:36:36.040 information theory there's

00:36:37.700 a strong association

00:36:39.340 between something that's

00:36:40.960 informative and something

00:36:42.060 that's surprising if you

00:36:43.700 can predict it technically

00:36:44.980 speaking it doesn't

00:36:46.040 contain any information

00:36:47.260 and so information always

00:36:49.640 comes in the form of

00:36:51.080 surprise technically

00:36:52.380 speaking and and we are

00:36:54.400 wired to attend to what's

00:36:56.880 informative because that's

00:36:58.420 what updates and teaches

00:36:59.520 us and so then you you

00:37:03.960 said revelation comes in

00:37:05.380 the form of surprise and i

00:37:06.560 would say that's virtually

00:37:07.540 the case by definition

00:37:08.640 isn't it because imagine

00:37:10.260 that you're viewing this

00:37:11.460 narrative through a

00:37:12.480 particular lens you're you're

00:37:14.500 in a you're in a cognitive

00:37:16.400 perceptual structure a frame

00:37:17.980 of reference that you're

00:37:19.980 using to track all the

00:37:21.180 actions and to make sense

00:37:22.320 of them and to make

00:37:23.020 predictions and if

00:37:25.840 something unexpected

00:37:27.380 happens that means that

00:37:28.760 you've just learned that

00:37:30.100 that frame of reference is

00:37:31.440 no longer applicable to the

00:37:32.860 current circumstance and

00:37:33.800 so what that really does

00:37:34.760 mean is that something

00:37:36.020 transcendent at least from

00:37:38.240 the perspective of that

00:37:39.340 current frame of reference

00:37:40.380 has in fact occurred

00:37:41.820 because so that's a mini

00:37:43.660 miracle in some sense right

00:37:45.560 because yes a miracle is

00:37:49.100 something that doesn't obey

00:37:50.360 the laws that you're

00:37:51.500 currently following that

00:37:53.080 that that that's one way

00:37:54.680 of thinking about it and

00:37:55.640 so a revel a surprising

00:37:57.520 revelation is a mini

00:37:58.820 miracle and maybe it's

00:38:00.260 because of that it's it

00:38:01.840 it's what it's reminiscent

00:38:03.260 of the fact of the

00:38:05.240 miraculous generally

00:38:06.880 speaking but i would also

00:38:08.600 say you're the narrative

00:38:09.960 does something else if

00:38:10.980 it's profound too it

00:38:11.940 doesn't just surprise you

00:38:13.120 it also it also gives you a

00:38:17.120 new frame of reference

00:38:18.260 instantly within which that

00:38:20.500 surprise now makes sense

00:38:22.020 and if it doesn't then

00:38:23.960 you're left unsatisfied by

00:38:25.380 the movie you think on

00:38:26.520 because i've seen that

00:38:27.480 often in particularly in

00:38:28.880 movies it doesn't seem to

00:38:29.820 happen quite so much in

00:38:30.740 novels where the director

00:38:33.840 and the writer will throw

00:38:35.020 a whole variety of things

00:38:36.620 up in the air and you

00:38:38.460 have it's really compelling

00:38:40.120 and then about three

00:38:41.180 quarters of the way

00:38:41.680 through the movie you

00:38:42.340 think it'll be really

00:38:44.200 something if all of that

00:38:45.600 gets tied together and then

00:38:47.200 it doesn't right it falls

00:38:50.200 flat it doesn't it doesn't

00:38:51.560 end in a manner that that's

00:38:53.040 that that does justice to

00:38:54.880 what's being set up so yeah

00:38:57.820 and you know that's that's

00:39:00.640 that's a classic narrative

00:39:03.040 structure right there's there's

00:39:04.360 a stable state to begin with

00:39:05.660 and then something that

00:39:06.380 disrupts it and throws

00:39:07.800 everything into a state of

00:39:08.900 chaos temporarily and then the

00:39:10.980 establishment of a new

00:39:11.920 state and and a good story

00:39:14.540 definitely does that for us

00:39:15.940 and guides us through that

00:39:17.280 and and shows us that we're

00:39:18.640 the thing that does that as

00:39:20.000 well well like if you take an

00:39:22.180 agatha christie movie or or

00:39:24.960 story there'll be all of these

00:39:27.960 clues and then then hercule

00:39:31.040 perot or we we have a term in

00:39:34.360 screenwriting we call it irving

00:39:35.860 the explainer will show up at

00:39:38.060 the end of the movie to to

00:39:39.720 explain everything and then it

00:39:41.420 all fits together and and the

00:39:43.680 sherlock holmes movies will

00:39:45.240 often be that way too to me

00:39:47.700 they become much less fun then

00:39:51.000 the fun is is when you don't yet

00:39:54.420 know the answers but once it's

00:39:56.800 explained it's no it no longer has

00:39:59.680 any magic for me an example would

00:40:02.120 be when i was in college and i was

00:40:05.320 a singer songwriter and i worked with

00:40:07.580 a friend who was a magician and we

00:40:10.240 would entertain at different

00:40:11.700 gatherings and um he was great at

00:40:14.580 slighted hand of slight of hand with

00:40:16.820 cards he could do a trick right in

00:40:18.860 front of your face with cards and

00:40:20.920 you'd be gobsmacked and and he would

00:40:25.180 show me how he was doing it and all of

00:40:28.080 a sudden i'd go oh gee that's just um

00:40:31.720 that's so simple and how could i miss

00:40:34.240 that and then he would do the same

00:40:36.040 trick to someone else and i would be

00:40:38.940 watching the trick and i would think oh

00:40:40.380 he blew it he he he slipped he showed

00:40:44.240 them that they can see how it's done

00:40:46.140 and they were gobsmacked they didn't

00:40:49.840 understand how it was done so they were

00:40:52.440 amazed but that to me is a difference

00:40:56.380 about a story like you say the agatha

00:40:58.640 christie or or they throw up a whole

00:41:01.540 bunch of parts and they they never come

00:41:04.020 together um for a great story it's one

00:41:07.780 that you're left um it's it's vibrating

00:41:12.960 in you and you can't fully explain it you

00:41:16.720 you just know what happened uh i hate to

00:41:19.060 keep referencing braveheart but but i

00:41:22.660 wanted to make a movie and it was my

00:41:25.140 first movie i i wanted to to make a movie

00:41:28.020 that would have people walk out of the

00:41:31.840 theaters the way i walked out of theaters

00:41:34.520 at different times in my life and would

00:41:36.180 say

00:41:36.480 my life will never be the same after what

00:41:40.160 i just experienced there i mean that

00:41:43.360 that's always been what i was look for

00:41:45.300 and that happened with braveheart i had a

00:41:47.520 a huge tough

00:41:48.940 scott i mean a burly brawling head

00:41:53.040 butting scott come up to me after a

00:41:55.700 screening of braveheart and look at me

00:41:57.060 with tears in his eyes and say i will

00:41:58.940 never forget that not ever and and i

00:42:02.180 think of like a story like tol story

00:42:04.860 wrote a tale called the wood felling

00:42:07.940 or the wood felling party and it was about

00:42:12.040 some some russian soldiers who were

00:42:15.120 fighting i believe they were fighting

00:42:17.120 afghan or you know muslim troops in

00:42:21.340 azerbaijan or in the mountains but

00:42:24.000 they've they've been in this cold forbidding

00:42:26.600 place for a long long time they've seen all

00:42:29.220 sorts of death and they've gone out to to

00:42:32.200 cut wood

00:42:33.100 and load it firewood and load it into a

00:42:35.880 wagon and a sniper

00:42:37.020 hits one of them in the leg and he's or

00:42:40.200 hits him in the body and he's bleeding to

00:42:42.180 death

00:42:42.480 and he knows he's dying and they load him

00:42:45.280 on the wood wagon to carry him back while

00:42:47.480 he's still alive but

00:42:48.600 he grabs the lieutenant by the collar and

00:42:51.700 says

00:42:52.040 there are letters from my wife in my

00:42:54.840 boot

00:42:55.140 take them and send them back to my wife

00:42:57.940 so she'll have them and the officer says

00:42:59.640 yeah yeah i will but

00:43:00.600 the dying man knows he won't because he's

00:43:03.760 seen many men die and just pitched into

00:43:06.260 shallow graves and

00:43:07.420 there's just so much death

00:43:09.200 so he says no take them while i'm still

00:43:11.520 alive and then i know you'll do it

00:43:13.160 so the officer gives the order and they

00:43:15.760 strip off the man's boot and cut through

00:43:18.920 his his pant and unwrap the wrappings

00:43:21.380 around his

00:43:22.120 leg that he's done to keep warm and there

00:43:25.440 are the letters but what the officer sees

00:43:28.460 for the first time

00:43:29.620 in months and months maybe years is the

00:43:32.760 bare flesh

00:43:33.740 of a man's

00:43:35.120 leg this white

00:43:36.860 sunless

00:43:38.060 flesh and it's that

00:43:40.440 that reminds him that this is a human

00:43:43.500 being

00:43:43.880 and Tolstoy says he was struck with a

00:43:46.660 terrible dread of the loss of life

00:43:48.940 it

00:43:49.640 and and i thought even i remember i was

00:43:52.340 18 when i read that

00:43:53.820 that this is what an artist does

00:43:56.100 you you hold up to us when we've become

00:43:59.760 inured immune to the

00:44:03.080 to certain things like you watching women

00:44:05.540 it's

00:44:05.960 one time it's mini skirts

00:44:07.900 another time it's no bras

00:44:10.140 another time it's bare midriffs another

00:44:12.100 time it's something else

00:44:13.440 but you get used to something so

00:44:16.280 nothing nothing it makes you notice

00:44:18.840 and the artist looks for well what can i

00:44:22.000 do that will make people notice to say

00:44:24.100 look here

00:44:24.820 see what you see what's there rather than

00:44:27.820 what you remember

00:44:28.620 yes so there's that interplay with

00:44:31.720 okay

00:44:32.240 there's there is

00:44:35.180 your perception

00:44:37.120 reflection in what you're looking at

00:44:39.200 what you expect like the magic trick

00:44:41.140 if you're expecting one thing and you

00:44:43.280 don't see it or or now you know the

00:44:45.400 trick so now you perceive

00:44:46.760 that's one part of it

00:44:48.760 the other part of it is

00:44:50.360 okay now i have

00:44:52.300 experienced perceived something

00:44:54.720 how do i make sense of that

00:44:56.820 i mean another thing that i've been doing is

00:44:59.120 working on the story for the resurrection

00:45:01.320 which i've studied

00:45:02.560 since well since i was in school

00:45:05.980 the the resurrection

00:45:07.360 has fascinated me more than anything else

00:45:10.280 in part because as i think it's nt wright

00:45:14.120 would say

00:45:15.900 if you if you don't think the resurrection is preposterous

00:45:22.080 you're missing the point

00:45:23.520 the the whole point is that

00:45:26.540 this is beyond anything you could imagine

00:45:29.760 you said in a a few weeks ago i was listening to your podcast and i was

