This Past Weekend with Theo Von - E503 Robert Greene

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00:00:30.120 I have some new tour dates to tell you about.

00:00:33.160 We've added a third show in London on June 16th at the Evan Tim Apollo.

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00:01:20.860 Thank you guys so much for your support.

00:01:22.480 Today's guest is one of the best-selling authors of the last 20 years.

00:01:28.260 You may know him from his books, The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery, as well as The Art of Seduction, and more books.

00:01:38.180 We're going to talk about relationships, human interaction.

00:01:42.900 We cover a lot of ground, and I'm grateful to talk with Mr. Robert Green.

00:01:48.220 Shine that light on me

00:01:52.080 I'll sit and tell you my stories

00:01:58.120 Shine on me

00:02:02.860 And I will find a song

00:02:07.060 I'll be singing

00:02:08.260 Almost

00:02:08.860 Thank you so much, man.

00:02:18.120 You're very welcome.

00:02:19.120 Really.

00:02:20.480 Please.

00:02:21.080 That's really, really nice of you.

00:02:23.220 My pleasure.

00:02:24.080 That's a wonderful gift to have 48 Laws of Power right there.

00:02:27.060 Yeah.

00:02:28.640 Yeah, thanks for coming.

00:02:29.660 Nice to meet you.

00:02:30.460 Very nice to meet you.

00:02:31.720 Yeah.

00:02:32.340 Oh, thanks.

00:02:33.220 Same.

00:02:33.600 Yeah.

00:02:33.760 Thank you for all the inspiration.

00:02:35.340 Yeah, thank you for taking the time to think and write down your thoughts and things that make you feel something or things that you feel are worth sharing with the world.

00:02:46.160 Yeah.

00:02:46.840 Well, it's been what I've been doing for 26, 28 years now.

00:02:51.440 Hopefully I can keep going for another 10, 20 years.

00:02:54.880 Yeah, unless the government puts like a word limit on people.

00:02:57.640 Or it's like it canceled for some reason.

00:02:59.900 Yeah.

00:03:00.980 Yeah, I mean...

00:03:02.620 I don't think so.

00:03:03.500 I don't think so.

00:03:04.360 I think we would...

00:03:05.760 Sometimes I wish the government would put a word limit.

00:03:08.040 Oh, sure.

00:03:08.700 On a lot of people.

00:03:09.700 Yeah.

00:03:09.960 God, yeah.

00:03:10.840 That would be wonderful.

00:03:12.300 You'd have to really articulate.

00:03:14.380 You mean for books or just in talking?

00:03:16.740 Maybe only in talking because books, it's more of a choice.

00:03:20.260 People can go to choose to look in it, you know, and read it.

00:03:23.660 But talking, it's like, yeah, you only...

00:03:25.680 You got a thousand words a day.

00:03:28.360 Of course, some people would have more, some people have less if they're really obnoxious or irritating.

00:03:32.200 Yeah.

00:03:32.640 We'd cut it down to like 200 words a day.

00:03:34.860 Yeah.

00:03:35.260 Maybe your neighbors vote on how many you have or theirs.

00:03:38.920 Yeah.

00:03:39.440 But yeah, I think it would be great.

00:03:40.760 Then if you're at...

00:03:41.340 Yeah.

00:03:42.020 Like, especially like if a guy's...

00:03:44.000 Like, a lot of guys would be like, hey, guys, come over to the house today.

00:03:47.940 You know, Marjorie only has four words left this month.

00:03:50.880 Yeah.

00:03:50.960 That'd be wonderful, yeah.

00:03:53.400 So the good times over here, you know, we're going to be able to do whatever we want.

00:03:57.820 Well, the ancient Greeks had this thing called Ostraki, where they would put on little clay tablets, fragments of a clay pot.

00:04:06.960 You could write down the name of somebody that you wanted to banish from the city.

00:04:10.700 Yes.

00:04:11.100 And then every year they would collect that and they would banish the person who got the most votes because it was inevitably the most obnoxious person in the whole city.

00:04:19.240 Can you imagine how wonderful that would be if we had something like that?

00:04:22.440 I would love that.

00:04:23.500 Well, you would think if we get to vote people forward, we should be able to also vote people...

00:04:28.160 Off the island.

00:04:29.040 Yeah.

00:04:29.520 Yeah.

00:04:30.140 Right?

00:04:30.520 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:32.520 Oh, that would be so wonderful.

00:04:34.140 And it could even start in your own home, you know?

00:04:37.260 With your kids.

00:04:38.000 I mean, well, okay.

00:04:40.600 I think it's up to the...

00:04:42.240 I mean, it would be quite a topic for family discussion.

00:04:46.460 Oh, here it is right here.

00:04:48.980 Ostracism.

00:04:49.500 That's what the word ostracism comes from.

00:04:51.020 Wow, that's pretty cool.

00:04:51.780 They got that, yeah.

00:04:52.680 Was an Athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for 10 years.

00:04:59.560 So you get a chance to get it together.

00:05:01.620 While some instances clearly express popular anger at the citizen, ostracism was often used preemptively.

00:05:07.460 It was used as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or a potential tyrant.

00:05:13.700 Though in many cases, popular opinion often informed the expulsion.

00:05:18.880 Wow.

00:05:19.520 Wow, that's pretty cool.

00:05:21.200 They put that up there.

00:05:22.500 Broken pottery.

00:05:23.660 Yeah, that's what I was saying.

00:05:24.420 Shards were used.

00:05:25.700 Served as a kind of scrap paper.

00:05:27.420 Yeah.

00:05:28.860 Wow.

00:05:29.740 That'd be exciting.

00:05:30.720 Yeah, it would.

00:05:32.040 It would, yeah.

00:05:32.600 Let's bring it back.

00:05:33.700 Yeah, let's bring it back, huh?

00:05:35.060 Be a movement.

00:05:35.760 Yeah.

00:05:37.460 Yeah, you've written so much, man.

00:05:39.920 48 Laws of Power, Mastery are the books that I've absorbed the most of, which is so nice to have this.

00:05:49.900 This is so cool, man.

00:05:51.400 I really lit up when you gave me that.

00:05:52.940 Thank you.

00:05:53.200 And a lot of what we talk about on this show for a lot of young men and women is purpose, you know, and what it means to have purpose and how to find purpose.

00:06:03.400 And you talk a lot about that in Mastery, about purpose.

00:06:07.460 Do you think that everyone has purpose?

00:06:11.000 Well, it's a difficult question to answer, I mean, I believe that everyone, the way I look at it is, you, Theo, were born with a DNA that will never be replicated in the past or in the future.

00:06:29.080 It's a unique marker of you, right?

00:06:31.040 So genetically, there is something different about you, weird, odd, gray, however you want to put it, okay?

00:06:39.700 And it's like something that's planted at your birth.

00:06:42.180 It's what makes you different from everybody else.

00:06:44.340 It's even what makes you different from your parents, right?

00:06:47.360 I mean, you do inherit their genetics, but it's always different, okay?

00:06:51.660 And so that's like a seed at your birth.

00:06:56.280 If you cultivate that seed, if you cultivate your uniqueness, it gives you a purpose in life.

00:07:03.040 It's why you are unique.

00:07:05.480 You can look at it as if somebody or just nature intended it to be this way, but it's what makes you, you.

00:07:14.120 It's your energy.

00:07:15.340 It's your character.

00:07:16.140 It's your weirdness.

00:07:16.860 It's your sense of humor.

00:07:18.080 It's what draws you to certain things, what you hate about certain things.

00:07:21.340 It's you.

00:07:22.820 If you listen to that, it's like a voice inside of your head instead of listening to all the other bullshit that's around you, what your parents are saying, what your teachers are saying, what your friends are saying.

00:07:32.260 If you listen to that voice clearly, it directs you.

00:07:35.640 It gives you a purpose.

00:07:37.420 Now, I'm saying everybody has that potential.

00:07:42.580 I see.

00:07:42.820 But quite clearly, not everybody.

00:07:45.080 In fact, few people actually go that far.

00:07:47.960 So if you see somebody out there in the public eye, yourself or others, who's reached a level of fame and success, you can say that there's nobody else like them out there.

00:08:00.960 They're unique.

00:08:01.620 They're one of a kind, right?

00:08:03.300 You can say that about a Steve Jobs.

00:08:05.000 You can say that about Elon Musk.

00:08:07.340 You can say that about political figures, et cetera, et cetera.

00:08:09.840 Yeah.

00:08:10.300 Comedians.

00:08:10.780 Richard Simmons, Mr. T.

00:08:12.180 Yeah.

00:08:12.780 Okay.

00:08:13.840 50 Cent, somebody I've worked with.

00:08:15.720 There's only one person like them.

00:08:17.660 That's because they found their uniqueness and they brought it out and they cultivated it.

00:08:22.120 They're not afraid of it.

00:08:23.800 And that's what gives them their purpose.

00:08:25.760 A lot of people are afraid of being different.

00:08:29.080 That's one of the worst things that can happen to you.

00:08:32.240 Yeah.

00:08:32.620 Because it's what makes you different that is what makes you powerful.

00:08:36.020 So to answer your question in my long-winded way, everybody has a purpose, but not everybody follows it.

00:08:42.700 Not everybody connects to it.

00:08:44.100 But yeah, I guess there's a lot of fear in it because you're going to be different.

00:08:50.440 You're going to have to choose to – people are going to look at you.

00:08:54.240 The eyes of the tribe are going to turn towards you if you try to step out into a different march than the group.

00:09:02.060 You know, sometimes I would see like – yeah.

00:09:05.720 Sometimes I – you ever be like on a floor somewhere and you just see one ant by itself?

00:09:10.700 Yeah.

00:09:11.240 And you're like, this guy is a gangster.

00:09:13.400 Well, they're called scout ants.

00:09:15.180 I mean, I wish they were gangsters, but what they're doing is they're looking for food or something and they're signaling to the army, hey, guys, here's where it's happening.

00:09:23.520 Let's follow me.

00:09:24.420 Oh, damn.

00:09:24.900 Yeah, I thought they were dudes that were like, you know what?

00:09:27.540 I'm going to do something different.

00:09:29.360 Well, that would be the more interesting interpretation.

00:09:32.220 So then are there some – so it's not that some people don't have a purpose.

00:09:36.600 It's just that some people are able to hear a voice inside of them that directs them more towards their purpose.

00:09:42.820 Yeah.

00:09:43.120 I mean, so what is it?

00:09:44.940 I call it in mastery, I call it a primal inclination.

00:09:48.140 So we see that in certain people.

00:09:50.360 So at a very, very young age – and I maintain it happens to everybody, but you forget about it.

00:09:56.460 So you look at like Albert Einstein.

00:09:58.360 He was like four years old and his father gave him a compass, and he was like mesmerized by it because it meant that there was some kind of force out there that was moving the needle of the compass, an invisible force.

00:10:12.280 For a child, that was an overwhelming thought that there's something out there in the universe that is moving something, but you can't see it.

00:10:20.040 It had a lasting influence on his whole way of science and wanting to discover these unseen forces.

00:10:26.700 Tiger Woods, when he was like two years old, his father would be hitting golf balls in the garage, and he would be going – the little baby Tiger would be going crazy.

00:10:37.060 He's like, I've got to do this.

00:10:38.540 He was so enamored with just the physicality of it.

00:10:42.560 He had to do it.

00:10:43.840 I could go on and on and on with athletes, with dancers, with riders.

00:10:48.760 I mean, I'm not putting myself on their level, but I had a relationship when I was six years old or so to words.

00:10:56.720 Words just mesmerized me.

00:10:58.620 I couldn't believe that there was a word that meant something.

00:11:01.740 I was entranced by the sound of it, by the look of it, et cetera.

00:11:05.320 Yeah.

00:11:05.780 Well, even just to think that a bunch of letters would get together and party like that.

00:11:09.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:10.020 Exactly.

00:11:10.340 Yeah, because I remember like first they taught us letters, and I was like, okay, but then the word showed up, and I was like, oh, okay, they're in gangs.

00:11:17.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:11:18.580 You know, there's some real turf wars out here.

00:11:20.740 That's right.

00:11:21.180 Yeah, so I guess the best way for a parent then to probably help associate their child or give them the best opportunity to find or to bring their purpose to a boil would be to present them with more options, do you feel like?

00:11:44.340 Like is that kind of what you're saying?

00:11:45.840 Well, yes and no.

00:11:47.160 I mean, parents try to do too much sometimes, so children are more interesting, they're more powerful, they're smarter than we think they are.

00:11:56.900 We don't give them enough credit, so they find their ways to the things that excite them and interest them.

00:12:03.000 What you're looking for in your child is that spark, that look in their eye of excitement.

00:12:09.140 They can't control it.

00:12:10.680 I'm so excited by this.

00:12:12.400 I have to do it.

00:12:13.640 Yeah.

00:12:13.660 It could be physical activity, it could be music, it could be math, it could be technology, it could be objects and their colors.

00:12:22.380 When they have that excitement, lean into it.

00:12:25.920 Don't try and tell them, oh, I don't know, you can't make a living doing that.

00:12:29.760 You want to be a rock and roll star, you'll never make a living.

00:12:32.000 You've got to go become a lawyer.

00:12:33.580 Cut that crap out.

00:12:34.600 Let them go into their lane of excitement, encourage it, because that is a sign of what I'm talking about, that purpose that you were born with.

00:12:44.780 Is there like certain ways or times or moments that you would create for yourself or that you would suggest people create for themselves to try and hear that voice of purpose?

00:13:00.900 Well, it's a very interesting question and it's a very difficult one because I get a lot of people writing to me saying, you know, Robert, I hear what you said.

00:13:10.380 I've read your book, but I have no idea.

00:13:12.960 I can't hear it anymore, right?

00:13:15.520 I'm lost.

00:13:16.840 Right, because there's still a lot of guys who are young adolescents and middle-aged and who are like, I still don't know what my purpose is.

00:13:22.720 Yeah, well, so when you're younger, there's hope.

00:13:26.760 Like when you're 16, you'll find it, man.

00:13:28.620 And I've helped people who are younger find that path.

00:13:32.780 It's easier.

00:13:34.180 By the time you're 30 or 40, it gets more and more difficult.

00:13:37.400 When you're 50, I don't know.

00:13:39.720 It's possible, but it's harder and harder and harder.

00:13:42.240 I didn't really find my niche, if you will, until I was about 38 years old.

00:13:47.660 But until then, I knew it was writing.

00:13:50.140 I just couldn't figure out what kind of writing.

00:13:51.780 But you have to go through a process.

00:13:55.160 The problem that most people have is they're not connected to themselves.

00:14:00.420 They're too outer-directed.

00:14:02.200 They're not inner-directed.

00:14:03.860 So what you need to be doing is you need to be looking at yourself, not listening to others, not listening to what's on social media, not listening to what your peers are saying, but listening to yourself, who you are, what really, truly excites you.

00:14:17.540 You have to cut out all that other stuff that your parents told you that other people are telling you.

00:14:22.940 And so you're looking for signs of things that bring back—you're looking for your childhood again, for that child inside of you that got so excited about those things but that you forgot.

00:14:34.560 There is not a child on the planet that doesn't have that.

00:14:37.980 In Mastery, I have a story in there about a woman named Temple Grandin.

00:14:43.860 Temple Grandin was born with severe autism.

00:14:47.420 It looked like she would have to be committed for her entire life to hospitalization.

00:14:52.140 Right?

00:14:52.220 She was very deep on the spectrum, but she had a teacher that kind of slowly drew her out, and she discovered at a very early age that that excitement was animals.

00:15:04.100 And a lot of autistic people and people on the spectrum have a very intense relationship to animals.

00:15:10.620 It's humans that they can't quite relate to, but animals excite the hell out of them.

00:15:14.680 Yeah.

00:15:14.980 Humans can be so trashy, too.

00:15:16.880 Yeah.

00:15:17.200 And they can be so deceptive and tricky, but animals are genuine, right?

00:15:23.100 She found animals I love, and she became a scientist dealing with animals, animal behavior.

00:15:30.980 And so somebody born with deep, deep autism found her way to that voice.

00:15:35.380 Yeah.

00:15:35.560 So I bring that up as if someone like that can do it, anybody can do it, but it's that she really, really wanted to break out of the shell that she had been in.

00:15:45.580 And so it's the level of desire.

00:15:48.440 If you're 20 years old and you're lost and you're worried about it, but you're hungry and you don't want to be like your whole life wandering, you have a good chance.

00:16:00.040 But a lot of people don't have that energy.

00:16:01.720 They don't have that desire.

00:16:02.720 It's not strong enough in them, and it's going to be a very much more difficult process.

00:16:06.660 Bring up Temple Grendin.

00:16:08.920 I know she created – didn't she create a more – I don't know if that's the right word – heartwarming way to decease the animals?

00:16:19.360 Yes.

00:16:19.820 I mean, you put it more or less correctly.

00:16:23.120 I mean, her idea was cattle – she had a very deep connection to cows and cattle.

00:16:30.440 They're going to be slaughtered anyway.

00:16:32.060 She's not going to end – she herself eats steak, et cetera.

00:16:36.360 She's not going to end it.

00:16:38.120 But if you're going to have to kill them so that, you know, for people who eat meat, then let's do it as humanely as possible.

00:16:45.520 Yeah.

00:16:45.740 So she created a way – one of the worst things is the whole process of how we slaughter animals.

00:16:51.860 It's so horrifying for them, right?

00:16:55.700 So she had found a way to make them comfortable so that they don't really know where they're going when they're being led to the slaughterhouse,

00:17:02.960 where she knew exactly how to comfort them, how to make them feel soothed in those moments.

00:17:08.500 A little more bait and sweat.

00:17:09.660 Like, yeah, just something to – yeah, just not make it such so horrific.

00:17:13.700 Yeah.

00:17:15.020 Not make it such a haunted house.

00:17:16.760 Yeah.

00:17:17.920 Well, because also when they're so distressed, they release all these kind of hormones and things that are actually very bad for us as well.

00:17:26.180 And then it's in the food.

00:17:26.940 I believe that a ton.

00:17:28.220 Yeah.

00:17:29.360 So does everyone have the chance to find their purpose?

00:17:34.400 Say if somebody like, you know, they accidentally got a girlfriend pregnant in high school, something like that,

00:17:39.660 and they got really put off track, developed a lot more responsibility because sometimes responsibility takes away the freedom that you have,

00:17:48.560 even just the space in your life to feel anything.

