The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 232. Narrative, Story, and Writing pt. 2

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.

00:00:23.780 Discover more at viking.com.

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.

00:00:46.640 With decades of experience helping patients,

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.

00:01:17.600 Welcome to episode 241 of the JBP podcast.

00:01:25.360 I'm Mikayla Peterson.

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

00:01:39.000 and what that ability can add to your life.

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.

00:02:03.880 I hope you enjoy this compilation episode.

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.

00:02:17.340 I hope you enjoy this episode.

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.

00:02:43.420 Where did you go?

00:02:44.520 I went to the University of San Diego.

00:02:46.760 You went to the University of San Diego.

00:02:48.180 What did you take there?

00:02:49.820 I was an English major.

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?

00:02:59.460 Why were you 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

00:03:07.080 and blowing things up.

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.

00:03:13.700 Okay.

00:03:15.480 Why was I an English major?

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,

00:03:35.120 you have to write them an award.

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.

00:03:43.180 You have to write evaluations for your troops.

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.

00:04:11.920 You know, that's so insanely important.

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.

00:04:55.680 And that was really the case.

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.

00:05:14.720 And it's the writing part of that.

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,

00:05:25.780 to help people write.

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,

00:05:34.820 is that nothing can stop you if you can write.

00:05:38.500 And it's for the reasons you just laid out.

00:05:40.480 It's like, when you write, you make a case for something,

00:05:44.860 whatever it happens to be.

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.

00:05:53.580 And so, you know, you said,

00:05:56.200 maybe that's why I didn't ask you why you went into English.

00:05:58.620 I guess that might have been the reason,

00:06:00.580 is that the utility of learning to write is so self-evident to me

00:06:04.460 that it could pass by without question.

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

00:06:15.920 of looking at things.

00:06:17.440 You know, you describe the intense relationship

00:06:20.520 between marshalling your arguments properly,

00:06:23.680 getting everything in order on the page,

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,

00:06:37.900 well, look what it's done.

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.

00:06:44.540 So that ability to communicate is,

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.

00:06:57.140 You're adventurous, you want to make a mark,

00:07:00.860 is you bloody well better learn how to write.

00:07:03.100 Because if you learn how to write, well, then you can think,

00:07:05.880 and you can communicate your thoughts.

00:07:07.520 So not only are you deadly strategically,

00:07:09.680 you become extremely convincing.

00:07:11.840 And then you can go and do anything you want,

00:07:14.040 and no one will stop you.

00:07:16.060 And that's never told to people.

00:07:18.600 And I don't really understand why.

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.

00:07:31.460 Yeah.

00:07:31.740 You have to communicate what happened as well as having it had it happen.

00:07:36.100 Right.

00:07:36.700 So you already connected the dots,

00:07:39.580 but obviously not only am I having to write and present my argument,

00:07:44.320 I'm also having orders being issued to me,

00:07:47.960 which are written.

00:07:49.000 And I'm sure you've heard the term rules of engagement.

00:07:52.100 Well,

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.

00:08:08.860 And so I've got to be able to do that.

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

00:08:22.600 why we're doing this mission.

00:08:24.580 So that was why I decided to study English when I,

00:08:30.660 when I went to college and believe.

00:08:32.760 So that was a conscious decision.

00:08:34.660 Absolutely.

00:08:35.320 And with that end in mind that it was.

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.

00:08:54.900 Right.

00:08:55.200 Here's the, here's the thought process.

00:08:57.580 I want to be a good seal.

00:09:00.120 The good seals that I see can communicate.

00:09:03.760 They can write and they can read.

00:09:05.480 That's what I need to learn how to do.

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.

00:09:25.220 Okay.

00:09:25.380 So, so let's say you take the example of a seal who's got it all,

00:09:29.560 but this literacy.

00:09:33.340 Okay.

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.

00:09:58.180 Okay.

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,

00:10:13.680 they're never going to meet that leader.

00:10:15.960 And they're definitely not going to meet that guy.

00:10:17.740 There's no, there's no bias.

