232. Narrative, Story, and Writing pt. 2
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 8 minutes
Words per Minute
168.76808
Summary
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, and a roadmap towards healing. He provides a roadmap toward healing, showing that while the journey isn t easy, it s absolutely possible to find your way forward. If you re suffering, please know you are not alone. There s hope, and there s a path to feeling better. Subscribe to Daily Wire Plus to get immediate access to all new episodes of the JBP Podcast. Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code JBPpodcast to receive 10% off your first month with discount code: JBPodcast. Learn more about your ad-free experience at anchor.fm/JBPpodcast and how you can become a supporter of the podcast here. Thanks to our sponsor, Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort and adventure, on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination-focused dining, and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. Discover more at Viking.co/Viking.Discover more at Viking.co.nz and let us know what you think of this episode and what you're looking forward to in the future episodes of JBP! Thank you for listening, Mikayla Peterson, and thank you for supporting the podcast, and Happy Manifesting! - Dr. Jordan Peterson. . JBP. - The JBP podcast - Episode 241: Depression and Anxiety - Season 4 - Episode 1 - Part 1 of Season 4, Episode 1, "The Story and Writing with Purpose" - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4: "Why We Need to Write with Purpose?" - Episode 4 - "The Journey?" - Part 5: "The Narrative Story & Writing" - Season 2, "How We See the World in the World by Andrew Doyle by Randall Wallace, Jocko Willink, and Andrew Doyle, and Mark Manson, Season 3, Episode 4, "Why Do You Need To Write With Purpose? Part 2: "What's a Good Thing?" - Season 3: "How Do You Feel Better?" - "Why You're Not Alone? "What Are You Writing With Purpose and Why Do You Think You Need to Be Better Than That?" - Episode 6: Why You Can Start Writing With It?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort.
00:00:06.080
Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service,
00:00:11.900
destination-focused dining, and cultural enrichment on board and on shore.
00:00:17.860
And every Viking voyage is all-inclusive with no children and no casinos.
00:00:26.020
Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:33.020
Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:39.300
We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be,
00:00:42.680
and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:49.160
Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:53.940
He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy,
00:00:58.520
it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:01:01.900
If you're suffering, please know you are not alone.
00:01:05.060
There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:01:08.340
Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:01:14.000
Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:01:26.940
In part one of the narrative story and writing compilation released January 21st,
00:01:32.120
we explored how stories impact how we see the world.
00:01:35.560
In this second part, we look at what it means to write with purpose
00:01:41.920
We also look into how reading and writing connects to personal growth
00:01:45.200
and how character is built by forcing an articulation of what we think, how we feel, and why.
00:01:52.020
This compilation consists of conversations from season four
00:01:54.800
with people like Randall Wallace, Jocko Willink, and Andrew Doyle.
00:01:58.760
We also included a few clips from the time I had Dad and Mark Manson on my podcast.
00:02:06.540
Remember, if you don't want to hear me read ads throughout this episode,
00:02:10.260
you can go to jordanbpeterson.supercast.com and sign up for the ad-free experience.
00:02:18.780
The Navy sent me to college because in order to be an officer in the Navy,
00:02:40.900
you have to go to college, and I hadn't been to college.
00:02:53.880
All right, so you finished college, and then what happened?
00:02:56.780
You're not going to ask me why I was an English major?
00:03:01.640
I thought when he hears English major, he's going to say,
00:03:04.120
wait a second, here you are, this guy talking about machine guns
00:03:08.260
What in God's name are you going to go study English for?
00:03:10.480
I have to say that that thought did pass through my mind.
00:03:16.760
I was an English major because, believe it or not, when you're in the SEAL teams,
00:03:21.740
and especially when you're in the officer position, you have to write and read all the time.
00:03:28.140
So when one of your troops does something and they deserve some kind of recognition for that,
00:03:37.220
And if the award is written well, there's a much better chance that it'll actually be given to the person that you're writing it for.
00:03:46.220
And the evaluations that you write is how your troops are judged so that they can be promoted.
00:03:53.300
On top of that, if you want to go do a mission, you have to write a concept of operations,
00:03:59.920
which is a document, which is five, six, seven, eight pages long,
00:04:05.200
that you send up the chain of command that then they scour through and see if they're going to approve your mission or not.
00:04:13.580
You know, I mean, one of the things, I did a talk at Harvard four years ago,
00:04:20.640
and I pointed out two things to the students in the audience.
00:04:25.740
One was that a tremendous amount of civilization and effort had gone into producing the institution that they were now part of,
00:04:35.820
and that everyone who was part of that institution was hoping that they would come there
00:04:40.980
and learn everything they possibly could that was relevant and important,
00:04:45.000
and that they would be the best possible people they could be,
00:04:48.040
and they would go out in the world and do as much good as they possibly could.
00:04:51.960
That was the essential mission of the enterprise.
00:04:58.500
And also that learning to write, in particular,
00:05:03.440
was going to make them more powerful than they could imagine.
00:05:07.300
And a number of students came up to me afterwards and said,
00:05:10.380
I really wish someone would have said that to us when we first came here.
00:05:16.740
I kind of got obsessed with that when I was working as a professor,
00:05:20.720
and I'm working on a piece of software right now to help, which will launch soon,
00:05:28.100
Because what I observed in my own career, and it's so interesting,
00:05:31.560
the parallelism is so interesting, but not surprising,
00:05:40.480
It's like, when you write, you make a case for something,
00:05:46.540
And if you make the best case, well, then you win.
00:05:50.060
And you get whatever it is that you're aiming at.
00:05:56.200
maybe that's why I didn't ask you why you went into English.
00:06:00.580
is that the utility of learning to write is so self-evident to me
00:06:06.680
But it's also interesting to think about how it fits into this broader,
00:06:12.040
well, let's say, at least partially military-slash-strategic way
00:06:17.440
You know, you describe the intense relationship
00:06:26.040
and making strategic progress truly in the military sense,
00:06:30.680
that those things are tied together very, very precisely.
00:06:33.880
And it's obviously your ability to communicate as well that's,
00:06:39.160
You have your podcast, you have your YouTube channel,
00:06:41.180
you have your books, many of which you self-published.
00:06:47.080
it's, I just can't understand why it's not presented,
00:06:50.520
especially, not entirely, but especially to adventurous,
00:06:53.760
well, let's say young men, we could say young people.
00:07:03.100
Because if you learn how to write, well, then you can think,
00:07:22.280
You know, you hear the pen is mightier than the sword,
00:07:24.740
which is just a cliche unless it's fleshed out.
00:07:27.880
But the reason, you laid out the reasons perfectly.
00:07:31.740
You have to communicate what happened as well as having it had it happen.
00:07:39.580
but obviously not only am I having to write and present my argument,
00:07:49.000
And I'm sure you've heard the term rules of engagement.
00:07:52.280
rules of engagement is a 12 page document that is in a bunch of legalese.
00:08:00.280
And I've got to translate that document to my troops,
00:08:04.840
some of whom, you know, barely graduated high school.
00:08:10.680
So I've got to be able to read and then write and be able to then communicate
00:08:14.260
and talk to the team and brief them in a manner that they can actually
00:08:19.520
understand what it is I'm talking about and what it is our mission is and
00:08:24.580
So that was why I decided to study English when I,
00:08:37.740
So tell me exactly what the decision was with regards to studying English.
00:08:42.440
What did you know that, because it's not, as you pointed out,
00:08:46.980
it's not self-evidently the most practical of pursuits and not necessarily
00:08:51.360
what you'd expect someone with a military orientation to pursue.
00:09:07.740
I need to learn how to do that better so that I can persuade my chain of command
00:09:13.040
that we need to do this mission or we need this piece of gear or this guy over
00:09:17.600
here needs to get an award or he needs to get promoted.
00:09:20.640
All those things are done by being able to write and communicate properly.
00:09:25.380
So, so let's say you take the example of a seal who's got it all,
00:09:34.000
So what, what happens to him compared to someone who has all those skills?
00:09:41.180
Well, if he can't, if he can't write well, and he's in charge of six guys and one of those guys
00:09:48.660
works hard or does something that deserves to be recognized.
00:09:52.960
This is the responsibility of that leader to write that person an award.
00:09:58.240
So he can't reward his, he can't reward his, his good workers, his good soldiers.
00:10:02.960
He can give him a pat on the back, but the pat on the back isn't going to get him promoted.
00:10:06.220
An award is actually worth some points towards your promotion.
00:10:10.240
And the people that are on that board that are giving that reward,
00:10:15.960
And they're definitely not going to meet that guy.
00:10:19.420
It's, it's based on this piece of paper that you hand in your hand in this piece of paper.
00:10:23.360
They read the piece of paper and they say award approved or award not approved,
00:10:26.580
or you want to do a mission and you send that up the chain of command.
00:10:32.180
It gets to a certain point where they're just looking at it and reading
00:10:35.060
and trying to decipher this pile of junk that you put together.
00:10:39.100
And by the way, if I'm in charge and Jordan sends me a concept of operations,
00:10:46.100
Why would I possibly let you go out and execute an operation?
00:10:49.420
That I can't even understand what it is you're trying to do.
00:10:57.920
Well, I'm dwelling on this because it's, it's upsetting to me.
00:11:01.080
I would say that young people in particular aren't stringently instructed that the ability
00:11:10.860
to, that literacy makes them powerful in every way they can possibly imagine,
00:11:19.320
And so it's just sad to me that it's not sold in that manner.
00:11:35.500
But then you could add some literacy to that and you're an unstoppable machine.
00:11:43.160
And, you know, you said being literate makes you powerful.
00:11:46.880
And throughout recent history, if we're trying to oppress someone,
00:11:51.600
what we don't want them to be able to do is read or write or, or articulate themselves.
00:11:58.340
Well, we haven't even talked about reading, you know, we just talked about writing and
00:12:06.100
And so what's the advantage to that as far as you're concerned, practically speaking?
00:12:10.640
Well, obviously there are so many lessons that you can pull out of books and you, you can
00:12:21.900
get to a point where nothing really surprises you because you've at least seen some indication
00:12:30.900
So again, for me, it's very much focused on combat and war, but there's, there's lessons
00:12:40.260
that you learn and you say, Oh, I I've seen that before.
00:12:44.600
It's, it is a book called about face, which I think the last time you and I talked, you
00:12:49.100
were, I think you were writing the forward for, for the Gulag.
00:12:55.060
And I was about to write the forward to, I don't know if that's your favorite book, but
00:13:00.500
I was lucky enough to be able to write the forward for my favorite book, which was re-released
00:13:07.320
And the book is called about, the book is called about face.
00:13:11.080
And it's, it's about a guy that was in the Korean war and then he was in the Vietnam war
00:13:14.820
and his name is Colonel David Hackworth, but I would read that book when I was on deployment,
00:13:23.720
And I would read two pages or three pages before I'd go to bed.
00:13:28.540
And, and there were so many lessons that correlated to what I was actually going through.
00:13:32.920
And a real obvious example was when he was in Vietnam, he's working with the South Vietnamese
00:13:37.960
soldiers and therefore by proxy, the South Vietnamese government.
00:13:42.600
They're all corrupt and they're not motivated and they don't have the right gear.
00:13:45.860
And here we are in Iraq and we're working with Iraqi soldiers.
00:13:48.500
And therefore by proxy, we're working with the Iraqi government.
00:13:57.980
So there's an example of when you read, you can learn and you don't have to, you don't
00:14:05.920
You don't have to get punched in the face repeatedly with things that turn out to be situations that
00:14:15.260
And the amount of, the amount of the, the, the, the, the level of capability increases
00:14:27.480
Well, if I see something one time, I'm, I'm infinitely better than if I'd never seen it
00:14:32.540
So if, if it's like those, you know, those little puzzles, they give you a little puzzle,
00:14:49.440
So just knowing, just seeing it one time, you're infinitely better.
00:14:54.400
So when you read enough, you're capturing all these lessons and, and you know what?
00:15:06.360
And, and I learned this because as I started doing my podcast and many of my podcasts are
00:15:16.000
I realized how to read more intently, even more intently than I did when I was going to
00:15:22.740
And I was going to be, you know, writing a paper about a book.
00:15:26.160
And so I'd read it in a certain way, but you, even that reading was a little bit detached,
00:15:31.300
a little bit detached because you're looking for a theme or you're looking for character
00:15:37.220
But when you read to learn about human nature and life, you, you, you detach less and you
00:15:45.140
kind of put yourself in there and you experience it a little bit closer.
00:15:50.560
And then when you take a step back, you go, Oh yeah, I, I know what he was thinking right
00:16:01.200
You kind of have to put yourself into the work and, and really read it with that kind
00:16:07.000
of, uh, intensity, if for lack of a better word, is it, is it possible for a human being
00:16:15.900
That's no different than, than, than acting intensely or playing intensely.
00:16:19.740
Of course you want to put the book on, you want to become that person that can rattle you
00:16:26.380
Especially if the person is thinking all sorts of things that you've never thought.
00:16:32.660
I could pick my peers too, which I really loved.
00:16:35.300
It's like, well, you know, I have these people around me, but then there's these people who
00:16:39.660
who've lived before me and in different places and I can set them up on my shelf.
00:16:44.320
I can enter into their world and I can benefit from everything they've thought and saturate
00:16:52.080
It's, and it's very disruptive, especially if the person that you're reading has a mind
00:16:56.500
that's more powerful and more well-developed than your own.
00:16:59.600
I mean, Friedrich Nietzsche spun me around for about three years and I was reading Jung at
00:17:04.680
the same time intensely and the same thing, you know, it, it was very disruptive, but
00:17:11.480
unbelievably useful, unbelievably useful to try on other people like that.