00:17:51.520 Right.

00:17:52.600 But those people aren't – they don't not have a purpose.

00:17:55.560 Maybe they just haven't been able to reach it.

00:17:59.520 Well, yeah.

00:18:00.420 I mean, these things happen to everyone.

00:18:02.560 We're all human beings.

00:18:03.920 We're flawed.

00:18:04.460 We don't have – we can't see the future, especially when we're young.

00:18:10.060 We make mistakes.

00:18:11.460 We do things that we will later regret, et cetera.

00:18:14.740 And I've dealt with people who say, you know, I'm stuck in a horrible, horrible job.

00:18:19.460 I have – just like your scenario, I have a child I have to support, a family to support, and I'm flipping burgers.

00:18:27.300 I'm working at Dairy Queen.

00:18:28.280 I don't care whatever it is, right?

00:18:30.020 Yeah.

00:18:30.280 What do I do?

00:18:30.820 Selling things, selling, yeah, braiding hair at the beach, something like that.

00:18:33.800 Or telemarketing back in the day.

00:18:35.940 Yeah.

00:18:36.060 You know, so what do I do?

00:18:37.840 Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to realize that you have to want to get out of it, and you have to want it badly enough.

00:18:45.660 So you've got to figure out a path out of this trap that you're in.

00:18:49.380 And it is a trap because if you're living paycheck to paycheck, it becomes a habit, and it's going to stay with you your whole life.

00:18:55.820 So every time there isn't a paycheck, you're going to freak out, and you're going to go get the quickest, easiest job that you can get.

00:19:01.540 You have to break out of that.

00:19:02.600 So I tell people, even in the most despondent circumstances, first of all, think of what is that childhood thing that you loved?

00:19:12.900 It doesn't have to be a very specific job.

00:19:16.100 It's just something that excited you, all right?

00:19:19.060 Okay, we want to start moving in that direction.

00:19:21.680 So let's say you're flipping burgers, but what really excites you is video games and programming, which is fine.

00:19:29.820 That can be a path in life, right?

00:19:32.060 But you want to be a programmer.

00:19:33.540 You want to be the person creating video games, all right?

00:19:37.060 So let's do some research.

00:19:39.160 What is the first step that usually – what's the entry-level job that people take?

00:19:42.680 What is the education that will lead to that kind of thing, all right?

00:19:46.580 Here's step – it's like three possibilities.

00:19:49.020 You go to school, you study this, you get a job doing that, whatever, okay?

00:19:53.160 You can choose one of them, right?

00:19:55.580 And you're going to start doing it right away.

00:19:57.780 So you still have your job.

00:19:59.060 You're still paying for your family.

00:20:00.740 But you're going to go to school at night.

00:20:03.280 You're going to take a side job.

00:20:04.780 When you go home at night, you're going to study things on the internet, which is an amazing resource that nobody had 30 years ago.

00:20:11.960 You're going to learn new skills in your spare time, you know, even in the only two or three hours a day that you have.

00:20:19.100 You're going to create a little space in your brain for moving in that direction, a little wedge that's going to open up.

00:20:25.640 And I've had this feedback just knowing that that's happening.

00:20:31.320 That's just knowing that's a possibility that I don't have to be flipping burgers, that I don't have to be this horrifying, soul-sucking salesman my whole life, and that I can go this other route.

00:20:40.800 It's enough to excite the hell out of you.

00:20:43.060 It's enough to get you out of it.

00:20:44.540 It's enough to give your life some meaning and some purpose.

00:20:47.240 Yeah, and then you will build – you will follow that sort of thing.

00:20:49.820 That energy, it's like it really becomes a magnet in your life.

00:20:53.640 Yeah.

00:20:53.880 How did you find your way?

00:20:55.880 What was it that – can you go back?

00:20:59.160 Yeah, I remember – well, I wanted to – I think I wanted to make my mother laugh, you know.

00:21:09.300 My mother was always stressed out.

00:21:12.860 Wow.

00:21:13.480 So I don't mean to laugh at this.

00:21:14.540 No, it's funny.

00:21:15.420 That's terrible.

00:21:16.140 It is what it is, you know, and she would – but sometimes she'd go lay in her bikini outside and have a beer or whatever.

00:21:24.820 And so we'd left her alone on that during those hours.

00:21:29.520 But otherwise, I think I wanted to make her laugh.

00:21:32.680 I don't know.

00:21:33.380 The second I saw – I don't know.

00:21:37.260 This may sound crazy to some people.

00:21:38.880 Well, I remember being like in a – it might have just been my bed or – I don't think it was a crib because I hate – when people say that I remember at four months old like that, I think that's insane.

00:21:49.720 No, you can't.

00:21:50.200 You don't remember shit.

00:21:50.840 That's not possible.

00:21:50.940 You've been using – but I remember one time I just remember being in my bed and my brother like poked his head up and I just remember it just made me laugh.

00:22:03.700 And it was like the first thing I remember that made me feel so good.

00:22:07.880 And I just – I loved it.

00:22:10.580 That's interesting.

00:22:11.240 And then when I saw like if somebody laughed that they – even if they were sad like and you could get them to laugh, it could – that someone could be crying and then a laugh could get through that.

00:22:23.440 Yeah.

00:22:23.860 And man, I just found that – it was like watching lightning.

00:22:27.300 It's like power.

00:22:28.960 Yeah.

00:22:29.180 And it was – and it was just like watching lightning, I think.

00:22:32.200 And so, yeah, I think I loved that.

00:22:36.660 And then the other thing that ever – the happiest day I ever had in my life, I was in – I was a student actually on an exchange thing and I was in India.

00:22:46.260 Wow.

00:22:47.500 The country.

00:22:48.980 Yeah.

00:22:49.180 And we had to – we worked at this children's home clearing the land or something so they could make a playground there.

00:22:57.940 And I just – I still remembered it was the greatest feeling that I ever had, just this one day.

00:23:06.560 So, yeah, those are things in my life that –

00:23:08.580 How old were you?

00:23:09.760 The India part where I was probably 20.

00:23:12.560 Oh.

00:23:12.980 But the laughter was just most of my youth.

00:23:14.720 I just became obsessed with laughter.

00:23:16.560 I just – because it was a trump card.

00:23:19.680 Yeah.

00:23:19.840 It was like –

00:23:20.880 Yeah.

00:23:21.300 It could be a sad moment.

00:23:22.760 It could already be a happy moment.

00:23:24.160 You could take it to another level.

00:23:25.600 Well, let's just imagine a scenario where you're 26 and you're you and you somehow got off on the wrong track somewhere.

00:23:36.600 Would you be able to like remember that and remember the power and the feeling that you had when you – that laughter and then when you were a kid and your brother and then go back to it in some way?

00:23:47.240 Yeah, I think I would notice – I think it's – you can know – I feel like it's kind of easy to know what really makes you feel good.

00:23:54.940 Yeah.

00:23:55.320 I just think that sometimes circumstances have sailed our ship kind of far in other directions.

00:24:03.160 And so we may be able to appease ourselves, but we may not get to a level of mastery of it in this lifetime.

00:24:11.040 That's right.

00:24:11.440 Just because of circumstances, you know?

00:24:16.520 And then if people – another thing I notice is like a lot of times, you know, some people aren't always going to be trying to achieve and do more.

00:24:26.100 I notice I – a lot of times I enjoy also just feeling content.

00:24:30.640 Like if I can feel content, that is a victory, right?

00:24:36.220 Like what do you mean?

00:24:37.140 Like just if I can feel at peace, right?

00:24:41.440 Like not – not only – maybe I might be a little bummed if I'm not striving for something, but I'm not upset that I'm not at a level or in a place with something, a certain thing, right?

00:24:54.540 So being just content.

00:24:56.500 Like is there – there's nothing wrong with being content.

00:25:01.020 No.

00:25:01.280 The only thing is if you're completely lost in life, if you didn't – if you hadn't become a comedian, you've gone on the wrong track, it's harder to have those moments of contentment because it gnaws at you and you become a little bit bitter.

00:25:18.400 And as you get older and those childhood dreams start getting fading, you feel resentful and some dark energy can start taking over and that contentment can be harder and harder to come by.

00:25:31.720 But to have moments of peace, to have moments where you're just happy and you've got – your kids are on the – you're raising them well, et cetera, et cetera, that's fine.

00:25:41.580 That's beautiful.

00:25:42.160 That's another form of mastery.

00:25:43.760 I just think – and I could be wrong because I'm not inside the skin of other people and I've only known myself, I have to say.

00:25:54.160 But if – I could say that pretty confidently.

00:25:59.840 But, you know, I have the feeling that if you don't know what you're doing and you're just flailing around in life, it's hard to have those peaceful moments in your day-to-day existence.

00:26:11.940 You may find them, but what will happen is you will try and grab – because this is the nature of the human animal.

00:26:19.040 You will try to grab that contentment through quick things, through drugs, through online porn, through whatever it will give you that quick, instant little buzz of gratification.

00:26:30.400 Oh, yeah.

00:26:30.920 Watch the porn out.

00:26:32.280 And that will become your habit.

00:26:34.300 And you'll feel kind of – I don't know if it's contentment.

00:26:37.040 And, you know, you'll feel something, some form of pleasure.

00:26:41.100 But those pleasures become harder and they become smaller and smaller and smaller and quicker and quicker and quicker.

00:26:47.080 And so it's a trap that you fall into.

00:26:49.680 So I still believe that if you figure out what you were meant to do in life, it opens up doors to having other moments where you don't have to constantly be pursuing.

00:27:00.140 You don't have to constantly be striving, you know.

00:27:02.580 So, like, I can sit down and I can watch a basketball game tonight and enjoy it and not feel like I'm wasting my time because I work so much hard during the day.

00:27:12.200 Right.

00:27:12.880 Yeah, I think that's kind of what I'm getting at is it doesn't have to be occupational, finding your purpose.

00:27:18.360 No.

00:27:18.860 Yeah.

00:27:19.600 Yeah, because sometimes I think the best thing that a person could be could be a parent.

00:27:24.600 For sure.

00:27:26.140 Believe me, we need more of them.

00:27:28.060 Yeah.

00:27:28.380 God damn, that should be, like, a job that people should get a degree for.

00:27:32.080 It really should.

00:27:32.940 You know?

00:27:33.220 Yeah, I would subsidize – if governments subsidize parenting, good parenting, wow, I would be –

00:27:39.380 Or put people to school to go learn how to do it.

00:27:41.820 Yeah.

00:27:42.440 Yeah.

00:27:43.300 Oh, well, there should be at least a fanflet when you leave the hospital that says, hey, these are seven things you have to do, right?

00:27:51.820 But, you know, I think – I don't have kids, so it's easy for me to say.

00:27:55.300 Oh, yeah, me either.

00:27:56.280 So we're just obviously a couple of grifters yelling at people.

00:27:59.080 Yeah, yeah, right.

00:28:01.140 But, no, I do think, though, that there should be something that tells a parent basic things because you can't just assume everyone has the knowledge just because they can conceive a child.

00:28:13.080 That's right.

00:28:13.560 That's right.

00:28:43.560 You need to know it.

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00:31:14.280 Is pornography causing a problem in your life?

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00:31:20.380 It has in mind.

00:31:21.920 It has at certain periods in my life, watching porno and everything and watching porno was making me, it was ruining my life.

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00:33:01.180 You talk a lot about how unique humans are, you know, and just how rare.

00:33:07.040 Like, how unique is it that a person exists?

00:33:11.700 How unique is an individual?

00:33:13.400 Oh, well, it's something I'm going into in my new book.

00:33:20.020 And I'm trying to tell you how you must realize how strange it is for you to be alive at this moment.

00:33:26.980 I don't know if that's quite what your question is.

00:33:29.180 No, I think it is kind of.

00:33:30.420 How rare is it?

00:33:31.320 Like, sometimes I want to be able to remember how rare I am.

00:33:39.320 And not just me.

00:33:40.100 I mean that as a voice of a human.

00:33:43.160 I want to be – I want to remind myself more often that I am one of one.

00:33:51.140 And not me, but every person.

00:33:53.460 Yeah.

00:33:55.080 Well, the way I try to describe it in my new book – I'm not going to go into the full thing because it will take hours.

00:34:00.860 But first of all, the idea that our planet has life on it is incredibly strange and weird.

00:34:08.800 It was like an accident, totally fortuitous.

00:34:11.700 We know billions of other planets that have no life, right?

00:34:14.860 So something snapped three billion years ago, four billion years ago that we don't understand.

00:34:20.480 Wow.

00:34:20.800 All right.

00:34:21.240 From that point on, life evolved in this weird fashion.

00:34:26.140 And there was this moment about 600 million years ago called the – the word escapes me.

00:34:33.320 It's a period in history.

00:34:35.360 Mesoloic?

00:34:36.140 No, no, no.

00:34:36.760 It's before that.

00:34:38.780 It'll come to me later.

00:34:41.600 600 million years ago?

00:34:43.120 600 million years ago.

00:34:44.860 Suddenly, life became complex.

00:34:47.120 It'll come to me at some point.

00:34:48.260 Maybe it's the Cretaceous period.

00:34:49.660 Spring or something?

00:34:50.980 Cretaceous.

00:34:51.960 Cretaceous.

00:34:53.080 Cretaceous.

00:34:53.820 So suddenly, complex life evolved.

00:34:58.400 Cambrian explosion.

00:34:59.340 Cambrian explosion.

00:35:00.640 Thank you, sir.

00:35:01.580 Sorry, not to cut you off.

00:35:02.560 Thank you, you see.

00:35:03.220 But 600 million years ago, the Earth experienced an evolutionary event which has never been repeated.

00:35:07.180 The Cambrian explosion saw a huge increase in new life forms, many of which laid the foundations for the body plans of all subsequent animal life.

00:35:15.540 Wow, I've never even heard of that.

00:35:16.720 So yeah, there's this guy, Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote a book about the Cambrian explosion and how there were these forms of life, and he has pictures in his book, of these really grotesque-looking creatures that lived in the ocean because all life was in water then.

00:35:31.040 And if only one plan survived, which is the plan that all bodies basically have, right, with a head, et cetera, et cetera, but if that hadn't happened and it almost didn't, the strangest, most weird-looking forms of life would be walking around this planet.

00:35:47.560 You have to see these pictures to believe it, right?

00:35:49.700 Anyway, that happened.

00:35:52.760 Okay, I can go on and on and on.

00:35:54.720 Then there were the dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs disappeared because of, we now know, because of a meteor.

00:36:03.860 What do you call it?

00:36:06.520 Heat or something?

00:36:07.520 No, no, no.

00:36:08.120 A meteor hit the planet.

00:36:09.480 Oh, a big bang.

00:36:10.960 Yeah.

00:36:11.460 Or like a meteor wiped everything out.

00:36:14.500 Yeah.

00:36:14.840 It shook the whole thing, huh?

00:36:16.120 About 60 million years ago, right?

00:36:18.440 It ended up to the extinction of dinosaurs.

00:36:20.640 But that meteor could have easily missed planet Earth.

00:36:25.240 It had shifted just a slight degree.

00:36:29.000 It could have hit somewhere else, but it landed in exactly the spot in the Yucatan Peninsula that caused the greatest amount of damage.

00:36:35.920 If that hadn't happened, dinosaurs would still be roaming the planet.

00:36:38.920 And then we wouldn't.

00:36:39.740 We wouldn't.

00:36:40.460 Humans, about 80,000 years ago, nearly went extinct.

00:36:44.320 There were only about 8,000 of us.

00:36:46.440 We had been decimated by various illnesses, et cetera.

00:36:49.280 We very nearly went extinct as a species, okay?

00:36:53.280 So humans surviving all of that, surviving that life evolves, surviving that life evolved in the way that it did, that dinosaurs disappeared, that mammals came on, is extremely unlikely.

00:37:06.060 And then add on to this, Theo, the fact that your parents met and there was a chance that they, the chance that they met was probably a bit unlikely.

00:37:16.880 It could have easily been somebody else who was your father, right?

00:37:20.120 And then you would still be you, but you wouldn't be you exactly.

00:37:24.240 It'd be different.

00:37:25.740 Multiply that by 70,000 generations going back to the earliest humans.

00:37:30.900 If they hadn't met in a certain way, if they hadn't met each other, you would be completely, you wouldn't be you at all, right?

00:37:37.720 So the fact that you were here, the odds against it are so astronomical that you, I say in the book, you must have to sit down on your knees and it's almost like a religion.

00:37:48.240 You must think it is so strange, it is so miraculous, that I'm so grateful that I am who I am.

00:37:55.420 It is incredible.

00:37:56.480 There's a reason for that, you know?

00:37:58.060 Yeah.

00:37:58.880 Yeah, I think that's something, yeah, that we all should, yeah, it's like that you were here like you were, there was purpose in you.

00:38:06.420 There was some, the universe chose this.

00:38:09.940 Yeah.

00:38:10.120 Whoever you are, the universe chose you.

00:38:13.380 Whatever pain, whatever prosperity, whatever this walk is right now, that you were chosen for it.

00:38:21.460 It's like, I feel like it just gives, I don't know if it helps me have some ownership when I'm thinking of myself or I don't know what it does for me,

00:38:32.020 but I think it's important to hear that because I think more than ever now, it feels like that individuality is getting lost for how rare we are to exist.

00:38:46.100 Yeah.

00:38:46.580 Like, no, we only, only some of us have the same fingerprint.

00:38:49.420 None of us have the same fingerprints, right?

00:38:50.940 Right.

00:38:51.720 That's crazy, bro.

00:38:53.180 Yeah.

00:38:53.740 You know?

00:38:54.960 And I think also, is this, I think I read that the, everybody has the same, nobody has the same sphincter either, which is, yeah, the 11th fingerprint.

00:39:07.300 Never thought of it that way.

00:39:08.720 Yeah, so that's crazy.

00:39:10.020 Just to think that at, you know, at the, at both ends, they really got you sealed off, you know, very, you know, uniquely.

00:39:17.160 But it's definitely just, but I feel like for as unique as we are, we're losing individuality sometimes.

00:39:24.180 And that's a problem that I feel like is going on today.

00:39:27.560 A lot of it is social media.

00:39:30.040 I mean, you don't want to beat that drum too much, but I think there's some, some truth to it.

00:39:34.500 Like, we're, we're too much attuned to what other people are doing and it's hard for us to think about what we want, what we make, what makes us different.

00:39:43.920 You know, a lot of young people going to high school, I mean, I know, I remember when I was in high school being, being weird and different.