00:45:33.960 believe that with that

00:45:35.300 brilliant um i think he's canadian who makes the icons

00:45:39.640 jonathan pagio

00:45:40.880 oh and mind-blowing i

00:45:42.640 yeah that was quite the conversation

00:45:45.080 yes and and and jonathan said

00:45:48.280 um that that there's this

00:45:51.500 outside of what what we can imagine

00:45:55.140 that that is going on

00:45:57.240 and you said

00:45:58.000 yes you would have

00:45:59.140 you would never

00:46:00.220 you would never make this up

00:46:02.880 um

00:46:04.000 if you're

00:46:05.020 you make up make up this jesus story

00:46:07.960 i even believe that

00:46:08.900 well that's part of the problem with marx's theory

00:46:11.640 that religion is the opiate of the masses

00:46:14.160 it's like okay fair enough i get it

00:46:16.160 and and and it's actually a reasonably intelligent critique

00:46:19.700 you could say well

00:46:20.640 if you wanted to enslave people and and oppress them

00:46:24.360 then you could invent a story and you could use that as a manipulative

00:46:28.840 technique but then you you'd see it seems to me that you'd want a story that

00:46:34.260 was sort of maximally fantasy like and attractive and so

00:46:38.280 then you're stuck with well why invent hell for example

00:46:43.040 and then you can say

00:46:45.060 well that's where you put your enemies you know so that's kind of convenient

00:46:48.780 but if you take medieval experience seriously

00:46:52.540 it's quite obvious

00:46:54.260 um

00:46:54.760 there's a philosopher in in canada taylor

00:46:58.960 who wrote a wrote about this in a book called sources of the self

00:47:03.020 um

00:47:04.060 medieval people took the idea of hell extremely seriously and tortured themselves with it

00:47:09.460 believe that

00:47:11.200 the fruits of immorality were

00:47:13.680 infinitely terrible

00:47:15.200 and while that isn't something that

00:47:17.120 that you

00:47:18.740 go that you that you use as a childish defense against the world

00:47:22.760 in fact fear of hell

00:47:24.440 is actually more intense i would say in some sense than fear of death

00:47:28.460 and i believe that

00:47:30.240 i i think there are things that are

00:47:31.660 if you if the thing you're most afraid of is death

00:47:34.280 you haven't been very afraid

00:47:35.780 because there are things that are far more terrifying than death and certainly

00:47:39.560 well hell is among those uh and i suppose that's the place that

00:47:45.260 you're eternally tortured for for your own immorality

00:47:49.700 maybe perhaps even defined by your own conscience

00:47:52.500 anyways you wouldn't invent that

00:47:54.480 as something attractive to the masses

00:47:56.860 and and there's much of of religious thinking that's like that

00:48:01.820 it it doesn't have the aspect of

00:48:05.420 there's too much burden in it for it to be pure escapist fantasy

00:48:09.140 there's too much and there's too much about it that's incomprehensible for it to be

00:48:15.000 like

00:48:16.280 what would a cons a conspiratorial machination

00:48:20.280 no it doesn't it's not a hypothesis that that fits the data well at all

00:48:25.540 right

00:48:26.240 well it's a limit case also in some sense like you talked earlier about

00:48:29.980 you said something about sacrifice you know and that

00:48:33.400 well people don't take the idea of sacrifice very seriously

00:48:37.500 i i've looked at the development of the idea of sacrifice in the old testament and

00:48:42.620 one of the things i've come to realize is that

00:48:45.060 one of the great human discoveries was actually that of sacrifice because it was the discovery of

00:48:51.420 the fact that you could modify the present so the future was different

00:48:55.160 so it it signals the discovery of the future by humanity the idea of sacrifice

00:49:01.540 because you become consciously aware perhaps after acting it out for god only knows how long that

00:49:07.440 you can give up something that you're deeply committed to in the present something of extreme value and obtain

00:49:14.060 something of even more value in the future

00:49:16.480 yeah and that's that's the discovery of an entire dimension the temporal dimension it's it's it's a cataclysmic

00:49:23.020 discovery it's on the same order as the emergence of self-consciousness and so

00:49:27.220 and then the i and then mysteries emerge out of that as well some sacrifices work better than others

00:49:33.000 well why well the reaction of being to sacrifice seems to be reflective of the nature of being

00:49:40.880 and that's that that's definitely the case some sacrifices work and some don't just like some games are playable and some aren't

00:49:48.260 and and and so sacrifice has value well then the question starts to become

00:49:52.840 well what's of the highest value that you should sacrifice for and what is the ultimate sacrifice

00:49:58.280 and well you can give up something that you own you can give up something that you love

00:50:03.520 you can die for something or you can sacrifice your entire life to it

00:50:09.220 and it seems to me that in some sense the latter the last of those is the ultimate sacrifice

00:50:15.240 to to give up your entire life for the sake of the highest ideal

00:50:21.720 and that is the ideal of humanity and then the that is the ideal of humanity

00:50:26.140 and that is what everyone admires and that's what we all look for in stories

00:50:29.540 that's what compels us you said well it's the attract it's the basis of romantic attraction

00:50:34.480 and i believe that to be the case that associated with generosity right to share the fruits of your sacrifice

00:50:41.020 and the question arises well what is the ultimate sacrifice and what would be the consequences of that

00:50:46.640 and that's obviously what's being investigated let's say in our religious thinking in in the new testament

00:50:53.720 there's no doubt that that's that's what's being investigated

00:50:56.680 is there a cosmic significance to the idea of sacrifice

00:51:00.320 and in and i i i agree with that completely and i believe that that's that that's what is at play

00:51:07.680 when you're making the sacrifice there's this other element of you of faith in it

00:51:14.000 like the person making the sacrifice is instead of it just being a negotiation central to the sacrifice

00:51:23.480 it seems to me is is a transforming commitment that the person is being transformed

00:51:31.040 and and what he is giving is transforming it's like one of the most commonly quoted lines from braveheart

00:51:37.720 is every man dies not every man really lives um and i didn't um by the way it's pet peeve of mine the

00:51:46.880 uh the other another line from braveheart besides just the scream of freedom uh that that people do

00:51:53.800 that comes from the film um but is uh they may take our lives but they'll never take our freedom

00:51:59.540 and that quote is on the wall of the united states air force academy but under it is the name

00:52:05.860 william wallace although william wallace never said that i keep wanting to write the english department

00:52:11.160 there and say hey listen guys but uh the but the where that quote came from was me thinking okay

00:52:20.000 is it ego is it pride is it stubbornness that keeps william wallace in the dungeon refusing to

00:52:28.340 to submit to the king refusing to ask the king for mercy and maybe buy time in his life so he can survive a while

00:52:37.120 longer and the the queen the future queen comes to him with that offer and then she says you'll die

00:52:44.500 it'll be terrible uh after he has said if i submit to him if i cry out for mercy then everything that is

00:52:52.160 me is dead already and she says you'll die it'll be awful and i was thinking well what can he answer to

00:53:01.920 that and that was every man dies not every man really lives and and it it became that and it

00:53:09.860 in thinking of say jesus at golgotha that if you took a snapshot at golgotha on the day jesus was

00:53:19.600 crucified and you said who's the victor in this picture you probably wouldn't be inclined to say the

00:53:26.680 guy on the guy on the middle cross but you might if you stared at the picture long enough

00:53:32.920 you you actually might see it human beings may recognize that that this one here in this way was doing

00:53:44.340 something um beyond all understanding and to me writing a story isn't just me going what will

00:53:55.120 surprise the audience it's i am being surprised by the story as it's coming through to me the most

00:54:03.300 notable part of that in braveheart was uh i reached the end of the story and and i can see this

00:54:10.220 clearly now although it was more than 25 years ago the the axe is falling toward william wallace's

00:54:18.760 throat and i wrote that on the page and then i thought well we can't see the axe contact his

00:54:27.220 throat and sever his head what do we see now and then i thought well what about to look at this from

00:54:34.600 the point of view of him when he knows he has fractions of a second to live what would he look for

00:54:41.160 well where would he turn his eyes would he look at the axe what would he do and he would know that

00:54:47.380 his friends were there so i wrote in the last instant of his life william wallace turns his eyes

00:54:54.620 to his friends who were stephen and hamish and i did not know jordan until that instant um that

00:55:02.480 there between them was her the wife he had lost and i wept and i had no sense that anybody else was

00:55:13.760 going to relate to that story i have a friend named jack bernstein who's a comedy writer he wrote ace

00:55:19.880 ventura the original ace ventura and and and jack is different from me in almost every way if you put

00:55:27.260 our traits on paper we're just polar opposites and he's the one i i always take my first drafts to and

00:55:33.960 say i know this is a mess but is there anything here and he read braveheart and we sat down to have

00:55:41.360 breakfast and and for him to give me his notes and he said this is the best thing of yours i've ever read

00:55:47.400 and and i was completely blindsided i had had no sense that anybody would like it that particularly him

00:55:57.700 that it had any value but the story surprised me and i think therefore that revelatory quality was love

00:56:08.860 i think it happens in music what what makes music magical is not that it's what we if it's just the

00:56:15.900 same beat the same monotony the same chord changes we've heard the same lyrics we've heard it it doesn't

00:56:23.040 open us up at all but when it's when it's just enough different that we notice the difference and

00:56:29.940 are drawn into it now if it's too different you know a when i was in school and took music classes

00:56:36.920 and they're telling us about atonal this and that and abstract it had it had no life no heart at all

00:56:43.140 but when i listen to beethoven i can just feel the feel the swelling of his heart and um in in here

00:56:54.740 hundreds of years later yes well you hear something great and you follow it and then there's a move of

00:57:01.600 genius and out of that greatness comes something that's even greater and you're so you're so satisfied

00:57:07.580 by that because you can see what's greater emerge from what's great but you can also see that that's

00:57:12.220 characteristic of humanity you're participating in that yes emergence of what's better in this

00:57:20.440 surprising manner yeah one of your new rules is um uh is to take a room and make it beautiful

00:57:28.580 and i love that i love that rule i mean that that it seems so simple um but it it that is one of the

00:57:41.480 richest ones for me i i had that's my favorite chapter of all the of all of both books i would say

00:57:47.680 i'm happiest with that one wow yeah well i i had an incident um a few years ago and i i got a an

00:57:55.560 infection uh MRSA and i was misdiagnosed and um a doctor a friend um and and my doctor gave me