00:17:16.500
And you get the benefit of their entire life distilled into their, into their book.
00:17:24.220
I read this one book called the Neuropsychology of Anxiety, which is a, it's a great scientific
00:17:30.040
I think it's the greatest neuropsychological work of the last 50 years.
00:17:36.320
I think it has 1800 references, something like that.
00:17:39.280
And this guy, Jeffrey Gray, he actually read all those references and he understood them.
00:17:43.960
And so it took me six months to read the book, but I got an entire education out of it.
00:17:49.300
I got to experience in six months what it took him 30 years to learn.
00:17:57.140
I was, I was listening to an interview with, uh, Gary Kasparov.
00:18:01.420
I think you said Russian, he was a chess world champion for 20 years, something like this.
00:18:07.320
And he, they asked him and the interviewer didn't ask him directly
00:18:12.860
if he could beat this young, young guy named Magnus Carlsen, who's the current kind of prodigy
00:18:20.020
of chess, he's just phenomenal and the highest chess rating ever, et cetera, et cetera.
00:18:25.360
And he didn't get asked directly if he could beat him, but it was definitely implied if
00:18:31.640
And, and what was very interesting to me, Gary Kasparov, there was two things that I found
00:18:47.160
So he has an advantage as an advantage because he's younger.
00:18:50.700
And I kind of thought to myself, well, that's kind of weird because this isn't a physical,
00:19:00.260
And then sure enough, you learn a little bit about cognitive decline and Gary Kasparov is
00:19:10.660
Well, depending on who you are, but you start to see cognitive, cognitive decline around
00:19:21.120
There's, you can, IQ is pretty unitary, but you can fracture it into crystallized and,
00:19:26.260
and fluid and fluid IQ is what enables you to learn.
00:19:33.380
Crystallized intelligence continues to grow, roughly speaking, because it's partly dependent
00:19:39.300
on such things as vocabulary, which you can learn and which accumulate.
00:19:42.540
But interestingly enough, you know, you were talking about physically, the best way to
00:19:47.720
stave off cognitive decline is not cognitive activity.
00:19:52.040
It's exercise, weightlifting and cardiovascular exercise can, is the, it's by far the most potent
00:20:01.380
So Kasparov would have the advantage in terms of experience, but the younger guy would have
00:20:14.000
And it's wrong for the exact reason that you just said.
00:20:17.860
So Magnus Carlsen, when he's 11 years old, he gets to open up a book and see every single
00:20:33.380
And so what he got to do was what you got to do.
00:20:36.080
You got to learn a person's 30 years experience in six months.
00:20:38.780
Well, this young kid, so, so this, where it might've taken Gary Kasparov, you know, eight
00:20:46.060
years or four years to figure out how to get out of some particular quandary on the chess
00:20:52.360
Well, Magnus just opened to a page in a book and said, oh, that if I ever get into that
00:20:56.560
And so what Magnus got to do is he got to start from here.
00:21:02.400
And so I make this point from a leadership perspective.
00:21:10.640
We can jump up to Gary Kasparov's level, or at least get a baseline of what he knew and,
00:21:21.780
Well, you think, and again, with regards to selling this sort of thing, you know, I'm
00:21:26.360
stunned that it's possible to make history boring.
00:21:28.800
For example, people should be so enthralled with history that they can't get enough of
00:21:32.680
But with reading, you imagine you have this opportunity to learn whatever you want from
00:21:39.300
the greatest people who ever lived along that dimension.
00:21:43.260
And, and, well, it's stunning to me that that is a hard sell.
00:21:55.140
It's mysterious that, that it's, that, that it isn't something that everyone is just clamoring
00:22:01.880
I mean, that, to me, that points to a devastating failure, inadequacy of the education system,
00:22:09.940
Yeah, there's a, I think maybe the transaction isn't always clear for people.
00:22:16.600
I always talk about, well, if you're going to sell somebody, if you're going to sell somebody
00:22:19.820
a book, you know, if I'm going to sell you a book, Jordan, you've got to give me $20 and
00:22:28.800
That's what, you know, you're going to give me, you're going to give me $20 and you're
00:22:31.660
going to give me eight hours of time, which you would probably, you know, have other things
00:22:37.300
And the transaction is not always clear of what you're going to get out of that, especially
00:22:41.360
when, look, you can spend a lot of time reading books and not get as much as you might want.
00:22:45.380
You might not get your $20 worth out of a book.
00:22:49.200
Now, luckily, it's not even that hard to figure out which books to read because there's so
00:22:53.480
many reviews and, and, and, and history about where these books came from and the, and the
00:22:59.980
And so, but I think it's hard sometimes for, look, I can, I can only speak for myself.
00:23:05.980
When I was younger, it was really hard for me to figure out that transaction.
00:23:12.260
Like I had a librarian when I was 13 who told me what to read, which is what a teacher should
00:23:23.960
That's better than say, well, here's 10 books that will change you completely.
00:23:29.900
And one of the things I'd really like to do, I I've toyed with, um, well, with the whole
00:23:37.540
One thing I'd really like to do is to divide up the variety of, of domains of learning and
00:23:46.640
So to ask an expert, it's like, well, you're a historian, you're a great historian.
00:23:52.980
And I have a list on my website, a list of recommended books.
00:23:56.280
There's about a hundred of them that have been instrumental for me.
00:23:58.680
And lots of people have used that list to purchase books.
00:24:02.520
So that's been really good, but I'd really like to extend, extend and expand it.
00:24:07.140
Yeah, I have the same thing on my website, the books from the podcast and same thing.
00:24:13.520
All kinds of those books get sold and it's, it's beautiful to see, but the people that
00:24:19.340
are checking the website or listening to the podcast, they know that that those books have
00:24:25.140
They're there because they're going to be worth that transaction.
00:24:28.140
And I think that's a tough sell for, for a lot of people.
00:24:32.400
They can't figure out, maybe they've invested in books before and they didn't quite get the
00:24:35.580
return on investment that they wanted and buy two or three books and 50 or $60 and 20 or
00:24:42.200
Yeah, that's, that's a great observation, I think, because one of the advantages to coming
00:24:46.580
from a literate background is that you do in fact, reduce the transaction costs because
00:24:54.040
I mean, well, no, there isn't, but as far as we're concerned, there might as well be.
00:24:58.420
And so the question of what to read really is daunting.
00:25:00.800
If you don't know anyone who reads, where do I start?
00:25:04.280
And, and, and how can I not be a fool in doing this?
00:25:12.980
So what, what were you reading when you were in university?
00:25:18.740
What, what were you, what were you focusing on?