00:39:51.040 You, you, you, you were, you could be laughed at, but I think it's much, much worse right now.

00:39:56.060 Really?

00:39:56.640 Yes, I do.

00:39:57.840 I mean, I, I mean, I was kind of a loner in high school, kind of as a hippie, had very long hair.

00:40:03.980 Yeah.

00:40:04.520 Did a lot of drugs.

00:40:05.540 Yeah, buddy.

00:40:07.400 Oh, there you are right there, Bobby Green.

00:40:10.020 Robert Green right there.

00:40:12.160 Wow.

00:40:12.360 That's me, that's, that's the 19-year-old Robert.

00:40:15.340 Bro, you look like you were looping right there, gooming on some boomers.

00:40:18.060 Yeah, we were, we were doing a lot of LSD at that time.

00:40:21.680 You could see the tie-dyed sofa behind me.

00:40:24.520 They had a tie-dyed sofa?

00:40:26.140 Yeah, look at that, look at that thing.

00:40:28.880 Yeah, we were like getting into the Grateful Dead, if you can believe it.

00:40:33.140 Oh, yeah.

00:40:34.500 American Beauty, yeah, that album was out, yeah?

00:40:36.540 Yeah, Working Class Dead was the one, Working Man's Dead was the one that we were, that came out just at that time.

00:40:41.680 Would you, who would you, who would you take it with, by yourself, or would you take it with friends?

00:40:45.940 Oh, we took it with friends.

00:40:47.160 Yeah.

00:40:47.440 You really want me to go into this?

00:40:50.040 Yeah.

00:40:50.120 I mean, the drug that we really, really, really liked at this point, we're talking about the 70s, I'm an old dude, man, was peyote.

00:40:57.600 Wow, I never got to do it.

00:40:58.880 It was really big, because this was in Berkeley, and it was like, it was like the trendy thing.

00:41:05.600 We would get, there are these buttons from Cactus from Mexico or Arizona, and they were, if you ate them, you would like be incredibly sick.

00:41:14.520 So you had to pull out all these little hairs so that you could digest them without throwing up.

00:41:19.860 Wow.

00:41:20.280 Then you had to, and they tasted absolutely horrible.

00:41:22.600 You had to put them into these tiny little pieces and eat it in like peanut butter or like a milkshake so you didn't have, just swallowed it.

00:41:30.460 Man, you'd be tripping like you can't believe it.

00:41:33.480 It was just unbelievable.

00:41:35.060 Yeah.

00:41:35.280 Totally transcendent, the most spiritual drug of all.

00:41:39.220 Really?

00:41:39.840 Yeah.

00:41:40.580 How would it get more, like, because spiritual is a unique word to use, because LSD would get like freaky and weird sometimes.

00:41:47.760 Mushrooms would get more spiritual, I felt like.

00:41:49.920 Definitely.

00:41:50.540 So peyote, you felt like went even more spiritual than that?

00:41:53.580 I think so.

00:41:54.700 Wow.

00:41:54.880 I think so.

00:41:55.660 I mean, I did it probably maybe about a dozen times when I was younger.

00:42:00.220 Yeah.

00:42:00.620 And I've done LSD and I've done, and mushrooms are pretty spiritual.

00:42:06.380 God, I'm revealing all this crap of my youth, but.

00:42:09.640 No, I think it's important.

00:42:10.740 A lot of people do these things, especially psychedelics are coming back more than ever now.

00:42:14.320 Well, I must say I don't do them anymore.

00:42:16.260 I mean, I've tried little tiny micro dosing of mushrooms.

00:42:20.100 Yeah.

00:42:20.520 I don't do it anymore.

00:42:22.200 But it had a very positive impact on me.

00:42:25.500 It opened my mind to things that I will never forget, right?

00:42:30.400 Experiences that still resonate in my brain that I may not create through drugs, but I

00:42:34.840 create through other means.

00:42:36.000 I like try to return to spiritual sensations that are very powerful.

00:42:41.680 So those drugs could be used, could be, I say, for very positive purposes.

00:42:47.320 They shouldn't be used just for partying and just for forgetting yourself, but they can

00:42:51.460 be used to open what Aldous Huxley called the doors of perception.

00:42:55.340 Yeah.

00:42:55.840 That's a great way.

00:42:56.740 Yeah.

00:42:56.940 That's the biggest thing is just the perception.

00:42:58.620 Because perception is how you change everything about your life.

00:43:01.980 Like, yeah, mushrooms have helped me many times to have perception adjustment, to realize

00:43:10.140 where I was being, not giving myself enough grace or just being, to trying to be, control

00:43:17.160 things to, you know, just to relate, just to have a little more.

00:43:19.860 Yeah.

00:43:20.080 Because mushrooms is like a sponge, you know, just to add a little bit more space into my,

00:43:25.120 into your, how you view things or see things.

00:43:27.720 And it could be anything, a relationship.

00:43:29.660 I mean, there's business situations.

00:43:31.440 I mean, they can help so much.

00:43:33.420 I feel like, um, and they're being used more than ever.

00:43:36.400 It seems like, you know, because yeah, I've microdosed before that just microdosing.

00:43:40.980 And I'll just like, during the day at one point, I'll just start, I'll see a mosquito

00:43:45.280 and I'll kind of follow him around the house for a minute.

00:43:48.320 Then I'll go back to work, but that's about as like weird as it gets, you know?

00:43:51.320 That's pretty damn weird.

00:43:52.460 Yeah.

00:43:52.620 I'm just kind of curious, you know?

00:43:54.000 Yeah.

00:43:54.400 Just doing a little air traffic control.

00:43:56.020 Are you seeing the little ant on the ground there?

00:43:57.940 Yeah.

00:43:58.260 I'll just see where he's going.

00:43:59.680 Yeah.

00:44:00.000 I'm like, tell me if you're a scout.

00:44:01.720 Yeah.

00:44:02.440 Hey, look, dude, if you're trying to get away from something, blink once, you know?

00:44:05.420 Um, so how long did peyote last?

00:44:08.800 Did it last for like a long time?

00:44:11.740 You mean when you took it?

00:44:15.140 Well, if it would, like all those drugs, you would, you would take effect after about 40

00:44:19.860 minutes or so.

00:44:20.840 Yeah.

00:44:21.320 And then, um, then it'd be very intense for about four or five hours and then it would

00:44:26.700 kind of wear off.

00:44:27.500 It's kind of had the same sort of span as mushrooms in a way.

00:44:31.140 It just depended on how much, how many buttons you consumed.

00:44:34.280 And if you consumed like a dozen buttons, man, you'd be tripping for like several days.

00:44:39.200 Yeah.

00:44:39.640 I don't think we went that far.

00:44:41.840 Yeah.

00:44:42.260 Your damn elevator car at that point, dude, you're going up, bro.

00:44:45.460 Yeah.

00:44:45.760 But I mean, it has an incredible history among, among Native Americans and Mexicans.

00:44:51.400 Yeah.

00:44:51.780 What did they use it for?

00:44:52.680 Can you bring that up, Nick?

00:44:53.480 I want to learn like if there was a distinctive, like, were they trying to talk to a God?

00:44:59.220 Cause I can't imagine the first time they took it, it must've blown their minds.

00:45:03.080 Well, it was the first time people experimented with all kinds of drugs.

00:45:06.440 You know, that fascinates me how they, how they didn't kill themselves, how they knew that

00:45:10.860 it had that effect.

00:45:12.600 In the late 1800s, the modern day Native American church was formed, a key part of which is

00:45:18.140 the ingestion of peyote as a religious sacrament during all night prayer ceremonies.

00:45:22.760 In this context, peyote is not viewed as a drug, but rather as a medicine for healing.

00:45:26.620 Wow.

00:45:26.900 Well, yeah.

00:45:28.820 Yeah.

00:45:29.140 That's kind of reminds you of like how ayahuasca is these days.

00:45:32.120 It is very much so.

00:45:33.280 I've never done it.

00:45:34.380 I think ayahuasca sounds even more intense.

00:45:37.460 Yeah.

00:45:37.740 So I don't know, but I think it's similar to that.

00:45:40.380 Yeah.

00:45:40.600 I've had some good experiences with it.

00:45:42.040 For me, it's been very therapeutic.

00:45:44.040 Oh, really?

00:45:44.580 Yeah.

00:45:44.740 I don't think of it as a drug and I'm, I understand if other people do, that's fine.

00:45:48.960 I think of it as a medicinal drug, but I don't think of it as a party.

00:45:53.060 You know, it's very painful to go sit there and you go through the filing cabinet of you,

00:45:57.760 who you are and pull out some files and kind of burn them in a way, you know?

00:46:02.880 I don't know.

00:46:03.220 I'm a little bit frightened about that myself at my age, you know?

00:46:06.580 Oh, you could rock in there, I think.

00:46:07.960 You think so?

00:46:08.780 Yeah.

00:46:09.020 It doesn't, I find it to be actually not super invasive.

00:46:13.080 I could get up and go pee or go get a snack in the kitchen and then go sit back down and

00:46:17.380 drop back into the meditation.

00:46:18.980 Really?

00:46:19.540 Yeah.

00:46:19.700 And I felt very okay with that.

00:46:22.280 Well, I don't consider it.

00:46:23.680 Yeah.

00:46:25.520 How do you feel like we're like, well, one thing that I worry about with society today

00:46:30.780 is since we watch so much of each other, right?

00:46:33.680 We're never spending that time like getting to know ourselves kind of.

00:46:37.100 We're not, you know, I remember we used to just,

00:46:39.020 lie around all the time and sure, it seemed like you were bored, but your brain was like

00:46:43.240 maybe coming up slowly, building ideas or, you know, forming like thoughts or hopes, dude.

00:46:51.200 I remember you used to be able to hope so much because you would hope you would see this

00:46:55.300 girl across town or you would hope that she was going to be at summer camp or there was

00:47:00.000 just no way to know everything.

00:47:01.400 So you had so much hope all the time.

00:47:03.520 And, um, now you just, there's so much information that I feel like it's taken away a lot of hope,

00:47:09.280 but I feel like even more so that, and I don't want to be like Debbie Downer where there's

00:47:13.700 still hope, but I feel like it's subdued hope.

00:47:16.080 Um, but I feel like if you're looking, if we're always watching stuff, then do we start to just

00:47:21.680 mimic it instead of being individual?

00:47:25.640 That's what I worry about.

00:47:26.740 Do you think that's possible?

00:47:27.760 Like if we're always, do we become more mimics than creators?

00:47:33.160 And has it always been that way, do you think?

00:47:36.060 No, I don't.

00:47:36.780 I think things are getting worse.

00:47:38.460 Of course, I don't know.

00:47:39.280 I don't have, you know, I can't see everything, but my feeling is it is getting worse.

00:47:45.220 I mean, um, you know, I do believe that there is something as vague as the word is that is

00:47:51.760 like a soul that a person has.

00:47:55.080 And that soul is connected to who you are as an individual.

00:47:58.740 Like you're kind of born with it, right?

00:48:01.980 And when you know who you are, when you go deep into it, when you connect to things that

00:48:07.540 you really love, when you connect to your memories from childhood, to things that make

00:48:12.680 you different, that soul's kind of alive.

00:48:15.780 It feels alive.

00:48:16.940 It feels vibrant.

00:48:17.640 It feels right.

00:48:18.500 Yeah.

00:48:18.820 The feeling of rightness, which is, I think people don't understand.

00:48:22.980 Some things feel right.

00:48:24.200 Some things don't.

00:48:25.460 Okay.

00:48:25.980 And I know for myself, and I'm guilty of it.

00:48:29.080 If I spend an hour on Instagram chasing this thing or that thing, or wasting my time on this

00:48:36.220 website or whatever, I have this feeling like a bit of my soul was sucked out of me.

00:48:41.220 Yes.

00:48:41.740 That I kind of lost something, that I'm just this kind of machine that's just processing

00:48:46.580 data, and I'm not a human being anymore.

00:48:49.440 And I feel that soul kind of, it's like a vapor that's escaping me, right?

00:48:54.760 So.

00:48:55.600 Yeah.

00:48:55.820 I feel like they got me.

00:48:56.640 They tricked me.

00:48:57.600 Yeah.

00:48:57.800 The second I set it down, I feel like it almost takes a couple of seconds for you to get out

00:49:02.200 of this trance.

00:49:03.700 Yeah.

00:49:04.100 In a way.

00:49:04.540 It is a trance.

00:49:05.100 You're like, dang, they tricked me.

00:49:06.460 They did.

00:49:06.960 They did trick me.

00:49:08.080 Yeah.

00:49:08.580 Because a lot of the algorithms and just the entertainment value of it is so strong.

00:49:14.040 Sure, it's entertaining, but with all the time you spend doing that, or that I or anybody

00:49:18.700 spends, it's time that I feel like you could be doing things that would get me to know

00:49:26.800 myself better.

00:49:27.700 Yeah.

00:49:28.480 But it's, that's what I'm wondering, are the scales of that other stuff getting so heavy?

00:49:33.980 So like, have they narrowed the algorithm so cleanly with the, with everything, the pornography,

00:49:39.660 it's taken away so many, like.

00:49:41.460 It's frightening.

00:49:42.200 It's frightening.

00:49:42.880 That's what I wonder.

00:49:43.480 Do you feel like there is a way for that, is it just a cycle and there's a way out of

00:49:48.860 that?

00:49:49.200 Well, the possible optimistic scenario, which I don't know will happen, is that human beings

00:49:56.280 have a spirit and that will get so disgusted with it, that will rebel, that a young generation

00:50:03.880 will evolve, probably not Gen Z, probably three or four generations from now, that will find

00:50:10.820 it so lifeless and, and so, you know, sick, sick, but you know, so unfruitful, not giving

00:50:19.100 them anything, that they will rebel and they will be angry and they'll say, screw all this

00:50:24.080 crap.

00:50:24.460 I don't, I want to go back to something else.

00:50:26.440 I want to go back to something in the past or whatever, however far back, or I want to

00:50:30.860 create something new, a real revolution of sorts, a consciousness revolution.

00:50:35.300 That can happen because human beings have that capacity.

00:50:39.640 And it's happened before in history where we've gone through these cycles of, of kind

00:50:44.660 of our, our soul disappearing.

00:50:46.700 Really?

00:50:47.180 Yes, definitely.

00:50:48.800 And people kind of going crazy and moments of chaos.

00:50:51.980 Yeah.

00:50:52.400 Does one come to mind?

00:50:54.300 Well, I mean, think of, of the people that have succumbed to things like Nazism or, you

00:51:00.080 know, those kinds of things where they're, they're mass hallucinations and being drugged.

00:51:04.280 Yeah.

00:51:04.980 And, uh, the Germans now, I mean, however, you might not like Germans.

00:51:09.900 I don't know.

00:51:10.680 I mean, they're nice people.

00:51:11.880 I'm fine with them.

00:51:12.900 I'm fine.

00:51:13.240 I don't know all of them, but they're not like that anymore.

00:51:15.840 Right.

00:51:16.280 So they emerged from that.

00:51:17.940 That's a good point.

00:51:18.980 But, um, so kind of mass hallucinations sort of thing, but there were periods, um, I'm going

00:51:25.680 to get kind of wonky here, but I believe it was the third century or fourth century BC in

00:51:30.320 Greece where they went through this incredible crisis where their belief, their gods, all

00:51:36.540 that was disappearing.

00:51:37.660 People who didn't believe in it anymore.

00:51:39.440 And there was a crisis, you know, human beings need to believe in something, need to believe

00:51:43.700 in something larger than themselves.

00:51:45.700 Yeah.

00:51:45.860 And when they don't, things can get really nasty and chaotic and soulless.

00:51:51.120 And I think that's sort of what we're going through right now.

00:51:54.480 That's kind of what I'm writing about in my new book.

00:51:56.980 But I think people will find their way back to it.

00:52:00.600 It'll take young people who get disgusted with this kind of mechanical culture that we

00:52:05.420 have.

00:52:06.020 Yeah.

00:52:06.320 Will that happen?

00:52:07.220 I don't know.

00:52:08.620 You know, the, the, these algorithms, as you say, are insanely powerful.

00:52:12.880 Yeah.

00:52:13.300 It's like, we're really up against this dark, this darkness that we've created, which is

00:52:18.260 kind of fascinating too.

00:52:19.500 You know, it has a very much a story.

00:52:21.640 It's like all the stories, you know, it's like the, it's like the perfect story, you

00:52:26.360 know, it's like you create the Frankenstein, you know, it really is.

00:52:30.380 So, um, when it, when it comes to like individuality, right, what is a good way for people to start

00:52:36.700 to get to know themselves?

00:52:39.840 Does it make sense to you what I'm asking, Kevin?

00:52:41.340 Yeah, it does.

00:52:42.400 Well, I keep coming back to something that I tell a lot of people I think is very important

00:52:46.180 is the desire to know yourself.

00:52:50.120 So people are very good at faking it.

00:52:53.040 And you could be out there listening and go, yeah, I kind of want to know myself better.

00:52:57.160 Okay, let me get online and get, you know, they just forget about it.

00:53:00.520 Because the other forces are stronger than them.

00:53:03.180 You have to have a level, you know, that if you're in recovery, a level of disgust, you

00:53:09.040 have to hit bottom.

00:53:10.100 Yeah.

00:53:10.260 You have to go, I don't want to be like this anymore.

00:53:12.320 I want to find out who I am.

00:53:13.760 I want to touch that in core of individuality that I know is still within me.

00:53:17.940 That soul that I believe is still there.

00:53:21.000 You have to have the desire.

00:53:22.960 If there's no desire there, if you're just mimicking, if you're just saying it just for

00:53:26.660 the sake of it, because it sounds good, I can't help you.

00:53:29.740 But if it's still there, yeah, you want to start by, I mean, there are many paths you

00:53:35.640 can take.

00:53:36.080 A very good path is to take a journal and start journaling, right?

00:53:41.180 And writing down your thoughts and writing down your dreams.

00:53:45.280 And when I say that, I say, don't do it on a computer.

00:53:48.880 I mean, I know a lot of young people don't know how to handwrite anymore.

00:53:51.600 But pick up a pen.

00:53:53.580 I still handwrite a lot of things.

00:53:55.560 Pick up a pen and a journal and write it down.

00:53:59.920 Dreams, I know this sounds woo-woo, but it's not.

00:54:03.240 Dreams are really powerful, very interesting.