00:58:06.320 two medicines which actually caused it to inflame even more and um and a week later i was at the mayo

00:58:15.700 clinic and they were discussing amputation on my right hand you write about that in in this book yes

00:58:21.920 yes living the brave heart life this is an autobiography or partly an autobiography yes and

00:58:29.120 i was i was trying to make sense of of that experience for me and one way i did was to say

00:58:37.500 i i don't want to just like have a hand and do hand exercises i want to celebrate having hands and

00:58:47.180 i decided i would learn to play the piano i mean learn to really play the piano and i went out and

00:58:52.760 and made a kind of sacrifice and kind of a crazy thing i bought a fabulous piano way way beyond

00:59:00.880 anything i deserve or my playing merits but having that instrument i did that with a suit

00:59:08.800 when i went on tour i i spent like eight thousand dollars on a suit and it was more money than i'd

00:59:16.380 ever spent on a car like you know i was just it was horrified by it but i thought well i'm going

00:59:22.220 to put everything i have into this and yes start with this and did you find that it was well worth

00:59:30.420 it exactly definitely worth it no doubt about it and and kind of goes with uh with one of your very

00:59:37.280 first rules about you know walk with your shoulders back and your chest out and it's like you you when

00:59:42.800 you when you dress well you're a different person well i felt i owed it to my audience it was like if

00:59:49.780 they were going to come and see me i was going to do everything i possibly could to set the stage

00:59:54.040 properly yes and and and you know it's all those little gestures matter well they're not just little

01:00:01.780 gestures right so it's there that was a that was a mark of faith in some sense it it certainly violated

01:00:08.640 my sense of fiscal propriety right you know and i i i wasn't sure how i could justify it i guess partly

01:00:16.140 the justification would be if the lectures were good enough you know but i i was at least

01:00:22.800 moving in that direction and like i said i never regretted it at all it was exactly the right thing

01:00:28.240 to do well it's funny to do it for yourself it's i think it's easier to do it for a loved one than

01:00:35.580 for yourself and it it it it calls to mind the the new testament incident of the woman breaking the

01:00:44.680 the the the box of ointments and and anointing jesus's feet to say um this will be remembered

01:00:53.940 always and you always have the poor and you can always help the poor but this is something that

01:00:59.880 will last and i thought that's a very strange story that one isn't it it's one you think would

01:01:05.480 have been edited out long ago yes absolutely if you the the uh editors would have said no no maybe

01:01:14.060 this is not not one we should have but um when i was in germany i was in germany the first time

01:01:20.020 when i was about 26 and i was in a really rough time of life i'd lost a job i was very much lost

01:01:28.320 and i had thought i'd rather spend my last dollars to go to europe than to sit alone and worry so i'd

01:01:37.540 taken a trip alone to europe and i went to see norschwanstein in december the uh castle that

01:01:45.180 mad king king ludwig ii had built in bavaria and what i learned there was that uh it had nothing to

01:01:54.980 do with the architecture of the day the the the trends the principles of of of sensible building

01:02:03.920 it was kind of a crazy indulgence based on his love of opera and and of grand romantic gestures

01:02:12.200 and it nearly bankrupted the treasury to do it but almost from day one it became a huge financial

01:02:19.540 success well that's one of the things that's so stunning about europe is that

01:02:25.080 there isn't anything that's more valuable than beauty yes and i mean i mean that from the cold

01:02:35.880 hearted conservative um capitalist perspective it's stunning how valuable beauty is like the most

01:02:43.680 valuable artifacts in the world are paintings i know x you know accepting things like chips to make

01:02:51.260 or factories to make chips but single artifacts paintings are worth 100 150 million dollars at the

01:02:58.700 at the upper end and ancient manuscripts that that that that are that are works of of timeless art

01:03:05.940 and it looks like an investment in beauty is one that pays off as long as the thing remains in

01:03:12.320 existence i mean i don't know how much everything in europe that's beautiful cost but it was plenty but

01:03:20.440 it's paid back in spades and is only going to become increasingly more valuable as the past

01:03:27.120 becomes more and more scarce which is happening very very rapidly yes so i mean these countries have

01:03:33.440 more tourists than people yes and it's all a consequence of art and beauty well in rome there are

01:03:41.000 something like 150 cathedrals if you if you went to or it's enough that if you went to three or four a day

01:03:49.540 in a month you couldn't visit them all and and everyone you walk in takes you to a different place which is

01:03:57.080 exactly as they they were intended to do i thought your your podcast with juliet foger foger yeah ogre

01:04:06.420 was fascinating to have the interplay between the writing and and the this well the depth of the thought

01:04:17.600 that then connected with turn this into an actual visual visual image um i mean that's hard um it's hard

01:04:30.020 for me when i've written a character to accept a human actor as being that character uh they say that

01:04:39.280 um um david lean when he was directing dr shivago didn't want to stay in the same hotel

01:04:47.080 um as some of his actors because he like julie christie was his laura and dr shivago he didn't

01:04:56.060 want to see her with a martini in her hand smoking a cigarette he he he wanted to to direct the movie

01:05:03.340 seeing her as this pristine object of love this this woman this subject of love and um and i think it's

01:05:12.700 hard for i i was fascinated to hear the process of the way you work together to create those images and

01:05:20.880 i thought the images were stunning and really resonant for you know when you're reading it you look

01:05:26.000 forward to seeing the next illustration to to tee you up for the for the next chapter as you you see

01:05:34.080 it and then as you're reading you're starting to understand the image more and that that's incredibly

01:05:41.480 rich yeah well i was hoping and i think it happened that that adds another dimension you know you have

01:05:47.540 the explicit rules let's say that's the explicit philosophy and then you have the implicit philosophy

01:05:54.640 which is the story but then you have something that's even more implicit which is the image

01:05:59.700 and the the story is richer than the explicit rule and the image is richer than the story but

01:06:06.060 the image isn't as clear and neither is the story right so you you move from focused clarity but a

01:06:12.840 rather narrow representation to what's extremely broad and all-encompassing and you lose something

01:06:18.740 when you move in either direction right but having all of it at the same time well it gives you the

01:06:24.560 advantages of all three kinds of representation yes and that's that that to me leads us back to the

01:06:32.020 to the power and the resonance of art that that any piece a painting a piece of music a movie a story

01:06:42.580 resonates through through all of it i when i when i was a child my um my father was extremely frugal

01:06:51.500 uh but he loved music and he got i guess he got a deal on the one of the first stereo sets it was a

01:06:59.780 huge thing speakers were separated and had a turntable and he bought a collection of classical

01:07:06.320 records because they were basically giving it away nobody wanted it in memphis tennessee and

01:07:11.320 and he brought those records home and and one one side of one lp was the 1812 overture and i would

01:07:21.700 turn that on and turn the volume up as loud until my mother would scream at me and and just be caught

01:07:28.320 up in that i could see the battle i could see the armies moving i could feel the winter i could um you know

01:07:35.600 here's napoleon's coming and and the the cannons are going and the the russians are fighting back and

01:07:42.100 um and it it had dimensions beyond the simple things of of of notes and and what was audible

01:07:52.520 and i think that that's that that's a big part of the uniqueness of your work there's one thing and

01:07:59.860 and i'm sorry if this sounds like a fan club but but when i heard you speaking in the last several

01:08:07.120 podcasts in your and and read the the the preface of your your new book and to to look at all you've

01:08:15.660 been through um all you've been through lately it it really spoke to me about what is required if

01:08:27.140 you're going to go do something different if you're going to bring in maybe if you just kept your mouth

01:08:33.800 shut about anything outside of your own area of course you were you know in toronto you were you

01:08:40.860 were speaking about it what it didn't feel like it was outside your your own area to say wait a second

01:08:47.120 uh you're asking me to to violate some things that i think are to are are violations um

01:08:57.000 you could have just been a good boy and sat in your seat um i could have been a good boy and

01:09:03.860 and tried to write um an action-adventure movie set in the present day and not write something crazy

01:09:12.020 like something about somebody that was was beheaded and disemboweled 700 years ago or this upcoming movie

01:09:20.700 about yeah it's gonna set some people's hair on fire no doubt and i i you know there's a part of

01:09:27.500 me well i hope it's it's important enough to do that but you're you're combining you're saying it

01:09:33.540 everything is relevant that what these philosophers were talking about what these artists were painting

01:09:41.720 what these musicians are doing what filmmakers are doing this is all something that's is trying to get

01:09:51.640 us that way no that's what the cathedral represents you know it's it's it's it's an expression in stone

01:09:59.460 of this yearning to to bring the material world into harmony with the spirit it's something like that

01:10:05.680 and that's what music does as well and there's this this proclivity within us to strive upward

01:10:12.020 and the cathedral i mean the cathedrals they're absolutely amazing these lattice-like structures

01:10:18.760 of stone there's something about the harmonious interplay of shadow and light that's key to it as

01:10:24.100 well it's it's like the opening up of dark matter to the light that pours in that's all embodied in the

01:10:30.200 architecture and and and and i i i can't say and neither can anyone else what that ultimately

01:10:35.740 represents and then to bring music into that space and and tradition it's all pointing upward to

01:10:42.500 something to to the direction that we're supposed to go it's it's so terrible to see these buildings

01:10:47.480 empty out i mean thank god that they're being preserved in some sense by the tourists who come

01:10:52.680 there driven by a sense of awe but we we can't inhabit them anymore the way that we used to and that's a

01:10:59.740 that's a terrible thing it means there's a kind of ideal that we that we're no longer we're no

01:11:06.260 longer pursuing perhaps we're no longer pursuing it it seems like a catastrophe to me no one really

01:11:12.860 knows how to revitalize it though unfortunately so well the i think one of the problems to me when

01:11:19.320 when i was in paris working on man in the iron mask i would want on a sunday morning to to go to a mass

01:11:29.360 and it was very difficult to find well for one thing in a baptist we would church would start at 11

01:11:37.240 o'clock on a sunday morning and masses aren't like that but go into say the cathedral saint germain

01:11:44.820 and there was no one there it was a it's magnificent ancient cathedral and and you know a few tourists and

01:11:55.420 the place the place the place didn't feel dead the architecture was alive but but it it was very

01:12:02.920 difficult to have a congregation and a congregation is what the church of course is supposed to be

01:12:10.340 it's it's a collection of people who are united and and and different it's you know it's a collection of

01:12:19.260 sinners um acknowledging their sins and i think that that is a fascinating thing to me about

01:12:28.280 how we keep um well it's so surprising it's also so surprising that

01:12:35.720 those hundreds of years ago when those buildings most of those buildings were built that those cultures

01:12:43.260 would dedicate themselves to such great cost to produce these absolutely spectacular impossible