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.

00:10:31.100 And it's the same thing.

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, 0.67

00:10:43.900 that doesn't make any sense.

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.

00:10:52.580 So it has a huge impact.

00:10:55.640 It has a huge impact.

00:10:57.640 Okay.

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,

00:11:16.060 except the absolutely immediate.

00:11:19.320 And so it's just sad to me that it's not sold in that manner.

00:11:25.480 You want to be weak, stay illiterate.

00:11:28.360 You want to be strong.

00:11:29.720 It's like, put yourself together physically.

00:11:31.960 Fair enough, man.

00:11:33.060 Get brave and street smart.

00:11:35.500 But then you could add some literacy to that and you're an unstoppable machine.

00:11:40.880 So I concur 100%.

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.

00:11:58.140 Right.

00:11:58.340 Well, we haven't even talked about reading, you know, we just talked about writing and

00:12:01.560 fair enough.

00:12:02.440 So, but obviously you studied English.

00:12:04.860 So you also read.

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

00:12:27.900 of what can unfold through reading.

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.

00:12:43.520 There there's a book.

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

00:13:05.080 because I was talking about it all the time.

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,

00:13:21.880 I would read, open up that book anywhere.

00:13:23.720 And I would read two pages or three pages before I'd go to bed.

00:13:26.500 If I was in my bed that night.

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.

00:13:41.560 And guess what? 0.98

00:13:42.600 They're all corrupt and they're not motivated and they don't have the right gear. 0.63

00:13:45.860 And here we are in Iraq and we're working with Iraqi soldiers. 0.90

00:13:48.500 And therefore by proxy, we're working with the Iraqi government.

00:13:51.020 Guess what? 0.97

00:13:51.600 They're all corrupted. 0.92

00:13:52.740 They're, they're, they're not well-equipped.

00:13:54.660 And how do you, how did he deal with it?

00:13:56.580 How do we deal with it?

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

00:14:03.840 have to go through the school of hard knocks.

00:14:05.920 You don't have to get punched in the face repeatedly with things that turn out to be situations that

00:14:12.820 other people have absolutely gone through.

00:14:15.260 And the amount of, the amount of the, the, the, the, the level of capability increases

00:14:23.640 so much by seeing something one single time.

00:14:27.480 Well, if I see something one time, I'm, I'm infinitely better than if I'd never seen it

00:14:32.320 before.

00:14:32.540 So if, if it's like those, you know, those little puzzles, they give you a little puzzle,

00:14:38.200 some kind of a mind bender, right?

00:14:40.740 The mind benders only work on you one time. 1.00

00:14:42.580 The riddle only works on you one time.

00:14:44.280 Then you go, I know the answer to that.

00:14:46.640 That's the answer.

00:14:47.340 You know, you never get fooled by that again.

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?

00:14:58.740 It's, I gotta say this.

00:15:02.540 It's not just reading.

00:15:04.980 It's not just reading.

00:15:06.360 And, and I learned this because as I started doing my podcast and many of my podcasts are

00:15:12.460 just me reading books.

00:15:16.000 I realized how to read more intently, even more intently than I did when I was going to

00:15:22.440 college.

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

00:15:35.040 development or what have you.

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

00:15:55.680 there.

00:15:55.840 Cause I was right there with them.

00:15:57.960 And so there's a certain attitude.

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

00:16:11.360 to read intensely?

00:16:13.000 Absolutely.

00:16:13.960 Because that's what I try and do.

00:16:15.360 I get there.

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

00:16:25.180 up, man.

00:16:26.380 Especially if the person is thinking all sorts of things that you've never thought.

00:16:29.860 I mean, I love reading for that reason.

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

00:16:50.180 myself with that person.

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.

00:17:21.680 You know, it, it, it's 30 years of work.

00:17:24.220 I read this one book called the Neuropsychology of Anxiety, which is a, it's a great scientific

00:17:29.440 work.

00:17:30.040 I think it's the greatest neuropsychological work of the last 50 years.