00:54:05.860 They're going to tell you a lot about yourself, right?

00:54:08.860 It's going to tell you about those journeys your brain takes at night that are pretty fantastical.

00:54:13.620 Okay, you write that down.

00:54:15.940 You go back into your childhood and you go, what was it that made me so different, that

00:54:21.620 was so weird about me?

00:54:22.740 What was it that I was attracted to?

00:54:24.940 As you go through that process, things will start coming up.

00:54:28.200 It's like you're digging, you're excavating, you're an archaeologist into your own past.

00:54:32.640 Yeah, it's like using a brush and brushing off and you see a little bit of bone and then

00:54:35.620 you're like, what other questions can I ask around here that might help me remove a little

00:54:39.400 more dirt?

00:54:39.900 Yeah, and memories will come up like your memory when you're two years old and your

00:54:43.880 brother popping up his head.

00:54:45.660 Things will start coming back to you and you'll start connecting to who you were when you were

00:54:50.940 young and you're connecting to who you were as an adolescent.

00:54:55.600 Adolescence is an extremely important part of our life.

00:54:58.820 It really is almost the most formative part.

00:55:01.000 It's where we really made that turn into this or into that, right?

00:55:04.680 And I find returning to your adolescence, returning to those strong, powerful emotions that you

00:55:11.220 felt, those sexual things that were just so overwhelming, those other things that were

00:55:19.140 happening, returning to that because people, psychologists have studied, that is the period

00:55:25.640 when you feel what makes you different the most, right?

00:55:29.980 It's when you feel the most rebellious, when you understand, this is who I am.

00:55:35.120 I'm not like my parents.

00:55:37.220 You're 13, you're 14, all of a sudden you go, I don't have to be like mom or dad.

00:55:41.440 In fact, I want to be the hell, I want to be totally different.

00:55:44.520 Adolescence is like a really key thing to go deep into.

00:55:48.000 That will show you a lot about your individuality, about who you are and about who you've become.

00:55:54.160 So it's a process and it should be a very exciting process.

00:55:58.100 Right, right.

00:55:58.440 You shouldn't look at, yeah, that's the thing.

00:56:00.080 If you look at it, it's like, oh shit, I got to do this.

00:56:02.840 You know, but to carve out a little time where you're like, yeah, let me think, whatever some

00:56:06.220 things, look at old photos and stuff like that, really look at yourself a little bit like

00:56:10.060 you're studying something, you know?

00:56:12.120 Even listen to the music that you liked, however embarrassing that might be.

00:56:15.640 Yeah.

00:56:16.380 You know?

00:56:17.840 Yeah, what'd you listen to, man?

00:56:20.300 Remember the first song that you heard?

00:56:21.680 I can't go.

00:56:23.320 I think I was four years old or so and my sister, who's four years older than me, had

00:56:30.140 a Beatles album.

00:56:31.660 Yeah.

00:56:32.580 And it was, I mean, this is, I'm older than you.

00:56:35.220 Abbey Road?

00:56:36.180 No, God, no.

00:56:37.660 I'm almost so much older than that.

00:56:39.520 It was like, meet the Beatles.

00:56:40.760 And it was the song, I Saw Her Standing There, I think the single.

00:56:45.760 And I was like, wow, this is so weird.

00:56:47.920 This is so different.

00:56:48.900 And it's hard for people to imagine because the Beatles seem sort of cliched now.

00:56:53.140 But when that sound first came out, I was like, there is nothing else like this out

00:56:57.100 there.

00:56:57.320 It's amazing.

00:56:57.980 It's fantastic.

00:56:59.060 And I remember my grandmother was there and she couldn't understand it.

00:57:03.080 She thought it was awful.

00:57:04.440 And I thought it was the most amazing thing.

00:57:07.020 I think that was the first song I can remember, I can recall.

00:57:10.700 Yeah.

00:57:11.920 Yeah.

00:57:12.240 I remember my mom used to play Brian Adams all the time and make us clean the house

00:57:16.460 to it.

00:57:17.700 And then she would sometimes abuse us if we didn't clean up good.

00:57:20.520 But Brian Adams.

00:57:23.140 Wow.

00:57:23.720 Yeah.

00:57:24.020 It was a bit, it was kind of crazy.

00:57:25.320 But then what else would we, oh, I, yeah, I've told this story before, but the first,

00:57:29.960 a camp counselor, a woman picked me up and took me to camp one day because my mom couldn't

00:57:35.360 take me in summer camp.

00:57:36.820 And she reached over and put my seatbelt on me.

00:57:41.100 And it was like the first time that like a woman, other, I guess, than my mother had

00:57:45.400 been near me.

00:57:46.180 Oh, wow.

00:57:46.920 And then she put on Bon Jovi.

00:57:49.200 Wow.

00:57:49.880 And I was like, what is going on, dude?

00:57:53.600 Are we married?

00:57:54.840 Wow.

00:57:55.280 How old were you?

00:57:55.900 I was probably eight, seven or eight.

00:58:00.540 And I'm sure I'd heard something before that, but nothing that, you know, this moment, that's,

00:58:05.400 that was the first song I remember hearing and being like, yeah, I want to hear that song

00:58:09.100 again.

00:58:10.020 Wow.

00:58:11.500 But yeah, I think it was because there was a, you know, maybe because there was a woman

00:58:14.260 there or something, but that was something that I remembered.

00:58:17.640 What was it, you know, in a lot of your books, you have the art of seduction.

00:58:22.420 You have, um, you have 48 laws of power.

00:58:27.540 You have mastery.

00:58:28.580 Uh, you're always like looking at yourself and finding ways.

00:58:33.700 It seems like to encourage the most out of oneself.

00:58:38.560 Yeah.

00:58:39.480 Um, how did that kind of begin for you?

00:58:41.700 Like, what was there like a period in your time where you're like, I got like, I wasn't

00:58:47.460 my best self or I'm not going to let this happen to me again.

00:58:51.580 Like what was that trigger kind of for you?

00:58:55.240 Well, there were, there were many triggers.

00:58:57.840 Um, so I was, uh, out of college, I decided to go into journalism because I needed, I needed

00:59:05.800 to make a living.

00:59:06.440 I wanted to write, but I had to support myself.

00:59:08.140 I was living in New York and, you know, I was very poor at the time.

00:59:11.540 I had a very low level job and it wasn't connecting to me.

00:59:17.100 I felt like something was wrong.

00:59:19.960 I didn't like the fact that you would write something and then the next day you'd be on

00:59:24.580 to something else.

00:59:25.280 It was totally forgotten.

00:59:26.280 It didn't last.

00:59:27.560 And I was into something because I love history.

00:59:30.240 If it doesn't last more than 24 hours, what's the point?

00:59:33.200 It should last like 12 years, 20, 100 years.

00:59:36.340 What you write should have some weight to it.

00:59:37.940 I felt wrong.

00:59:39.640 So I left it.

00:59:40.900 I wandered around Europe for about four or five years.

00:59:43.920 Sometimes I was with a backpack.

00:59:45.440 I worked in a hotel in Paris.

00:59:48.280 I did construction work in Greece because I ran out of money.

00:59:52.220 I taught English in Barcelona.

00:59:53.940 I worked in a crappy television show in London.

00:59:57.240 I led a tour guide thing in Dublin, Ireland, trying to write novels and I was starving.

01:00:04.840 It's like a John Irving story, it almost seems like.

01:00:06.940 It was.

01:00:07.420 It was like it's such a cliche.

01:00:09.420 I was a cliche of the American, the young American trying to write a novel.

01:00:15.380 I had amazing experiences, you know, experiences that seeded all of my books.

01:00:21.140 But nothing happened and I was lonely and I was depressed and I felt like something was wrong.

01:00:28.540 Were you basing your achievement on something?

01:00:31.440 What do you think you were looking for in that?

01:00:33.960 Because it sounds like a searching kind of time.

01:00:35.820 Well, I was trying to write a novel but I couldn't write it.

01:00:39.120 It wasn't happening.

01:00:41.040 My mind wasn't – I don't think I would have been a good novelist because I'm too much into ideas

01:00:46.280 and my novels were just like these kind of big kind of sticks with a big idea on it

01:00:52.340 that you were supposed to read about.

01:00:53.720 It didn't have life to – I think I could do it now but something was wrong about it

01:00:58.020 and I couldn't earn a living off of it, you know.

01:01:02.760 I was on my own.

01:01:04.000 I had to earn a living.

01:01:05.440 I didn't want to be doing all these crap jobs my whole life.

01:01:08.200 So I came back to L.A. where I'm from.

01:01:10.800 My father wasn't well and I got a job in Hollywood thinking that's – this is the golden path.

01:01:16.860 Money, writing, glamour, you know, whatever.

01:01:20.180 The dream.

01:01:21.320 Fancy, yeah.

01:01:22.480 Cocaine, women.

01:01:23.620 All of that.

01:01:24.220 Yeah.

01:01:25.260 And none of it happened.

01:01:26.920 It was – I wasn't – well, I mean I had the cocaine and all that stuff

01:01:31.080 but I didn't have the success.

01:01:32.160 I had all the other stuff but none of the really stuff I was after.

01:01:37.360 And so to answer your question, nothing was going right.

01:01:41.220 Nothing was quite fitting, right?

01:01:43.440 And I had a moment.

01:01:45.480 I was getting kind of desperate.

01:01:47.680 And my girlfriend was saying, you know, maybe you got to stop like trying to cut –

01:01:53.820 have it both ways where you have your – writing, your creativity

01:01:58.180 and then you have earning a living.

01:02:00.820 Maybe you can't have both.

01:02:02.660 So she said, I always wanted to write plays and theater and stuff.

01:02:06.460 So she said, go ahead and do that.

01:02:07.900 And that was a kind of a turning point where I'm going to stop trying to just be this person

01:02:14.240 that other people wanted me to be and I'm going to follow what excites me

01:02:17.940 even though I can't make a living in it.

01:02:20.020 And that was a very important part.

01:02:22.820 It meant like, yeah, I can do something that's kind of fun

01:02:27.300 and maybe it will turn into something.

01:02:29.820 Well, it's the same thing you talk about in mastery too, kind of,

01:02:31.680 that we were talking about earlier.

01:02:32.400 Yeah.

01:02:33.460 And then – so sometimes fate has its weird ways of operating.

01:02:39.260 Just as after I had done that, writing the plays, we put them on here in Los Angeles.

01:02:44.300 We performed them.

01:02:44.980 I acted in them.

01:02:46.080 She directed them.

01:02:46.980 We did all the work ourselves.

01:02:49.180 Very strange plays.

01:02:51.240 Right after that, I met this man in Italy who offered me the chance to write a book.

01:02:57.260 And something clicked in me going, Robert, all the bad choices in your life,

01:03:02.260 all the mistakes, everything can turn on this moment, right?

01:03:06.580 You can go from being this kind of loser in your one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica.

01:03:12.480 You could somehow turn this around.

01:03:14.980 A book?

01:03:15.980 Wow, I never thought of that before.

01:03:17.960 Not a novel, but a nonfiction book.

01:03:20.880 I see.

01:03:21.280 So you'd never really take – you'd never consider that.

01:03:23.420 Of course not.

01:03:23.940 If you're thinking of fiction, you're thinking of like the F. Scott Fitzgerald.

01:03:29.440 You're thinking of like a magnificent piece, you know, on the road with Kerouac.

01:03:33.600 You're thinking of something that's going to change the tides, you know?

01:03:37.040 Exactly.

01:03:37.580 But then you're like, oh, damn.

01:03:39.120 I'm like a nerd book.

01:03:41.040 Exactly.

01:03:42.080 But I'm kind of a strange individual, I have to say, for better or worse,

01:03:47.900 because until I was 38, it was for the worst, right?

01:03:51.320 And my parents were getting really worried about me.

01:03:53.100 But when I had the chance to write the 48 Laws of Power, my first book,

01:03:58.140 I made it a book that's not like anything else out there, right?

01:04:03.340 Yeah.

01:04:03.520 Because I'm sure it's something you've done in your comedy.

01:04:06.100 There's nobody else out there like Theo Vaughn.

01:04:08.440 You're unique.

01:04:09.960 I made the book look weird, feel weird.

01:04:13.120 Nothing about it was like anything else.

01:04:16.000 It was dark.

01:04:17.660 It was kind of like language was a little bit strong.

01:04:21.000 It was controversial.

01:04:21.940 It even looks biblical, almost, this one.

01:04:24.140 That one, yeah.

01:04:25.040 This copy.

01:04:25.760 The coolest thing is the face that's in this.

01:04:28.620 There's two faces.

01:04:29.940 Oh, is one of them Benjamin Franklin, one of them's you?

01:04:32.340 Oh, no, wait, one of them's Henry, uh, Henry, uh...

01:04:35.720 No, it's Machiavelli.

01:04:36.980 Oh, Machiavelli.

01:04:37.960 And me.

01:04:38.740 I was thinking it was a guy from Black Flag.

01:04:39.980 You know who that is, Henry?

01:04:41.160 Henry Rollins?

01:04:41.960 Yeah.

01:04:42.420 It looks like Henry Rollins.

01:04:43.500 A little bit.

01:04:44.320 You mean me or Machiavelli?

01:04:46.060 Well, unfortunately, Machiavelli.

01:04:47.420 Oh, okay.

01:04:47.980 You still look like you, but you look handsome.

01:04:50.540 Henry Rollins is a lot more.

01:04:51.940 Oh, yeah, I know.

01:04:52.440 He's a lot beefier than I am.

01:04:54.160 He's different than us, man.

01:04:54.840 He's more intimidating.

01:04:56.320 Yeah, maybe he's more intimidating.

01:04:57.580 Is he still alive?

01:04:58.380 What happened to him?

01:04:59.000 I think he lives, I believe, actually, that he lives in Tennessee, yeah.

01:05:03.560 Oh.

01:05:04.180 I've heard that.

01:05:05.000 Wow.

01:05:05.320 I've heard that he moved to Nashville.

01:05:07.460 Yeah, I've heard that he moved to Nashville.

01:05:08.720 I would love to meet him sometime.

01:05:10.200 Some of my friends have worked with him.

01:05:11.920 I think he's a very interesting guy.

01:05:13.140 And there's Machiavelli now.

01:05:14.740 I don't see a resemblance really there.

01:05:16.880 Yeah.

01:05:17.400 Maybe.

01:05:17.820 Maybe the eyes.

01:05:18.820 Yeah.

01:05:19.600 Yeah.

01:05:19.980 Maybe the eyes.

01:05:20.700 They each have two eyes.

01:05:24.560 Thank you.

01:05:25.140 That's a good one.

01:05:25.700 Thank you for trying to support me there, Robert.

01:05:27.360 It took me a little while to hear the catch on.

01:05:30.520 It took me a while, too.

01:05:31.720 I didn't realize it was a joke until after I said it.

01:05:35.740 But so then at that point, that's you kind of like realizing something's different here.

01:05:40.580 There's this voice that says, this could be something for you.

01:05:44.400 You need to follow this.

01:05:46.420 And was it hard for you to like start to make that happen for yourself?

01:05:51.720 Well, you know, as I said, I was 38 years old.

01:05:57.900 I hadn't really amounted to anything.

01:06:00.780 And this guy, Joost Elfers, who's the producer of the book, he offered me this chance.

01:06:06.800 I pitched to him what turned out to be the 48 Laws of Power.

01:06:11.140 He got so excited.

01:06:12.860 So what happened was I went home to L.A. and I go, Robert, it was before 50 Cent,

01:06:18.140 I coined the expression, but it's either get rich or die trying here, right?

01:06:22.420 You either make this book work or you're just going to be floundering the rest of your life, right?

01:06:29.440 So I was so motivated.

01:06:32.720 I was so hungry and desperate that this had to be it, that I put everything I had into it.

01:06:41.120 And it's hard for me to understand now because it took two years to write.

01:06:44.720 Now it takes me five years to write a damn book.

01:06:47.460 Damn.

01:06:48.140 All that research, all the creating something that hadn't been out there before,

01:06:53.740 I don't know how I did it.

01:06:55.020 But all I can say is there was something else inside of me that was so hungry that it made it happen.

01:07:02.000 So there wasn't any like I can't do this kind of thing.

01:07:07.060 It was like if I don't do it, that's it.

01:07:10.960 I have in one book, in my book on strategy and warfare, this thing that I call death ground strategy.

01:07:17.040 It's a great expression.

01:07:18.880 It comes from Sun Tzu.

01:07:20.160 And if your back is to the ocean or your back is against a mountain and you're fighting the enemy,

01:07:27.520 you're going to fight with 10 times the energy because it's either conquer them or you're going to die.

01:07:33.680 So you put yourself on death ground.

01:07:36.200 You either succeed or terrible things will happen.

01:07:39.900 You find energy that you hadn't believed you had.

01:07:42.720 You'll find creativity that you hadn't believed you had.

01:07:45.460 Did you lock yourself in a hole or something?

01:07:48.780 Did you create that scenario for yourself?

01:07:51.400 Did you change your habits?

01:07:53.100 Because it seems like you have to really change your habits to produce something that...

01:07:57.540 Well, I had good work habits and I had learned how to research.

01:08:01.560 But one thing my girlfriend did was I had this cat who just would never leave me alone.

01:08:08.480 Oh, yeah.

01:08:09.080 He was so attached to me and quite honestly, he probably made it so I couldn't write a book.

01:08:15.100 So she created this table, this very thin table that would fit right in here on the chair.

01:08:22.260 I could put my laptop on.

01:08:23.840 He couldn't get on it.

01:08:25.040 Oh, it wasn't enough space for him.

01:08:26.580 No.

01:08:27.100 Wow.

01:08:27.560 And that allowed me to write the book.

01:08:30.960 Damn, dude.

01:08:32.700 They say a cat also...

01:08:34.900 And I'll tell you because I know this, but a cat will...

01:08:39.400 If you die, a cat will start eating...

01:08:41.900 Will probably start eating your face within like 48 hours.

01:08:45.460 That's very nice to hear.

01:08:46.480 Thank you for sharing that.

01:08:47.800 You're welcome.

01:08:48.240 I'm not going to look at my cat the same way now.

01:08:50.640 But I just want to let you know.

01:08:51.820 So don't be shocked that they want to stop you from writing a book.

01:08:54.680 Okay.

01:08:55.280 Okay.

01:08:55.640 He wanted to eat me, you're saying?

01:08:57.600 I'm just saying they're playing a long game.

01:08:59.780 Oh, okay.