01:12:52.120 buildings made out of stone or brick these these these they're like a dance in stone they're so

01:12:59.880 magnificent and then to fill them with with the greatest of artworks and and to to to bring the

01:13:07.440 light in in the most colorful possible ways and then to bring the music in to set the scene and then to

01:13:13.440 have everyone come in and commit to at least not being as bad as they were right like it was a joint

01:13:21.080 moral enterprise that everyone was involved in you can be as cynical about that as you want and and talk

01:13:26.900 about you know sunday christians and all of that but an hour a week to contemplate how it is that you

01:13:33.900 should be living your life or to become in tune with your conscience once again which at least the

01:13:40.840 confession can offer that um and and and then to see that so much effort was poured into that

01:13:48.180 it's amazing that that over occurred and and then it's also equally amazing that we've stopped doing it

01:13:53.800 because you might think well wouldn't wouldn't we be interested in jointly coming together and saying

01:14:01.680 well here's how we're inadequate and here's how we're conceptualizing what would be ideal and

01:14:07.940 couldn't we move together toward that and i was talking to bishop barron this week and about this

01:14:18.300 issue about the the loss especially in the catholic church of young people and

01:14:23.520 it seems that there's a great adventure there that isn't being communicated properly and and

01:14:34.520 and it's a terrible loss for all of us what do we have to replace that you know i've talked to the

01:14:43.220 new atheists especially sam harris and it's not like i don't understand their arguments it's not like

01:14:49.120 i don't have sympathy for them for that matter but there's nothing poetic or artistic or magnificent

01:14:58.280 about

01:14:59.560 the alternative yes right it loses it loses it loses there's something that just disappears it's the

01:15:10.320 it's that artistic ineffability there's no room there's no obvious room for that in the

01:15:15.500 say the enlightenment worldview i i'm an admirer of stephen pinker for example um and he falls into

01:15:24.100 the enlightenment rationalist camp um and in his book the language instinct he talks a little bit at

01:15:30.380 the end about culture philosophy music art and all of that religion even for that matter to some degree

01:15:36.520 but it's like a throwaway chapter at the end whereas by my way of looking that's the whole book

01:15:42.380 all of that that artistic endeavor and that shades into the religious endeavor

01:15:46.980 and that that's the scent that's not some side effect of human cognitive development quite the

01:15:53.200 contrary it's the central feature and i agree but jordan a when when you're speaking with julia

01:16:00.080 um the the most recent uh podcast i heard um the uh it reminded me her her description of her life

01:16:09.180 reminded me of an experience i had in russia was in saint petersburg and we were doing a scout

01:16:15.680 for a film i wrote called love and honor based on a novel that i wrote and and we were finished with

01:16:25.440 the scout we had seen everything that that we were scheduled to see and this young woman who was

01:16:32.260 in her early 30s a russian woman um asked if there was anything else we'd like to see uh because we

01:16:39.380 had some time and i said well i'd love to see some of your churches and she got quizzical look on her

01:16:46.440 face she was surprised that i don't know a hollywood director would ask that and she said well i'll take

01:16:52.200 you to my church and i said you've got a church and she said oh yes i'm christian and i said but

01:17:00.000 you grew up when that was discouraged even i'm illegal are your parents christian and she said

01:17:07.500 no um their mother's a confirmed atheist or her father was baptized as a child but he's also an

01:17:16.300 atheist and so i said well how did you become christian and she said there was no beauty i was

01:17:24.040 a young girl walking around and nothing was beautiful and one day i passed the church and i

01:17:30.780 could see candlelight in it and heard music coming out and i went in and i kept going and i kept going

01:17:37.860 and i became a christian and and and that to me says so much um and people have no idea they have no

01:17:47.580 idea that's why i wrote chapter eight they have no idea how much they're starving for beauty

01:17:51.680 yes like it's it's a hunger that goes far beyond well let's not say that it doesn't have to go beyond

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01:20:48.740 when a woman experiences an unplanned pregnancy she often feels alone and afraid too often her first

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01:22:05.320 no matter how well fed you are without some relationship to beauty there's too much suffering

01:22:15.300 in the world for it to be viable it's the ant it's along with truth it's the antidote to

01:22:20.920 to suffering it's not opt it's not uh optional right it's crucial and you can tell that by its

01:22:30.060 economic value for those who are hard-headed it's like you can't point to anything with more economic

01:22:35.520 value period the end and so well some weeks back when you were you were i felt really working your way

01:22:47.280 back that that that that work and engagement and in your calling um is helping to heal and sustain you

01:22:56.560 um you said something along the lines of that that you wondered why in the the christian community

01:23:06.500 and religious community that people were telling you that um your work means so much you know why

01:23:14.760 why why it it it's it's it's somewhat overwhelming to realize that so many people are drawing

01:23:24.040 from you and and i think i can tell you completely it is i i today i was sitting on a bench with my

01:23:31.920 friend who walks with me and this kid came up to me and he said apologies for interrupting you but i was

01:23:40.660 listening to your podcast while i was walking down the street and i saw you here he said

01:23:44.260 and he started to tear up right away he said five years ago i was suicidal

01:23:50.260 and i was i've been listening to your lectures on a regular basis he said an hour and a half a day which

01:23:57.020 seems like an overdose to me um he said he's invented prosthetic limbs and has helped all sorts of

01:24:06.480 disabled people and is on his way to mit it it's like it's a random

01:24:12.460 meeting on the street you know yes yes and thank god for that too much yes of course it is but i tell

01:24:24.260 you and like i know you like to understand you know that's the the um there's something else you

01:24:31.040 said a couple weeks back about i i want to i want to understand why i want to understand why this story

01:24:38.460 makes sense and and i do too but the what of it all um that to me gets at the why of it all but the what

01:24:47.340 of it all is that you speak to people like me and like others who who know this this experience of

01:25:00.300 more who know who know who know what it is to stand in awe um to to feel the awe of a moment

01:25:09.680 and you combine all the different elements of of perspective of thought of experience and you

01:25:19.880 you you validate or endorse that that people who choose faith and who see courage and sacrifice

01:25:31.460 as crucial divine values are not idiots it's i think that that's it's no accident that crucial and cross

01:25:42.440 are the same thing yes exactly and and and you know we we go through this thing of well um you're you're

01:25:53.440 just you're you're choosing an opiate and and to me it's like well um the the alternative is not

01:26:03.060 attractive to i when i started working on the pope story i came across a a statement that i believe is

01:26:10.520 one of the um talk show um guys late night talk show guys had said conan o'brien i believe it was

01:26:17.840 but he said that uh pope francis had made a pronouncement that he thought even atheists could

01:26:23.980 go to heaven and in gratitude atheists have said um that the pope when he dies is welcome to enter their

01:26:32.080 endless void of nothingness so well that you know the problem with that worldview is in some sense that

01:26:43.540 endless void of nothingness confronts us right here and now yes exactly that i i try to tell people i'm

01:26:51.280 i'm not so much concerned about life after death as life after birth um jesus said come that you can

01:26:59.120 have life and have it more abundantly and and i'm not trying in a movie to to uh espouse my particular

01:27:07.640 dogma i don't believe in my own dogma my you know my own dogma is is is limited and and i'm not i'm not

01:27:16.500 trying to think that when i was in school and i'd study systematic theologians and i remember asking

01:27:22.060 my mentor who was the head of the department um what is really the point what what are they trying

01:27:30.040 to do and he said well they're they're trying to have a system of understanding that that holds up

01:27:37.960 um from every angle i thought but well how is that working out for them because ultimately you get

01:27:46.660 into do you have faith or not when i write a story it's it's i've got to jump in and trust

01:27:56.140 and i don't know where they'll lead but i know that to not jump in is is death and so for me it's like

01:28:07.780 the old testament says you know i set before you life and death choose life and and that to me is

01:28:17.000 what i i hope my work's about and i'm damn sure it's what your work's about um i want to talk i want

01:28:24.880 to talk about your life as well because it's it's i'm very curious to see how these things are managed

01:28:33.800 so you you grew up in tennessee is that correct yes yes and so tell let's start there and tell me

01:28:44.360 and you worked you worked with an animal show in in florida oh in in nashville so nashville in nashville

01:28:51.880 so so yeah my father was from lizard lick tennessee and um um the the men in my father's family

01:29:01.800 are alton elton dalton lyman gleeman herman thurman and clyde thurman was it sounds like it sounds like

01:29:10.080 a group of names from lizard lick yeah from lizard lick and by the way brilliant people um my father's

01:29:18.440 cousin um gleeman was werner von braun's right-hand man at the redstone arsenal in huntsville alabama he was

01:29:26.480 a genius mechanical engineer building the the rockets and um um his uh there wasn't a whole lot

01:29:35.080 of education in the previous generation of his family but they were brilliant men and my mother

01:29:40.080 skipped two grades in school um and dreamed of being a writer but she didn't tell me that until i was

01:29:46.560 grown um my grandmother had a country store one room country store made of wood that my grandfather

01:29:55.620 had salvaged from the wreck of a tennessee riverboat and i sat in the back of that store on the desk

01:30:02.940 i'd fashioned out of sacks of pig feed and wrote my first story and i just always loved to write when

01:30:12.700 the other kids would groan when the teacher would say okay we're going to write we're going to free

01:30:17.840 write write a write a passage write a theme uh write a story how did your parents respond to that

01:30:23.820 interest of yours that interest in writing well so so my parents my my mother was the artist uh my father

01:30:32.520 loved singing um but he was extremely practical he had worked full-time since he was 14 years old

01:30:40.120 while going to school but he he had full-time jobs during the depression and and he scraped for every

01:30:47.700 dollar he was incredibly frugal so he he it was his greatest dream that my sister and i could get an

01:30:55.540 education which he and my mother had not been able to get higher education though they read everything

01:31:01.480 my mother read everything particularly um my father was a great salesman um if if you sent my father

01:31:10.200 to your enemies anywhere they'd call up and say i'm sorry i'm going to knock it off uh he was my father

01:31:18.480 could just he loved people uh but he was afraid of me having a um an airy fairy kind of career one that

01:31:28.520 that would be impractical and when i was in college i started a little record company and i had a local

01:31:35.340 hit um i started my own record company i sold the records i went to the stores and went to the radio

01:31:41.920 stations and and i had an encouraging hit what kind of equipment did you use um i i uh it was just me

01:31:49.820 and a guitar but it was in the folk era and i and i found a studio and i went to school at duke in

01:31:57.760 in uh durham north carolina and there was a studio in greensboro uh and one in winston-salem so i'd make

01:32:03.840 the drive over there and make a recording you know save my money and and make a have a three-hour

01:32:09.560 session and make a couple of of sides of a record and and put it out and i met chris christopherson

01:32:17.040 who is absolute genius songwriter wrote me and bobby mcgee and many others and he was a road scholar

01:32:26.140 and an airborne ranger and a boxer and he was the kind of renaissance manly man that i aspired to be

01:32:37.040 that i related to and he came to duke for a concert and i got to meet him backstage and i told him how

01:32:42.960 much i loved writing and and singing and he said man you've got to go to nashville and he was thoroughly

01:32:51.540 drunk at the time but and i thought okay that i didn't and he didn't know me at all but i seized

01:33:00.000 on that advice and i heard about a park a theme park opening up called opry land and they were looking

01:33:07.480 for summer workers and i went over and auditioned and i did a a um a comedy song that i'd written

01:33:15.980 as a kind of a parody of a country song um tammy winette had had a hit about a couple who spell

01:33:23.980 things so their children don't understand what's going on and it was called d-i-v-o-r-c-a i remember

01:33:30.920 that yeah all right so you're from an area that they had country music oh yes definitely well so i wrote

01:33:38.240 a song called me and the d-o-g and um and they offered me a permanent job as manager of animal

01:33:46.480 shows and i had a piano playing pig uh named pigarachi and i had a duck that played the drum and i named

01:33:56.700 him burt backquack um and i had 8 000 people a day see that show and and i put it together i hesitate to

01:34:05.980 ask what the pig could play the piano he would play happy birthday but but the way we had it

01:34:13.260 worked he was there was a sequencer it was the early days of the moog synthesizer and we had a

01:34:19.620 sequencer so that wherever he hit on the keyboard or rooted and i put a little um sparkly bow tie on

01:34:26.340 him and he had a white uh chest and a black main body and white hooves so he looked like he was in a

01:34:33.520 tuxedo see this is the different this is one of the differences between canada and the united states

01:34:38.380 that sort of thing happens in the united states that would never happen here

01:34:42.240 oh it was awesome it was yes it was awesome and

01:34:49.200 well uh there's a theatrical element to the united states that always just stuns me

01:34:56.960 when i when i go there because it's almost completely lacking in canada and not to our advantage i might also

01:35:02.360 add well i tell you jordan when i went to nashville and i left i left duke i left i'd done one year at

01:35:12.380 the seminary um i was head of the religion majors committee i was kind of a leader among students and

01:35:21.420 and i was kind of i hate to put it this way but i was sort of the golden child of my parents

01:35:28.440 hopes that you know i was going to go be a doctor a lawyer um and right the classic game of of parents

01:35:36.840 who want education for their children but aren't educated themselves yes of course and and i had

01:35:43.720 actually spoken with my my the pastor of my home church the one i grew up in and and he asked me if

01:35:50.440 i felt the call to be a pastor when i was majoring in religion and i i just studied religion because it

01:35:56.940 fascinated me um and it seemed more relevant and at at that time i hadn't settled on becoming a writer

01:36:05.200 and what what year were you in university when was this what year i graduated in 71 i was in seminary

01:36:11.540 until 72 so you were doing you were studying religion right at the height of the hippie era

01:36:16.360 essentially oh yeah absolutely and did you have hippie leanings or were you buttoned down conservative

01:36:23.140 type at that point well i i i would say i was more conservative but i but school was a time for

01:36:31.000 me to to try to be open like when you talk about the personality traits of openness yeah well you're

01:36:37.440 very open so well i hope i am um well it shows you wouldn't you you wouldn't be driven to create

01:36:45.640 that way and and you wouldn't have attained this level of success across these multiple disciplines and

01:36:50.280 and the diverse range of your activities that's all emblematic of of high high levels of trade

01:36:57.220 openness right so multiple interests interest in philosophy interest in fiction interest in art the

01:37:04.100 capacity for aesthetic experience all of that is deeply biologically rooted all of that it's a real

01:37:10.080 it's a really fundamental trait well the uh the reason i i i wonder about uh the the various interplays of

01:37:25.400 my traits is that at that time i was also considering going into the marine corps and being a platoon

01:37:32.520 leader in vietnam which is the are you an orderly person yes oh yes okay and and a hard worker you said

01:37:39.820 that right at the beginning so you're very high in conscientiousness that's orderliness and

01:37:44.400 industriousness and very high in openness and that makes you a complex personality because openness

01:37:50.260 tilts people towards liberalism and radicalism but conscientiousness tilts them towards traditionalism and

01:37:55.780 and conservatism and so you have to marry those two opposites right rare combination of traits like

01:38:03.460 the extreme levels in any traits are rare but if you take the extremes of two traits and bring them

01:38:08.400 together that's particularly rare and yes and conscientiousness and openness fight to some degree

01:38:14.880 because if you're creative you like to break things but if you're orderly you don't really like the mess

01:38:19.620 yes absolutely and and in fact jordan i i think that that's that that conflict within me has been the

01:38:29.220 source of of a lot of distress um and depression i felt i i started to get depressed when i was in

01:38:37.620 nashville and part of it was that i i felt very alone i didn't have many peers i didn't have

01:38:45.440 people with whom i could that i shared musical interests interests with i that i could have a

01:38:52.800 conversation about kierkegaard my i have a i have three sons and my youngest is named soren after kierkegaard

01:39:00.280 um nobody that i was around had any idea what soren meant or was or although i had named him that then

01:39:10.520 um but uh when i went to nashville i knew that i was i was flying in the face of what my parents had

01:39:20.260 sacrificed mightily for me to have and it was really distressing for me and i i made a vow that two

01:39:28.280 things wouldn't hold me back a lack of effort or a fear of failure so i would plunge in and wherever

01:39:34.020 i had an opportunity i would do the best i could i was working 60 70 hours a week at the animal show

01:39:42.100 at the theme park but i got up every morning at 4 30 and would write a song every day okay so that's

01:39:49.880 okay so that's the the first thing i'd like to highlight because i am interested in what's made

01:39:54.240 you successful across these multiple domains and part of it is well the fortune that the marriage

01:40:01.600 of openness and conscientiousness there's a paradox there but that that capacity for dedicated work

01:40:09.080 and discipline conjoined with creativity that can make both of them move very very rapidly yes well i i got

01:40:17.720 signed to nashville's biggest music publisher and they considered me really prolific i did a song a

01:40:26.160 day that's and did you decide you were going to do that you're going to get up at 4 30 in the morning

01:40:30.180 you're going to write a song so how did you because are you waiting around for inspiration or you just

01:40:34.860 write the damn song right i if i dragged my butt out of bed at 4 30 in the morning i was going to write a

01:40:41.500 damn song and yes and and and i actually learned later that that was too much but i didn't know it

01:40:49.360 then i felt i have to you have to do too much before you figure out how much is enough exactly to be when

01:40:55.120 you're young that's the time to figure out what's too much because you can actually tolerate it yeah

01:41:00.720 you can overload yourself and then pull back well i was living in a one-bedroom apartment in a in a nice

01:41:07.440 apartment building i mean it was clean it was safe but i had no furniture i was sleeping on the floor

01:41:12.840 i didn't want to spend any money on furniture and um i saved my money and after about two years

01:41:20.820 i felt i wasn't getting anywhere i wasn't having any songs recorded you know i wasn't i was making a

01:41:28.100 little money and with this publishing company but not much and and i was making a pretty good salary at the

01:41:33.720 theme park but i'd saved my money and i decided i was not being successful because i wasn't committed

01:41:40.360 enough i had a picture of beethoven which is a rather iconic picture of him holding a notepad and frowning

01:41:48.240 up at the sky and and i thought okay i'm going to be like beethoven i'm going to commit completely

01:41:54.360 and i um uh i quit my job and i spent all day every day alone uh in my apartment i almost never went out

01:42:06.940 no friends no social life at all uh just writing studying practicing all day every day and after about

01:42:16.940 four or five months of that i had a breakdown and um i mean a really like panic attacks couldn't eat

01:42:23.880 um debilitating depression you extra are you extroverted yes yes so that would have been very

01:42:33.360 hard on you that isolation yeah i mean i i'm like my father i'll i'll go into a restaurant and i'll get

01:42:40.580 to know the bus boys and i hug everybody and covet's been bad on me um but um it was it was raining

01:42:50.960 every single day there'd been 14 straight days without a patch of blue sky and i decided if i

01:42:57.900 don't see some blue sky i'm going to kill myself and i loaded everything i could carry in a toyota and i

01:43:04.140 drove to california by myself and got out here and kept trying to write songs uh ultimately got a job

01:43:14.500 because i was still running my own little music company and that impressed some people in in the music

01:43:21.980 business that i would that that i could walk into an office without a calling card without a company name

01:43:30.180 talk to the secretary get past the receptionist get my songs to the producers and they were impressed with

01:43:37.500 that and and uh they offered me a job um i was at a at a music major music publisher for about a year

01:43:46.560 and then they had you had you graduated from duke at that point oh yeah yeah how old were you when you

01:43:51.760 went out to california 25 okay okay and um and then um and why california apart from the sun i mean

01:44:01.080 were you going there because it was hollywood because it was did you go to la yeah i went to la

01:44:05.660 but they had a they had a music scene in la that so it was music was either london which i didn't have

01:44:14.220 the money to go to and new york which i thought they're going to hate me up there i'm just i'm a

01:44:20.480 southern christian they're they're going to hate me and nashville was i didn't really love country

01:44:28.780 music uh one brilliant music publisher listened to my songs once and and he was so elegant and

01:44:36.000 thoughtful and he he looked at me and he said do you love country music and i said well i really

01:44:41.700 respect it and he went no it's not what i asked you he said if you don't love it it's not going to

01:44:47.180 work here and don't sell your soul for pennies and i thought well la is the only place where

01:44:53.520 they're they're they're that the kind of music that i seem to like besides london is happening and

01:45:00.500 i'll go out and try it out there and what did you like at that point who are you listening to

01:45:05.080 guys like cat stevens um i you know i thought he was an incredible blend of of surprising music and

01:45:13.540 ethereal powerful lyrics um i also love neil diamond who to a lot of my friends seemed real

01:45:21.220 cheesy but i thought you know the taproot manuscript oh gosh god that's a great album i was that was my

01:45:27.520 favorite album ever that's that's head and shoulders above anything else he ever made and

01:45:32.260 it's arranged so brilliantly it's got one pop song on it which really doesn't belong but the rest of it

01:45:38.260 is it's really quite brilliant that oh suleiman is just incredible and it works very well as an album

01:45:44.980 as a totality it's great my my my wife loved that when she was a kid grade five and i listened to it

01:45:52.260 through her and i've listened to it you know from time to time ever since it's brilliantly arranged too

01:45:58.520 and yes which is quite striking absolutely that was my favorite album ever probably cool well lots of