00:17:34.580 It's very hard book.

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.

00:17:53.480 Like what a gift that is.

00:17:55.220 It's, it's, it's unbelievable.

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

00:18:30.440 I remember the interview correctly.

00:18:31.640 And, and what was very interesting to me, Gary Kasparov, there was two things that I found

00:18:36.520 interesting.

00:18:37.400 Number one was he said, he's younger than me.

00:18:41.080 And he didn't mean that.

00:18:42.320 And like, that was an advantage for, for Gary.

00:18:45.240 He meant it.

00:18:46.120 He's younger than me.

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,

00:18:55.540 this isn't a wrestling match.

00:18:56.960 This isn't a jujitsu match.

00:18:58.500 Why would that help?

00:19:00.260 And then sure enough, you learn a little bit about cognitive decline and Gary Kasparov is

00:19:06.780 57 years old when he did this interview.

00:19:08.660 And guess what you start?

00:19:10.660 Well, depending on who you are, but you start to see cognitive, cognitive decline around

00:19:17.140 that time.

00:19:17.920 And I'm sure it kicks in at 25.

00:19:20.020 Well, there you go.

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.

00:19:30.780 And it declines from 25 onward.

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

00:19:58.920 means of staving off cognitive decline.

00:20:01.200 Yeah.

00:20:01.380 So Kasparov would have the advantage in terms of experience, but the younger guy would have

00:20:06.020 the edge on, on sheer raw brain power.

00:20:08.600 That's what I thought too.

00:20:10.840 That's what I thought too.

00:20:12.320 But guess what?

00:20:13.420 It's wrong.

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

00:20:25.600 match and move that Gary Kasparov ever made.

00:20:29.840 Because that's what they do.

00:20:30.980 They document that stuff.

00:20:32.340 Of course.

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

00:20:51.380 board.

00:20:52.360 Well, Magnus just opened to a page in a book and said, oh, that if I ever get into that

00:20:55.540 quandary, I'm there.

00:20:56.560 And so what Magnus got to do is he got to start from here.

00:21:00.680 Right.

00:21:01.340 And build.

00:21:02.400 And so I make this point from a leadership perspective.

00:21:05.800 Yeah.

00:21:06.000 We can do the same things as, as leaders.

00:21:08.800 We don't have to figure all this stuff out.

00:21:10.640 We can jump up to Gary Kasparov's level, or at least get a baseline of what he knew and,

00:21:16.780 and win because we learned.

00:21:19.940 It's very interesting to me.

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

00:21:32.560 it.

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

00:22:01.520 for.

00:22:01.880 I mean, that, to me, that points to a devastating failure, inadequacy of the education system,

00:22:06.980 a mysterious inadequacy.

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

00:22:26.680 eight hours of your time.

00:22:28.380 Right.

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

00:22:36.260 that you might need to do.

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.

00:22:47.780 So you have to be somewhat selective.

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

00:22:58.460 productivity that they resulted in.

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.

00:23:11.340 Yeah, fair enough.

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

00:23:21.800 do, right?

00:23:22.360 There's nothing a teacher can do for you.

00:23:23.960 That's better than say, well, here's 10 books that will change you completely.

00:23:27.440 And who actually knows that to be the case.

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

00:23:35.920 concept of online education.

00:23:37.540 One thing I'd really like to do is to divide up the variety of, of domains of learning and

00:23:43.920 identify the top 10 books in each domain.

00:23:46.640 So to ask an expert, it's like, well, you're a historian, you're a great historian.

00:23:50.780 What 10 books are crucial.

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

00:24:23.580 been through a filter.

00:24:24.320 They're there for a reason.

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

00:24:41.380 30 hours.

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

00:24:52.320 there's an infinite number of books.

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? 0.89

00:25:04.280 And, and, and how can I not be a fool in doing this? 0.94

00:25:08.960 So, well, okay, back to English. 0.89

00:25:12.980 So what, what were you reading when you were in university?

00:25:16.080 Was it, was it fiction novels?