01:09:00.660 You know what I'm saying?

01:09:01.560 They want to ruin it all.

01:09:02.900 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:09:03.540 So yeah, they're just...

01:09:04.560 Yeah, you know, they're just saving face, you know, by trying to get you to think that

01:09:09.900 writing a book is the issue.

01:09:11.900 But that's so...

01:09:12.680 It's like...

01:09:14.380 But that's such a...

01:09:15.500 That's almost such a metaphor, like I'm going to make a table that a cat can't get on.

01:09:20.500 And that way I'll be able to write my book.

01:09:22.460 We still have the table.

01:09:23.620 It's really cool looking.

01:09:24.660 She made it...

01:09:25.380 She painted it.

01:09:26.020 She made these like...

01:09:27.280 These like kind of backgammon signs on it.

01:09:29.680 It was really cool.

01:09:30.520 Oh, that's super cool.

01:09:31.460 Yeah.

01:09:32.260 What a neat...

01:09:33.020 That's a fascinating little piece of information.

01:09:35.520 Yeah, yeah.

01:09:37.820 Did you feel more powerful after the book?

01:09:41.520 Well, I couldn't have felt less powerful because I had no power really up until then.

01:09:45.600 But you don't know because like a lot of things fail in life, right?

01:09:51.900 Oh, yeah.

01:09:53.020 And the book could have been...

01:09:54.780 Could have flopped easily because it was so different and weird.

01:09:57.460 And so I had no idea.

01:10:00.800 But then suddenly it starts selling well and I'm getting, you know, the press was pretty good.

01:10:07.140 And I remember in early 1999, I was invited to Italy for a book tour.

01:10:13.920 And this was like the strangest moment of my life probably.

01:10:18.560 I don't know if you know at Disneyland, they have Mr. Toad's Wild Ride where it's like he goes on this really weird adventure and it kind of blows your mind if you're like four years old.

01:10:28.340 And this was like my Mr. Toad's Wild Ride because suddenly I was invited to this conference where I was mingling with Italian politicians, where paparazzi were following me around and taking my photograph.

01:10:43.100 I went, well, who am I?

01:10:44.920 But this was the land of Machiavelli.

01:10:47.620 And the 48 Laws of Power seemed really great to them, right?

01:10:52.220 So suddenly I'm starting to realize, well, maybe this book has legs.

01:10:55.960 Maybe something will happen.

01:10:57.040 Then a couple of years later in Playboy magazine, there's an interview with Jay-Z and Jay-Z quotes the 48 Laws of Power.

01:11:05.940 Wow.

01:11:06.780 I would go, wow.

01:11:08.200 It's like infiltrating that far.

01:11:10.380 That's pretty interesting.

01:11:11.940 And slowly, slowly the hip-hop world, more and more and more, you know, meeting 50 Cent.

01:11:18.040 People were coming to me for advice.

01:11:20.560 Me that was always giving advice before I wrote the book, but nobody would ever listen to me.

01:11:26.240 Now, they were coming to me for advice about their businesses, et cetera, et cetera.

01:11:30.800 I got put on the board of directors for the company American Apparel.

01:11:36.120 It was like being on acid.

01:11:39.260 It was so weird because I had had so little success before that.

01:11:43.940 If you have success when you're 23, it kind of spoils you and you think that this is what life should be like.

01:11:49.440 Yeah.

01:11:49.540 I had so much loneliness.

01:11:51.800 I had so much not being able to pay bills.

01:11:54.620 I had so much frustration and depression that when it happened, it was like, man, this is like, I'm like on a drug.

01:12:01.720 It's fantastic.

01:12:03.280 Yeah.

01:12:03.600 Because the odds, the odds of that are slim.

01:12:08.580 They are very slim.

01:12:10.540 Very slim.

01:12:11.180 The odds of that are slim.

01:12:12.780 I'm very grateful.

01:12:13.640 And did you feel like you had found mastery, though, or do you just felt like you had found your calling?

01:12:20.720 Did you feel like you just got fortunate?

01:12:26.640 Did you write it?

01:12:28.340 Sorry.

01:12:28.860 Yeah, that's the question, and I think it's three questions.

01:12:32.420 Well, you know, there's luck involved in anything.

01:12:35.540 So, meeting this man who produced the book, I was in Italy, that could have not happened very easily.

01:12:42.040 We could have not taken the walk that we'd taken, and I would have never improvised the idea that came to me.

01:12:47.820 So, you met a man and took a walk?

01:12:49.800 Yeah, in Venice.

01:12:51.840 We were walking.

01:12:53.580 It was a beautiful day.

01:12:54.720 I was in a good mood.

01:12:56.020 And I pitched this book idea.

01:12:58.160 And I pitched other ideas, which he didn't like, but he liked that idea.

01:13:01.420 Anyway, that's a slender, slender thread that the whole thing hangs upon.

01:13:06.360 Right.

01:13:06.640 Me going to Italy, this man also being there, us taking this walk, me being in a good mood, me improvising it.

01:13:14.440 Okay?

01:13:15.560 But it's just as unique as going back to, like, how people are created, an idea, how something magnificent happens, how something unique happens, that this had to happen.

01:13:26.000 Your grandparents had to meet each other on a ship, or somebody had to be a slave, or somebody had to work at a Chick-fil-A, or whatever.

01:13:33.540 It's like, there's all these little things, you know.

01:13:37.020 Twists of fate.

01:13:37.900 Yeah, just twists of fate.

01:13:39.120 Sorry, go on.

01:13:40.060 So, you know, if that hadn't happened, there wouldn't be any book.

01:13:46.480 But, on the other hand, I might have, there's some feeling that, I don't know if people out there can relate to, but some way I had a feeling like it was meant to happen.

01:14:00.160 That something about me or him drew us together, and that all of those bad experiences in life, all of the really awful bosses that I had, and I had some really bad ones, right?

01:14:15.580 Roger, too.

01:14:16.360 I had this guy, Roger.

01:14:18.080 Roger, what was he?

01:14:19.160 He was just, he was a damn deviant, dude.

01:14:22.840 He would make us work, and he would sit in his car also, and he would smoke weed a lot of the time.

01:14:28.420 But, whatever.

01:14:29.160 Where's Roger now?

01:14:30.740 That's a good question.

01:14:32.060 I know his wife left him.

01:14:33.080 I'm not sure.

01:14:33.940 Okay.

01:14:34.220 But, you know, he also was, he did lead our, like, company bowling team or whatever, so that was, like, the one redeeming thing he did.

01:14:41.840 Well, that's pretty impressive.

01:14:43.600 It was nice of him to do.

01:14:45.880 So, he bought us all jerseys and everything.

01:14:48.000 But, anyway, go on.

01:14:48.880 Sorry.

01:14:49.320 I'm sorry.

01:14:50.020 Well, that's a great story.

01:14:53.160 Anyway, so.

01:14:56.420 What other books did you pitch him that day?

01:15:02.060 You shouldn't ask that question.

01:15:03.620 Because they'll, I remember, so, I really was into Louis XIV, for whatever reason.

01:15:14.120 Yeah, I'm from Louisiana, so.

01:15:15.660 Oh, okay.

01:15:16.440 We, yeah.

01:15:16.980 There you go.

01:15:17.680 Yeah, Louisiana Purchase.

01:15:19.580 Roulez le bon temps.

01:15:21.120 Hey.

01:15:22.020 Yeah.

01:15:22.620 Bon temps, you know.

01:15:25.080 Les bon temps, roulez.

01:15:26.900 Yeah.

01:15:27.620 That's what they say, right?

01:15:28.520 Right, exactly.

01:15:29.740 So, I pitched an idea about how weird, how different people were in the court of Louis XIV, like, what their psychology was.

01:15:40.840 But it was kind of related to the 48 Laws of Power.

01:15:43.540 But this other idea that I pitched was, I had read this book about nonsense, and kind of, it was called The Philosophy of Nonsense.

01:15:55.240 It's a very kind of theoretical book, but it was all about how nonsense could be actually kind of revolutionary.

01:16:01.820 To take words and to kind of make you think that there's a meaning, but there's no meaning, kind of excited me, right?

01:16:08.640 Yeah, because it activates a part of your brain that's not a common path.

01:16:11.560 Yeah.

01:16:11.960 Yeah.

01:16:12.220 Sort of like some of the things in Lewis Carroll, like in Alice in Wonderland.

01:16:16.820 Right, like you're falling through a hole in the ground and come up into a new universe, like world, yeah, like ridiculous, walking into mirrors, yeah.

01:16:23.020 Yeah, exactly.

01:16:24.140 Change of perception.

01:16:25.520 Exactly.

01:16:26.200 So, I was pitching him an idea about nonsense, but it would be kind of a popular book that would sort of show, you know, how nonsense can be kind of a powerful force, can be very poetic and exciting.

01:16:39.200 Like, that idea didn't fly.

01:16:41.260 Those are the ones I can remember.

01:16:43.200 Yeah.

01:16:43.920 But hey, that's what it takes, man.

01:16:46.480 That's what it takes to get something that does fly.

01:16:49.720 Yeah.

01:16:50.400 You know?

01:16:50.720 But, you know, I think it was, so what I was saying is all the horrible bosses I had, all the bad experiences, I worked in a detective agency briefly here in Los Angeles, actually in Pasadena.

01:17:04.380 For PI, private, private, private.

01:17:06.120 Well, it was a firm.

01:17:07.500 What is PI?

01:17:08.660 That's private investigator.

01:17:10.500 I wasn't, I wasn't a dick, I wasn't a gumshoe.

01:17:13.500 I was, what's called a skip tracer.

01:17:15.960 And it was one of the worst jobs I ever had, where basically, you know, some guy in Wisconsin jumps bail or owes this company this amount of money.

01:17:29.820 I'm sitting in an office on the telephone trying to find him.

01:17:35.380 That's what literally means skip tracer, you're tracing where he skipped.

01:17:39.040 And they give you, like, these dialogues you're supposed to follow.

01:17:42.580 You call his mother up and you pretend to be a high school buddy of his.

01:17:46.360 Wow.

01:17:46.680 You do some research.

01:17:47.600 You went to Kenosha High School and you do little research things you can say to kind of bullshit your way.

01:17:53.180 And I was very good at bullshitting.

01:17:55.220 And I would kind of do that.

01:17:56.860 And she'd say, oh, he's, he's, you know, she'd give you a clue.

01:17:59.800 Yeah.

01:18:00.200 Then you would find him.

01:18:01.820 And then they would, you know, get the guy and they'd get him to pay.

01:18:04.960 I felt so awful.

01:18:06.720 Yeah.

01:18:07.000 I was, like, helping the law by these poor suckers.

01:18:10.580 You were kind of a, yeah, you weren't a snitch, but you was, like.

01:18:13.040 Kind of.

01:18:13.640 Yeah, you was, like, a undercover kind of guy on the phone.

01:18:19.140 Yeah.

01:18:19.700 Not a cop, yeah.

01:18:20.820 And I had the worst boss there.

01:18:22.820 I hated that son of a bitch.

01:18:24.640 Anyway, all of those people went into the 48 Laws of Power.

01:18:28.760 I kind of got my little digs into them because they sort of inspired some of these awful laws that I ended up creating.

01:18:35.060 Yeah, was some of the, was some of the 48 Laws of Power written with, like, vengeance?

01:18:39.200 Was it written, like, yeah.

01:18:41.120 A little bit.

01:18:41.780 I think you have to have something like that.

01:18:43.660 A little bit.

01:18:43.940 You have to have a fire.

01:18:44.900 You have to have a thing.

01:18:45.100 I was angry.

01:18:46.060 Yeah.

01:18:46.320 Were you angry at the world?

01:18:48.920 Were you angry at circumstance, do you think?

01:18:52.760 Because I get angry a lot.

01:18:53.980 I try to think about what I'm angry at.

01:18:55.840 It's hard for me to sometimes know what it is.

01:18:58.360 It is hard to know what it is, what's, like, really underneath it.

01:19:01.640 Yeah.

01:19:01.860 Because you can't be superficially angry, but there's something else underneath that's gnawing at you.

01:19:05.760 I think I was angry at people's bullshit about people pretending to be something that they're not is what really angers me and what angered me about Hollywood.

01:19:15.020 I don't know your relationship to Hollywood.

01:19:17.220 I hate Hollywood.

01:19:18.320 Oh, good.

01:19:18.940 Thank you.

01:19:19.580 Yeah.

01:19:20.060 Well, you know, people pretending to be these liberal, wonderful people in favor of all the best causes out there to create art, what bullshit?

01:19:30.120 They wanted power.

01:19:31.840 They loved having the power over people.

01:19:34.640 Yeah.

01:19:34.820 Right.

01:19:35.860 Producers and directors loved the power they had over actresses, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

01:19:40.240 And so I had a law in there about get other people to do the work but always take the credit, which is one of the nastier laws.

01:19:49.560 Yeah.

01:19:49.940 That's what happened to me a lot of times in Hollywood.

01:19:52.640 I would do the work.

01:19:53.960 I would write all the dialogue, et cetera, in some screenplay.

01:19:57.200 I wouldn't get any credit at all.

01:19:59.540 So I was kind of like turning it around and telling people this is how the world works.

01:20:05.420 People will get you to do things and they'll put their name on it kind of thing.

01:20:08.800 So is some of it not as much with 48 Laws is not as much telling people to do these things but making people aware of things?

01:20:17.820 It's almost like making people aware of different clocks that tick in time but that aren't necessarily timekeeping clocks but just clocks of like how things work.

01:20:26.880 Does that make any sense?

01:20:28.700 Almost, Tom.

01:20:29.800 Almost.

01:20:30.840 There's something there.

01:20:31.900 Thanks.

01:20:33.040 Yeah, start it off.

01:20:34.120 I can think about it.

01:20:34.600 I feel like it started off good.

01:20:36.620 I'm going to go to bed thinking about that.

01:20:38.920 There is something there.

01:20:40.320 It's different like –

01:20:41.600 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:20:42.200 So it's not all how to do things as much as some of it can be warnings or awareness.

01:20:48.320 Well, there's a law in there about play on people's need to believe to create a cult-like following.

01:20:54.460 And the idea is that there are a lot of cults out there.

01:20:57.280 Yeah, there's a lot of cults.

01:20:58.480 Definitely 30 Seconds to Mars I think is one.

01:21:01.340 What's that?

01:21:03.300 It's a band, I guess.

01:21:05.680 It's also like a GPS estimate, I guess, if you drive a space shuttle or something.

01:21:11.520 Excuse my ignorance.

01:21:12.740 Yeah, no, it's – no, I'm just joking.

01:21:14.760 It's Jared Leto and his brother's band.

01:21:17.040 I'm just joking.

01:21:17.540 Oh, Jared Leto, okay.

01:21:18.300 I am joking, but people always say that it's a cult.

01:21:20.560 Oh.

01:21:21.080 But, yeah, there's a lot of different cults out there.

01:21:23.020 Yeah, so I'm not telling you to go out and create a cult.

01:21:25.720 Right.

01:21:26.280 Although you could if you wanted to.

01:21:27.980 I'm saying that you might be in a cult right now.

01:21:31.060 And here's how to recognize when you're in a cult.

01:21:33.740 These are the things that people do to kind of trap you into a cult.

01:21:37.200 They create like an us versus them dynamic.

01:21:40.100 While there's an enemy out there that's trying to destroy you, better stay inside here where it's us.

01:21:44.940 And then they create – like they use numbers a lot.

01:21:48.200 Like this is the fifth level of the sixth domain that you have reached.

01:21:51.860 Then you know, brother, you're in a cult.

01:21:53.740 That's what you're hearing that.

01:21:55.500 So it's not so much like go out there and create this cult, but like maybe you're in one and here's how to recognize it.

01:22:02.760 Yeah, dude, that's hilarious, man.

01:22:07.140 Especially now with the media, it's like it's definitely become cult-like behavior and with their force over society.

01:22:15.720 What do you think has more effect on us these days, our government or our media?

01:22:23.020 Like who's a bigger power, Hollywood or the government?

01:22:28.100 Well, Hollywood and you're also saying like tech, the tech world, like social media, I'd say they have more power.

01:22:37.560 I mean I don't know what the numbers would be.

01:22:39.880 I'd have to say like 70% and 30% would be the government.

01:22:44.480 Yeah.

01:22:44.700 I mean at this point though, it's reaching a point where the government and the media are kind of becoming one.

01:22:53.640 Oh, right.

01:22:53.940 I'll tell you a story.

01:22:54.720 So I'm at the mall the other day in Century City in Los Angeles, right?

01:22:58.900 West Los Angeles kind of.

01:23:00.960 I'm in there.

01:23:01.820 A construction guy walks through.

01:23:03.820 He's like, Dio, what's up?

01:23:05.440 So I start talking to him and he's like, dude, guess what we're building?

01:23:09.980 I'm like, I don't know.

01:23:11.000 I thought maybe it could have been like a Hardee's or something.

01:23:13.920 He's like, we're building like a 20-story building and 10 floors of it are the CIA and the other 10 floors are a management company, Hollywood management company.

01:23:26.560 Oh, wow.

01:23:27.340 That's pretty spot on, right?

01:23:30.240 I was like, you've got to be kidding me.

01:23:31.720 He goes, bro, I wish I was joking with you.

01:23:35.440 He's like, that is exactly who's going to be in the building.

01:23:38.700 Yeah.

01:23:39.920 Because I was like, who's going to be in the building?

01:23:41.800 He's like, you're never going to believe it.

01:23:43.520 I'm like, wow.

01:23:44.700 I used to be.

01:23:45.780 I might still be.

01:23:46.640 I don't think I am.

01:23:47.440 I was with CAA and they were trying to make movies out of my books.

01:23:51.560 And you go to that building and they call it like the Death Star.

01:23:55.520 I forget.

01:23:56.260 Maybe that's the name of it.

01:23:58.300 And there are like politicians who are being represented by CAA, athletes, tech bros, influencers, right?

01:24:08.280 So that's where all of that kind of, yeah, there's the Death Star.

01:24:11.900 Yeah.

01:24:12.700 Cool looking building.

01:24:13.740 Their building is awesome looking.

01:24:16.140 Yeah.

01:24:17.120 It's pretty frightening though when you go inside.

01:24:20.780 It's like all these people, everyone's like wearing a suit.

01:24:24.640 Yeah.

01:24:25.020 It's almost like, it's almost like Dianetics.

01:24:28.800 What's that called again?

01:24:30.640 Scientology.

01:24:31.220 It's almost like Scientology.

01:24:32.820 Like Scientology.

01:24:33.460 Hollywood's version of Scientology.

01:24:35.420 Yeah.

01:24:35.700 Anyway, thank you.

01:24:38.980 Yeah.

01:24:39.300 That's a pretty building though.

01:24:41.400 Yeah.

01:24:41.960 So it's, I, it feels like there is a merging these days of the government and social media.

01:24:48.240 To me, social media is definitely the power.

01:24:52.340 Oh, for sure.

01:24:53.220 That's what it's like.

01:24:53.960 That's all the influence.

01:24:55.680 I mean, the government couldn't even keep the post office open.

01:24:58.520 Yeah.

01:24:59.080 You know?

01:24:59.460 I mean, the post office is crazy, dude.

01:25:05.120 You can go in there and just ask for mail and they'll give you some mail, bro.

01:25:09.220 Oh, really?

01:25:09.800 Yeah.

01:25:10.060 You don't even have to have any.

01:25:11.220 They're just like, here's some mail for you.

01:25:13.800 You know?

01:25:14.000 I'll try that.

01:25:14.940 Yeah.

01:25:15.200 It's gotten way, they, yeah.

01:25:17.160 They're, they really lowered the bar on like rules or whatever.

01:25:23.980 Yeah.

01:25:24.480 But, but the technology people, um, they've read all of the books on marketing, on psychology,

01:25:31.140 you know, Mark Zuckerberg.

01:25:32.400 They figured the whole thing out.

01:25:33.820 Yeah.

01:25:34.180 They know how to move us around like little puppets on a string, you know?

01:25:39.120 So, um.

01:25:40.280 Yeah.

01:25:40.640 I wonder if we'll get to a point in, uh, I have to pee.

01:25:44.080 Do you or not?

01:25:44.600 I have to pee.

01:25:45.380 You do?

01:25:45.780 You go pee and then I'll pee after you.

01:25:48.080 Okay.

01:25:48.380 But I wanted to ask you all, do you think like Hollywood has like an agenda, like that

01:25:55.700 it's an organized agenda that they try and create through their art?

01:26:01.360 Or do you think that's just like a conspiracy theory where people, that art just imitates

01:26:07.440 life and that's just the way things are?

01:26:09.300 Are you talking about the movie industry?

01:26:11.400 You're talking about tech?

01:26:12.660 You're talking about which aspect of it?

01:26:14.680 That's a good question.

01:26:15.680 Are you talking about video games or, I mean, um.

01:26:19.620 I guess I would probably talk more about like the movie industry.

01:26:24.780 Well, there, to me, um, for my being inside the belly of the beast, so to speak, is it's

01:26:32.660 really all about money.

01:26:34.420 I mean, there's so much money involved and at stake.

01:26:37.700 That's really the motor that drives everything in Hollywood.

01:26:40.460 You know, people may pretend it's about creating art or supporting this cause or that cause.

01:26:47.760 But when you bring it all down, it's about making money.

01:26:50.160 I'm sorry.

01:26:51.180 Yeah.

01:26:51.400 You know, and that's what.

01:26:52.820 Yeah.

01:26:53.140 And that's what generates what they choose to make movies about.

01:26:56.340 So for a while, it was all the franchise movies, you know, the Mission Impossibles.

01:27:01.760 Then it was all the Marvel movies because, you know, they need to, they need to sell their

01:27:07.100 products abroad.

01:27:09.020 If it sells in China, they make a killing, you know, that's.

01:27:12.740 Right.

01:27:13.060 If they can make one thing that sells to everybody, then it's like, that's a super home run.

01:27:17.020 Whereas if they make some, one thing that sells like just to people in a certain region

01:27:20.820 of America, that's more of like a single or a bunt.

01:27:23.440 Right.

01:27:24.440 So that's what generates their, their, you know, their mojo.

01:27:27.700 That's why they, they, they make the things that they make.

01:27:29.960 So you don't want too much dialogue because if it's like an India or China, you know, you

01:27:36.840 have to do all the subtitles.

01:27:38.220 It doesn't work.

01:27:38.800 Just a lot of action, a lot of people beating each other up, a lot of explosions.

01:27:42.940 So it's, it's money.

01:27:44.740 And then comes the art and then it comes, well, do we actually film?

01:27:49.040 That's how they think.

01:27:50.080 I'm, I'm pretty damn sure of it.

01:27:51.900 Yeah.

01:27:51.980 So I don't think there's like a conspiracy to like, uh, move a certain agenda.

01:27:59.220 Although, you know, there is a kind of certain woke quality, excuse me, that I won't deny

01:28:05.520 that, that permeates it.

01:28:07.060 Yeah.

01:28:07.620 Right.

01:28:08.360 But it's more about, you know, they would drop the woke stuff tomorrow if they could make

01:28:13.940 more money doing something else.

01:28:15.380 It's just about what's going to bring the bucks and big bucks.

01:28:19.000 Cause that's what Hollywood's all about.

01:28:21.060 And Hollywood needs proof.

01:28:23.320 So Hollywood, I feel like is always a little behind the times in a lot of ways, unless they

01:28:27.180 do something indie, because they really need proof that something is going to bring in the

01:28:32.240 money.

01:28:32.680 Yeah.

01:28:32.980 So until still they start to see like a swing in like ticket sales or streams or views, then they are just, um, riding whatever the previous few years were.

01:28:45.160 Well, it used to be 30, 40 years ago when there was independent film that you could have somebody like a Jim Jarmusch, you know,

01:28:53.220 So who was it?

01:28:54.400 Huh?

01:28:54.800 Jim Jarmusch.

01:28:55.420 Who was it?

01:28:56.340 Um, bring him up.

01:28:57.620 Yeah.

01:28:57.780 Bring up Jim Jarmusch, please.

01:28:59.100 He was a really interesting film director.

01:29:01.060 He might've been from the South in like the eighties and nineties.

01:29:03.880 Let's bring him up.

01:29:04.960 Yeah.

01:29:05.400 Jimmy Jarmusch, baby.

01:29:06.980 Hey.

01:29:07.180 Um, but what were some of his movies?

01:29:09.700 You look at the Fonz, huh?

01:29:10.940 He did that movie with Tom Waits that I really like.

01:29:13.700 I haven't seen that.

01:29:14.900 Down by Law.

01:29:16.320 Huh?

01:29:17.080 Down by Law.

01:29:17.840 Down by Law.

01:29:18.420 Down by Law.

01:29:18.540 Thank you.

01:29:18.980 Yeah.

01:29:19.940 Um.

01:29:20.300 Thanks, Zach, for saying that.

01:29:21.460 Down by Law.

01:29:22.180 Put that on the list of things to watch, too.

01:29:24.260 Yeah, it's a really interesting movie.

01:29:25.600 Tom Waits is the only time I've ever seen him act.

01:29:27.800 Yeah.

01:29:28.400 Are you a Tom Waits fan?

01:29:29.900 Um, no.

01:29:30.940 Okay.

01:29:31.480 Well, that's all right.

01:29:32.360 I won't.

01:29:32.620 Oh, wait.

01:29:33.580 Cripple Creek, was that him?

01:29:34.720 Um, no, that's somebody else.

01:29:38.320 That's the band.

01:29:39.720 That's the band, yeah.

01:29:40.980 Oh, the Wait, I'm thinking of.

01:29:42.600 That's also the band.

01:29:43.540 That's the band.

01:29:44.540 Oh.

01:29:45.180 Tom Waits.

01:29:46.020 Bring him up.

01:29:47.260 Decent guy.

01:29:48.660 Oh, he's fantastic.

01:29:51.180 Do I know him?

01:29:52.360 Oh, wait.

01:29:52.980 Tom Waits, dude?

01:29:54.580 Yeah.

01:29:55.160 Dude, I know Tom Waits.

01:29:57.220 Yeah.

01:29:58.780 Yeah.

01:29:59.080 Yeah, I'm a fan of him, dude.

01:30:00.180 I frickin' know him.

01:30:01.280 Oh, yeah.

01:30:01.800 Show me another picture of him.

01:30:03.380 Yeah.

01:30:04.700 Wow.

01:30:05.600 He used to play, I think, with my buddy Josh Kelly.

01:30:08.980 Uh-huh.

01:30:10.960 Tom Waits, dude.

01:30:12.520 Yeah.

01:30:12.920 What's up, Tom?

01:30:14.040 He's one of my heroes from, like, I loved his music.

01:30:18.140 Is he dead?

01:30:20.040 Oh, he didn't know he's Jewish.

01:30:20.940 No.

01:30:21.260 Whoa.

01:30:22.200 He lives in California now.

01:30:23.500 No, he's still alive.

01:30:24.440 Oh, thank God.

01:30:26.660 I'll text him then.

01:30:29.000 Yeah, please say hello.

01:30:31.740 That's cool, dude.

01:30:32.700 Dude, yeah, I went and, I think he performed on a show with my buddy Josh Kelly, with a musician

01:30:37.760 friend of mine one time.

01:30:39.280 He's amazing.

01:30:40.620 He's amazing.

01:30:41.300 Yeah, with Josh Kelly.

01:30:43.660 That's cool, man.

01:30:44.840 So, anyway, so back in the day, you'd have these, like, weird independent filmmakers, like even

01:30:51.100 Jonathan Demme or Jim Jarmusch, and they would create something weird and different, and it

01:30:57.380 would start a trend.

01:30:58.320 People would start doing independent films like that, you know, kind of, you know, even

01:31:04.860 films in black and white, et cetera, et cetera.

01:31:06.960 And, but now, you know, you can't make a movie for a million dollars or half a million dollars

01:31:15.260 like you could back then.

01:31:16.480 Now you need at least 10, 20 million dollars to even begin to think about making a movie.

01:31:21.300 Well, to make a big movie.

01:31:22.960 To make any movie.

01:31:24.200 You think so?

01:31:24.820 Yeah, because the costs have just gone way, way up.

01:31:31.020 Like, just to even think, because my wife, she's an independent filmmaker, right?

01:31:37.060 And she used to make her own films that she would kind of raise the funds with.

01:31:41.980 She could shoot a film for a million dollars.

01:31:43.720 It's not possible now anymore.

01:31:46.420 So, yeah, I mean, I think you probably, at least, probably have to have maybe five million

01:31:49.480 dollars or something.

01:31:49.980 At least.

01:31:50.620 Okay.

01:31:51.320 At least.

01:31:51.880 That I'll agree on, yeah.

01:31:52.700 And they won't fund it.

01:31:55.160 Right.

01:31:55.380 They're not going to fund it.

01:31:56.220 Yeah.

01:31:56.540 It's definitely hard.

01:31:57.800 We've been trying to get a movie made for a while.

01:31:59.440 And I, David Spade, and I wrote a movie.

01:32:01.160 And it's not a super expensive film.

01:32:03.580 Yeah.

01:32:03.880 And it's been a nightmare.

01:32:06.500 And so that's why sometimes it's like, I wonder, well, it's like, do they just not

01:32:10.640 like us?

01:32:11.840 Is that why, like, William Morris won't help us make this thing?

01:32:15.420 You know?

01:32:15.700 Like, why would it, you know, like, you know, I don't know.

01:32:19.700 I don't want to get petty in it.

01:32:20.600 I don't feel petty, but it's like, why wouldn't they invest in it, you know?

01:32:24.200 Well, what would happen is if you made your $5 million movie with David Spade, it could

01:32:29.160 very well set a trend.

01:32:30.300 It could very well make $80 million and be huge.

01:32:33.160 But they don't want to take the risk.

01:32:35.060 They're so scared.

01:32:36.200 Their balls are so scrunched up in a little, you know, they've got, and they're just so

01:32:40.500 afraid and timid that they only want to do what they know is a slam dunk where they can

01:32:44.440 make a lot of money because their lives are on the line.

01:32:47.440 It's such a precarious world now, Hollywood.

01:32:50.020 It's not doing very well.

01:32:51.540 They're in kind of a crisis stage right now because of streaming, because it's so competitive.

01:32:56.820 Yeah.

01:32:57.440 It's really hard to make money.

01:32:58.980 So they're not willing to take risks, you know?

01:33:01.320 Yeah.

01:33:01.480 And this is a problem that's happening in America in all fields.

01:33:05.860 The amount of risk takers now is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking because people are so afraid.

01:33:12.480 Ah, see, that's it.

01:33:14.240 And that, in a way, is also taking away our individuality because if we don't take risks,

01:33:20.680 if there's not enough space to take a risk or someone isn't brave enough or willing or

01:33:26.920 is able to make it happen, it's not always bravery.

01:33:29.080 A lot of people, they just, it's not feasible based on their life.

01:33:33.860 And it's okay if they can't take a risk.

01:33:36.300 But you need those people, you know?

01:33:37.960 You do need those people.

01:33:38.920 You need those people for things to change, to start a new curve.

01:33:42.480 Yeah.

01:33:43.080 Yeah, that's really interesting, man.

01:33:45.400 Thinking about what you just said a second ago, I had a friend of mine is a publicist

01:33:50.080 and he was saying the other day, he's like, man, Hollywood's just, nobody's making a lot

01:33:54.400 of things, you know?

01:33:55.860 Like last year, I think Sony Pictures only made like 12 movies last year.

01:34:03.900 Really?

01:34:04.600 You know?

01:34:04.920 That's crazy.

01:34:05.260 I think this year they're on slate to make like 20 or 25.

01:34:08.480 Well, a lot of that had to do with the strike.

01:34:10.160 Right.

01:34:10.620 Oh, that's a good point, too.

01:34:12.020 But to think that like probably 10 years ago, they probably made 100 movies, you know?

01:34:18.940 And if you can bring up any numbers on that, that'd be great.

01:34:21.120 If you see anything, let me know.

01:34:23.340 But yeah, he was that.

01:34:25.500 Well, one of the problems also, I think, with Hollywood is you have like nepotism is alive

01:34:32.240 and well in America overall.

01:34:34.120 So I think you get, I don't know if this is true, but I feel like you get people that

01:34:39.340 are just, now it's the children of people, it's their sons.

01:34:42.920 The creativity, the guy moving from Dubuque, Iowa with a great idea isn't coming here anymore

01:34:49.700 and bringing, because they're giving that job to somebody's kid or it's all, and you start

01:34:53.820 to lose creativity because the creativity isn't going to come there after a while because

01:35:00.620 it doesn't, it's not nurtured.

01:35:04.220 Yeah, yeah.

01:35:04.960 You know?

01:35:05.280 I mean, there is a possibility, there is some hope that it's so cheap to make a movie with

01:35:10.940 your iPhone, right?

01:35:12.200 That the means of making a movie could be, you could go out there if you're some 20-year-old

01:35:17.720 kid and you have a really interesting, weird idea and you just go ahead and make it.

01:35:22.640 Oh, totally.

01:35:23.720 That could, you could create a trend, but the problem is a lot of people, a lot of people

01:35:30.580 are afraid to even make that step, you know, they want, they want, they want to make the

01:35:36.340 money first.

01:35:37.640 You know, sometimes I tell people, it's okay to do something for free.

01:35:42.780 It's okay to take a job where you're getting paid very little, but if you learn a valuable

01:35:48.680 skill, if you actually make something that, that gets a lot of attention, the money will

01:35:54.180 come in.

01:35:55.400 But a lot of people are so afraid of making that step, right?

01:35:59.160 So if you're like a young person, you have an idea for film, don't sit there and wait

01:36:03.940 and try and get William Morris and get all the other crap online.

01:36:07.040 It will never happen.

01:36:08.160 You know, just go out and make it on your own for $10,000 and something could happen, right?

01:36:14.080 But so you're saying right there, then you can make a movie for $10,000, but you can't

01:36:17.360 make like a, it's a different looking movie.

01:36:21.660 Yeah, but you could get a lot of attention for it and you could maybe start a trend and

01:36:25.240 you could create something so weird and stylistic that it reflects you.

01:36:29.020 A hundred percent.

01:36:29.900 A proof of concept.

01:36:31.460 Yeah.

01:36:32.000 And that other people will not want to imitate.

01:36:34.100 There just needs to be more of that.

01:36:35.600 And the same thing's happening to the music industry as well right now.

01:36:38.720 Yeah.

01:36:39.300 You know?

01:36:40.560 Yeah, you're fine.

01:36:41.060 Well, I think in music, it's an easier barrier to entry probably because it is cheaper maybe

01:36:46.640 to create, you know, you need an instrument, you know, because then you have to pay editing,

01:36:50.780 but maybe not, not really.

01:36:51.980 These days you can learn everything online.

01:36:53.980 I just wonder if we're less creative or more creative than ever, or maybe we're the same

01:37:00.260 as we've always been.

01:37:01.400 Uh, well, being an old guy, I'd have to say less creative, but that's maybe just a misperception

01:37:08.600 that comes with age where you think everything was so much better back in the day.

01:37:12.920 Right.

01:37:13.200 I think that's, sometimes I think that's possible, but I also think the imagination isn't used

01:37:18.920 as much because there's so much, why I can be like, okay, right now, could I think of

01:37:23.600 something to entertain myself or to keep me busy or to see where my thoughts take me?

01:37:27.820 Or can I open up TikTok and just see something that's definitely going to be entertaining?

01:37:33.200 Yeah, yeah.

01:37:33.960 You know, so I think our imagination has started to, and I don't even know how you would measure

01:37:41.020 that, but I think our imagination has started to, uh, become like the appendix or something,

01:37:45.680 you know, in the body.

01:37:46.460 We don't even know what it was for.

01:37:48.080 Uh, back in the day, George Carlin had a, had a routine, you know, George Carlin.

01:37:52.600 Oh yeah.

01:37:52.940 Yeah.

01:37:53.380 About, uh, when he was a kid, he would just pick up a stick and he would play with it

01:37:58.500 and he would create all these amazing games with just a stick that he found on the road.

01:38:02.500 Yeah.

01:38:02.880 He'd sit there and poke it and look at the animals and then he would invent this, that

01:38:06.040 and the other.

01:38:06.940 And he was like bemoaning how nobody can take a stick anymore and, and, and imagine something

01:38:12.280 with it.

01:38:12.960 You know, he had a much funnier way than I'm saying it right now.

01:38:17.220 Believe me, trust me.

01:38:18.820 But the idea was that, you know, when you were a kid, you, you know, I remember we, we

01:38:24.180 created something when I was a kid, I was about eight years old, nine years old, it's called

01:38:28.360 Dirt Village.

01:38:29.640 And what it is, is we created a whole town in dirt on this hill that near where my friend

01:38:36.940 lived and we created houses, et cetera, et cetera.

01:38:39.760 And then we had wars and we took all our army men and then we would like blast their city and

01:38:45.000 destroy it.

01:38:45.640 But they had created like bridges and lakes and all this stuff.

01:38:48.820 It was like wonderful, you know, that kind of thing, making your own world.

01:38:53.300 Yeah.

01:38:53.840 Yeah.

01:38:54.780 Yeah.

01:38:55.180 Well, I think doing things like that was so interesting doing like being creative.

01:38:59.380 Um, but one thing that always creates imagination in people is love.

01:39:05.040 I feel like that's something that like, you know, um, always like the risk of the siren in

01:39:15.120 the distance, you know, always was the, that was a big factor for me, I think.

01:39:19.920 Yeah.

01:39:20.220 Yeah.

01:39:20.380 Yeah.

01:39:20.680 That always like sparked my imagination from whether I was writing a girl a poetry or making

01:39:25.820 a, uh, uh, collage, doing something, you know, trying to create romance or something.

01:39:31.340 Or figuring out how to seduce her and how to strategize and where to take her and what

01:39:35.440 would impress her and all that other stuff.

01:39:37.700 Yeah.

01:39:38.520 Yeah.

01:39:38.880 And I mean, I didn't even think, I guess I didn't think of it.

01:39:40.760 It's weird because you think of it, I guess seduction isn't just sexual, is it?

01:39:46.100 Oh.

01:39:46.660 Okay.

01:39:48.160 So yeah, cause I would think about like, yeah, what could I go do that's nice with my girl?

01:39:53.800 What would be, what would make her care about me?

01:39:56.740 What would make me show her that I care about her?

01:40:00.280 I loved that stuff when I was young.

01:40:02.360 Yeah, me too.

01:40:03.500 You know?

01:40:04.360 Yeah.

01:40:04.860 I mean, uh, I think, um, online porn has definitely degraded those skills.

01:40:10.760 Oh, it's ruined so much.

01:40:12.800 I'm amazed that we allow it.

01:40:14.420 I mean, you used to be, um, like if you wanted to meet, you were feeling lonely, you'd go

01:40:22.540 to a party or a bar or something.

01:40:25.200 You had, it took some guts.

01:40:27.060 You had to like get out, out of your house.

01:40:29.320 You had to take the risk of somebody saying no, you know, and you, you were kind of afraid

01:40:34.980 and timid.

01:40:35.800 Yeah.

01:40:36.240 You're kind of trembling.

01:40:37.100 And then maybe you had a few beers and things went a little bit better, but it took like

01:40:41.640 a skill that you had to develop, a people skill.

01:40:44.820 But if everything is so quick and instant, you're, you're, you're, you're afraid.

01:40:49.400 So many young men are afraid of women.

01:40:52.920 They get in their early twenties.

01:40:54.380 They don't know how to approach them.

01:40:55.740 Yeah.

01:40:56.080 Because they've never had to approach them.

01:40:58.200 They've never had to deal with the fact that somebody could reject them because it's just

01:41:02.680 right there.

01:41:04.160 You don't have to deal with it.

01:41:05.180 Never rejected.

01:41:06.180 So then no interaction.

01:41:07.800 So then this, yeah, this weird feeling of weird fear.

01:41:11.560 I had a ton.

01:41:12.340 I was definitely too much pornography.

01:41:16.480 Oh, really?

01:41:17.140 Yeah.

01:41:17.380 My twenties, dude, bad news, dude, jerking my, yeah, just jerking my body off or just

01:41:25.880 looking at porno.

01:41:26.880 This is in the earlier days of porn.

01:41:29.000 This was, yeah, 15 years ago, 13 years ago or whatever.

01:41:34.280 Yeah.

01:41:34.680 How much long ago was it?

01:41:36.400 Yeah.

01:41:36.760 It just was bad, man.

01:41:37.900 I would, yeah, well, sometimes I would even set a date up and then instead of going on the

01:41:42.720 date, I would end up looking at some pornography and then just cancel the date.

01:41:46.720 All right.

01:41:48.000 Yeah.

01:41:48.800 I was like, well, why am I going to go on this?

01:41:51.160 Because I think probably some of it was nerves.

01:41:52.980 I didn't want to have to go.

01:41:54.080 But then also it was like, I, you just found a loophole to make yourself feel sexually gratified.

01:41:58.720 But the longterm effects of that miserable, man.

01:42:03.280 Because then I started thinking anytime I was like engaging in sexual activity, I would

01:42:09.100 think of it in almost like camera shots or something.

01:42:12.200 Oh my God.

01:42:12.660 You know what I'm saying?

01:42:13.220 Like it was all like, um, and I didn't even realize it, but it wasn't like,

01:42:17.360 like in a moment it was just like, I'd almost be just watching, um, yeah.

01:42:25.040 Like it wasn't, I wasn't in the moment, even the way I saw it.

01:42:28.680 Right, right.

01:42:29.100 It was, I'd seen it so many times this way that I couldn't break the pattern.

01:42:34.120 Wow.

01:42:34.300 That's really scary.

01:42:35.520 Oh, no idea.

01:42:36.860 Yeah.

01:42:37.260 It was, it was tough, man.

01:42:38.540 Ruined.

01:42:38.920 Yeah.

01:42:39.120 Ruined, um, some relationships that I was in.

01:42:42.100 And I'm not trying to be self-pity.

01:42:44.480 I'm just saying, yeah, I was a, certainly not even a victim of it.

01:42:48.320 I can, I did it, you know, and I wish that it hadn't have been there because I do miss

01:42:53.820 the days when I would just lay at home and just scream like, where are all the chicks?

01:43:00.420 You know, and just jerk off that way, you know, instead of at least like looking at

01:43:06.240 the screen or whatever.

01:43:07.860 And then their bodies could never measure up to what, what you saw.

01:43:11.540 Yeah.

01:43:11.900 The lighting is never, it's all, it's never the same.

01:43:14.920 It's never the same.

01:43:15.920 So then next time a girl comes over to your place, you have 700 watt bulbs in the ceiling.

01:43:19.880 She's like, what the hell's going on?

01:43:22.460 But dude, there was nothing.

01:43:23.820 That's what drew you out into the world as a man, the fantasy, even going to Europe or

01:43:28.240 whatever.

01:43:28.580 What if I meet a, someone on the corner smoking a cigarette?

01:43:31.760 Oh man.

01:43:32.340 I remember when I worked in this hotel in Paris, I was 21.

01:43:36.240 It was the hotel where all of the models would stay.

01:43:40.000 Wow, dude.

01:43:40.880 Oh my God.

01:43:41.860 I would hide under a bed.

01:43:43.280 It was like paradise.

01:43:45.200 You know, I die in God of heaven.

01:43:46.580 And there was this guy who kept showing up at the hotel.

01:43:49.840 His name was Eduardo.

01:43:51.160 He was this tall Brazilian man.

01:43:53.560 This is kind of where the art of seduction came from.

01:43:56.140 I would watch this guy.

01:43:58.060 He was so smooth.

01:43:59.460 He had every skill in the book.

01:44:01.680 Wow.

01:44:02.180 He was so relaxed that when women were around him, they just melted.

01:44:06.360 Right.

01:44:06.980 And so I was thinking, what is this power that this guy has?

01:44:10.380 Yeah, he was, he was pretty good looking.

01:44:12.200 He wasn't the most handsome person in the world, but he had some kind of skill that he

01:44:16.920 had developed.

01:44:17.940 And, you know, he had crafted it coming to this hotel partially, you know, because he

01:44:22.960 had seduced so many of the models staying there.

01:44:25.580 But I was thinking, what is it about him?

01:44:28.120 And I was kind of fascinated by him.

01:44:29.800 And I became friends with him briefly.

01:44:31.980 And I realized it was his confidence, his calmness.

01:44:37.740 There was nothing defensive about him.

01:44:40.400 And the fact of him being so undefensive made him incredibly charming to women.

01:44:46.440 What does undefensive mean?

01:44:48.000 And he's not insecure.

01:44:51.320 Yeah.

01:44:51.720 He's not thinking about himself.

01:44:53.800 He's not in the moment with a woman going, what do I need to say to impress her?

01:44:58.160 He's not there at all.

01:44:59.360 He's like so on them, inside their mind, so relaxed and not thinking about himself.

01:45:07.380 That's what I mean.

01:45:08.740 Eduardo.

01:45:09.860 Eduardo.

01:45:10.300 Where is he now?

01:45:11.900 God.

01:45:12.780 Probably with some chick, probably.

01:45:14.600 Well, now he's going to be in his 60s or 70s.

01:45:18.140 That ain't stopping him, dude.

01:45:19.860 I'll tell you that.

01:45:21.820 Maybe not.

01:45:22.660 Maybe not.

01:45:23.140 Gosh, yeah.

01:45:23.920 I think seeing somebody be like, oh, I was always shocked when a guy was good with the

01:45:28.420 girls.

01:45:28.780 I was like, who is this wizard?

01:45:31.980 Yeah.

01:45:32.540 Who is this damn wizard?

01:45:34.760 Yeah.

01:45:35.020 And there were people like that.

01:45:36.140 They had something about them.

01:45:37.580 And it wasn't just looks.

01:45:39.340 Mm-mm.

01:45:40.960 No, dude.

01:45:43.020 Yeah.

01:45:43.680 I mean, it was not.

01:45:45.820 It's just a comfortability.

01:45:51.900 Sometimes there are moments I would get into that state where I would be fearless with women,

01:45:56.260 very rarely.

01:45:58.180 But it's gotten better as I've gotten older.

01:46:01.240 But yeah, when I was young, it was so hard just to like even look at a girl and talk at

01:46:06.040 the same time.

01:46:06.700 I fucking, I don't even know.

01:46:08.140 I feel like my legs were just going to climb right into my butt.

01:46:11.800 I just was so scared.

01:46:13.140 Well, we've all been there.

01:46:14.400 Yeah.

01:46:16.240 Is that what propelled you out into Europe?

01:46:18.080 Were you a ladies man growing up?

01:46:20.200 I had a period.

01:46:21.800 My 20s were a bit like that.

01:46:24.700 Yeah.

01:46:24.980 And then I kind of grew out of it for whatever reason.

01:46:29.240 What do you mean grew out of it?

01:46:30.960 It got tiring.

01:46:32.700 Oh, just chasing women kind of.

01:46:34.360 Yeah.

01:46:34.640 And it felt like, it felt like something, you know, like it's okay when you're in your

01:46:41.400 20s, you're young, you look good, you've got energy, you've got spirit.

01:46:45.020 You start getting into your 30s, you start getting into your 40s and it seems kind of

01:46:48.940 pathetic.

01:46:49.760 Yeah.

01:46:50.600 It doesn't seem, that's how my, maybe if you're Mick Jagger, it's not pathetic.

01:46:56.580 Yeah.

01:46:56.760 But for me, it felt like, it doesn't feel right anymore.

01:47:00.880 But when I was in my 20s, I'm not saying I was, I wasn't on the level of Eduardo.

01:47:06.180 No way, man.

01:47:07.580 But, you know, the interest was there.

01:47:10.680 I was aspiring to be in his league, let's put it that way.

01:47:13.820 And were you brave with women?

01:47:15.200 Like, were you brave enough to go talk to him and stuff?

01:47:17.040 Because part of that is learning just the art, like learning, even being in the dance.

01:47:23.000 Like, I never even put myself in the dance so many times.

01:47:26.240 I'm like, dude, you got to at least get on the, get in the interaction moment, you know?

01:47:31.520 Well, the key to me that I learned, and maybe it's just me, is that if you're really interested

01:47:40.340 in her, if you're really excited by her, if it's not just about sex, but there's something

01:47:45.400 about her that excites you, it'll bring something out of you that you didn't think was in you,

01:47:52.380 right?

01:47:52.720 It'll bring energy out of you.

01:47:54.340 It will make you, they will feel that your excitement and your interest, they'll see

01:47:59.700 that it's not mechanical, that it's not just about sex, that you're genuinely interested

01:48:03.520 in them.

01:48:04.020 That will relax them, which in turn will relax you back and forth, back and forth.

01:48:08.840 So if you choose somebody that you genuinely feel a connection to, and it's also sexual,

01:48:15.700 it'll have this kind of reverberating effect where you will bring out your, I remember

01:48:22.120 sometimes I'd be funnier than I've ever been in my whole life, I'd be wittier, I'd be an

01:48:28.140 actor, I'd be saying all kinds of weird things, and you know, they brought it out of me.

01:48:33.480 But then other women, no, nothing at all like that.

01:48:35.900 I'd be nervous.

01:48:37.000 It didn't happen.

01:48:38.200 But that kind of magic happens when it's like a real, a real connection.

01:48:42.440 When there's purpose there.

01:48:43.540 Yeah.

01:48:43.960 Kind of like even what we were saying earlier about purpose showing up, how does it, that

01:48:46.940 it shows up.

01:48:47.800 Yeah.

01:48:48.180 That there's something there, if you can navigate it, that a moment there's something,

01:48:53.180 there's some energy there that shows up, that connects you to your purpose.

01:49:00.400 Yeah.

01:49:00.640 It's very similar to the energy that shows up to connect you to a woman in a way, I would

01:49:04.120 say.

01:49:04.460 Yeah.

01:49:04.860 Or someone of the opposite sex.

01:49:06.600 Yeah.

01:49:08.400 Did they outlaw, sorry, the art of seduction in prison?

01:49:12.000 I hope so.

01:49:13.860 Right, right.

01:49:15.000 That's hilarious, dude.

01:49:18.680 I wouldn't want that book in prison.

01:49:20.600 I wouldn't feel very good about myself.

01:49:23.900 Sorry, sorry, sorry.

01:49:25.020 I meant to say, I heard they outlawed the 48 laws of power in prison.

01:49:33.940 Is that true?

01:49:34.480 They might have outlawed art of seduction.

01:49:36.580 I don't know.

01:49:41.780 Yes, they did outlaw the 48 laws of power in a lot of prisons.

01:49:46.220 Well, they picked the wrong book.

01:49:47.460 I'll say that now.

01:49:48.400 They just piggybacked on your joke earlier.

01:49:52.660 Yeah.

01:49:52.860 Why?

01:49:53.260 Why?

01:49:53.720 They don't want people having power in there?

01:49:55.880 Well, um.

01:49:58.200 Robert Greene's 48 laws of power is second most banned book in prisons.

01:50:01.420 You know what the most banned book is?

01:50:04.920 Is it an obvious one or not?

01:50:06.260 Oh, I know what it is.

01:50:07.980 Hold on.

01:50:08.580 I know exactly what it is, dude.

01:50:10.220 I don't think you do.

01:50:11.600 Yes, I do, brother.

01:50:12.760 I know exactly what it is.

01:50:14.620 It is Shawshank Redemption.

01:50:19.860 No.

01:50:20.900 No way.

01:50:21.580 It's a recipe book.

01:50:23.260 About how to cook ramen.

01:50:26.660 I kid you not.

01:50:27.880 Prison ramen, the most commonly banned title on the list.

01:50:30.100 There you go.

01:50:30.560 What?

01:50:32.440 There you go.

01:50:33.300 Thank you.

01:50:33.940 Why?

01:50:34.340 The 48 laws of power is also one of them.

01:50:38.540 The girl with the lower back tattoo, the art of war, and Cuba Libre.

01:50:45.880 Yeah.

01:50:46.400 Prison ramen.

01:50:47.840 Don't ask me why.

01:50:49.460 What is?

01:50:49.940 Yeah.

01:50:50.140 Why is prison ramen?

01:50:53.740 Let's get the answer.

01:50:54.860 Why is your book banned in there?

01:50:59.760 Well, because ostensibly it's because it's about manipulation.

01:51:05.160 And they're worried that people are going to use it in prison to manipulate other prisoners.

01:51:11.840 But really, it's not really about that.

01:51:14.360 Really, it's about prison is—and I have a lot of feedback from prisoners.

01:51:21.280 I don't have a record.

01:51:22.440 I've never been in prison, so I can say that.

01:51:24.500 But I have a lot of sympathy for people in prison.

01:51:27.200 I understand that, you know, if not for the grace of God, I could be in that situation.

01:51:33.380 For sure.

01:51:33.660 There's a side of me—there's a slight criminal side to my psyche, I have to admit.

01:51:38.820 Yeah.

01:51:39.160 So I understand that.

01:51:41.100 And prison is about power.

01:51:44.080 It's about making you feel—it's about dividing the prisoners amongst themselves so they don't get together and see what's really going on.

01:51:51.440 It's about controlling what they read, controlling what they see, controlling every aspect of their life, what they eat, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

01:51:59.240 And it's a book about gaining some of that control back, and they're very much afraid of it.

01:52:06.640 And I've had prisoners tell me about that, like, you know, the games that wardens play on prisoners and guards play are really powerful and really manipulative, very psychological.

01:52:18.080 And they said that the book kind of helped them see through that.

01:52:20.880 But I have a woman who's in prison in Texas who—she had gotten the book from her, I think, husband or boyfriend, and I think she ended up committing a crime against him, something like that.

01:52:37.960 But she realized how he was using the book against her, and the book opened up her mind.

01:52:42.380 And she's in prison in Texas.

01:52:45.280 They will not let her see it.

01:52:47.500 So she has a kind of memorize.

01:52:49.000 She remembered the chapters.

01:52:50.880 But they're afraid of somebody getting a hold of that and learning about how the system operates, how other people operate, what the guards are up to, et cetera, et cetera.

01:53:00.560 Wow.

01:53:01.020 I think it's about that more than anything else.

01:53:03.100 Did that make you feel pretty cool?

01:53:06.360 Yeah, I feel kind of bad about it.

01:53:09.880 It's kind of cool.

01:53:10.860 Yeah, I guess so.

01:53:11.820 I don't know why.

01:53:12.480 But it's kind of cool because it's like, you're banned here, Robert.

01:53:16.120 Yeah, yeah.

01:53:16.840 Don't you come around here, buddy.

01:53:18.880 There's something about that, you know?

01:53:20.360 But what if I ended up in prison?

01:53:22.220 They'd have to ban me because it's all in here.

01:53:24.120 I could tell everybody all the laws.

01:53:27.020 You know, that'd be a good movie.

01:53:28.780 I love that, huh?

01:53:29.720 Let's go to William Morrison's pitch that.

01:53:34.540 Yeah, sure.

01:53:36.980 In 10 years, we'll get it made.

01:53:40.780 What were some books you read that helped shape your worldview or things you liked reading growing up?

01:53:45.580 I was a big John Irving guy, World According to the Guard, Prayer for Owen Meany, Hotel New Hampshire, some of my favorite books, Confederacy of Dunces.

01:53:54.540 That's a great book.

01:53:55.400 Dude, that's a great book, isn't it?

01:53:57.200 Yeah.

01:53:58.300 That's a great book.

01:53:59.040 It's a wicked book.

01:54:00.320 Robert O'Toole, I think.

01:54:02.120 Something O'Toole, yeah.

01:54:03.160 What did you like?

01:54:06.640 Well, I was into some heavy stuff, but I also really like...

01:54:11.160 Like Vonnegut kind of stuff?

01:54:12.540 Well, like philosophy, like Nietzsche, like Machiavelli.

01:54:16.800 But I was also very much into Carlos Castaneda.

01:54:21.920 You don't know Carlos Castaneda?

01:54:23.360 But write him down so we can get one of his books.

01:54:25.960 Well, Carlos Castaneda was really big in the 60s and 70s, kind of the hippie generation.

01:54:31.920 Ooh.

01:54:33.340 And he writes a lot about peyote, et cetera.

01:54:37.120 His book, Journey to Ixatlan, that one on second from the top, that had a big influence on me.

01:54:43.260 Okay.

01:54:43.500 Yeah.

01:54:44.780 Carlos Castaneda was a professor of anthropology at UCLA.

01:54:48.580 And some people think he made it up, but he went to Mexico and he met a kind of a curandero,

01:54:53.560 a kind of a witch doctor type person named Don Juan, who had magical powers, but who ate

01:55:00.060 a lot of peyote and took all of these journeys.

01:55:03.000 And he taught him about the world.

01:55:06.160 And I swear to God, that book had so much impact on me that a lot of the things in the

01:55:10.180 48 Laws of Power actually come from that book.

01:55:12.720 Wow.

01:55:13.500 There are ideas in there that are so amazing and practical and wonderful.

01:55:18.120 For a 16-year-old, it was one of the most wonderful books I have ever read.

01:55:22.600 I really, really love that.

01:55:25.500 And that's where, you know, like a separate reality.

01:55:28.520 They're all great.

01:55:29.640 Yeah.

01:55:30.480 Wow.

01:55:30.920 That's cool.

01:55:31.420 No, I want to order that.

01:55:32.260 Will you make sure to order that too, Zach?

01:55:33.480 And, you know, who else?

01:55:39.460 I also, a writer named Hermann Hesse, German writer who had books like Siddhartha and Damien,

01:55:48.500 which were really kind of quite radical.

01:55:50.600 I like things that were a little subversive and radical and weird.

01:55:53.680 Like Clockwork Orange, that kind of stuff?

01:55:56.080 Yeah.

01:55:56.320 Anthony Burgess, he was a great writer.

01:55:57.780 Sure.

01:55:58.940 Yeah.

01:55:59.860 That was always one of the crazier things that, like, when you were a kid, only like

01:56:04.260 the weird kids knew about Clockwork Orange when I was growing up.

01:56:06.560 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:56:07.720 Like the jocks and stuff, they didn't know about it.

01:56:09.660 No.

01:56:09.980 But, like, the weirdo kids who would sometimes take a little sip of gasoline knew about it.

01:56:15.380 You did sips of gasoline?

01:56:17.320 Not a lot.

01:56:18.760 Wow.

01:56:19.520 Think of the damage that did to you.

01:56:22.520 Yeah.

01:56:23.240 I can't even think about it.

01:56:24.340 I think it killed off the cells I would have used to think about it.

01:56:27.000 Well, when I was in college, there's this Englishman.

01:56:30.060 This is when we were doing a lot of drugs.

01:56:33.180 And he started telling us about something he did when he was a kid called Lady Esquire shoe

01:56:39.240 polish.

01:56:40.620 And basically, you would take this shoe polish and you would put it in a rag, then you would

01:56:44.880 sniff it, and your brain would go crazy for, like, a minute, and you felt deathly sick.

01:56:50.540 But for that minute, you were like, whoa.

01:56:52.660 And all you had to do was, like, $1.25 shoe polish.

01:56:56.440 And he said, you know, he got us so excited that we went searching for it, and we found

01:57:02.140 a bottle of it in San Francisco, and we did, and we sniffed it.

01:57:06.600 And it was the most awful thing I've ever experienced in my life.

01:57:10.640 It was, like, way too intense.

01:57:12.520 It was like, wah, wah, wah, wah.

01:57:15.080 Everything was, like, it was just awful.

01:57:17.660 It's the equivalent of gasoline.

01:57:19.720 Yeah, there you go.

01:57:20.440 That's your gasoline.

01:57:21.860 We used to do everything.

01:57:23.040 Like, we heard about, like, cooking banana peels.

01:57:24.960 There were always rumors that would go through town of things you could do to get high.

01:57:29.080 Nutmeg.

01:57:29.760 Oh, we smoked everything in my buddy Jeff's kitchen.

01:57:32.960 We, I remember one time we had, oh, one time I took a bag of mushrooms to a party, and

01:57:43.580 people had never taken them there, and so gave them to everybody.

01:57:46.580 And then I was like, we're going to play hide-and-go-seek, right?

01:57:48.300 You guys go hide, and I'm going to count, right?

01:57:51.420 I'm going to count to, like, 700.

01:57:53.180 And they all went and hid, and I never went and found them.

01:57:56.840 And then I went home.

01:57:59.580 Can you imagine that?

01:58:01.040 Did they know you were giving them psychedelic mushrooms?

01:58:03.860 Dude, fuck them.

01:58:05.080 That's how I felt about it.

01:58:06.380 That's a pretty good trick.

01:58:07.520 Yeah, that's what it was.

01:58:08.520 They're basically like Chris Angel.

01:58:09.440 They're probably still waiting for you.

01:58:11.260 Oh, dude, somebody's.

01:58:12.880 There's some guy in a closet still wondering where you are.

01:58:15.620 Oh, there was things like that I loved.

01:58:17.600 Like, I remember we went camping one time with a Boy Scouts or something, and I told everybody

01:58:25.000 the day we left that Jay Leno had died, right?

01:58:27.940 So all weekend, everybody, this is for the internet, and everybody's like, God, you hear people talking

01:58:31.940 about it?

01:58:32.240 So I would just lay in my tent, and I would hear dads telling each other, you know, you hear

01:58:37.120 that Jay Leno passed away.

01:58:38.200 And I would be howling in there, like laughing at a, like it was coming out of the, like

01:58:45.860 the core of the earth through me.

01:58:48.000 There was always, I love that element of creating a scenario that nobody knows if it was real

01:58:55.800 or not.

01:58:56.580 You can't do that anymore, though.

01:58:58.660 Right, because the internet killed everything.

01:59:00.200 It did.

01:59:00.480 You can't lie.

01:59:01.080 You used to be able to tell a woman you were a lawyer, and she's like, you're 11.

01:59:05.040 And I'll be like, I object.

01:59:08.200 Don't be such a bitch, man.

01:59:10.300 I'm trying to meet a cool chick.

01:59:13.180 You're right.

01:59:13.700 It did ruin everything.

01:59:14.780 Can't lie anymore.

01:59:16.200 Your new book, Siren, is that what it's called?

01:59:17.960 I've heard you talk about it a couple times.

01:59:19.260 Sirens?

01:59:19.660 Sirens?

01:59:20.300 No.

01:59:21.100 What's that about?

01:59:22.120 I don't know.

01:59:22.620 I thought it was a new book that you were working on.

01:59:24.480 There was one-

01:59:25.000 Like about police sirens?

01:59:26.580 No, about like the women in the distance.

01:59:28.820 No, that's in The Art of Seduction.

01:59:31.040 Okay, that's in The Art of Seduction.

01:59:32.160 You're talking about sirens.

01:59:34.560 What was it?

01:59:35.080 There was some new book I heard you talking about.

01:59:37.100 I'm writing a book on the sublime.

01:59:38.820 The sublime.

01:59:39.700 Sorry, that was it.

01:59:40.340 It's an S word.

01:59:41.560 It's close enough.

01:59:42.820 That's what happened to me.

01:59:43.740 Yeah, it's in The 50th Law, the book I did with 50 Cent, the last chapter is about confronting

01:59:57.720 your mortality because 50, you know, he nearly died.

02:00:01.440 He got shot nine times, close range.

02:00:03.740 Gosh.

02:00:04.380 And he had like a near-death experience.

02:00:06.080 So the last chapter is sort of about, I call it the sublime.

02:00:09.380 Um, and then in the, my last book, The Laws of Human Nature, the last book, the last chapter

02:00:16.380 is about confronting your mortality.

02:00:18.500 And when you do that, all the amazing little things that will happen to your brain and your

02:00:23.120 mind and how it will make life seem that much more intense.

02:00:26.700 That was also what I called the sublime.

02:00:29.160 And then about three months after I wrote that chapter, I came this close to dying myself

02:00:35.600 with a stroke, which you can see the results of.

02:00:38.020 Oh, wow.

02:00:38.600 That's, so that's why you have this, uh, some physical illness.

02:00:41.440 Yeah.

02:00:41.720 It's just, I had a stroke.

02:00:43.220 Damn, dude.

02:00:43.940 So, uh, you know, I was driving here in LA and my wife is in the car and she basically

02:00:48.320 saved my life.

02:00:49.900 Um.

02:00:50.780 Could you feel it as it came on?

02:00:55.200 Yeah.

02:00:55.960 Uh, I didn't, I didn't recognize it.

02:00:59.520 I was like, something weird's going on.

02:01:02.240 And she noticed it right away.

02:01:04.360 Like the whole side of my face was like elongated and weird and wrong.

02:01:10.380 She knew right away.

02:01:11.980 She forced me to pull over and I'm like, what, what, what?

02:01:15.300 But, and then I started to get out of the car and she came around and I don't remember

02:01:20.160 anything else.

02:01:21.080 Wow.

02:01:21.560 So, you know, there were some sounds that were a little bit weird and I was kind of

02:01:26.680 acting like nothing was going on.

02:01:28.360 Like it was all just a joke.

02:01:29.580 But deep down I knew something was, was very, very wrong.

02:01:33.580 Dang.

02:01:34.600 Anyway, so.

02:01:35.760 That was almost a near death experience thing kind of.

02:01:37.400 Very, very close.

02:01:39.160 You know, uh, because if I'd been alone, which I often have, it happened, it's just luck that

02:01:45.780 she was with me.

02:01:47.540 Even if I was driving, because most of the time I'd be alone, I'd be dead right now or

02:01:52.940 I'd have such bad brain damage.

02:01:54.280 It wouldn't be worth living.

02:01:55.960 So I'm very lucky.

02:01:57.120 But, um, you know, uh, it, it was like I had written about it and now I lived it.

02:02:05.960 And so the sublime is about experiences.

02:02:10.080 A lot of them related to some of those drug experiences that make you realize that there

02:02:16.120 is another level, another almost dimension to life itself that you're not aware of.

02:02:21.180 So your mind can either shrink and it'll shrink with your, your phone to the confines of your

02:02:28.060 stupid little phone.

02:02:29.620 And although, you know, what people are eating for breakfast, what, where they're taking their

02:02:33.920 vacations, et cetera, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

02:02:37.080 Your, your circle of thinking gets narrower and narrower and narrower, or it can expand

02:02:41.360 and it can expand further and further.

02:02:43.880 Your books can do it.

02:02:45.180 Drugs can do it.

02:02:46.540 I'm trying to make this book something that will, will do that.

02:02:49.060 Will make you think about what it means to be in a universe where there's, where we're

02:02:53.980 alive.

02:02:54.880 What it means, a book, a chapter about your childhood and how sublime your childhood was about the

02:03:00.080 human brain and how weird it is about animals and our connection to animals about love and how

02:03:06.240 love can be a sublime experience about a relationship to the past and history.

02:03:11.220 I'm doing a chapter now about what I call the daemon, which is a sense of like, there's

02:03:16.780 a second self inside of you that's kind of guiding you, has to do with what we're talking

02:03:21.080 about purpose, is to get you out of your, the small thing and get you into thinking that

02:03:26.000 there's something very weird about being alive in the world and being a human being who's

02:03:31.980 conscious.

02:03:32.820 So that's the book that I'm writing.

02:03:34.620 Wow.

02:03:34.920 That's fascinating.

02:03:36.320 Do you think God put consciousness in us?

02:03:38.360 Do you think we're just an anomaly?

02:03:41.220 Well, we now know that animals have consciousness, that animals think.

02:03:48.120 So we're kind of knocked off our high horse.

02:03:49.820 How long have we known?

02:03:50.960 Huh?

02:03:51.280 How long have we known that?

02:03:52.760 Well, you can't know for sure because we can't get inside of them.

02:03:56.080 But people who study this very seriously, who study what is consciousness, who study neuroscience,

02:04:01.360 who study animals very deeply, they're convinced that animals have consciousness.

02:04:06.680 And I have incredible proof for it.

02:04:08.760 And even, even like bees and spiders.

02:04:12.980 So I have a chapter about animals in the new book.

02:04:15.500 Yeah.

02:04:16.240 Spiders actually think, spiders are amazing, the powers that they have.

02:04:23.020 And then.

02:04:23.940 I knew it.

02:04:25.140 Octopus.

02:04:26.160 Octopuses.

02:04:26.920 Water spiders.

02:04:27.600 Are the most amazing animal on the planet.

02:04:30.880 So this guy wrote a book called Alien.

02:04:33.540 No, it's an anthology called Aliens.

02:04:35.620 It's all about alien life.

02:04:38.180 And one of the chapters in there is by a neuroscientist, a really good, amazing neuroscientist named Anil Seth, an Englishman.

02:04:44.860 He wrote a chapter on octopuses.

02:04:46.460 And he said, if there's an alien consciousness that's different from ours in the universe, it could be like the octopuses.

02:04:54.500 Because octopuses have thinking, have brain neurons in their arms.

02:05:00.200 They have like 12 different centers of consciousness.

02:05:03.500 Yeah.

02:05:03.760 So they're thinking with their whole body.

02:05:05.540 So animals are conscious.

02:05:09.000 And.

02:05:09.200 It's interesting.

02:05:09.700 We only have five senses.

02:05:11.180 That's not that many.

02:05:12.560 Yeah.

02:05:12.780 There are other senses out there that we don't have.

02:05:15.220 Yeah.

02:05:15.380 Like snakes can pick up the heat.

02:05:18.880 They have a sense of heat.

02:05:20.460 There's a name for it.

02:05:21.760 Where they can pick up the heat from a mammal in the area to attack and eat it.

02:05:27.320 Birds have a sense of electromagnetic waves in the environment to navigate by.

02:05:34.780 You know, there are other senses like that.

02:05:36.560 Spiders have a sense where they can pick up rhythms.

02:05:39.540 Or elephants have senses in their feet that pick up the vibrations from the ground.

02:05:46.800 So I'm blowing your mind.

02:05:50.100 There's just a lot out there.

02:05:51.780 Yeah.

02:05:52.260 So.

02:05:52.860 There's a lot that's.

02:05:53.980 We're not so special as we might think.

02:05:56.200 Right.

02:05:56.940 And it's.

02:05:57.540 And it is amazing to marvel at ourselves in positive ways.

02:06:02.040 In fact, we should do it more.

02:06:04.000 You know, I.

02:06:04.720 I, I'm sometimes amazed how few times I look up at the sky or up at the gods, the universe

02:06:13.640 that created me and even just let it see my face.

02:06:16.480 Yeah.

02:06:16.720 Like the universe created me and here I am all the time just down here.

02:06:19.980 Yeah.

02:06:20.280 Yeah.

02:06:20.620 Yeah.

02:06:20.900 Like just to go out there and be like, thank you, you know, or here I am, you know, don't

02:06:26.640 what, you know, or even ask the universe for information.

02:06:29.920 Like, yeah, it's like, here's the fricking universe and I'm down here trying to read a

02:06:35.520 book, dude.

02:06:36.380 But you got, you know, I don't know if that works or anything, but it's like, if I look

02:06:41.940 up like this, I feel like something, I feel a little different.

02:06:45.420 Well, you can do that tonight.

02:06:47.060 Yeah.

02:06:47.740 I'll get out there tonight, Robert.

02:06:49.420 Okay.

02:06:49.820 Um, so many thought provoking, I'm going to say that's who you are.

02:06:55.660 Oh, thank you.

02:06:56.460 And I think that's one of the most unique things that somebody can be.

02:07:00.940 And thank you for charting so much of it for us.

02:07:03.460 Oh, thank you.

02:07:04.000 So we can go back through your thoughts and, um, and explore our own.

02:07:08.360 Thank you.

02:07:08.940 Well, I really enjoyed it.

02:07:10.320 That's great.

02:07:11.000 Robert Green, love to, uh, get to chat with you again sometime, dude, or sit, or if I come

02:07:15.520 across any peyote, I'm not going to say it out loud.

02:07:18.680 Yeah, yeah, please.

02:07:20.080 But I will come watch you do it.

02:07:21.740 All right.

02:07:22.120 Well, um, yeah, you want to, I'll do the peyote myself.

02:07:24.880 You can watch me.

02:07:25.800 Cool, dude.

02:07:26.380 I'll be right there with you, man.

02:07:27.720 Okay.

02:07:28.060 Yeah.

02:07:28.260 When the, my next book comes out, definitely, we'll definitely.

02:07:30.680 Yeah, I would love to.

02:07:31.420 The sublime.

02:07:32.020 I want to know about it.

02:07:32.940 If I get any neat ideas or things that I think are sublime, I'll, uh, send them your way.

02:07:37.140 That would be great.

02:07:37.860 I'd love it.

02:07:38.560 Not the jazz.

02:07:39.180 It was kind of an insane thing to say to you.

02:07:41.280 Um, Robert Green, thank you so much, man.

02:07:43.120 Thank you so much for having me with you.

02:07:44.280 I really enjoyed it.

02:07:45.140 Yeah, me too, bud.

02:07:45.840 Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

02:07:51.880 I must be cornerstone.

02:07:57.040 Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.

02:08:02.620 I can feel it in my bones, but it's gonna take...

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - May 16, 2024

E503 Robert Greene

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