01:46:07.400 people who are watching this won't have heard of that so i would regardless of your opinion of

01:46:11.720 neil diamond you should listen to taproot manuscript because yes he did a lot of things in there that

01:46:16.220 paul simon did about 20 years later yeah bringing in the african music and so brilliantly it was very

01:46:23.000 creative that album ah absolutely and so that's so cool that that's your favorite album yeah that's

01:46:30.340 who else do you so cat steven so you like the those were very melodic um very lyric based um

01:46:38.740 who else were you listening to van morrison um i really loved van morrison and um and of course i like

01:46:48.640 the beatles but i i really like the rolling stones too and i thought they were not underrated how could

01:46:56.660 you say they were underrated but like if you listen to sympathy for the devil in the line i

01:47:03.220 wrote a tank in the general's rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the body stank yeah that's a killer song

01:47:10.720 that i defy anybody show me a lyricist that writes with more power than that yeah he was somewhere else

01:47:17.660 when he wrote that that's that's that's that's a pretty pretty dark song but i i wasn't in a band

01:47:26.980 and i um and i i wasn't it was it felt that i was trying to get my arms around too much

01:47:36.780 that i i didn't know how to go from sitting in a i lived in in um los angeles i lived in an attic

01:47:45.840 over a garage it was built in it was a it was nicely built in but i could only i'm six foot two

01:47:51.780 i could only stand upright in the very center of the apartment because the the roof was so slanted and

01:47:58.960 um but i had a piano and i i worked all day and on on songs um but i just i wasn't i wasn't having

01:48:09.260 any success then and i met a woman who became my wife um and her father was absolutely brilliant

01:48:19.020 um he had been a prisoner of war in um world war ii he was a bombardier navigator and he was shot down

01:48:26.620 1942 or early uh 43 so he's a prisoner of war for a couple of years stalag lift three and he'd written

01:48:35.640 a screenplay about his experiences he was um close friends with william peter blatty they had been

01:48:42.460 they had worked exorcist yes and blatty was also a genius and they had worked as a an intelligence

01:48:51.680 unit uh counterintelligence unit during the korean war and they were friends and blatty's success with

01:48:58.340 exorcist kind of inspired my father-in-law and he'd written a screenplay and i'd never seen one

01:49:03.820 and when i picked it up it was on her coffee table and and the form lit me up jordan because

01:49:13.100 it didn't have the sort of pompous uh nature of so much modern fiction when the the writer's trying to

01:49:24.760 show off his knowledge um it it it it had there was an essential nature like when you talk about

01:49:35.220 how to write and all the the editing to get down to the essence um screenplays have to do that they

01:49:43.180 were like songs and that every word has to count and all you can really portray effectively in a

01:49:50.240 screenplay is what you see the character do and what you hear the character say so what that character

01:49:56.780 is thinking has to come through and what which gets us back to that how is thought manifest in

01:50:05.700 in the concrete world and i decided to try that and how are you how are you surviving at that point

01:50:13.560 you were writing music were you were you employed by this this this the offices that you had walked

01:50:18.880 into uh yeah i i i had a job for uh for a year and that they paid me well and i was extremely frugal

01:50:31.760 so that i mean i i didn't drink i didn't smoke i didn't i i didn't eat out you know i i made beans and

01:50:41.980 stuff and um so i was able to i was able to get along and once in a while my mother would send me

01:50:47.980 a little money and my father would call me and say don't miss any meals but he wanted me to

01:50:54.620 not suffer but he wanted me to under to undergo the cost of my choices yeah well it's really hard

01:51:04.980 when you're a parent to know how much to help your kids you know gosh it's you can easily over help

01:51:11.480 them yeah oh yeah it's a real problem oh it's a it's it's such a hard question um is you you

01:51:18.880 want you steal from them if you take their problems away right you deprive them of deprivation

01:51:24.860 yes you do you put it yes and do you deprive them of the of the of the solution that they might

01:51:29.960 come to on their own too well i i landed a job with architectural digest the phone rang out of the

01:51:37.180 blue one day that i i wrote a novel and got it published over the transom by a publisher called

01:51:44.200 gp putnam sons oh it's a great publisher that you must have been thrilled oh gosh i was over the moon

01:51:49.940 and um and my thought was i didn't have an agent but i thought i want if i i want to write my own novel

01:51:58.700 before i take a class on novel writing or uh you know i i don't want somebody who's failing at

01:52:05.120 something tell me how to do it and i want to discover what is in me to do what is my way what is my style

01:52:14.340 of doing this and if i write the novel then as well as vince lombardi i believe was the one who said it

01:52:21.400 the more you sacrifice the harder it harder it is to surrender if i write the novel then i will be

01:52:28.460 willing to fight my way through the rejections that will inevitably come to to see it through

01:52:35.460 and i went to the library and got down a bunch of novels and and copied the the addresses of the

01:52:43.700 publishers out and had 15 new york publishers and i wrote 15 letters and described my my new novel and

01:52:52.160 asked if they would like to see it and the very first one was gp putnam's sons and they said send

01:52:58.940 us the first three chapters um i did they called a week later and said we'd like to see the rest of it

01:53:05.920 right that never happens

01:53:07.820 and uh and then i got 14 rejection letters some of some of which i got after the the the book was

01:53:16.340 published uh and uh um and along in there i um uh i got married and my wife got pregnant and uh my wife

01:53:30.200 got pregnant we got pregnant and she had mormon ancestors uh and she knew because of them she knew

01:53:39.560 the entire genealogy of her family back as far as it could be traced and all i knew was that we were

01:53:46.280 tennesseans i didn't know about scots irish i didn't know about any of that you know we spoke english so

01:53:53.320 i was like i guess we're english and um uh but she um had said to me i never really imagined being a

01:54:03.700 mother but if you get me pregnant you have to promise to take me to europe because she loved to

01:54:09.000 travel and she was a dancer and worked made money was very successful at it and and i was saving my

01:54:17.440 money and i was writing for architectural digest at the time i wrote eight or nine articles for

01:54:23.400 architectural digest which was interesting because i'd been living in an attic over a garage

01:54:29.060 multi-million dollar homes uh and um well you probably appreciated them more oh yeah oh yeah and

01:54:38.380 my my my gimmick jordan was most people who are reading this magazine don't have the money that the

01:54:45.200 people who are living in these homes have but there must be some principle of making a place beautiful

01:54:52.580 that is applicable and if i can share that with them and the way the the person who's building the

01:54:59.260 home both the the architect designer and the and the the owner um the way their personalities what is

01:55:08.320 driving their process and all this could be interesting to to the buyers of the magazine whoever would read

01:55:14.940 my article and that seemed to resonate so i would make i'd make nice money doing that and would save it

01:55:22.040 so we went to europe and i had heard that there were wallaces in scotland so we were in london and i

01:55:29.540 suggested a detour to scotland and we were walking into edinburgh castle and there was a statue of a man

01:55:38.280 named william wallace and on the other side of the door flanking the door with him was the statue of

01:55:45.540 robert the bruce and i knew robert the bruce from a um bobby burns poem which of course you quote

01:55:52.880 the would send you know the gifty geas to see ourselves as others see us in your new book

01:55:58.060 um i knew from scotts which have with wallace bled i knew the reference to wallace from that

01:56:06.400 robert the bruce poem about robert the bruce so i asked a guard there who is this william wallace and

01:56:13.600 he said he's our greatest hero and i'm elbowing my pregnant wife going greatest hero i didn't hear

01:56:21.020 wallace greatest hero and uh and i said to the black watch guard there um well was he an ally of

01:56:29.760 robert the bruce and fighting the english and the guard said the magic words that every writer loves

01:56:36.780 to hear he said no one will ever know for sure uh but our legends say that robert the bruce may have

01:56:45.500 been in on the betrayal of william wallace to clear the way for himself to become the king well i didn't

01:56:53.460 know that william wallace had been betrayed but that statement was like hearing that judas iscariot

01:57:02.120 and saint peter were the same person it it made me wonder what if there was something so powerful and

01:57:09.760 profound in the life and death of william wallace that it transformed robert the bruce from a person

01:57:18.420 who would betray his country's greatest hero into this country's greatest king and i thought this is a

01:57:27.700 mind-blowing story but i had a pregnant wife and i had to find a way to feed her to feed her and my new

01:57:34.880 baby and and um and it and i didn't feel ready to write that story so we came back to los angeles and

01:57:42.440 i got a job working in television and television is an incredible grind it's like running in front of

01:57:48.940 freight trains yes it's insatiable insatiable and in those days and in these days like if you're on the

01:57:54.620 netflix series it might be 10 episodes a year well in in those days it was 22 episodes a year

01:58:02.720 and my mentor was a guy named steve cannell and he taught me tremendous stuff and but one thing

01:58:10.340 so how did you get a job in television uh i i had written a screenplay and a friend of mine

01:58:17.840 i was working out at a gym and i love to work out in fact it it keeps me it keeps me sane and i just

01:58:26.140 i enjoy it i enjoy being in gyms and and um and there was a guy there um who was working out

01:58:34.180 really ferociously as well and um he was telling another friend there stories about elvis presley

01:58:41.520 and my father had seen elvis when he was the truck driver and was getting paid like 50 to sing at a

01:58:51.700 supermarket opening and i told him that story that my father saw elvis at a supermarket opening getting

01:58:58.540 50 bucks and we started chatting and that guy that i was talking with was mike post who is the most

01:59:06.820 successful television composer probably ever absolutely brilliant guy and we hit it off and

01:59:13.560 became friends and and one day he said to me how are you how are you making money you know what do you

01:59:19.340 do and i said well i'm you know i write screenplays and i that's that's what i'm doing now i'm a writer

01:59:24.860 and and he said you ought to meet steve cannell and he was doing mike was doing the music for steve cannell

01:59:30.860 so mike made it his business to get steve to read one of my scripts and um eventually a sample of my

01:59:40.120 writing got there what attracted them was they were doing a show about a guy from texas who's

01:59:49.180 basically a well dare i say a shit kicker and um and i was telling him lizard lick stories right right

01:59:58.800 and they immediately and you know once i told him about the piano playing pig they were like give this

02:00:05.540 guy an assignment and from my first assignment yeah that's definitely a door opening story that one

02:00:12.180 yeah and so i got i and i became he became my mentor and we had a we had a really fabulous

02:00:20.360 relationship for about three years and then we started to get sideways um in and i guess it's an

02:00:29.640 old story that you know a mentor and the mentee the protege you know the protege starts thinking he

02:00:37.340 knows what he's doing and the mentor maybe you know has mixed feelings about it and and i realized i

02:00:44.360 had to leave and and i did and what shows did you work on then um well the first one i worked on was

02:00:53.220 called hunter uh which was a long-running cop drama um also created uh co-created with steve by my

02:01:02.360 friend frank lupo who just passed away about a week ago and they had done a team and um frank and steve

02:01:10.720 had done a team so i worked on a show called hunter and this show called jj starbuck and another show

02:01:16.020 called uh sunny spoon none of which became big hits but they were all on for about a season

02:01:21.620 um and and and and i made a lot of money doing it i mean i had a i had a beautiful home and german cars

02:01:31.400 in the driveway and a tennis court in the front and a swimming pool yes you said you're a car you said in

02:01:35.860 your book that you're a car aficionado i'm a hillbilly jordan i guess like i it's like elvis i love

02:01:41.200 them and um so um yeah well they were they were in the 60s and 70s 50s as well they were still

02:01:48.940 simple enough so that you could kind of understand them and have an affinity for them you know they've

02:01:54.260 got so sophisticated now and so abstract that it's hard to it's hard to fall in love with them

02:01:59.740 they're great car new cars are so good but they're so good they're kind of not interesting anymore

02:02:04.680 that's right that's right and all my relatives could fix them and tear them apart and and my oldest

02:02:10.260 son restores cars he'll take a junked like 65 mustang and a year later it looks brand new he's

02:02:18.580 he's incredibly gifted with that but deeply satisfying work that yes absolutely but um

02:02:26.580 uh when i left when i left cannell it was terrifying in a sense because i had gone from having no idea

02:02:37.480 where my next dollar would come from to my salary doubling every year for four years and then suddenly

02:02:44.640 having no idea where my next dollar would come from and i couldn't having been steve's protege

02:02:52.240 and then getting sideways with him i couldn't even get a meeting to pitch an idea at a network

02:02:59.900 and i i went to features almost in desperation and and has decided that i would write that story

02:03:08.220 that uh so that was still lurking in the back of your mind oh yeah yeah and but but there's a

02:03:16.380 watershed moment in this um i was i i felt the the the dark voices clutching at my insides you know

02:03:27.680 and screaming through my head and my stomach was nodding up and my hands were trembling and

02:03:33.500 i found i couldn't write and um and i started to get really afraid then because i'd always been able

02:03:40.740 to will myself through that was that was my most remarkable trait was just that sort of scottish

02:03:47.920 stubbornness um like no matter what the pain is i can take it longer than you can dish it out

02:03:53.000 and um and i was finding that i felt i was betraying my sons and i had that's a terrible feeling

02:04:02.660 that oh were you you were getting depressed was that what was happening yes yeah that's that well

02:04:08.300 the problem with depression is that it actually saps that will like not only is it painful beyond

02:04:15.040 description often but it goes after the very thing that you would use to fight it yes exactly and

02:04:23.040 my sons were the same age i was when my father had lost his job and had a complete breakdown i mean

02:04:29.960 hospitalized and everything and and i just i felt that that lurking and i got on my knees

02:04:38.880 and i said a prayer and i i mean i did i had nowhere else to go and i got on my knees and i prayed

02:04:49.560 what matters most to me right now is my sons yeah and and maybe the best thing for them

02:05:00.240 is not that they grow up in private schools and german cars and you know nannies and everything maybe

02:05:09.040 maybe it would be best for them if they lived in a house even one without indoor plumbing

02:05:14.340 the way i lived when my father had his breakdown but my father also showed me how a man gets up

02:05:22.180 and he did get up and he came back to tremendous success and and i thought if that's what you want

02:05:30.460 me to show my sons then please bring it on and please help me bear it but if i go down in this fight

02:05:37.900 i pray i go down not on my knees to hollywood but standing up with my flag flying fighting for what i

02:05:46.500 believe in and i stood up and i wrote the screenplay for love and honor and that got me into the office of

02:05:54.500 a young woman named rebecca pollack who's sydney pollack's daughter sydney pollack directed out of

02:06:00.240 africa jeremiah johnson um three days of the condor and i told her the story of braveheart in about 10

02:06:08.940 minutes and she went my god go write that and i said do you want an outline or something and she

02:06:15.340 went what i'm going to tell you how to write act two go write that and um and that led me into

02:06:23.320 what do you think it was about you that that made doors open for you like that it's quite a remarkable

02:06:34.660 theme i mean these are all very difficult enterprises to gain a foothold in and and you tell stories over

02:06:41.320 and over about people offering you the chance was that the salesman the salesman skill that your father

02:06:48.540 had do you think what what was it i i i have to guess jordan because the to see ourselves as others

02:06:56.400 see us is clearly the hard thing but i do think i do think i am am um incredibly blessed that i had

02:07:07.640 this salesman father whose heart was as big as the ocean and i had this brilliant mother who was

02:07:15.660 who was absolute steel inside and and tinder i mean she was she was an iron iron hand in a velvet glove

02:07:25.520 and um but makes sense because you think well you need the creativity and you've got that and you need

02:07:30.940 the discipline to work and you've got that but that's not enough you have to be able to market you

02:07:36.260 have to be able to make contact with people you have to be able to communicate with them about your

02:07:40.420 material because otherwise you languish but you have that too yes but i i think there's i think

02:07:46.700 there's something and and look you know whenever anyone says oh this was it you know thank goodness

02:07:52.620 i have this gift of god it's so self-aggrandizing like you're elevating your your gifts but but i think

02:07:59.800 there was there is a a thing that i didn't create but i have chosen to follow which is there's something

02:08:08.580 about being bold and being willing to take the punch to to be able to walk in it's like when

02:08:17.820 i decided i would write my screenplay first i like i like writing original screenplays

02:08:23.920 without going to a company and saying um like it was an original screenplay what we call a spec screenplay

02:08:32.300 that got me into rebecca's office in the first place that got her to listen about braveheart and

02:08:39.080 there's there's an element of tremendous daring to say i i don't have to have your endorsement or your

02:08:48.820 money to sit down and write this and in fact i like the equation of it to say if i write this and

02:08:55.680 i've made this choice a dozen times in my career if i write it and it doesn't sell i will live with

02:09:03.400 that but i will have written what i believe i will have written what i want i will have written the

02:09:09.980 movie i want to make and if you say you don't want to buy it the next guy might and then you're going

02:09:16.600 to look like an idiot and that that equation that theme comes out quite strongly in secretariat

02:09:23.560 yes yes it does because she pursues that that investment in in her horse in that famous remarkable

02:09:33.120 horse yes single-mindedly and and and in and at high risk yes and i i feel that um there's something

02:09:45.100 and obviously we can be we can be projecting this onto the horse but the the metaphor of the movie for

02:09:54.300 me was i actually i wrote the i wrote the song of the end credits um called it's who you are

02:10:02.340 um it's not the prize it's not the game it's not the score it's not the fame when every road looks way

02:10:09.940 too far it's not what you have it's who you are and in that you choose your race and then you run

02:10:18.060 and and i'll i'll say that to myself over and over i say it to myself daily just don't miss the chance

02:10:27.280 to live this day and when i i'm divorced and it was the most wrenching horrific thing of my life

02:10:36.880 life and i would i would get out of bed in the morning and drop straight down to my knees and

02:10:43.580 pray for the strength to get through the day and at the end of the day when i would get down on my knees

02:10:48.740 to say thanks i would think well i did have faith today i did get through the day

02:10:57.160 and at least enough to get through the day and and if did that catapult you into depression as well

02:11:05.380 oh yeah oh yeah yeah i mean it's i mean it's it sounds like it's from what you're relating

02:11:11.900 and that came through in your book too that that i mean you don't talk about it much but when you

02:11:16.720 touch on it it's quite clear that that was an experience that you know took this the slats out from

02:11:23.960 underneath you yes and and that that uh and i don't i don't talk about it too much because you

02:11:30.180 know there are other people involved but you know it's my family and it was wrenching for all of us

02:11:35.820 but it it may be that the depression also contributed yes you know the the it was highly probable

02:11:45.140 it's very difficult to live with someone who has a predisposition to depression yeah it's hard

02:11:51.120 and um so yeah it it certainly it certainly was the fight and within me and um uh but at the same

02:12:02.020 time there was something beautiful i mean there were many beautiful things that come out of such

02:12:07.340 darkness um one was um i was putting up christmas lights at the that the house i had moved to to try to

02:12:17.320 rebuild my life and and and my sons i would see my sons three days a week and that was very strained and

02:12:26.720 and um and i was trying to make my home look beautiful and i was putting up christmas lights

02:12:32.440 and i was getting really depressed and um i was talking with my therapist who's a brilliant guy and

02:12:38.940 and i told him about that and i said you know i can't really date anybody and i i you know i'm not

02:12:45.840 seeing my sons enough and my neighbors don't celebrate christmas and and i'm i'm putting up

02:12:51.920 christmas lights and i'm getting more depressed doing it and he said well how about this you don't

02:12:58.400 put your christmas lights up for your neighbors to see you don't put them up for someone you're dating

02:13:05.300 to see you don't even put them up for your children to see god sees your christmas lights put your

02:13:11.200 christmas lights up for god to see god what what a great way to think of everything we do in our

02:13:17.620 lives like here's here's what it is most if i if i labor in in an anonymity if nobody knows it

02:13:27.780 um but i've done it so that god sees it then that's better than if i did something i don't believe in

02:13:37.420 that everybody applauded me for um and um so that that's just been a it's it's a choice i continually

02:13:47.780 have to make and struggle with to affirm but um it's it's the one i really believe in i don't think

02:13:57.100 that people would create anything that was truly original if they didn't think like that

02:14:02.300 you know because if it's original and surprising there's no track record for it there's no proof

02:14:11.160 that it's valid right you have to there's just no option but to take the risk and so if that line

02:14:18.440 of thinking didn't exist then there'd be no way that you would take the risk exactly i mean i was

02:14:25.800 always the kid that maybe that's why creativity and religion religious thinking are aligned so tightly

02:14:31.060 it's that you you have to make that leap of faith to produce something that's original

02:14:35.520 virtually by definition yes and despite you see that again that theme sort of playing out in

02:14:42.500 secretariat because all the advice that is given to the chenery chenery is her name right miss chenery

02:14:51.780 she owns this horse remarkable horse and anyone sensible would have sold him

02:14:57.380 because she was going to lose everything including her credibility yes but she didn't and she was

02:15:06.940 right but there was no proof of that to begin with that was a leap of faith and i don't i really don't

02:15:13.300 see how you can do something original without that leap of faith because just as i said there's no track

02:15:20.240 record well jordan i hadn't thought of this at all before this conversation but um but it strikes me

02:15:29.280 that there's something um as you mentioned that in common with you and her and when i say how isolating

02:15:35.480 it is to take that leap um i got to know penny i i i've i've i've had the the opportunity to make