00:25:28.480
I read everything, you know, from each one of the little periods and it took the various
00:25:32.040
classes and, and really as trite as this may sound, it was actually the, the most impact
00:25:47.340
And when I've covered Shakespeare on my podcast, I explained this to people, people think, well,
00:25:55.660
And I, I, so I start off when I talk about Shakespeare on my podcast, I start off by saying,
00:26:01.020
listen, if you think you're going to just pick up Shakespeare, open it up and read it
00:26:08.220
You're not going to, because it's barely written in English.
00:26:16.340
And so you're not going to be able to just pick it up and read through it.
00:26:19.200
It's, it's, it's written in, in almost other language.
00:26:23.640
So what you have to do is you have to start to interpret it.
00:26:26.060
And so what I realized with, with Shakespeare is number one, the weight of the words that
00:26:31.060
these words were so pregnant with meaning that you had to pull those words and parse those
00:26:39.040
words and pull those words apart to see all the depth that each individual word had.
00:26:46.900
And what was great about this was by the time I was back, because then I went right back
00:26:51.280
into the SEAL teams and somebody would hand me a rules of engagement document.
00:26:54.500
And that was written by some lawyer in Washington, DC.
00:26:57.080
And I'd pull it out and say, wait a second, this word, I don't know what this word means.
00:27:01.020
Let's see what this, let's see what this actual definition of this particular word is
00:27:04.200
and how that changes my viewpoint of these rules of engagement.
00:27:06.900
And how can I translate that for my troops so that they actually know what to do.
00:27:10.480
So that part for me was from a reading perspective, starting to read Shakespeare and saying, oh,
00:27:20.840
And if you don't understand something, that's okay.
00:27:23.740
You pull out the Oxford English Dictionary and you look it up.
00:27:27.200
And then you not just find out what the meaning of the word is, but what's the root word and
00:27:31.660
where does it come from and what kind of depth and what kind of...
00:27:34.120
Yeah, and that's really, that's unbelievably useful to discover the connotation of words.
00:27:39.380
And the Oxford English Dictionary is particularly good for that because you discover things that
00:27:45.320
you'd never guess by looking at how the word developed.
00:27:48.480
I mentioned the word hamartia, like the fact that the word for sin was derived from an archery
00:27:57.100
It ties this moral concept, abstract philosophy back down to something as primordial as weaponry
00:28:06.260
and hunting. And just the fact that that's the metaphor is absolutely fascinating.
00:28:11.480
And then there's the overlap in meaning that I already referred to. And virtually every word is
00:28:15.900
like that because word is an ancient artifact. It's like an animal in some sense. It has an
00:28:22.320
evolutionary history and it transforms across time. And each word kind of, it carries the echoes of
00:28:27.940
its past with it too, because each word attracts other words in a particular unique way. So it kind
00:28:35.680
of lives in a word ecosystem as well. And the ecosystem contain information about the history
00:28:41.200
of that word. And you think, well, why is that important? It's like, well, hey, guess what?
00:28:45.980
You think in words, you talk in words, you have all these archaic entities, these words, these living
00:28:56.080
entities that you use. It's like, the more you know about them, the more you know about you,
00:29:00.260
the more you know about other people, and the better you are at formulating and communicating
00:29:04.880
your ideas. There's nothing lost in that kind of investigation. There's nothing but gain there.
00:29:11.820
So. Yeah. And that's, that was, so that was the, that was the English road for me. And it was.
00:29:18.780
Good thing I asked you that question, eh? Yeah. That was really, really insightful for you to come
00:29:23.580
up with that. Thank you. Thank you. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to
00:29:30.100
the safety demonstration on a flight. Most of the time, you'll probably be fine. But what if one day
00:29:35.320
that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do? In our hyper-connected
00:29:40.900
world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury. It's a fundamental right. Every time you connect
00:29:45.760
to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your
00:29:50.700
personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it. And let's be clear,
00:29:55.160
it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this. With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy
00:30:00.020
teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details. Now, you might
00:30:05.680
think, what's the big deal? Who'd want my data anyway? Well, on the dark web, your personal
00:30:10.320
information could fetch up to $1,000. That's right, there's a whole underground economy built
00:30:15.600
on stolen identities. Enter ExpressVPN. It's like a digital fortress, creating an encrypted tunnel
00:30:21.640
between your device and the internet. Their encryption is so robust that it would take a
00:30:26.040
hacker with a supercomputer over a billion years to crack it. But don't let its power fool you.
00:30:31.160
ExpressVPN is incredibly user-friendly. With just one click, you're protected across all your devices.
00:30:36.180
Phones, laptops, tablets, you name it. That's why I use ExpressVPN whenever I'm traveling or
00:30:41.560
working from a coffee shop. It gives me peace of mind knowing that my research, communications,
00:30:45.980
and personal data are shielded from prying eyes. Secure your online data today by visiting
00:30:50.980
expressvpn.com slash jordan. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash jordan,
00:30:57.320
and you can get an extra three months free. Expressvpn.com slash jordan.
00:31:05.660
Starting a business can be tough, but thanks to Shopify, running your online storefront is
00:31:10.240
easier than ever. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of
00:31:15.280
your business. From the launch your online shop stage, all the way to the did we just hit a million
00:31:19.640
orders stage, Shopify is here to help you grow. Our marketing team uses Shopify every day to sell
00:31:25.380
our merchandise, and we love how easy it is to add more items, ship products, and track conversions.
00:31:31.000
With Shopify, customize your online store to your style with flexible templates and powerful tools,
00:31:36.320
alongside an endless list of integrations and third-party apps like on-demand printing,
00:31:40.800
accounting, and chatbots. Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best
00:31:45.700
converting checkout, up to 36% better compared to other leading e-commerce platforms. No matter how
00:31:51.420
big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take
00:31:55.300
your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash
00:32:00.980
jbp, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash jbp now to grow your business, no matter what stage
00:32:10.980
Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe
00:32:18.900
on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive
00:32:25.080
fairs. Discover more at viking.com. The question of what constitutes an acceptable value structure is
00:32:31.980
an incredibly deep question, and maybe part of the reason that your books have been successful is
00:32:37.400
because so many people are asking that question now. I think so. Sorry, I'm anticipating your
00:32:50.260
question, which I assume is why is that? Well, and what's it done for you, this investigation?
00:32:58.520
Well, that's an interesting question because I've always seen my work, and my background is just
00:33:10.040
blogging. I don't have an academic background in this stuff like you do, but I started blogging in
00:33:17.200
2008. Initially, I used it as my own vehicle for personal development, growth, developing emotional
00:33:29.740
intelligence, managing relationships, all these things. The way my career has unspooled is
00:33:38.440
whatever issue I'm struggling with at that period of my life, I investigate it, and then I write about
00:33:47.160
it as, and the writing is kind of my own personal form of digestion, I suppose, and there's, I just
00:33:55.020
kind of have this faith that if I'm going through it, then there must be a lot of other people going
00:33:59.100
through it as well. I actually think that's the answer to why your book was so successful, is that it is
00:34:05.100
the case that there's a large population of people who are, who have the same questions that you do, and, and are
00:34:12.660
stumped in the same way that you are or were, and that you're leading them through a process of
00:34:18.400
investigation and thought at exactly the level that's, there's this idea from developmental psychology
00:34:26.380
that a man named Vygotsky originated called the zone of proximal development, and adults speak to
00:34:33.460
infants and toddlers with implicit knowledge of the zone of proximal development, and what they do is
00:34:39.140
speak at a level that's slightly more advanced than the infant or toddler can understand, and that
00:34:45.680
leads them, so they can mostly understand the adult speech, but not quite, and that leads them
00:34:50.860
further, right? They can understand, but they're also forced to develop further understanding, and
00:34:56.160
I've noticed when I was teaching that it was often the case that when I was trying to figure out
00:35:01.260
something out, that was the best time to teach it, rather than after I had figured it out,
00:35:05.480
because then I would have forgot what the problem was, and also what I didn't know.
00:35:11.080
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me. I think part of it is, this is kind of the hypothesis I lay out
00:35:18.560
in the book, and it's something I still believe, but I think when you, when you live in a society where
00:35:25.680
information is no longer scarce, where there's essentially more stuff for you to consume, and
00:35:31.620
understand, and learn about, then is humanly possible. The most obvious question becomes,
00:35:38.720
what is worth pursuing? What is worth learning about? What is worth trusting and believing in?
00:35:44.880
I think if you look at previous generations, you know, information was scarce, opportunities were
00:35:51.300
more scarce, and so people had, kind of, from an early point in their life, a more clear path of what
00:35:59.120
they should be following, and what they should be learning about, and I think today,
00:36:07.300
starting with millennials, and even more so with Gen Z, it's, you know, we've grown up with this
00:36:11.880
overabundance of information, and an opportunity of paths, life paths, to choose for ourselves,
00:36:18.600
and so it, kind of, on paper, that sounds like a great thing, and it is a great thing in a lot of ways,
00:36:24.240
but it also, kind of, invites these existential questions of what is worth pursuing, and I just
00:36:30.840
found that, you know, myself, and a lot of my peers, and, and, and friends, kind of, went into what
00:36:38.340
most people would call midlife crisis in our 20s, and, and, and for me, writing subtle art was, kind of,
00:36:46.080
writing my way out of that. It was, as you said, investigating these value structures, you know,
00:36:51.400
going back to the philosophers, and trying to understand, you know, what, what their ideas
00:36:56.940
around these things were, and, and it's, for me, it kind of, you asked me, you know, your original
00:37:04.160
question was, what did it do for me? For me, it, it gave me a sense of, sense that I understood
00:37:12.880
where I was, I guess, I guess it helped me create, like, a map, of how to navigate my life, and,
00:37:24.020
and so it was, was subtle art, it was, kind of, I wanted to provide the right questions for a lay
00:37:30.580
person, you know, somebody who's not going to go read Nietzsche, or somebody who's not going to
00:37:34.700
study existentialism, to ask the right questions that will, kind of, help them do the same thing,
00:37:40.520
in a more basic way. Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through
00:37:48.140
the heart of Europe, on an elegant Viking longship, with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment,
00:37:54.400
and all-inclusive fairs. Discover more at viking.com. If you're trying to exist creatively, not only
00:38:01.880
is it a very high-risk proposition financially, but you lack that psychological, uh, comfort that comes
00:38:11.280
from routine, which, you know, people, artistic people often are hypercritical of routine, but
00:38:17.780
God live, man, routine keeps you sane, and trying to invent yourself every day, that's, that's not for
00:38:24.920
the faint-hearted. I've seen very few people manage that successfully across decades.
00:38:29.180
No, absolutely. And I, I think particular, you know, particularly in comedy, you know,
00:38:34.440
you, because you have to work for about three or four years on the circuit without getting paid
00:38:37.780
anything. In fact, you're losing money because you're paying for your travel expenses, and then
00:38:40.640
you get somewhere and you don't get, you don't get paid for it. And, and it's, this is why a lot,
00:38:45.140
you'll find a lot of comedians, particularly in the UK, are from, are from quite wealthy backgrounds
00:38:49.160
or privately educated, because they, you know, they have rich parents who can help them out,
00:38:53.780
put them up in a flat, and they don't have to work during the day. And, and they escalate much
00:38:57.480
quicker through the ranks. But, but if you come from my sort of background, you can't do that.
00:39:01.780
You have to have the job. And then, and, and you have to, it's like having two jobs. And so you have
00:39:08.040
to really care about it. I mean, my, my advice is always that I do believe, although it comes with
00:39:12.500
that insecurity, if it is a vocation for you, you have to do, I mean, for me, I couldn't have done
00:39:19.080
anything. It's, it is a genuine vocation for me. Even if I were making no money whatsoever out of
00:39:24.060
comedy or writing or the rest, I would still be doing it because I would feel unfulfilled
00:39:29.320
if I were not doing it. I think there's something also quite, I mean, I take your point about
00:39:33.220
the practicalities of living and the business of living, but my God, I think depriving yourself
00:39:40.680
No, it is. Well, for, for, I've, I've spent a lot of time studying creativity scientifically. And
00:39:45.860
the first thing that's useful to note is that creativity is not common. I mean, everyone isn't
00:39:53.720
creative. That's wrong. Some people are very creative. A minority of people are very creative.
00:40:00.020
And I mean, it's, it's a continuum, but you don't get, you know, you don't get creativity till you get
00:40:05.740
out to the point where what you're doing is original and that's very difficult. So it's a minority
00:40:10.640
proposition. And then of those original people, there's only a tiny fraction that can make a
00:40:15.380
successful financial go of it because it's just, you have to be creative. Plus you have to have
00:40:20.400
some sense for marketing and sales and business, and you have to be reasonably emotionally stable
00:40:25.380
and et cetera, et cetera. It's very, very difficult. But if you are creative by temperament,
00:40:32.380
well, that's you. And to not do that is to not be you. It's like asking an extroverted person not to
00:40:39.180
be around people or an agreeable person not to engage in intimate relationships or a conscientious
00:40:45.200
person not to be driven by duty. It's like, that's what you're like. And so, yeah, you're
00:40:50.280
stuck with it. It's a double-edged sword creativity. It's vital. It's entrancing. It's necessary.
00:40:56.420
It's transformative. It's disruptive, but it's a high risk, high risk, high return game. And the
00:41:04.020
probability of failure is overwhelmingly high. Even if you're an entrepreneur and, you know, more
00:41:10.140
practically oriented in your creativity, the probability that you'll make money from your
00:41:14.580
innovation or your invention rather than other people is very, very low.
00:41:19.480
But you need to find a way. I mean, it's also very difficult if you're a creative person to,
00:41:23.780
a lot of creative people don't think in practical terms. They don't think in terms of money,
00:41:28.440
actually. They're hopeless. A lot of them, I know, are hopeless in this stuff.
00:41:31.220
No, they also tend to be casually contemptuous of that and to regard it as practical concerns as
00:41:35.620
selling out. It's like, you should be bloody happy if you have the opportunity to sell out.
00:41:40.720
So I think that the ideal is to find a way to pursue your vocation, but have one eye
00:41:44.720
on the reality that, you know, you will have to earn money somewhere or another.
00:41:52.400
That's why I think I'm lucky insofar as with Titania, I hit on something that had commercial
00:41:56.860
viability, but it was very true to what I desperately wanted to do. And I think that's so rare. I think
00:42:01.380
some of the stuff I've written, some of the plays I've written, for instance, I don't think would have
00:42:05.220
any commercial success whatsoever, but I wrote them because I needed to write them. And some of them
00:42:10.220
didn't even get on. And maybe one day they will, and that would be great. But what if you were to kind of...
00:42:14.340
Right, well, just think what you have to accomplish, though, right? You have to have
00:42:16.700
your creative endeavor aligned with market demand at exactly that time.
00:42:27.200
Actually, that's why I always say don't attempt to anticipate the zeitgeist, because you won't.
00:42:32.220
Like, the best thing an artist can do is do what they believe and hope, because a lot of it is luck.
00:42:39.080
Yes, well, I mean, there's actually, there's a technical literature on that, too. I mean, what, essentially,
00:42:46.520
And it's a Darwinian competition, essentially. They're like life forms, these ideas.
00:42:50.380
And now and then, one will find a niche that it can thrive in. But the best way to maximize your chances
00:42:58.260
that that niche will manifest itself is to be, is to overproduce.
00:43:04.220
Because, look, I'll give you an example. I answered a bunch of questions on Quora.
00:43:10.120
So that's a website where anybody can ask any questions and anybody can answer.
00:43:13.560
I answered about 50 when I was playing with Quora. And one of them was a list of everything people
00:43:18.760
should know, of things people should know in their life. And I derived my books out of that list.
00:43:23.620
It was disproportionately successful. Most of the answers I generated got virtually no views.
00:43:30.100
But it got, it must be hundreds of thousands now. But even before I wrote the books, it was tens of
00:43:34.260
thousands. But had I not written 50, I wouldn't have got that one.
00:43:39.260
And the other 49 failures, so to speak, were, the answers weren't necessarily worse.
00:43:46.320
They just didn't hit the zeitgeist like that answer did.
00:43:51.420
I think that's a great piece of advice, overproduction, because it's the same with the Beatles.
00:43:56.040
They look like an overnight success. It's because they've been playing endlessly in those dingy clubs in Europe,
00:44:02.460
you know, before it happened. You produce as much as you can.
00:44:07.060
It takes 10 years to become an overnight success.
00:44:09.260
That's it. So, you know, of most of the things I've written, I've done nothing and gone nowhere
00:44:14.620
and had no success whatsoever. It's just, but the one thing, occasionally when it hits,
00:44:21.800
And it's also why creativity continues to be selected, let's say, from a biological perspective.
00:44:27.480
It's like, that's why I said it was a high risk, high return game.
00:44:30.020
Almost everything you do creatively will fail, but now and then you're disproportionately successful.
00:44:40.680
You didn't have any sense, did you, that when you put the lectures on YouTube that it would explode in this way?
00:44:59.020
You know, you get at the center of a whirlwind like that,
00:45:07.200
And I mean, I keep getting hit by surreal things,
00:45:12.760
Like, this Red Skull episode was just one of many equally surreal occurrences, but...
00:45:25.820
I knew I was working on something important back when I was in my 20s,
00:45:29.000
when I wrote my first book, and it was out of that that all my lectures came.
00:45:32.600
And I spent 15 years working on that book, and I worked on it about three hours a day.
00:45:40.540
And so I knew there was something to it, not necessarily because they were my ideas,
00:45:45.660
but because of the people who I had read and delved into while I was writing the book.
00:45:53.220
And I could see the effect of the ideas when I was lecturing on my students.
00:45:57.540
So I had some sense that there was something vital, that I was involved in something vital, but...
00:46:06.000
But had you uploaded those videos a couple of years before or a couple of years later,
00:46:09.840
you probably would have missed the zeitgeist and nothing would have happened.
00:46:14.400
I always think with any kind of creative endeavor or intellectual endeavor,
00:46:19.900
It has to be good and the timing has to be right.
00:46:25.180
If you just keep doing it, not only does your craft get better and you are...
00:46:30.020
If it does hit, you're in a position to be able to handle it.
00:46:34.080
Okay, so in scientific literature, the hallmark of impact is citations.
00:46:39.280
And so if your work is cited, it means that someone who's written another scientific article
00:46:48.820
And it's used for promotions and it's used to judge scientific merit.
00:46:59.060
A very small number of your published papers accrue most of the citations.
00:47:05.640
So what that means is the more papers you publish,
00:47:07.780
the more likely it is that one of them will become highly cited.
00:47:11.680
And my highly cited papers aren't necessarily the ones that I thought would be most impactful.
00:47:17.060
So yeah, you but the other piece of information from literature on creativity is that the best
00:47:28.760
And so you could index quality by impact, let's say, or by citations is quantity.
00:47:33.280
Yeah, it's not a great predictor, but it's the best one.
00:47:36.480
And so this is good advice for everyone out there who's a musician or an artist.
00:47:41.200
It's like, produce, produce, produce, produce as much as you can, because you do get better
00:47:50.120
But there's also, I think the other important thing is to actually be true to yourself in
00:47:55.900
your artistic endeavors insofar as don't be trying to anticipate the design, guys.
00:47:59.760
Don't be trying to anticipate what other people are doing.
00:48:01.200
My big concern in the current climate that we live in is that a lot of artists are choosing
00:48:06.400
to self-censor because the penalty for risk-taking has got too high.
00:48:12.160
You know, you can be completely, I mean, if I think of an example like-
00:48:15.600
Think about what kind of catastrophe that is, because we've already discussed the fact
00:48:19.460
that the impediments to creativity are almost insurmountable.
00:48:23.420
And so then you add an additional one, which is self-censorship because of social pressure.
00:48:27.520
It's like, you just decimate the creative enterprise by doing that.
00:48:34.580
I mean, an example I often think of is one of my favorite playwrights is Edward Albee.
00:48:38.920
And when he came to write his play, The Goat, which was a very controversial play because
00:48:42.600
it was about a man having an affair, a sexual affair with a goat behind his wife's back.
00:48:52.140
At least it wasn't sort of an open sort of paganistic thing.
00:48:54.860
But I mean, it's a shocking play and it's meant to be.
00:48:58.840
It's about where our lines of tolerance are, where they lie and why.
00:49:04.400
And all of his friends told him, don't do this.
00:49:07.160
You've got a valuable career, an incredible reputation.
00:49:10.660
He was roughly 80 years old when this play came out.
00:49:13.100
And they said, you're just going to scupper everything.
00:49:15.320
And he said that when he got that response, that's the reason he did it.
00:49:19.260
He went out there and he put the play on and it turned out to be a huge success.
00:49:27.940
So it just goes to show, I think, to an extent, I mean, I'm not saying disregard feedback from
00:49:34.160
other creative people or people who have suggestions.
00:49:36.620
What I am saying is if you're true to your muse, whatever that is, the rewards will come,
00:49:44.780
So that brings us back to free speech, too, because, you know, the problem with laws that
00:49:50.260
abridge free speech is they abridge creative endeavor.
00:49:53.140
And that's a terrible thing because it's the source of endless renewal.
00:49:57.140
And it's the thing that fixes corrupt structures.
00:50:00.200
And so to take aim at that is to take aim at the very process that would rescue you from
00:50:06.160
the conundrum you are pretending to be obsessed by.
00:50:10.220
I wrote the screenplay for Love and Honor, and that got me into the office of a young
00:50:16.240
woman named Rebecca Pollack, who's Sidney Pollack's daughter.
00:50:19.760
Sidney Pollack directed Out of Africa, Jeremiah Johnson, Three Days of the Condor.
00:50:27.060
And I told her the story of Braveheart in about 10 minutes.
00:50:34.360
And I said, do you want an outline or something?
00:50:36.520
And she went, what, I'm going to tell you how to write Act 2?
00:50:44.880
What do you think it was about you that made doors open for you like that?
00:50:56.800
I mean, these are all very difficult enterprises to gain a foothold in.
00:51:00.260
And you tell stories over and over about people offering you the chance.
00:51:06.340
Was that the salesman skill that your father had?
00:51:13.480
I have to guess, Jordan, because to see ourselves as others see us is clearly the hard thing.
00:51:19.960
But I do think I am incredibly blessed that I had this salesman father whose heart was as big as the ocean.
00:51:34.020
And I had this brilliant mother who was absolute steel inside and tender.
00:51:42.720
I mean, she was an iron hand and a velvet glove.
00:51:48.080
But it makes sense because you think, well, you need the creativity and you've got that.
00:51:52.040
And you need the discipline to work and you've got that.
00:51:57.620
You have to be able to make contact with people.
00:51:59.500
You have to be able to communicate with them about your material.
00:52:09.200
And look, whenever anyone says, thank goodness I have this gift of God, it's so self-aggrandizing like you're elevating your gifts.
00:52:19.500
But I think there is a thing that I didn't create, but I have chosen to follow, which is there's something about being bold and being willing to take the punch, to be able to walk in.
00:52:38.560
And it's like when I decided I would write my screenplay first, I like writing original screenplays without going to a company and saying, like it was an original screenplay, what we call a spec screenplay, that got me into Rebecca's office in the first place, that got her to listen about Braveheart.
00:52:59.400
And there's an element of tremendous daring to say, I don't have to have your endorsement or your money to sit down and write this.
00:53:12.920
And in fact, I like the equation of it to say, if I write this, and I've made this choice a dozen times in my career, if I write it and it doesn't sell, I will live with that.
00:53:25.180
Well, I will have written what I believe, I will have written what I want, I will have written the movie I want to make.
00:53:33.120
And if you say you don't want to buy it, the next guy might, and then you're going to look like an idiot.
00:53:42.340
That theme comes out quite strongly in Secretariat.
00:53:48.900
Because she pursues that investment in her horse, in that famous, remarkable horse.
00:54:02.860
And I feel that there's something, and obviously we can be projecting this onto the horse.
00:54:12.320
But the metaphor of the movie for me was, actually I wrote the song of the end credits called It's Who You Are.
00:54:24.740
It's not the prize, it's not the game, it's not the score, it's not the fame.
00:54:29.960
When every road looks way too far, it's not what you have, it's who you are.
00:54:34.520
And in that, you choose your race, and then you run.
00:54:40.580
And I'll say that to myself over and over, I say it to myself daily, is don't miss the chance to live this day.
00:54:51.320
And when I'm divorced, and it was the most wrenching, horrific thing of my life.
00:54:58.320
And I would get out of bed in the morning and drop straight down to my knees and pray for the strength to get through the day.
00:55:07.260
And at the end of the day, when I would get down on my knees to say thanks, I would think, well, I did have faith today.
00:55:17.140
I did get through the day, and at least enough to get through the day.
00:55:30.560
I mean, it sounds like it, from what you're relating.
00:55:35.640
I mean, you don't talk about it much, but when you touch on it, it's quite clear that that was an experience that took the slats out from underneath you.
00:55:46.880
And I don't talk about it too much because there are other people involved, but it's my family.
00:55:55.040
And it was wrenching for all of us, but it may be that the depression also contributed.
00:56:07.160
It's very difficult to live with someone who has a predisposition to depression.
00:56:12.560
And so, yeah, it certainly was the fight within me, but at the same time, there was something beautiful.
00:56:25.500
I mean, there were many beautiful things that come out of such darkness.
00:56:29.220
Um, one was, um, I was putting up Christmas lights at the, that the house I had moved to, to try to rebuild my life.
00:56:40.520
And, and, and my sons, I would see my sons three days a week.
00:56:47.960
And, and, um, and I was trying to make my home look beautiful and I was putting up Christmas lights and I was getting really depressed.
00:56:55.100
And, um, I was talking with my therapist is a brilliant guy.
00:57:01.760
And I said, you know, I can't really date anybody.
00:57:04.580
And I, I, you know, I'm not seeing my sons enough and my neighbors don't celebrate Christmas.
00:57:11.000
And, and I'm, I'm putting up Christmas lights and I'm getting more depressed doing it.
00:57:19.120
You don't put your Christmas lights up for your neighbors to see.
00:57:24.080
You don't put them up for someone you're dating to see.
00:57:27.280
You don't even put them up for your children to see.
00:57:35.360
And I thought, God, what a great way to think of everything we do in our lives.
00:57:43.400
If I, if I labor in, in an anonymity, if nobody knows it, um, but I've done it so that God sees it,
00:57:53.240
then that's better than if I did something I don't believe in that everybody applauded me for.
00:58:01.820
Um, and, um, so that, that's just been a, it's, it's a choice.
00:58:08.520
I continually have to make and struggle with to affirm, but, um, it's, it's the one I really believe in.
00:58:17.520
I don't think that people would create anything that was truly original if they didn't think like that.
00:58:23.740
You know, because if it's original and surprising, there's no track record for it.
00:58:34.700
You have to, there's just no option but to take the risk.
00:58:37.960
And so if that line of thinking didn't exist, then there'd be no way that you would take the risk.
00:58:48.500
Maybe that's why creativity and religion, religious thinking are aligned so tightly.
00:58:52.500
It's that you have to make that leap of faith to produce something that's original, virtually by definition.
00:59:00.580
And despite, you see that again, that theme sort of playing out in Secretariat because all the advice that is given to the Chenery, Chenery is her name, right?
00:59:13.220
She owns this horse, Remarkable Horse, and anyone sensible would have sold him because she was going to lose everything, including her credibility.
00:59:25.040
But she didn't, and she was right, but there was no proof of that to begin with.
00:59:30.560
That was a leap of faith, and I don't, I really don't see how you can do something original without that leap of faith because, just as I said, there's no track record.
00:59:43.220
Well, Jordanette, I hadn't thought of this at all before this conversation, but it strikes me that there's something, as you mentioned that, in common with you and her.
00:59:54.900
And when I say how isolating it is to take that leap, I got to know Penny.
01:00:03.040
I, I, I, I've, I've, I've had the, the opportunity to make several movies about people who are still living when the movie's being made.
01:00:15.040
And, and every time I do it, I swear I won't do it again because I'd rather be free, yes, yes.
01:00:21.620
But, I got to know Penny, and boy, there was fire in that woman.
01:00:26.380
And, and I, she was well into her 90s when we started making Secretariat, and she was incredibly attractive.
01:00:38.660
The, her, her eyes were so full of life and were so direct.
01:00:42.740
And, um, um, when we went to the Kentucky Derby together, right after the movie was made, which was certainly a magical moment.
01:00:55.680
You know, we just made the movie, and now we're going to, it's the next running of the Kentucky Derby.
01:01:02.420
And, and, and I got to go with Penny, and of course, Penny's in, at, at Churchill Downs, you know, she was, she was a rock star.
01:01:11.460
And, uh, you know, uh, everybody knew we were making the movie is, uh, Disney movie is going to be seen by a lot of people.
01:01:18.540
And, and, um, we, we saw the race together and everything builds up at the Kentucky Derby to the Derby itself.
01:01:26.000
It's the Derby is like the eighth race of eighth or ninth race of a whole day of racing.
01:01:32.420
So, uh, and then there are races after the Derby.
01:01:36.360
So when the Derby was over, it builds this crescendo.
01:01:41.060
Everybody walked back into the, the party rooms and forgot us.
01:01:47.400
And I was left out on a balcony, just Penny and me.
01:01:53.400
And, uh, and we're standing there together and I thought, okay, this is a sacred moment.
01:01:58.220
And, um, this is probably going to be the last time I see her.
01:02:03.200
And, um, she looked down at the horse that had just won.
01:02:06.680
They were, they had, um, taken the saddle off the horse and we're kind of cooling him down.
01:02:11.600
And, and she looked down and said, that's, that's a well, well-bred horse.
01:02:18.420
And I looked at her and said, Penny, we've come to the end of this movie process and, and now it won't, it won't be in the movie.
01:02:28.240
Uh, but tell me, uh, tell me, what did you not tell me?
01:02:32.220
What have you, what, what did you want to say that has never been told?
01:02:39.640
And she paused and she looked down at the, the box seats where she would sit as an owner.
01:02:46.520
And she said, I sat down there alone every day alone.
01:02:53.540
And the other owners would tolerate me, but they never accepted me.
01:02:58.360
And, um, and I, I just thought about that there there's, there's that cost of stepping out there of leaping out there alone.
01:03:07.040
And, and, and the, the thing to me about it is like, there's a rabbi.
01:03:14.540
And you have to believe it's worth doing for itself.
01:03:18.700
And, and in a way you, you hope it's worth doing, but you don't know.
01:03:24.680
I have, I have a friend here who's a rabbi named Mordecai Finley.
01:03:29.460
And, um, you know, for anybody as Gentile as me, it's always fun when I say he's my rabbi.
01:03:40.580
Um, and I, a friend named Steve Pressfield is an incredible writer wrote a book called the war of art, which you'd be very interested in.
01:03:48.620
I think, um, but Steve Pressfield was, um, investigating his own faith.
01:03:54.960
He had decided to, to, to look into spiritual matters.
01:03:58.780
And he asked me to go along with him to rabbi Finley's lectures at the university of Judaism.
01:04:04.680
And, uh, rabbi Finley is very practical guys got a son in the Marine Corps.
01:04:10.620
He's got a daughter and Israeli intelligence and, and, uh, he's a tough guy.
01:04:16.360
And, and he said, you know, people say, follow your heart instead of your head.
01:04:21.120
Well, your heart's the only thing less reliable than your head.
01:04:24.160
So that statement sort of sat for a minute and somebody raised their hand and said, well, then how do we know what to do?
01:04:32.700
And rabbi Finley paused for a long time as you do, by the way, when like, like you're considering the, the question of fresh, it's not like, oh, here's my pat answer.
01:04:44.780
It's like, well, let me find what, what's the true answer right now.
01:04:50.560
And he said, a couple of times in my life, I've been hanging by my fingernails over the abyss.
01:04:59.800
And I let go because I couldn't hang on anymore.
01:05:06.580
And he said, I didn't know it would be the arms of God when I let go.
01:05:13.700
If I had known it, it wouldn't truly have been letting go.
01:05:18.100
And I was sitting there in this crowd of people going, and he looked at me and pointed at me and he goes, Christians know this.
01:05:29.260
In our tradition, we, we have to sort of look for that concept.
01:05:41.160
It's, it's, I don't know every time when I sit down that, that I'm not wasting my time, that I'm not just going to ruin, you know, a ream of paper or, or, or that I'm not going to beggar my children.
01:05:57.380
Or I'm not going to write something that somebody is going to hate.
01:06:01.160
But, but, but my mother had a saying she gave me when we had just made, we were soldiers and my father died.
01:06:11.620
And it's written in my book about, at the end of, we were soldiers, my father passed away.
01:06:19.240
And, and we, after, after his funeral, and I was back to work.
01:06:26.420
I was calling my mother every day and, and I called her and said, how are you doing?
01:06:32.960
And she said, well, I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing okay.
01:06:39.940
And I said, well, you know, I've, we're, we're testing the movie tonight.
01:06:49.360
And she said, well, why does that make you nervous?
01:06:52.480
And I said, well, there are a lot of people that come to these things intentionally just to be snarky, just to, just to, you know, to sling mud at you.
01:07:01.480
And, and, and when you've put your, your blood and your sweat and your tears and your money into a work, and, you know, people are going to do that, it kind of makes you nervous.
01:07:14.840
And my mother said, well, honey, if they crucified Jesus Christ, they're going to be some people that don't like you.
01:07:22.620
So Jordan, if they crucified Jesus Christ, they're going to be some people that don't like you.
01:07:52.620
This message comes from Viking committed to exploring the world and comfort journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking long ship with thoughtful service, destination focused dining and cultural enrichment on board and on shore.
01:08:16.620
And every Viking voyage is all inclusive with no children and no casinos.