00:25:17.620 Was it nonfiction?

00:25:18.740 What, what were you, what were you focusing on?

00:25:22.020 It was like your basic English literature.

00:25:25.420 That's what I studied.

00:25:26.400 And so I read everything.

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

00:25:40.080 was from Shakespeare.

00:25:41.140 It was the most impact on, on multiple levels.

00:25:45.580 And I'll tell you the primary level.

00:25:47.340 And when I've covered Shakespeare on my podcast, I explained this to people, people think, well,

00:25:52.980 you know, I didn't really understand.

00:25:54.240 I read it and understand it.

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

00:26:06.780 and understand it.

00:26:08.220 You're not going to, because it's barely written in English.

00:26:13.020 It's barely written in English.

00:26:14.360 It's almost another language.

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.

00:26:44.140 And then the way that they're put together.

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.

00:27:00.120 Let's pull this word out.

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,

00:27:18.820 okay, you're not going to understand this.

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

00:27:53.860 concept was revelatory to me.

00:27:55.700 It's like, that's so cool.

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

00:32:07.880 you're in. That's shopify.com slash jbp.

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

00:39:38.100 of your vocation can be so soul destroying.

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.

00:41:49.400 Yes, yes. I agree.

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.

00:42:23.640 Right. It's impossible.

00:42:25.440 Yes, it's very, very unlikely.

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,

00:42:43.860 what you do is continue to produce ideas.

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.

00:43:23.200 Yes.

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,

00:44:20.140 that's what sustains all the rest of it.

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.

00:44:38.360 And so that keeps the whole game going.

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?

00:44:45.460 I mean, that wasn't...

00:44:46.680 In this way, this was completely...

00:44:48.360 I still...

00:44:49.040 I'm still shocked constantly by my life.

00:44:53.020 I'm shocked out of sanity by my life.

00:44:56.580 I just can't...

00:44:57.340 This is why I asked you about Titania.

00:44:59.020 You know, you get at the center of a whirlwind like that,

00:45:03.080 and there's something very surreal about it.

00:45:07.200 And I mean, I keep getting hit by surreal things,

00:45:10.480 and it's very hard to wrap my head around it.

00:45:12.760 Like, this Red Skull episode was just one of many equally surreal occurrences, but...

00:45:21.240 Yes.

00:45:22.620 No, I had no idea.

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.

00:45:36.740 And so I...

00:45:37.660 And I thought about it all the time.

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.

00:45:50.760 I knew the ideas were significant.

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...

00:46:05.600 Sure.

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.

00:46:12.260 You know, I mean, it doesn't matter.

00:46:14.400 I always think with any kind of creative endeavor or intellectual endeavor,

00:46:17.260 it doesn't matter how good you are in a sense.

00:46:19.900 It has to be good and the timing has to be right.

00:46:22.100 And like you say, if you just keep...

00:46:24.160 I think persistence is it.

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.

00:46:32.760 Look, if you...

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

00:46:44.140 makes reference to something you wrote.

00:46:47.680 And that's all tracked.

00:46:48.820 And it's used for promotions and it's used to judge scientific merit.

00:46:53.040 It's its own science, citation tracking.

00:46:59.060 A very small number of your published papers accrue most of the citations.

00:47:04.600 So that's the first thing.

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

00:47:26.120 predictor of quality.

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

00:47:46.160 at it, right?

00:47:47.860 You absolutely do.

00:47:48.920 And so there's that.

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.

00:48:31.580 We wouldn't have anything.

00:48:32.560 The Western canon would be decimated. 0.77

00:48:34.080 It's ridiculous.

00:48:34.580 I mean, an example I often think of is one of my favorite playwrights is Edward Albee. 0.90

00:48:38.920 And when he came to write his play, The Goat, which was a very controversial play because 0.61

00:48:42.600 it was about a man having an affair, a sexual affair with a goat behind his wife's back.

00:48:46.740 And obviously that doesn't sound palatable. 0.98

00:48:48.620 Well, at least he went behind his wife's back. 0.68

00:48:51.620 Exactly.