02:15:47.020 several movies about people who are still living when the movie's being made and every time i do it

02:15:55.640 i swear i won't do it again because i'd rather be free yes yes uh but uh i got to know penny and boy

02:16:03.480 there was fire in that woman and uh and i she was well into her 90s when we started making secretariat and

02:16:11.760 she was incredibly uh attractive the her her eyes were so full of life and were so direct and um

02:16:22.980 um when we went to the kentucky derby together right after the movie was made which was certainly a

02:16:33.400 magical moment you know we just made the movie and now we're going to it's the next running of the

02:16:40.120 kentucky derby and and i got to go with penny and of course penny's in at churchill downs you know she

02:16:48.700 was she was a rock star and uh you know uh everybody knew we were making the movie is uh disney movie is

02:16:55.940 going to be seen by a lot of people and and um we we saw the race together and everything builds up at

02:17:02.500 the kentucky derby to the derby itself it's the derby is like the eighth race of eighth or ninth race of

02:17:08.920 a whole day of racing so uh and then there are races after the derby so when the derby was over it builds

02:17:18.040 this crescendo everybody walked back into the the party rooms and forgot us and i was left out on a

02:17:28.200 balcony just penny and me and uh and we're standing there together and i thought okay this is a sacred

02:17:36.000 moment and um this is probably going to be the last time i see her and um she looked down at the horse

02:17:44.120 that had just won they were they had um taken the saddle off the horse and were kind of cooling him down

02:17:50.140 and and she looked down and said that's that's a well well-bred horse um just casual comment and

02:17:57.280 i looked at her and said penny we've come to the end of this movie process and and now it won't it it

02:18:05.820 won't be in the movie uh but tell me what did you not tell me what have you what what did you want to

02:18:13.700 say that has never been told what what have you kept from me and she paused and she looked down at

02:18:20.780 the the box seats where she would sit as an owner and she said i sat down there alone every day

02:18:30.700 alone the other owners would tolerate me but they never accepted me and um and i i just thought about

02:18:39.780 that there there's there's that cost of stepping out there of leaping out there alone and and the

02:18:48.260 the thing to me about it is like there's a round you have to believe it's worth doing for itself

02:18:55.320 yeah exactly and and in a way you you hope it's worth doing but you don't know i have i have a friend

02:19:04.700 here who's a rabbi named mordecai finley and um you know for anybody as gentile as me it's always

02:19:11.640 fun when i say he's my rabbi uh and rabbi finley was a marine he's a brilliant thinker um and i a friend

02:19:21.080 named steve pressfield who's an incredible writer wrote a book called the war of art which you'd be very

02:19:26.520 interested in i think um but steve pressfield was um investigating his own faith he had decided to

02:19:34.440 to to look into spiritual matters and he asked me to go along with him to rabbi finley's lectures at

02:19:41.420 the university of judaism and a rabbi finley is very practical guy he's got a son in the marine corps

02:19:49.180 has got a daughter and israeli intelligence and and he's a tough guy and and he said you know people

02:19:56.600 say follow your heart instead of your head well your heart's the only thing less reliable than your

02:20:02.380 head so that statement sort of sat for a minute and somebody raised their hand and said well then

02:20:09.200 how do we know what to do and rabbi finley paused for a long time as you do by the way when like like

02:20:18.600 you're considering the the question afresh it's not like oh here's my pat answer it's like well

02:20:24.000 let me find what what's the true answer right now and he paused like that and he said a couple of times

02:20:32.080 in my life i've been hanging by my fingernails over the abyss and i let go because i couldn't hang on

02:20:41.980 anymore and i fell into the arms of god and he said i didn't know it would be the arms of god when i let

02:20:51.060 go if i had known it it wouldn't truly have been letting go and i was sitting there in this crowd

02:20:59.040 of people going and he looked at me and pointed at me and he goes christians know this christians know

02:21:05.660 grace um in our tradition um we we have to sort of look for that concept it's there but we have to

02:21:13.820 look for it but he said it's grace and and i think about that it's it's i don't know every time

02:21:23.160 when i sit down that that i'm not wasting my time that i'm not just going to ruin

02:21:28.200 you know a ream of paper or or or that i'm not going to beggar my children um or i'm not going

02:21:36.760 to write something that somebody's going to hate uh but but my mother had a a saying she gave me when

02:21:46.000 we had just made we were soldiers and my father died as it's written in my book about at the end of

02:21:53.200 we were soldiers my father passed away he died on 9 11 and uh and we uh after after his funeral and i

02:22:04.000 was back to work um i was calling my mother every day and and i called her and said how are you doing

02:22:11.440 and she said well i'm i'm doing i'm doing okay how are you doing and i said well i'm nervous today and

02:22:17.700 she said why and i said well um you know i've we're we're testing the movie tonight we're going

02:22:25.760 to have its first public test and she said well why does that make you nervous and i said well there

02:22:32.480 are a lot of people that come to these things intentionally just to be snarky just to just to

02:22:38.000 you know the sling mud at you and and when you've put your your blood and your sweat and your tears and

02:22:45.320 your money into a work and you know people are going to do that it kind of makes you nervous

02:22:51.000 yeah i would say so and my mother said well honey if they crucified jesus christ

02:22:58.040 they're going to be some people that don't like you

02:23:01.160 so jordan if they crucified jesus christ they're going to be some people that don't like you

02:23:12.340 you know i would like to talk to you for another three hours

02:23:21.400 oh but i think that's a really good place to stop i think great and i i really enjoyed that uh

02:23:30.560 and

02:23:32.340 it was it was delightful to hear your stories and and to talk to you and i'm so happy that you decided

02:23:40.760 that you'd participate in this podcast i think people will find it quite interesting

02:23:46.680 so i should ask you what you asked penny is there anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to

02:23:55.620 let people know about you know jordan the i think the the big the big thing i'm trying to figure out

02:24:03.860 right now and i again i draw inspiration from you in this that to you know to be a teaching professor

02:24:12.080 and to to start to lecture and to start to use media and and and define and to find an audience in

02:24:21.600 different ways or i love making movies and it's it's it's my calling uh but i love music too and i um

02:24:32.100 and i'm and i'm trying to figure out how to to get it all out how to both to just do it and to let

02:24:43.600 people know it exists um and i'm not sure the proper way and in anticipation of doing this i i made a

02:24:52.580 little website for that new song i wrote called praise ye the lord because i think an affirmation right

02:24:59.780 now is what we really need to do look at all that we have going for us instead of being listening to

02:25:06.400 fear um so i'm trying to figure that notion out so um i i'm really going to be watching you to

02:25:16.280 learn from how to do that and uh what what the best way because there's a part of me too that goes

02:25:23.820 i really want to be left alone i don't want to be recognized i don't want to be i don't want to be

02:25:30.120 noticed but i also as the bible says you don't take a candle and put it under a you know a table or under

02:25:37.380 a bushel you know you you try to try to show it uh that's that's a very unfocused thing to say but

02:25:47.140 that's what i'm trying to figure out uh that between you and me personally that's the that's

02:25:53.220 the thing i'm i'm trying to figure out at this stage of my life is what do i do with all the

02:25:59.000 things that i'm doing i don't know the answer

02:26:03.000 i think it's really helpful to let people see into your life a bit you know people are so fascinated

02:26:13.460 with what goes on and in hollywood what goes on with people who are creative to to say what it's

02:26:20.200 been like to talk about that that's interesting and compelling and so and and so we've managed to

02:26:27.980 do some of that today and so hooray for that and i'm looking i tell you i'm very much looking forward

02:26:33.800 to this new movie do you have a title for it the swiss guard and and how about a proposed release date

02:26:41.400 any idea it would probably be 2022

02:26:43.860 and um you know i try to make the kind of movie that i would want to see you know that i would want

02:26:52.300 my sons to see that i want the people that i love to see so um it amazes me that that you and your

02:26:58.900 wife watched secretariat and uh that thrills me so i i hope that this is a movie that would be worthy

02:27:06.060 of your time to sit down and watch it oh i'm very much looking forward to it i hope we get to talk

02:27:12.500 again me too jordan all right let's stay in touch thank you my friend all right thank you god bless you

02:27:18.520 now we've come through play and through blood

02:27:26.540 still we will trust in your faith over fear

02:27:53.400 praise ye the lord praise ye the lord praise ye the lord songs of rejoicing as morning draws near

02:28:07.280 praise ye the lord praise ye the lord

02:28:14.400 who keeps his promises

02:28:17.700 who shows the way

02:28:20.840 who brings his healing when light turns to day

02:28:27.780 when we are wandering

02:28:30.920 when we are lost

02:28:34.760 who comes and finds us

02:28:38.460 whatever the cost

02:28:41.620 praise ye the lord

02:28:46.620 praise ye the lord

02:28:48.620 praise ye the lord

02:28:50.060 when we are drowning

02:28:53.560 who says come on

02:28:56.200 when we're in bondage

02:29:00.480 who cuts the core

02:29:03.600 praise god almighty

02:29:07.080 praise ye the lord

02:29:08.080 praise ye the lord

02:29:08.680 praise ye the lord

02:29:09.100 praise ye the lord

02:29:10.540 praise ye the lord

02:29:11.240 praise ye the lord

02:29:15.520 all entity

02:29:17.080 all of it

02:29:19.900 shall alarm

02:29:22.060 let us

02:29:26.240 Where the pockets like the modest King

02:29:38.040 The broken brothers lay us free

02:29:48.040 To the passions of the Lord

02:29:58.040 Come away from the heart

02:30:08.740 Come away from the heart

02:30:18.040 Come away from the heart

02:30:20.040 Come away from the heart

02:30:26.040 Come away from the heart

02:30:30.040 In the presence of the Lord

02:30:40.040 There was the presence of the King

02:30:50.040 In the presence of the Lord

02:31:00.040 In the presence of the Lord

02:31:10.040 There was the presence of the Lord

02:31:12.040 There was the presence of the Lord

02:31:22.040 There was the presence of the Lord

02:31:32.040 In today's chaotic world, many of us are searching for a way to aim higher and find spiritual peace.

02:31:49.040 But here's the thing, prayer, the most common tool we have, isn't just about saying whatever comes to mind.

02:31:55.040 It's a skill that needs to be developed.

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02:31:59.040 As the number one prayer and meditation app, Halo is launching an exceptional new series called How to Pray.

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02:32:26.040 From guests including Bishop Robert Barron, Father Mike Schmitz, and Jonathan Rumi, known for his role as Jesus in the hit series The Chosen, you'll discover prayer techniques that have stood the test of time, while equipping yourself with the tools needed to face life's challenges with renewed strength.

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - May 06, 2021

166. Writer of Braveheart ｜ Randall Wallace

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