00:48:52.140 At least it wasn't sort of an open sort of paganistic thing.

00:48:54.660 Absolutely.

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.

00:49:09.760 You're turning 80.

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.

00:49:23.060 It won, I think, the Tony Award for best play.

00:49:24.720 It was critically and commercially successful.

00:49:26.900 It was absolutely massive.

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,

00:49:42.780 actually, or they are more likely to 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.

00:50:31.300 And she went, my God, go write that.

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?

00:50:38.600 Go write that.

00:50:40.980 And that led me into...

00:50:44.880 What do you think it was about you that made doors open for you like that?

00:50:54.580 It's quite a remarkable theme.

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?

00:51:10.660 Do you think?

00:51:11.220 What was it?

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. 1.00

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.

00:51:54.540 But that's not enough.

00:51:55.880 You have to be able to market.

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.

00:52:02.640 Because otherwise you languish.

00:52:04.520 But you had that too.

00:52:05.540 Yes, but I think there's something.

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. 0.99

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. 1.00

00:53:39.640 And that equation- 1.00

00:53:42.340 That theme comes out quite strongly in Secretariat.

00:53:47.160 Yes, yes it does.

00:53:48.900 Because she pursues that investment in her horse, in that famous, remarkable horse.

00:53:56.240 Yes.

00:53:56.740 Single-mindedly.

00:53:58.120 And at high risk.

00:54:01.960 Yes.

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.

00:55:22.460 And if it weren't...

00:55:24.380 Did that catapult you into depression as well?

00:55:27.820 Oh, yeah.

00:55:28.720 Oh, yeah.

00:55:30.160 Yeah.

00:55:30.560 I mean, it sounds like it, from what you're relating.

00:55:33.820 And that came through in your book, too.

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. 0.56

00:55:46.460 Yes.

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.

00:56:02.000 Yes.

00:56:02.680 You know, it was...

00:56:05.640 It's highly probable.

00:56:07.160 It's very difficult to live with someone who has a predisposition to depression.

00:56:11.480 Yeah.

00:56:12.000 It's hard.

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.

00:56:46.220 And that was very strained.

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.

00:57:00.120 And, and I told him about that.

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.

00:57:15.860 And he said, well, how about this?

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.

00:57:29.840 God sees your Christmas lights.

00:57:32.040 Put your Christmas lights up for God to see.

00:57:35.360 And I thought, God, what a great way to think of everything we do in our lives.

00:57:39.480 Like, here's, here's what it is most.

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.

00:58:31.480 There's no proof that it's valid, right?

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.

00:58:45.720 Exactly.

00:58:46.640 I mean, I was always the kid that.

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.

00:58:59.740 Yes.

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?

00:59:12.260 Ms. Chenery.

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.

00:59:24.140 Yes.

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. 1.00

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.

01:02:15.740 Um, just casual comment.

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?

01:02:37.120 What, what have you kept from me?

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.

01:03:17.160 Yeah, exactly.

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.

01:03:34.680 Uh, and rabbi Finley was a Marine.

01:03:38.080 He's a brilliant thinker.

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.

01:04:48.560 And he paused like that.

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.

01:05:04.300 And I fell into the arms of God.

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.

01:05:26.400 Christians know grace.

01:05:29.260 In our tradition, we, we have to sort of look for that concept.

01:05:34.120 It's there, but we have to look for it.

01:05:35.740 But he said, it's grace.

01:05:38.980 And, and I think about that.

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.

01:06:16.460 And he died on 9-11.

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.

01:06:35.940 How are you doing?

01:06:36.740 And I said, well, I'm nervous today.

01:06:38.940 And she said, why?

01:06:39.940 And I said, well, you know, I've, we're, we're testing the movie tonight.

01:06:46.700 We're going to have its first public test.

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.

01:07:12.860 Yeah, I would say so.

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.

01:08:22.880 Discover more at Viking.com.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - March 03, 2022

232. Narrative, Story, and Writing pt. 2

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript