Jocko Podcast - 403: The Office, Art, Idiocy, and Other Tales. With Actor, Writer, Producer, Rainn Wilson

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

RAINN WILSON is a NY Times Bestselling author and three-time Emmy nominated actor best known for his role as Dwight Schrute on NBC’s The Office. Besides his many other comedic and dramatic roles on stage and screen, he is the co-founder of the media company SoulPancake and host of the docuseries “Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss” on Peacock. Rainn is the author of the NY Time Bestseller Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution, The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy, as well as the coauthor of SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions, a New York Times bestseller. He lives in California with a lot of animals, his wife and son.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Janko podcast number 403 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I had the biggest, fattest head of any baby that was ever born into the human species. My head was and remains a combination of the head from the alien and alien and a prize-winning albino cassaba melon from the Iowa State Fair. I feel truly sorry for my parents, Patricia Shea Whitman and Robert Bob Wilson when I imagine them cradling my doy gigantiness in the rain-soaked winter of 1966 on their houseboat in Seattle. I was one of those tots that you see and gasp under your breath in quizzical horror.

I wasn't one of those babies that made it easy for viewers to hide their surprised revulsion. I'm sure no one knew what to say when they saw my white bloated. Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade head lolling about on my snowy damp potato. potato sack body I was like some kind of larva I was the color of grub worms that have never seen the sun Picture an ashen manatee with a tiny human face now picture this creature screaming to have its diaper changed you get the idea No, you don't I need to keep going I'm not sure if you fully understand the large-headed pale horror of baby rain If there were a maggot with vaguely human features wrapped in swatheaval clothes, that would have been me. The University of Washington Hospital probably bleached the entire

pediatric ward after I left due to my resemblance of a life-size blood, white blood corpuscle. I was like Louis Anderson with the head of E.T. If the nurse at the hospital had swapped me with a big-eyed albino hippo baby that would have explained everything. Instead, my parents were handed a lumpy Jabba the hut like infant. that made sounds like a calf being strangled by an octopus. Me. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called Bassoon King, art idiocy and other tales from the bandroom written by Rain Wilson.

And Rain Wilson, if you don't know, besides being a large-headed baby, is an actor, comedian, podcast, or producer, writer, director, Philharmoner. philosopher and I made the term spiritual Voyager you might know him because in 1997 he played Casey Keegan in the iconic ABC drama one life to live in 2001 he played guy in supermarket on CSI for one short part of an episode he was the janitor in an episode of Law and Order in 2002 but he's most well known for his portrayal of Dwight K. Shrewt of Shrewt farms on the TV show, The Office. Now, this show came from the British version and my wife being a Brit. We had already watched this program and we were

somewhat obsessed with the British version of the office, but the American version of the office ran from 2005 to 2013, which were, for me, some rough years. There were some rough years in there. Those were the war years. And I put my family through a lot during those years. But we got through it through deployments and distance and death. And one thing that no matter what was going on, one of the things that always connected us

was that show, the office. It was funny, sentimental, it was reflective. And we still watch it and we reference it and we quote it and we are thankful for the joy and connection that that show brought us. And we are thankful to have Rain Wilson here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned along the way. Rain, thank you for joining us. Jocko, Echo.

Bros, I'm so happy to be here. Oh, that was hysterical. That is some fucking funny writing. That's a funny writing. Who wrote that shit? That guy's talented. Your ghost writer is a skilled individual. He or she did a great job.

It is true, though. I would always see these baby pictures and family pictures from like the late 60s, and I'd be like, I'd be like, that was me? I mean, I'm not exaggerating. It was like this watermelon-headed. My head was the same size as my body. It was something really wrong. Are your parents large-headed at all?

Or is this like a skip a generation? Yeah, my dad's a, you know, my dad's the whole side of the family is Norwegian, and they call Norwegian roundheads. And that side of the family has big round basketball heads. No question. So let's talk about you. Let's start at the beginning. You're grown up, you're born of this, obviously, this giant head.

Your name is Rain. Yeah. Legitimately, R-A-I-N-N. Yeah. The immediate reaction is your parents are hippies. Yep. And but then they're a little bit old to be hippies, true hippies. A lot of people in the SEAL teams, you meet guys that had weird names, right?

And it was just so obvious, you know, they'd be like, oh, my name is whatever, Harmony. You'd be like, oh, you know, born in 1969 or born in 1970, the parents were hippies. And they just, that's what they're doing to rebel against their parents, by the way, because their parents are probably still hippies. Right. And so they're like, I'm going in, we be a freaking commando. They're like, hey, listen, Harmony. You can do anything with your life, what you want, but don't go into the military, man.

So, of course, 18. Yes, boom. That's what we're doing. What's up with your parents? So they're a little old to be hippies. That's correct, right? It's hard to, it's hard to sum up my parents. They're a strange lot, you know.

They weren't hippies in the sense of like, well, my mom, I think she did some, she did some alternative substances, shall we say. But, like, my dad in a weird way was very like, he was very, like, in later years, very Reagan kind of Reagan Republican. and but at the time and he was so he didn't have like the long haired kind of thing but he had the kind of bohemian artsy kind of thing so he he's this

my dad let me put it this way for 20 some years my dad worked in sewer construction he was office manager sewer truck dispatcher billing accounts etc like that total blue collar guy then put that aside

he would get home put on opera and start painting abstract paintings, murals, like crazy, fantastic stuff. And then when that wasn't enough, he was writing like crazy science fiction books that no one ever read on the side. And he was a member of the Baha'i faith. So it's this weird thing of growing up and it's like this real blue-collar home. We didn't have any money at all.

I don't think he ever made over 15 grand in a year. And we lived in little rental concrete. 900 square foot houses and yet we had this bohemian artsy kind of thing so that's what was going on when I was born like they lived on a houseboat he was a pancake chef when I was chef he was a short order cook

when I was born but he wanted to be an artist at the same time so it was this it was a weird time did he grew up in the northwest as well no I thought he grew up in like Wisconsin Illinois Illinois yeah mom's from Wisconsin dad's from Downers Grove Illinois And this, what year were you born? 66?

Yeah. And yet in 1968, your parents get divorced. Yeah. Yeah. And what are your memories of that going on? Well, I don't remember any of that, but that was a, you know, it's one of the defining, you know, events of my life when I look back on it because I've been in a lot of therapy around it. But yeah, my mom took off when I was two. My dad then remarried when I was three.

He moved to Nicaragua. I'm sure you have your Nicaragua questions there for me. We got Nicaragua highlighted like a boss here. Up the wazoo. But yeah, it was kind of crazy because he would never answer why they got a divorce. So I would say, dad, why did you and Shea? She went by Shea because she changed her name.

She kind of went hippie. She went all hippie. Yeah, she even joined like a weird like cult called like. Well, don't you kind of, isn't that part of the gig? When you're going full hippie, don't? If you're going full hippie, there's got to be some kind of cult membership. And then she worked in an insane asylum in Bismarck, North Dakota. And she had a goat named Angel of the Morning.

Oh, yeah. So she went there. Yeah. She went there. We used to do training. There's a site, and I forget what state it's in, but it's an old insane asylum. So we used to go in there and like clear buildings

and do like military type exercises, but it was in this, the freaking creepiest place, and you have all these Navy shields and be going through, like everyone is on edge. It's like freaked out scare shit less. It's all weird. And there's some like old dilapidated wheelchair in the corner with like a blood stain on it,

and you're like, oh. Yeah, there's old, like you could, like weird gurneys all it was creepy yeah creepy thing but that's where your mom worked yeah stuff like that so it when I finally kind of I didn't really see her very much between two and 15 maybe just a handful of like visits where we'd have like a sandwich or an ice cream cone or something like that but then when I got to know her and around 1819 I asked her why she left my dad and what happened happened there and she admitted that she had had an affair with a theater director because

she was doing experimental plays. And I never knew like, why did I have this impulse to be an actor? Like, I didn't know anyone that was an actor, but just in my body, like I always wanted to be an actor. I wanted to make people laugh. I wanted to do skits. I wanted to do characters and stuff like that. And it turns out I didn't even know this.

And my mom had been an actor when I was a toddler. she had done the crazy experimental plays where she'd like been topless and like painted her torso blue and run around in the audience. I know you've done a lot of that kind of stuff. That was already a fan. And she had an affair with the theater director

of the crazy theater play and left my dad and left me big-headed toddler. But I do want to say like she came back in a moment. my life when I was 15, 16 years old, she committed to coming back into my life, getting to know me. She felt bad about what she had done. She wanted to repair the relationship. And she really worked hard to have a relationship and atone for her mistake.

And, you know, this is a shout out to anyone that's, you know, had a kid and didn't raise the kid for whatever reason. No judgment. You can always come back. It's never too late. and she made a big impact in my life when I was a teenager. Like she had a big heart. She really knew about emotions and she put her arm around me and just talked to me how I was feeling. And no one in my existing family did that at all.

And it made a big difference. And probably I wouldn't have been as successful as I am today without kind of a mom coming back into my life. And from like 16 to my early 20s like really being with me in that way. And one thing I noticed about this, and I was going to talk about it later, but I'll just bring it up now. So I found it interesting that your dad kind of didn't tell you.

And to me, that seemed like the right thing to do. Like if I was to get divorced for my wife and my wife did some heinous things and my kids were little, I wouldn't, I would try not to be the dad that's like,

your mom's a filthy, disgusting. I would try not be... She's a whore! I would try not to be that guy because I would think, think that the best thing you could do is try and give them the best possible image. And when they grow up, they'll figure it out. It seems like that's the move.

You hear about this all the time. You hear about these painful divorces. And you hear about both sides putting the kids in the middle and like bombarding the kids with like, well, your dad did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And your mom stole all the money and spent it on the blah, blah, blah. And the, you know, these poor kids are being traumatized in the middle. Like it was. And my mom, Shay, was shocked.

When she said, and I remember, I'll never forget the expression on her face. I'm like, why did you guys really get a divorce? And she's like, you mean your dad never told you? Salute to your dad. And he didn't do it. He didn't say one bad word about her, not one bad word. And she broke his heart. And dude, you've got this picture that your dad drew in the book.

And again, this is things. The book is, hey, get the book. This book, you got another book out called, Boom. This book is called the Boussoon King. Get the book. It's freaking fascinating to read, but you got this picture in there

that your dad drew. And it's like, it's like disturbing. It's like your dad's like laying on an altar and there's a woman and she's got a knife in her hand and it says. It's an operating table and it's like, he's being like tortured by her as like this naked doctor.

It's very. It's very crazy. Yeah. And but your dad never told you. Never told me. No. That was that, uh, But, you know, he had some real integrity around stuff like that, you know.

In fact, I will say, like, my dad rarely said a bad word about anyone. That's such a good way to be. Yeah. I recommend that course of action for pretty much all humans. Yeah. You mentioned, okay, so your dad gets divorced. Your dad gets custody, which I guess you probably didn't know how that was happening. But I guess if your mom's doing all this crazy stuff, he was probably able to make it work.

he, which never happened in no, how no. Babies didn't go with dads. Yeah, no. I mean, maybe it was just the fact that she couldn't have supported your head carrying you around. It was like, no option. He had enough upper body strength to be able to manage that.

They look to you and they're like, no. But he gets, he remarries some woman named Kristen. Yeah. And like you said, they moved to Nicaragua. You said there's some highlights. You definitely got some highlights from Nicaragua. Here's some highlights from Nicaragua. I remember Kristen getting caught.

in quickstand on the muddy beach and being pulled out of the sinkhole by a guy with the tree branch. I remember a friend of ours emerging from the ocean after a swim. He was screaming and falling to his knees covered in jellyfish tings. I remember running and flying kites on the hilltop with the local kids, all of them barefoot, me and giant rubber boots that cheese grated my ankle bones. I remember Devil Day, the local equivalent of Halloween, when terrifying men dressed as devils and outfits adorned with wings, ran around with fireworks. They would chase kids, pick them up, and scare the holy bejesies out of them by tickling them

and screaming in their faces. I was so horrified that this would happen to me that I refused to go outside. I'm pretty sure this was the work of the Catholic Church, turning a fun pagan festival into a helpful traumatic reminder of the evils of Satan. I remember bulls being driven and herded up and down the mud streets by Nicaragrin Cowboys who lived in the jungle.

I remember the best oatmeal ever made, served up by our cook, Antonia, and the taste of fresh shrimp and fried plaintiffs? What's that? Plantains. What's a plantain? It's like a banana kind of thing, but it doesn't have the sweetness and they fry it up. You haven't?

Oh, Central America is really big. I've only been to Central America a couple times. I went to Panama. Yeah, and that's it. You go through this list of the freaking animals and you got mosquitoes, dogs, parrots. You had a pet sloth named Andrew. Yeah. How do you get to keep a pet sloth?

Is that legal? Probably. Not. Probably not. There weren't many laws around there. I mean, Nicaragua is pretty lawless state, but then the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, which, by the way, Theo Vaughn is a buddy of mine. I watched his episode with you. You talked about Nicaragua. But that area of Bluefields is where I lived, where his, Theo Vons dead. We're going to do a Nicaragua trip. Me and Theo. I'm going with you. Would you provide security? Provide security. You in? Echo's going. Yeah. So it's a really. all as part of Nicaragua. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, yeah, in that, in that

little part in that little chunk. Yeah, are these the ones that couldn't make it to Brazil? Or what? Maybe. There's a, maybe there's a Nazi, can I didn't even think about that. Theo Vaughn is a Nazi. Oh, maybe. His daddy Vaughn.

Yeah. Was from there. So, anyways, there weren't many laws, but what were you talking about? Like, oh, it's sloth. Oh, the sloths. You guys had a pet sloth. The, um, the legality of that. The, the most hysterical thing, which I have vague memories of the sloth in the cage,

but I don't, my dad would always tell this story that they would put my, the sloth in the cage. and then every morning they'd get up and the bars of the cage because sloths obviously super slow but really strong right kind of like echo and the bars would be pulled open

and the sloth wouldn't be there but they're so slow that they just had to like walk around and they knew within like 30 or 40 feet and then he'd find him in a shrub and like pick up Andrew and put him back in the cage and go

bend the bars back and then repeat that every single night but I think eventually they just put them in the jungle and let him go Are we going to talk about the worms? Yeah, let's talk about. Are you going to go there?

Well, is it a bit much? We got oysters, we got amoebas, we got monkeys, we got, and then we got worms, which is like. You really, do you want to go there? I don't know that you do. I mean, the one quote that I self-edited and self-censored was the opening line, which says my most vivid memory of life in Nicaragua involves worms coming out of my butthole. I'll let you take it from there. I was going to leave it out. as you write things when you're younger and you're like, this is so edgy and flashy, but now I was

going to do the courtesy and we're not going to put it in there. But you know, you brought it up. Obviously, this is a fond memory of yours. You got a tough listening audience. I think they can handle this. No, it's, it's not that. It's just, I had worms. Most people have worms. You get worms down there. That's what happens. You know, the little eggs are in the water bins and whatnot. And then you take deworming medication. But, you know, what happens to those? pesky little buggers. Well, they got to come out somehow. They're not coming out this way.

So I remember walking down the street. And then all of a sudden, and I was to my, Kristen, my stepmom, I was like, Mama, I got to go poop. And it was like, oh! And then I reached down and pulled out a worm longer than this, and then this knife, wiggling. And there were a bunch of neighborhood kids around and they saw this happen and they were like, and I threw it on the ground.

And I forgot how to say, like, kill it in Spanish, but my stepmom was like, morta or murder or whatever to kill it. And like some kid came out with a shovel and they were stabbing it and crushing this worm that had just come out of my butt. And then they laughed at me and mocked me and that's why I have the personality that I have.

I mean, I don't know if normal people, I don't know what that does to your brain. You should have ended up in your mom's asylum North Dakota. I know. I needed some treatment. Evolution. Yeah. So you get done with the worms. You end up moving back to Washington State in 1971. That's your next move. And you weren't really quite sure it seems like why you move back there. Like what was the reason for that? They just ran out of money in Nicaragua. My dad tried a bunch of different business ventures. He had an oyster farm for a year or two. So he was,

They had just oysters, chocka block with oysters, and he was shipping him up and sending them to, like, nice hotels in Managua, and then shipping some back to the United States and stuff. But there was so much corruption that everyone wanted a piece of his profits, you know. And he couldn't make it work, and they just, they kind of ran out of money and came back. So he got a job in the sewer company, in her family sewer company. Oh, good. Nice.

Yeah. You say this in the book. my family was poor not food stamps or Haiti poor but poor we rented a two-bedroom cinder block house with a dirt yard in Olympia my dad got a job working with kids at the high school it was a program for juvenile delinquents and troubled teens just out of jail he taught art and english and Spanish and made $5,600 a year I truly have no idea how we lived off of that Kristen was a housewife as most women were in those days and had never learned to drive for some reason so she was truly a stay-at-home mom. I remember my dad's shaggy juvies, often dropping by the house in their bell bottoms

and leather-fringed vests. Kristen would stare as if the Manson family had just stopped by for a chat. Here's how I remember our poverty. We drove an old, used Edsel from the 50s, and then a 1972 powder-blue Ford Pinto, replete with exploding gas tank. I drank powdered milk instead of regular and got all my clothes from the Salvation Army. I had about seven toys and 11 books. and stared in awe and wonder at the grip, at the Gnipnops and the Rockham Sockham Robots. You don't remember Gnipcanops? I don't remember those things. From the 70s?

No, I didn't have them. It's like a toy and it sends a little ping pong balls through thing. And they had, it's like stretch armstrong and rock and sock and robots. I remember those. Yeah, it was one of those. Gnip Gnops. Yeah. That one slipped by me.

Normally when I'm reading stuff like that and I see something I don't recognize, I look it up. I didn't do that with Ginnip Gnops. You really do. did not come prepared. Kind of a shortfall. Rockam sock and robots and light brights and lawn darts and twisters and vibrating electronic,

electric football sets that the other kids in the neighborhood played with. We never took vacations and eating out was a complete luxury when we did. It was usually Bob's Big Boy, Shaky's Pizza, or this crappy restaurant that overlooked the local bowling alley where I once found a rubber band in my cheeseburger. We never owned a wash and a dryer and our weekend was always marked by a major trip to the laundry mat where Kristen washed our clothes for the week and I wandered around trying to fish quarters out of the machines.

Yeah. So there you go. There you go. The good times. Good times. And it's so funny because you don't, I didn't feel that poor. I mean, my friends had nicer toys, but I wasn't going to live in my life like, oh, we're so poor. But it was.

I wonder how old kids are when they start to realize like what money is and how much they have or don't have. Isn't that a junior high adolescent thing where all. of a sudden, like, you have this, like, you're 12 or 13, you have this, like, burgeoning realization of, like, who you are and how you fit in. Like, oh, I remember, like, being 12 and, like, oh, I'm one of the nerdy kids. Oh, they don't, they don't like me and they don't play with me. And, like, you know, that realization of, like, where you fit in, the social strata, you know, and, like, not only I'm nerdy, I'm poor and nerdy.

It's like, hell, yeah. You got to hand me down pants in the whole nine yards. So my parents were both school teachers, which is not a high paying job. And, you know, I mean, but you always had a job. You know, that's what was nice. Like, my parents always had a job. And so we always had food, you know. I remember, but we didn't have, like, the cool stuff, you know, like everything that you just mentioned, like that electric football thing.

But it was everything. Yeah. You set up your moves and your plays. I saw it, but I never had it. Never had the rock'em, sock them. robots. I think one of my sisters had the light bright thing. Light bright making things with light.

There you go. It's fun making things with light bright. I remember all the commercials from the early 70s. Yes. And your family obviously had enough money to have a TV. We had a TV. Because you start talking about TV and this is again, how old are you right now, 56, 57? Yeah, 57.

Okay, I turned 52 in a few days. So yeah, all this stuff is. like very familiar to me welcome to the 50s man it sucks everything starts going downhill everything's been going downhill oh um Adam's family mash all in the family Laverne and Shirley three's company happy days WKRP in Cincinnati and taxi I'm assuming that you just watched all these television shows all the time because that's what we did yeah that's what that's what when I say we I mean the United

United States of America. It was like we. Yeah. Collectively, that's what we did. It's interesting now. Everyone talks about parents, you know, with kids and talk about like screen time, like limiting screen time. Because now there's so many more options.

Like my son can open his phone and he can go on social media. He can play a game, you know, or an app or he can watch YouTube, which has 18 billion videos on it, you know, or he can get Netflix on his. his phone or you can turn on a TV or it can turn on his computer. Do this, you don't know, there's just all these options. 70s, black and white RCA, turn it on and just three channels. And then whatever was on was on. But boy, they knew how to do those reruns.

And yeah, it was, you know, one of these, I won't say I was a latchkey kid because my my stepmom Christian was at home. But it was, the TV was just on from 3 p.m. until I went to bed at 8 p.m. and it kind of raised me and kind of taught me about the outside world. And we don't have to get there now, but I talk about this in Soul Boom about how two of my favorite television shows

from the 70s, for me, were kind of taught me about spirituality. And do you want me to go there? Yeah, go for it. You talk about cane. I can cross-pollinate the two books. We can do whatever you want, man. So, Kung Fu was a show,

a lot of young folk don't know about because it's not played it's it's so boring to watch is why but it's brilliant so chinese chowlin monk martial artist kung fu master goes to the old west and wanders around he's looking for his brother so he's always encountering like these racist guys and like aggressive mean guys and he's very peaceful and he tries to like solve all the conflicts but then there has to be a couple of ass kicking fights throughout the course of the show. And the other show that meant so much to me was Star Trek. I just, I love that original series. I saw every episode like 10 times. I had one or two Star Trek books that had like how the ships worked and stuff. I memorized it. And to me, I was kind of when I was writing more

about spiritual themes later on in Soul Boom this last couple years, I was thinking about these two shows is like a parallel of our spiritual journey because kung fu is like our personal spiritual journey that we all have we are all we have our skill set we have um ways in which we you know deal with forces that come at us and we seek to be wiser kinder gentler to grow our spiritual qualities as we go about our individual path in the world but the star trek story is interesting because I find it to be a very spiritual story because it's about humanity has gone through World War III,

which was horrific, and it's come together united as a species on the planet, and out of that unity, and they, because of technology, like the replicator, they're able to feed everyone. The races all get along,

and they're able to go out in outer space and boldly seek out new life and new civilizations. And this is like the collective spiritual, journey that humanity is on. And that's one of the points of the book that I make in Soul Boom is like we don't put enough focus on that story. Like when people talk about spirituality, they usually mean church or they mean some kind of like, I do these three or four things to kind of make myself feel better like meditation or whatever, read inspiring quotes or whatever. And, you know, I'm going about my spiritual path. I'm trying to be just more peaceful in my life, let's say.

but we don't kind of have a conversation about like, hey, where are we going as a species and how can we spiritually evolve collectively to kind of make the world better? And what is our individual responsibilities to making the world better, not just making my life better, my family's life better, but expanding that vision of what our family is and trying to make the world a better place. And we do that in lots of different ways. You can do it through your church. You can do it just on a community level.

You don't have to do some, you don't have to feed starving kids in Africa. I mean, you can, but you don't have to do stuff like that, but that we all have a role to play and kind of a certain spiritual responsibility. And that was really taught to me by Star Trek and thinking about that collective journey where humanity has kind of matured and kind of realized its full potential. It's interesting to think about when you sit here and talk about that. you would think that look everybody watched star track right and how many people miss the whole idea of hey work we're working together to try and go towards a more common beneficial scenario

and with kung fu it's just interesting to me that or what does it take and i mean i guess i kind of know your life story a little bit from reading your your books but you not everybody gets there you know Not everybody gets there. There's people that are just mad. There's people that are, they're not happy unless they're undermining someone else or taking from someone else or make, you know, I know many people like this in my life.

And it's interesting to think about, like I'm thinking about, again, having just read your books and thinking about even what you just said about your mom coming back to you when you're 15 or 16 years old. and how that had such a big impact. Like, what if she didn't? If she didn't do that, is that the thing that made you start saying, oh, you know, she helped me, I should help other people, or I should feel good about, well, this is where I'm supposed to be doing.

This is what I should be doing. And you just wonder where those holes that don't get filled in, what do they get filled in with? If they get filled in with something negative, if your mom would have come back and been like, I never should have died you, you little bastard? or whatever, would you have been, would you've taken a left turn instead of a right turn or a right turn instead of a left turn?

Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. You know, I love that, that whole way of thinking. And, you know, part of the, you know, sometimes therapy gets a bad rap. I think people are more understanding of it and appreciative of it these days. But it's been one of the great things about therapy is to kind of unravel this. really complicated childhood that I have and had and be like, how did it lead me to be the man that I am today and doing the work that I'm doing today as a goofy actor, as a storyteller,

as a producer, but also as a writer, someone who's interested in kind of spiritual themes and topics as well. You know, how did that come from? But I do think that, you know, a lot of parents want their kids to like do good or do good in the world or give selflessly or whatever, but the parents aren't doing it. And I think we learn it from the people around us. You know, you hear people about that do great work, you know, in service to others. And they'll be like, you know, why do you do that? Well, I saw my grandfather doing that. Or I saw my dad doing that. Or my mom would always go to church early and do the meals at the soup kitchen or whatever it is that, you know, we mirror that behavior. So it's super important for parents to understand that,

that they, you know, it's deeds, not words. You know, you got to practice what you preach. And so, you know, I had a lot of people around me that were trying to make the world a better place in a lot of different ways. I grew up a member of the Baha'i faith. And, you know, Baha'is are often working, trying to make the world better and doing service work. And Baha'is look at service itself as an act of worship. So that idea that, you know, we give to others is really the ultimate, just like in Jesus. Jesus's example, you know, you know, serving the poor and the downtrodden is, is a kind of a worship in and of itself.

So you're putting this together post-situation, but in the 70s, when you're watching Star Trek, you're just like, this is freaking cool. Yeah, it's just cool. Yeah, laser guns. Beat me up. And then you got this, again, you got this section in your book. We were talking about comic sidekicks. You go through all, again, all these characters that are characters that I grew up with as well.

Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley. Radar O'Reilly from MASH. Reverend Jim Ignatowski. What a great name from Taxi. Les Nessman from WKRP, Horshack from Welcome Back, Cotter. You go through those characters and you actually have a guest author

that comes in and writes, Dwight K. Shrewt comes in and writes his opinion of each of those, which is really funny. Get the book. And it's weird too. Like you mentioned your dad was, you know, doing his day kind of blue collar job. And then he's doing this kind of wild stuff at night, writing all these books and doing this art.

You've got a list. You got a list of the books that your dad wrote. And I got to run through these titles. Ghosts of Ia. Is that how I say it? I have no idea. Ghosts of Ia. Curse of Gittanmu, the Chromium Kid, the Subways of Er.

Clarissa of Tomb Arizona Hospital I don't know how that one fits into it all I'll explain Arizona Hospital because it's set in the far post-apocalyptic future and the only places the only institutions that are still working

are hospitals so there's like Arizona Hospital Minnesota Hospital Virginia Hospital and that's where humans have congregated to fight off the legions of mutants that are always attacking the hospital and the lead character's name was Romeo Sierra which you know from call signs,

Romeo, Sierra, and that was the hero's name. And most of these don't even exist anymore. I don't know what happened to all his, it was before like word processors. He was on typewriters. He was writing these things. And not to mention,

now you have Amazon publishing. So he could have written these things and published them tomorrow afternoon. And they might have done well. And people could be like, oh my God, have you read Tentacles of the Dawn, which is the one that did get published.

Yes. Do you have a copy of Tenticles of the Dawn? I have any time they come up on eBay. Now, I shouldn't tell people this. I buy Tentacles of Dawn so I can have it in my collection. But yeah, I've got like seven or eight tentacles of dawn. We have blown out books.

I've covered some old kind of historical out-of-print books. Yeah, and then they're just gone. Yeah, and I would buy a couple copies for, you know, $4 or $3.99 or something. And then we do a podcast and there are $280 or $350. So, yeah, if you are looking for tentacles of dawn right now, good luck. You're going to pay a pretty penny for that. Damn you, Chaco! And meanwhile, you're nerding out, and I think you say this in the book, before nerding was cool.

Your's full-on D&D, Dungeons and Dragons. Yes. You are Ragnar, the Radical, who, this is your character that you play, 11th level fighter adept with both bow and sword, with a moral alignment of chaotic neutral, which meant he could do it every pleased. How ingenious was that the inventors of Dungeons and Dragons that you had a moral alignment of your characters? Lawful good, which is like paladins. Chaotic good, which is like, I don't know, the Lone Ranger. Like he's doing good, but he's off on his own, just kind of doing it in his own way, not part of any structure. And then there's neutral, chaotic neutral, lawful neutral, than evil, chaotic evil.

And so, you know, the dungeon master, you know, if you start to do behavior that's different than your moral alignment, then your moral alignment changes. And the dungeon master can change that. So it's fascinating. I love it. You didn't nerd out. You didn't do D&D? You beat up the kids who played D&D. So I didn't you, Jocko?

Well, you got to, you're going to. Because your name is Jocko and it's not like. Nerd-o. No. My buddy Jason Gardner, who's a seal with me for many, many years, 30 years he did, but he's like heavy D&D. In fact, he's no stranger to putting on a chain mail and picking up a broadsword and putting a picture of himself on, on Instagram or whatever. But I, so I remember D&D, and I probably tried to play it like four times or something and was just, I just couldn't, I couldn't get into it. Echo Charles, could you get into it?

Did they even have it in Hawaii? I vaguely remember something. I don't know. But I dig it, though. Okay. That's the most politically correct answer. You've never heard of it, but you dig it. Okay, cool.

I see what you're doing over there. The chaotic neutral and all this. I saw that spectrum somewhere and I was like, oh, that makes sense. But I didn't know where it was from. Yeah. So now I do. But you talk about in the book, you guys are full on.

Thelon. Hey, have you ever seen LARPing? Oh, sure. Have you ever done it? I haven't done it, but I've watched it. I've gone to LARPing. I've gone to LARPing festivals. I don't know what they call.

Yeah, I guess they call LARPing Festivals. I'm a spectator. I'm like the popcorn. I'm like, hey, down here in San Diego, they have like a bat. And speaking of Jason Gardner, he would send me pictures like once a year. They have like full contact fighting with swords and shields. stuff like but it's not it's not playing it's real videos on YouTube and it's it's real and people get hurt and they get like their arms cut off yeah so that sounds cool a little bit you'd be you'd be

into that if you could actually bash people in chain mail with a morning star or something that that does sound like fun uh so you know we would get out we would get out of school no joke this is not an exaggeration we would get out of school at three o'clock by four o'clock we were at my friend Sean Higgins' house. And I remember Sean Higgins' house because his parents were divorced, and the dad was a fruit importer, importer exporter of fruit. So they never had any, and they were really poor, big Catholic family, suburban Seattle. There was never any food around, but they always had boxes of fruit everywhere. And a lot of it was going bad. So it was like stale fruit, stale basement fruit. So, but it was cool. But it was cool.

because we could go like, you know, like, hey, do you have any food? It's like, we don't have any food, but we got this crate of pears, you know? Oh, cherries just came in. So we would like, and we would just be shitting, like, and rolling the 27-sided dice and eating fruit. And occasionally we'd splurge for a pizza. But we would play, so we would play from on Friday night, four till 11. Saturday morning we'd reconvene like 10 a.m. And play till 11, 12, however late we could make it.

Straight. Some, you know, we'd get some food in there somewhere. Sunday we would meet again like 11 or 12. I think after he went to church, after Sean Higgins and his brother, Tim Higgins, who was a dungeon master, after they'd go to church, we'd play from like one to like six. And then from six till nine at night, that's when we did our homework. For the week. How old were you at this time?

That's just like between 10 or 11 and like 13, 14. So multiple years. Many years of that. Yeah. Two or three weekends a month was that schedule. Damn. Yeah. Just getting after that D&D.

Oh, just it's all about the treasure. It's all about the loot. And is it, it's leveling up. You can't really win, can you? Can you win? There's no winning. It's like life, Jocco. Hey, I just keep going forward.

Wait, I just remember something from, uh, from D&D. Stormbringer. Was this a sword? Stormbringer. I remember a sword called Stormbringer. Yeah. Stormbringer is a title of, here I'm going to nerd out, of a fantasy novel by Michael Morcock about Elric of Melna Bonnet, and his sword was called Stormbringer. And there was a Stormbringer series of books, so good memory.

Those are from Daw books from like 1968 through 78. and that was a big inspiration for D&D. But that soul, you don't want to go larping with Stormbringer because if it kills you, it sucks your soul into it. So no afterlife. Forget the afterlife, Stormbringer. Yeah. There's something about naming weapons.

Occasionally guys would name their machine guns. Oh, I don't know if I like that. And my friend had a machine gun. And I think it's the best name ever. He had a machine gun. Its name was Roadblock. And I just thought that was epic. That's pretty cool.

Roadblock. That's pretty cool. The one I got roadblock. Okay. So you're full on. You're going full on this nerd stuff. And if people think I'm making fun of you, this is all the self-admitted nerd activities. Yeah.

I'm not trying to corner you. I have no problem with this. I own this. Yeah. Chapter 5. I was not a Navy SEAL. Okay. Can we just like, can we just get that out of the way?

say that, I don't know how to hit people. You know, I will thumb wrestle the fuck out of you. I stand down. I do not accept this challenge. This is roadblock right here. Roadblock, thumb. Chapter 5, because just when you don't think it could go any more nerd, Chapter 5, the bassoonist.

I ask you to savor the following sentence. For several years off and on, I was a member. of the following clubs at school marching band pep band orchestra debate club computer club chess club model united nations and pottery club note the above list does not include any of my aforementioned role-playing gaming Baha'i youth activities medieval weapons sketching kung fu movie obsession or vast Columbia record and tape club cassette collection featuring Journey Sticks Asia and a Rio Speedwagon and you a big tangent about the whole that whole scam the Columbia record tape club I remember that thing too I

never got I couldn't afford the whatever even get in the program in the first place and then if that wasn't enough I decided to play the bassoon boom universe explodes that implodes then explodes again quickly folding in on itself only to create infinite other bassoon shaped universes. So the bassoon. What's up? Talk to me about the bassoon. You want to get into bassooning? Look, I don't want to get into it, but maybe a brief description would be good. All right, get into it. Let's go. No, man. Here's the deal. You start, you start out in band. I'm on the recorder. That's cool. Then they're like, okay, pick your instrument, you know, in sixth grade, right? Did you guys play at all? It's band at all. I made it to recorder. Okay, recorder, not past

recorder you didn't go to trumpet or anything after that. I got a guitar. I got a bass and a guitar. Yo, let's go. So then I went to clarinet. Okay, whatever. And then I played a little saxophone on the side. And then I wanted to play saxophone. Saxophones are cool. And I talk about that.

Like the saxophone section, they could wear Hawaiian shirts and have sunglasses. Kind of like Bill Clinton was going on like doing the rock and sock and rock and roll saxophone. Right. And then I, so I said, to the band teacher whose name was, and I'm not kidding you, his name was John Law. John Law.

Yeah. And I was like, Mr. Law, I want to play the sax, and he's like, we've got enough sax players. But I've got something really cool for you. I have got an instrument. Everyone is going to flip. It's amazing. It's so cool.

It's called the bassoon. I was like, ooh. I was very susceptible at that point. You know, after my long 48-hour weekend, long Dungeons of Dragons. I wasn't thinking straight. I'm like, sign me up. He profiled you too.

Yeah. He got right in it. Yeah. He was like, the girls are going to be all over you. They're going to be licking your bassoon. Sorry. Sorry,

mom. So bassoon is a big double read instrument. You assemble it. It's like this big. You hook it around your neck. And it's pretty big, you know. And then it sounds like this. Oh.

Oh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ha, mm-hmm. It's a little. So I spent many years playing the bassoonist. I actually got pretty good. And I was like, you know, it's another, you talk about these life choices.

There's another, there's a parallel universe where this guy is a professional bassoonist with the St. Paul Symphony Orchestra. So thank God I dodged that bassoon bullet. Now, despite all this nerdery, you're still kind of, you're still doing some revels. ish type things, you're forking lawns and toilet papering trees. You get rolled up by the police at some point. I do. Yeah, I spent my time.

I did my time. I spent 11 minutes in the Lake Forest Park, Washington police precinct. My parents being called at 2 in the morning because we were out. We called ourselves the taco terrorists because we would do unusual things to people's lawns. And one time we would tackle them. What does that have to do with tacos? Oh, okay. We would go to like, buy stale tacos in big, in bulk, and then we'd put them all over.

We get like shaving cream and make like shaving cream tacos and cover people's lawns with tacos. So we were imaginative. Who did you target? Assholes. Like assholes from school? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes friend assholes, like they're really our friends, but we kind of like wanted to get them.

And sometimes it was like just the assholes. Jocs. Did they ever seek retribution? No, not really. Did you guys maintain anonymity? We did, except to the police, that crack police force of Lake Forest Park, Washington that arrested us, arrested us, we went into a 7-Eleven at 2 a.m. to buy eggs and bought out all the eggs from the 7-Eleven.

And the cashier guy was like, hey, Marty, down in the precinct. We got a bunch of 12-year-olds buying eggs at the 7-Eleven. You might want to roll up on this and boop. And they, we got some reports of people's houses getting toilet paper. Let me search your pockets here. I didn't, we didn't know like our rights. Be like, hey, you can't search me. What's the probable cause here?

And so then we got put it. And then the parents got called and that was it. But I did my time, man. I've been there. The big house. You're 16 years old and you end up moving to Chicago Again, this is all in the book Funny-ass stories, details are in the book, get the book

But you end up moving to Chicago And there's a transition that happens here Yeah Especially a musical, well, we'll start with a musical transition So you know, it was Billy Squired It was air supply and it was sticks And there's other lame music You get to Chicago and it's,

You actually didn't cover really where this introduction came from, but you get to Chicago and all of a sudden it's violent femmes. It's who screw do. It's the clash, joy division, psychedelic furs, B-52s, X, Joy Division, English beat, talking heads, and black flag. Yeah, right on. Hell yeah. Yeah, there was...

How did that happen? Well, it was this weird con that was being played in the American people, and it may not have happened in California because people in California were cool, But in Seattle, in the late 70s, early 80s, the only way you could get music was through Columbia Records and Tapes Club. Because no one had any real money to go buy into a record store. And we bought some records. But even at the record stores, you go and find punk rock or New Wave or indie rock or any of that kind of stuff. And the radio stations, KZOK and KISW, all they played was classic rock.

rock, which is pretty awesome. I love my classic rock. But there's this whole other world going on at that time, you know, that we just didn't, they didn't play any of those songs. And so I wrote, I'll never forget. Like this girl, I can't remember her name. We've got to figure out her name from my Seattle school. She's like, listen to this.

And she gave me a cassette tape. And it was the early police like Zanada Mondata on one side. And it was the clash like on the. on the other side. And then she gave me another cassette later was like Elvis Costello and like early kind of talking heads that was way more punky.

And I was like, oh my God. I had no idea that this world of music existed that was angry and crazy. And I mean, we got some like Black Sabbath stuff, but not like this really smart, edgy, weird experimental music. And so I was all in

all of a sudden on that. So that actually happened while you were in Seattle. Yeah, and as I was leaving. Yeah, it was the summer that I left. And then you get, so you get to Chicago and now you're kind of like into that music. Yeah. And so I change up my whole wardrobe. I get rid of my nerdy wardrobe.

I bought a tie with a piano keys on it, the skinny one. And I had a scar tie with the checks, you know, the scahl, like English bead and specials. And, yeah, and I wore like a tie. It was a John Hughes movie. Yeah. I basically walked into a John Hughes movie, essentially. That's when you got to Chicago. Yeah.

This is also kind of, I believe, where the acting thing started. Yeah. Because you're in Mr. Rutenberg's acting class. And he tasks you guys. Does everyone take acting or do you enroll in acting? Was it your elective? Did you just get thrown in there because you were late? This is one of those things where I'd always, you know, we talked earlier about like all the

comic sidekicks on the TV shows that I used to watch. For whatever reason, even though I never met an actor in my life, I didn't know that my birth mother had done acting. I just had this, I want to do that. I could do that. I don't know what it was. I don't know where that comes from God or it comes from within. I don't know.

I was like, I want to do that thing. That's what I want to do. And so here's my chance. We go to Chicago has a great theater department in this big high school in the suburbs. And I sign up for an acting class. That's really my first acting class. And, yeah, so our first assignment, I'm the new kid with my piano tie, and he assigns it's called Public and Private and Public from like that. Like, how would you act in your room?

Just be what you would do in your room. So I brought in like a record player and I put on Elvis Costello's song, Mystery Dance. And I put it on and then no one knew me. And I just went apeshit. Because this is what I would do in my room. I just was like dancing around and like air guitaring and thrashing around and pogoing. And it brought the house down. And all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, Jocko Welling,

girls talk to me. And all of the cute girls in the acting class came up and were like, hey, patting me. Hey, you're new here from Seattle. nice piano tie will you sit at the lunch table with us we sit over here say hi my name's you know and I would meet all these girls and they were just like that was so funny

that was so great and I was just like and I was like that's it fuck the bassoon I'm in I'm all in with the drama nerds now and I found my tribe you cover this in the book I had crossed over Not from the movie cliche of unpopular to popular.

I'd crossed over within subgenres, you see. I'd move from the regular old geek nerd to the very top of the geek nerd hierarchy, drama geek nerd. And the reason that drama geeks are at the pinnacle of the food pyramid of geekdom, it's not the tragedy comedy logo or cats pins on the raincoats.

It's not the black eyeliner on both the boys and the girls. Neither is it the ability to burst into sol, or a tap dance in the school hallway at the drop of a theater reference. No, the thing that separates theater dorks from the rest is one word. You guessed it. Girls. There were and are and always will be pretty girls who sing and dance and act and improvise and joke around

and are willing to make fools of themselves. And this is the most important point of all. And they're willing to hang out with geeky guys and even go to rap parties and occasionally make out with them. this sets up drama geeks as the lions of the dork serengetti. So that's how it went down, huh? Yeah, that's how it went down. Yeah.

No looking back at that point. Are you doing any sports at all? No. No sports. Just P.E. You know? You put your clothes that you wear all week. And then you forget to bring them home on Friday.

So you're like, ah, fuck it. And then you wear them the next week. And they just stink and you're doing kickball and stuff like that. But, you know, I played some sports. I play tennis. I play tennis. And your grades are good? Yeah, straight A's.

Straight A's. Yeah. You're trying in school. Yeah, I try. Yeah. Smart. I read books. Yeah.

You have a rock and roll band? Yeah. You don't play the bassoon in your rock and roll band? No, no, I don't. I'm the singer. The band is called Collected Mon. Right. Because a Rolling Stone. Look at you. Say?

We were horrible. Horrible. Two gigs. I think we had two gigs. Yeah. Not bad. Could be worse. Could be worse. So now you start applying to colleges. You get rejected by Brown. You get rejected by Stanford. You get rejected by Oberlin. Is Oberlin in the league of Stanford and Brown?

You just threw it in there? I just... For balance? Screw them. They're weird. They're weird. They're weird cornfield hippies. But you get into Tufts.

Yeah. And Tufts is great school. Yeah. Did you go visit it? Yeah, you went to visit it. You loved it immediately. Yeah, yeah. What did you love about it?

I mean, it's like, it was like seeing those movies of like what a college is. You know, it's like these buildings and churches and trees and a quad, you know, in dorms. And it's like this pretty little New England kind of vibe. and they had a really good theater department. So you're thinking theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to secretly be an actor. I was studying international relations, psychology, English,

but really I wanted to, I knew I wanted to be an actor, but I just, I was on the fence about how to, how to take that move, you know, to fully commit. You had a roommate, Rob. Oh, like, I think I'm paraphrasing, but basically like a long-haired, musly dude from Arizona.

Yeah, yeah. He's like exactly the kind of guy who listens to your podcast. Sounds like an awesome dude. Yeah. No, it was cool. I'll just tell the Rob story real quick. So I move into my dorm room and there's this guy, shoulder length hair, like built. He came in his truck.

He drove from Prescott, Arizona to Boston. He's got his guitars. I think he's got a gun rack. I'm not sure if he brought his gun to school. He's got Jethro Toll posters all over his half of the dorm room and like some velvet curtains and stuff like that and his bong, right? And we couldn't be more different. He doesn't talk to me for two months. And finally he admits, finally we start to talk.

And finally he admits like, oh, I found out you went to the suburban Chicago high school that was kind of wealthy. and someone told me like, oh, that's where rich douchebags go. So I thought you were a rich douchebag, so I didn't talk to you for those first two months. But then after that, we became really good friends, and it was awesome. We hung out a ton, and he's a great guy. I think he's a chef now. He's like a world-renowned chef somewhere. Hair is still looking good?

I think the hair's gone. That's a bummer. Yeah, it happens. You kind of talk through what we talked through already. this is when you kind of or now really reconnected with your biological birth mom. You kind of get the backstory on all that. And finding out that she had gone through this whole acting phase. Yeah.

Do you think that made you think this is sort of genetic thing? I mean, what else could it be? I mean, I mean, my parents were really great in that they supported me in doing the arts. You know, a lot of parents, you know, kids have an artistic inclination. Like, that's not practical. and they kind of shut it down. My parents were very supportive because my dad really wanted to be an artist

and he was kind of like, he was kind of a failed artist, right? Because he didn't really apply himself. He didn't try and get his paintings out there. He didn't like really try and publish his books. So I had this inclination, but, you know, I didn't know any actors or anything like that. It was mind-blowing to me at like 19

to find out that my birth mother had been an actor. for several years. And I, because I was, again, I was just filled with that longing to go, to go down that road. So it's got to be genetics, right? I don't know. Did it scare you at all? Like your dad is kind of tried the art thing, but not really getting it done. Your mom sounds like she kind of tried the art thing and now she's not kind of really getting it done.

Did you think? So, you know, we make these life choices. We don't know how they go down. But here's one thing that I do know. that if you want to be a professional artist, you have to devote yourself to that craft, to that art, to that discipline. Hardcore. You've got to give it 10 years, and you've got to work 16 hours a day at it. And there's no other way. I mean, there are some actors that have stumbled into it and other artists that have kind of fallen into things and that's all fine, but that's not,

that's not the standard, right? So here I am growing up, I have a failed artist dad. kind of a failed artist mom. And I know I have this longing to do acting. I'm pretty good at it. I'm not like this prodigy, but I'm pretty good at making people laugh. I'm playing characters and stuff like that. And that's when I'm like, okay, Rain, if you're going to do this, you have got to give yourself to it and commit your life to it and your work to it.

And you're 100% of your focus. Otherwise, you will never make it. So in that way, I'm grateful for what my parents taught me from what they didn't do and the choices they didn't make. I remember having conversations with my dad when I was like 12 or 13. I'm like, how come you never go and try and sell your paintings? You're like, oh, well, I went once or twice and they rejected them and I just don't have all these excuses. And even at 12 or 13, I'm like, no, just take your paintings, go down to art galleries and, you know, knock on the door and say, hey, I got this really cool paintings. you should sell him and he would never sell himself.

So when I finally made the decision to be an actor, I knew that this was going to be a really important decision because I was going to have to go all in. There's no half-assing it. And, you know, you've got to put both feet in. And so I applied to acting schools. I left college. I was at that point.

I was at the University of Washington in Seattle. And, you know, I auditioned. I moved to New York City. I was 20 years old. I didn't have a pot. to piss in. I had like $307 in the bank. And, you know, I went to NYU and went to acting school. I'm like, I'm in it to win it. And I'm going to do 10, 20 years as long as it takes. I'm all in. But I'm so grateful because I knew what the alternative was that if you just kind of try it and like it,

but don't fully go in, I see where that road takes you. And it's also no guarantee that you could go 100% in and you could dedicate your entire life to music, art, acting, and you can still be working as a waiter or whatever. I was, I spent the first 10 years of my life as an actor, an artist, I never made over 20 grand in a year. First 10 years of working as an actor. I was mostly doing theater. I couldn't get into TV and film.

No one would audition me because I was kind of weird looking. They didn't know what to do with me. So, yeah, but I just kept going. I just kept going and then came out to L.A. and then got some jobs and then, you know, ultimately the office. But, you know, there's a lot of times I was thinking about pulling the plug. And you apply to Juilliard and you didn't get in. I didn't get in, no.

And then you auditioned at NYU. And there's an interesting thing that you talk about in the book. You're doing the C monologue from Long Days Journey into the Night. which I went and watched on YouTube because I do research things when I don't know what they are, but I went and watched somebody doing it. It was interesting.

A woman named Zelda Fitchlander. Fichandler. Fichandler. She told you like, take all the performance out of it. Yeah, yeah. So it was like you were going over the top. I was acting.

I came in with my audition. I was like, I forget the first line. It's like, you told me stories about your life. Do you want to hear some of mine? They all have to do with the sea. Here's one. Oh, gosh. And then he tells this monologue about being on this boat, right?

Which really happened to you, Gene O'Neill, the playwright. He was a merchant seaman and sailed around the world on these boats. So he was telling this story. And, you know, I did it and did my performance and scene. You know, and she's like, okay, shut up. Stop it. Like, just, there was a guy. There was like the dude there, the dean.

Like, just pretend he's your dad. Look at him. And just say the words. I start again. You told me some stories. No, stop. I just, just talk to him. Like, okay.

You told me, no, no, no, right. Just literally just talk to him like you're having a conversation. I was like, you told me some stories about your life. You want to hear some of mine? Ooh. And then she's like, good. Keep going. They all belong to the sea.

I remember one time when I was on. And I connected with, I started to cry. Like I was just, he started to cry. Like we had this like. And I was like, oh, fuck, that's what acting is. It isn't all this drama club shit. It's like, and so she was like, boom, come to New York, kiddo. So now it's on.

1986. Yeah. New York City. New York City at that time was mayhem. Drugs everywhere, gangs everywhere. They talk about now, like on Fox News, the deterioration in the American cities, is happening. But, dude, go to New York in the 1980s.

Crack epidemics, graffiti everywhere, dilapidated, you know, empty lots, broken bottles. People, I mean, it was, it was nuts. This is when I was going to New York. So I was a kid. I grew up in Connecticut and I was like into the hardcore scene, into the punk rock scene. And so I was going into New York City. We take the Metro North train down. It cost $8.

I'd bring like 20 bucks for the weekend. $8 to get down, $8 to get back, $4 for pizza. Yeah. And we'd go to CBGBs. We'd go to whatever shows were going on. We'd go to the new music festival. We'd go to just mayhem. But that place was totally insane at that time.

Yeah. It was crazy. Like walking through Times Square was, I'm not kidding. You took your life in your hands. I'm not kidding. Every four steps that you took, somebody offered you crack or Coke or whatever. Like literally. every four steps, I go, I would go down on eighth or ninth avenues because I had a girlfriend

that was living in New Zealand and I buy stolen calling cards. Remember calling cards, like a sprint calling card and you'd have to dial an 800 number and then boop, boop, boop, bo, bo, in order to make. And I would buy stolen calling cards for like 20 bucks, but I would get $200 worth of calls off of them. But they were, I mean, they were offering like, here's stolen license plates. Do you need a Passport. I mean, there was you could get any fact is the dark web was on the street was on the street the the hookers would be out. It was crazy like we'd go to a show. We'd leave at 9 o'clock at night or 8 o'clock at night to go to the show somewhere in on the Lower East Side and we'd be walking and you see the hookers out and they're like looking

nice ready for the night and then we'd come back at 3 o'clock in the morning and they'd still be there now they're looking like you know they've been working all night It was freaking horrible to see. Absolutely horrible. And so New York was totally insane at the time. You got, you say mugged slash attacked a couple times there. You got hit in the head with a stick by a random dude. And you got gay bashed, which I found interesting.

Yeah, I got gay bashed. Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't sleep and I went walking at like 1 a.m. I was living in Chelsea at the time, which wasn't even a gay neighborhood really at the time. It kind of became one later. but it was kind of, they used to sell drugs up and down 7th and 8th Avenue, so it was kind of dangerous. This is 88.

And I went down and there were a couple of guys and they were like, call me, I don't know what I can say, the F word and matacone and some other things. And they just started swinging at me. And I wanted to be like, I'm straight. No. But for some reason, I was. like I did your jujitsu shit

like they couldn't land a punch on me for some reason I got so instantly I didn't I didn't punch back but I was like whoo whoo matrix it was like have you ever had that happen in a fight you can kind of see it like and then I took off and they

jumped in their car and they took off after me these were determined dudes they really wanted to bash some gays that weren't really gay kind of gay like metro sec half gay Metro yeah I was kind of Metro bashed.

They went a Metro bash. And I ran down like 13th, which was the wrong way. And then I crawled under a staircase under by some garbage cans. And I pulled the garbage can back. And I was like, and I was just, yeah. And I stayed there for like 45 minutes and then made my way back. It's brutal. What do you do at acting school?

Well, Jocko. What do you do in acting school? People watching this are like, what the hell? Can you bring back a general, please? to talk about leadership. I'm trying to figure out, like, what do you do in acting school? Now, I will say this, acting is not easy because people think it's easy, right? People think, I could do that.

And then they try and do it and they look like idiots. And the really good actors make it look so simple. They make it look like Brad Pitt, one of the best actors in the world. He makes it just look like just effortless. It's really hard to do when Brad Pitt does. Really fucking hard. And that's what they teach you at this acting school. thing. Although he never went to acting school, but terrible example. But yeah, so, you know,

the whole thing in acting school is we're going to teach you how to be theater artists and theater actors. And from that, you can do TV and if you have that skill set, you can do TV and film. So it wasn't really like on camera stuff. We did a little bit of that. But so we did Shakespeare. We did clowning. We did, which is all about physical kind of courage and daring and kind of. of putting yourself out physically out of your comfort zone. We did tight rope, trapeze juggling. Does everyone do this?

Is these like the general qualifications for acting? Everyone in this program did it. And it's again, you know, there's some, you know, fat kids in there that couldn't really walk on a tightrope or whatever. But you do what you can,

you know, and you're supported. But you do voice, you do speech and you do scene study and you do stage combat. So we did a lot of like sword fighting like we're doing. a Shakespeare play and learn how to do that, which comes in handy when you're shooting in film

and you have to pretend combat and stuff like that, how to take a punch or fake a punch, you know, that kind of thing. And the main thing you do is scene study where you go, you work with your scene partner, you memorize your lines, you come in and they give you notes on it and stuff like that. And there were some amazing teachers and I was really lucky. And you played Hamlet twice. Yes. Yeah. How's that? Yeah, we did Hamlet.

They cast me as Hamlet, which was an incredible experience. And then the guy who directed, was directing it was really bad director. And I was totally lost. And we would have a rehearsal. And then he would give me a grade on how I did in the rehearsal. So he would write out a thing like, you've got a team. Is this a course that you're taking? No, it was just a side play on the.

side of the courses. We would do plays on the side of the evenings. But it's part of the college. Yes, part of the college. Doing plays. But you get no credit for it. It doesn't work like that. It's just like you're going through this program and you're there from nine in the morning

till 11 at night every single day. Well, five or six days a week. And part of that is doing plays. So it's not really picking and choosing courses. This kind of. So he, I went to the main acting teacher. I was in tears because I was like, I'm so lost.

I don't know how to play Hamlet. I don't know what to do. And then he came and watched some rehearsals and he's like, oh, this guy's an idiot. And he fired him and he took over. So we shut down and then I had another chance. We had done like two weeks of rehearsal, shut that down. And then Ron Van Lue, an amazing acting teacher, came in and then he directed me in Hamlet. And it was an amazing experience.

There's something like 30,000 words that Hamlet speaks in Hamlet. Yeah. How do you go about memorizing that? So I knew I was going to be playing him like in the winter and then over Christmas break, I memorized all of the Hamlet monologues. I memorized all the soliloquies to be and not to be. That is the question. And so I came in. And then I memorized a bunch of his longer speeches before we started rehearsing.

But what people don't understand about like the memorizing lines. First of all, when you're 22, it's way easier. You can memorize things really quickly. but you're spending hours on your feet saying the lines and listening and responding and trying it in different ways. And so it's getting in your body. You know what I mean? It's you're not just kind of like it's hard to memorize when you're just sitting there with a book and you're just like trying to memorize it. That's almost impossible.

But when you're on your feet and interacting with people and stuff like that. So we did a big cut down version. So it was probably only 20,000 words. We cut big scenes out and stuff like that. but it was a lot. It was a lot. Yeah, I went and saw a version of Hamlet, and man, it was impressive.

Oh, cool. Where'd you see it? Right here in San Diego. Yeah, great theater in San Diego. Yeah, I saw one version at the old globe, which was like the cool one, well, normal one, but I also saw another version at some like other place,

and it was all modern and crazy. Yeah. But both those dudes had to memorize a lot of words. Yeah. The thing that why one of the reasons, Shakespeare is famous, he's famous for so many different reasons, and that's one of the things that makes him so amazing why people are obsessed with Shakespeare. But the fact that in 1600, he's written this play Hamlet that is all about psychology. It's as modern as Freud and Young and any psychologist or any Christopher Nolan movie that involves psychology. in this in 1601 he wrote that and it's all about who am I life death should I live should I die

should I kill this guy why am I doubting I should kill him I was told to kill him and I don't why is that it's my own failing do we have souls like I'm in love with her but should I tell it like it's this all this stuff and that's why that's what made him like head and shoulders better than anyone for hundreds of years it's not until check off you know two 300 years later that all of a sudden playwrights are like in Ibsen and Strenberg are like going into the psychology. We covered Henry V on this podcast which obviously

makes sense but I was going to do Hamlet and I had an an actor that I was that I met and I was like and who had played Hamlet and I thought oh if I can get them to come on that would be kind of epic and it just didn't I haven't pulled it off yet. Yeah

but maybe you're that guy. Let's do it. I'm a middle age doughy white hamlet you know So that's what you're doing. You're doing this. That sounds like a long-ass day, every day. That's what you're doing. You graduate from NYU, and there's one thing that you explain.

There's like a draft. It sounds like a draft that happens at Juilliard, where you do like a couple performances or something or a couple monologues or something. It's like the NBA draft. I've never heard it compared, but it is totally like that. Yeah. And so you go into this NBA draft thing or the theater draft.

The top schools go to this theater and Juilliard and we perform little scenes for all the casting directors and producers and TV folk and people that run theaters and there's, I mean, there's maybe 500 of them, you know, those who have, you know, in both theater and TV and film, watching it was totally nerve-wracking, you know, I was 23 years old. My scenes kind of sucked. I didn't do very well and I didn't get I just played Hamlet

This is a good story About how show business works These agents, pretty good agents Had come and seen Hamlet They loved it They called me in immediately They're like oh my God Your Hamlet was amazing

That was so great And they talked about it We talked about it They're like okay You'll do these league performances They call And then we'll call you back in And then I bombed at the league performances

Like I didn't be very good very good. And then they wouldn't return my calls and they didn't bring me back again. Wait, what's a league performance? This is that Juilliard thing. Okay. The NBA draft for actors is called, that's what they called it. What do you, and you go through this in the book, but this is you trying to be like

Mr. Serious guy, kind of? Well, it was me just trying to get an agent, right? That's what it comes down to. And the moral of this story is like, these assholes had seen me play Hamlet, and then they see me do a couple of two. minute scenes and because I don't do good in those, they don't want anything to do with me. But you had seen me play three hours of Hamlet and that's kind of how superficial the business is.

Yeah, because in my mind, it seems like if you can do Hamlet, you can kind of do anything. It seems like you'd think. But, you know, getting to what your other point about like, so I had this like wrong idea about what it was to be an actor and that's partially NYU's fault because I was still, you know, kind of nerdy, weird, uh, different. kind of guy and I was trying to be like Mr. Theater guy, you know, and so I had this idea of like, this is who I need to be and what I need to be and how I need to present myself. And so it took me several years and a lot of hardship to kind of figure out. And, you know, I had a seminal experience

that kind of showed me my road as an actor. Your first acting job, at least from where I could decipher from the book was 12th night for Shakespeare in the park. You got paid $210 a week. So that was kind of what you're doing out of the gate. Eventually, you joined something called the acting company. Yeah. Founded by John Houseman. Is John Houseman the guy that used to do those commercials?

Yeah, he did the commercials. What was that show that he was in? The paper chase. That paper chase. What was the paper chase about? He was about the lawyers in Harvard, like trying with a real, really tough professor trying to get their law. He was the tough professor.

Yeah. The ultimate tough professor. Yeah, he was like, when EF. Hutton speaks. When Eiff Hutton, yeah. Eiff, well, really. So you, he worked with Orson Wells. He was a big theater, Titan.

He started this company called the, the acting company. And I did two and a half years of bus and truck tours of Shakespeare plays. Which is freaking hilarious in the book. You're talking, you're rolling into like whatever town in the Midwest. Waterloo, Iowa. You've got, you roll in at 9 p.m. At 10 a.m. You've got a show in the high school cafeteria.

Oh my God. And at 7 p.m. You're at the downtown local civic club and you're doing these Shakespeare places to places that have never seen Shakespeare before. Maybe or not for years or something like that. Audiences that. It was cool. It was cool. That's wild.

And hard and sometimes sucky. And, but I loved it. You know, it was 24, 25. At that point, I was getting 500. $115 a week. So I was rolling in it. And plus you're getting this experience. Yeah.

So you roll into Waterloo, Iowa. Yeah. What Shakespeare player are you doing? Is it like a variety show? Yeah, we had, no, we did Romeo and Juliet. And 12th night. No, untuned gentlemen of Verona. And then the next year we did Midsummer Night's Dream.

So, yeah. Did you ever perform to like seven people and four of them walked out? it wasn't that kind of thing, but we would do a lot of like high school theaters and high school like cafeteria theaters. You know where the theaters is up in the cafeteria and they open the curtains and they're all sitting at the

and like we would have food thrown at us and stuff like that. We had fun though. We had fun. It was hard. And do you know, I'm picturing when I was in high school, if we,

if I was in that situation, I would have made it really, I wasn't, I would have been like, Such a dick. I'm sorry. Yeah, sure. I was just an idiot.

Yeah. We're like school assembly. Yeah. Jocko, be there at 10 a.m. to watch a two and a half hour version of Romeo and Juliet. And you're just like, the kids are like. Yeah. But the weird thing about Shakespeare and I pointed this out when we,

there was one of the first podcast we did was, I think it was number 15 actually. But I was because when I, when I studied a lot of Shakespeare when I went to college and it was like, oh, you're not supposed to understand. Understand this. You can't understand this. It's written in Middle English. It's it's not the same language and you have to There's some similarities obviously, but you need to actually look up with these words and understand this structure and and then you go holy

Shit this guy is incredible, but you got to get people through that Transitionary period because they look at it and they go I don't know what the hell this means and if they say oh yeah, I read Shakespeare. It's great. No, they're not they're lying because you there's words you don't know. Yeah, you have to look them up a third of the words you don't know exactly. I don't know exactly. I don't know. I don't Yeah. So I can't imagine if you try to present Shakespeare to me in high school. I'm sorry, I'm such a loser. Well, you cut out a lot of the stuff that just makes no sense. And then you try it. It's so hard to read Shakespeare on the page.

And a lot of people get turned off reading it, but you've got to hear it. Because when you speak it with intention and like you're trying to get something from someone. And so you say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you hear it in context, it starts to make way. way more sense and you, you have that experience, right? When you've seen these productions and stuff. For sure. So you're kind of...

The other thing we would do on the road is... Oh, that's like the games. We would do insane games to keep us sane. One of them was past the battery, so we'd have a little like double A battery, and it would have to go around to every single person in the cast. So over the course of the play, you'd have to figure out ingenious ways you'd shake someone's hand, and all of a sudden there'd be a battery in it. And you're like, oh, and then you go to someone else, you put your armor and you drop it in their pocket.

So the battery is making its way around. The other thing we would try and do is we would take, we would find out the mascot of whatever school we were at. And then we would try and everyone had to incorporate that word. So if they were like the badgers, you know, you'd have to say, I say thee, I pray thee, liege, for when from once thou come, surely thou are no badger to say that that. And we would always try and the kids would be like, no. Really? Is the word badger 17 times

in this Shakespeare play? It was, that was fun. We did shit like, we would do withered hand where at some point everyone had to have like a withered hand on stage

and bunny hop we would have to at some point incorporate a bunny hop. We got in bad trouble, but we had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun. There was a lot of debauchery on the road too.

And that kind of leads into this next section I want to read from the book. It says here, for an artsy, East Village actor there was simply no room for God, morality, or devotion, or at least none that I could conceive of at the time. In my quest for this tantalizing Bohemian street cred during my first year at NYU, I dyed my hair jet black and started smoking a pipe. The hair dye I got from a box of Clareol, midnight black. You know the kind so toxic that there's an emergency 800 number

right on the box in case you accidentally dump the concoction into your eyes. I looked ridiculous. The first issue was that I had forgotten about my eyebrows. The hair on my head was like Bruce Lee's, and my eyebrows were light brown with ginger highlights. I looked like a serial killer who had just written his manifesto on the walls of his cabin with his own blood and feces. And the pipe, my aunt Wendy, my dad's sister smoked one, always had. She was rebellious artistic pipe smoking inspiration, and I always loved her rebellious artistic pipe smoking spirit. As with most things in my life, I was simply trying way too hard. We were such a pretentious lot, us village artists.

I remember having one ridiculous late night conversation with a bunch of pot smoking artistites where the question was posed, would you ever do a commercial? I remember a friend of mine paused dramatically and considered this disgusting, capitalistic question quite deeply, stroking his goatee and drawing on his camel light.

I might do a commercial, and then he added headily for soy milk. So you guys were freaking full on. We were douchebags. No question. No question. You have to find, you always find the most embarrassing thing about me in the book. Not the cool stuff.

You find like the most humiliating. I thought these were the cool parts. Okay. No, get the book. There's so many, there's like I said, I mean, I'm reading less, I don't know, probably 5% of the book. There's all kinds of insane, funny stories. Like I said, your ghostwriter did a great job. Damn you, Jocko.

I wrote every word. Every word I say. At some point, you start, fast forward a little bit. Now you're dating like a lawyer slash drug dealer. I believe you gave her the name Jesse. Your cocaine comes into the picture. You say I spent countless nights in drunken, stumbling, and almost vomiting in taxi cabs, speeded speedily through parties and bars,

wafted, red-eyed and high through many late-night conversations and woke up desolate, fried, embarrassed, and sad on countless mornings during those years. Good bohemian times. It's weird because, like I said, I was going to New York at this time. And like I would see these people, I probably saw you. Yeah. In fact, if I didn't see you specifically, I saw your people.

I saw them down there. They were down there. they were looking exactly like this. This was you. This was your gig. Well, listen, so there's a bigger conversation here, which is, and this is a little bit in the bassoon king, I talk about my spiritual journey, and I talk about spirituality more in the new book, Soul Boom.

But I grew up a member of the Baha'i faith. It's a very beautiful faith. It's all about love and unity and peace. And I jettisoned that, like so many of us, do. when you're 20 years old, you move to the big city or maybe you go in the military or whatever, your college or you go get a job somewhere, whatever your life journey, wherever it takes you. And I wanted nothing to do with spirituality and I wanted nothing to do with God and morality and they don't want to think about that thing.

I just wanted to live what I thought of like a bohemian lifestyle, which is party, go crazy, make art, like, you know, live life to the extreme in that sense. And, you know, and that was good. You know, we talked about these hilarious times in the acting company and other theater that I did. And, you know, and then I got more and more dependent on drugs and alcohol. I really realized now that I was using them to medicate my anxiety. So I wasn't, I was occasionally like a fall-down drunk, but I wasn't like one of those guys that every time they drink, they pass out in their own vomit or something like that. But I was, you know, year after year, using a lot of drugs and alcohol to just cope and just get by my daily life.

And I was really unhappy. I was really miserable. And this started a journey for me, which was a spiritual one where I was kind of like this. And I realized now that I was having a lot of mental health issues at the time. Like I would have anxiety attacks. I was depressed a lot. I was experiencing extreme loneliness. It didn't make sense to me.

I was living my dream. We've been through my life story. Here I am living in New York City. I'm working as an actor. And from suburban Seattle, this loser D&D kid, this is incredible. And yet I was deeply, deeply unhappy. And why am I so unhappy?

And why am I filled with so much anxiety? And that's what kind of led me to examine God. and spirituality as a possible path toward recovery. I didn't at that point to go into 12-step programs, but I started to really dig deep into God and the meaning of life and, you know, why we're here. Because at that time, there weren't podcasts where you could go listen to, you know,

you or Rich Roll or someone that's going to make you like really think and learn Huberman and, you know, learn about how this stuff works. And there weren't that many resources, you know, in the early 90s at this point around this stuff. No one did therapy. Therapy was for really rich people, you know. And I certainly didn't have money for therapy. And, you know, you couldn't call it like better help or something like that. So this is the only thing I knew to do from my childhood was like read about God.

And I read the Bible. I read the Quran. I read the, I was a big reader. I read the Buddha, the original works of the Buddha, the Bhagavad Gita, and started really thinking, like, well, maybe because I threw everything to do out with religion and God and faith and spirituality out the window, maybe I threw the baby out with the bathwater, and, you know, maybe this stuff could actually help me. So it was like, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I had an amazing time. had, you know, there's chocka block with crazy adventures of New York and, and, and, and, and it was,

it was fun and great until it wasn't anymore. And I was pretty unhappy. And I was trying to make my relationship work with now my wife. We've been together for 30 years. And, uh, you know, and that's what set me on this spiritual journey and, and, uh, interest in, in spiritual topics. So that's one of the threads that runs through Boussoon King that I really dive into and, in soul, Yeah, yeah, no doubt. You just mentioned your wife. So at some point you take leave or I don't know what you call it in the civilian world. You go on vacation, I guess.

You go on vacation and you go to Washington and you had, you knew her, but you look her up in the white pages. Yep. Yep. Very romantic. Yeah. And she's in there. Yeah. And so you call her.

Yeah. Isn't it weird? You used to have to like find a person's phone number. And she tells the story really funny. her and a roommate were so broke. They were like trying to decide like, should we pay the extra 75 cents a month or whatever it is to have your name listed in the white pages?

And they're like, yes, we're going to make that investment. Who knows, someone might need to look us up and call us one of these times. So there she was, Holly Reinhorn. I remember she was hot and cool and edgy and wonderful and gave her a call and got together. And you were kind of like just kind of the romantic dream for her. I mean, you're like this actor guy living in New York City.

I moved to New York. I went to acting school. I was like professional actor. Hell yeah. Yeah. That was just, you rolled in there. You rolled in there big time. It all goes back to that first drama class, that first drama class.

And then she ends up moving back to New York with you. It's like a year later. You get her. It sounds like you got like the sickest apartment ever in Brooklyn. like 13 foot ceilings like this really is dirt we lucked into this 800 dollar a month apartment that was insane yeah it was insane we had huge parties there yeah it was great you roll into this uh chapter in the book the the chapter title is i bombed on broadway which is you know uh doesn't sound very good but it kind of set you in the right motion and part of this you know you just

kind of talked about this here you were professional actor yet you weren't happy at the time, right? You, you're not happy, which is crazy to think about. There I was not happy in Brooklyn, and I wasn't exactly sure why I would wake up in the middle of the night, deeply, deeply sad, alienated, disconnected. Then I would kick myself. Why are you feeling this way?

I mean, look at what amazing woman you have asleep beside you. Think of all the incredible theater you're doing. You have everything you ever wanted, including a kick-ass van. We haven't even talked about your van yet, but you had a kick-ass van. Your dream has come true, and yet you're still not happy, jerk,

face and fast forward a little bit I thought I had started sneaking up I had a thought that started sneaking up around me at this time perhaps the reason I'm not happy is I don't have meaning I don't have purpose started asking my friends about God this is kind of where what you were just talking about you go through this like you said it's kind of what you remembered from your childhood and like there's got to be something there let's start digging and you start that's what you do You start digging, and as you're digging through that, you have a good story about Daryl Strawberry. You asked Daryl Strawberry if what is the, uh, Waucomitanka, which is the Native American spirit. And you prayed a Wankan Tonka during this baseball game for Daryl Strawberry to get a home run so you can win.

So I had, I really struggled with the idea of God. Like I was really struggling with like God, Daddy, God. I call him Sky Daddy and Soul. boom, like this idea of this patriarchal man with a big beard looking down at us all and judging us. And I just really struggled with that. I'm like, I'm trying to figure it out. And I was reading a lot of Native American spirituality at the time. And the Lakota Su's word for God is Wakandanka, which literally translates to the great mystery.

And it's the god of nature and the seasons and beyond time and space. and you can only know this God kind of through nature and through the wind and through the sun. And I was like, oh, that's really interesting. So I was talking to my friend about, it's like, I don't believe in God, but I believe in Wakantanka. So he's like, prove it.

And I was like, okay, the Mets were down, bottom of the ninth. Daryl Strawberry was up. And I was like, let's try it. And I literally went, oh, Waukantan. Tonka, grandfather's spirit, great mystery. If you exist, please help us and have Daryl Strawberry help win this game. If you show yourself, I am not shitting. Turn to the TV, over the field, walk off, home run, ends the game.

Yeah. And me and my friend Phil, who's one of my best friends. We still, I was just talking to him earlier. We were just like, whoa. But it wasn't enough to convince Phil. He's still an atheist, but that was as silly and stupid as that sounds, I was like, okay, got to keep going and go down this path. Let's see where this goes. Meanwhile, you get this role.

You get a lead role in a Broadway show. And you say this about the role. In the months and weeks leading up to the rehearsals, I grew increasingly nervous. The pressure was building inside. I felt an immediate stress mounting within me about how I would need to really shine in this role. stressful voice in my head kept prodding this play could give me a better agent this role couldn't land me a tony nomination this is my chance to get an amazing new york times review the pressure continued to increase and build through the rehearsals and eventual performances until you guessed it

i totally sucked in the role i bombed on broadway but and isn't it funny how life works it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life in rehearsals i was stiff and disconnected i had for some weird reason decided exactly how to play the role in my head all my choices were pre-decided They were also broad, faky, and strangely puppet-like. I could feel myself throwing out all my training and rehearsed the play by doing strained line reading after strained line reading. I knew I was sucking and I didn't know what to do. I could tell internally and also from the quizzical, almost sad looks I was getting from

the rest of the cast. Joe pulled me aside after a couple weeks and spoke to me quite seriously about his concerns with me in this role. He urged me to relax and just explore and play and have fun in the rehearsals. process but tries it might I just couldn't I was in a gigantic pressurized acting rutton I couldn't escape all of a sudden we were getting close to having an audience I freaked I began waking up in the middle of the night shaking and sweating I was terrified I knew that I was about to suck in my first big show holiday was in

Iowa at the time I spent many tearful hours in the middle of the night with her on the phone as she consoled and counseled me that's when the prayers started when all this fails sometimes you just get on your knees and ask for help and I did over and over again, I reached out for assistance from Wankantanka, God, creator, whatever. I was stuck. I was lost and terrified. I literally didn't know what else to do. The prayers didn't make me a brilliant actor all of a sudden, but I do believe they were a factor in a transformation I made as an artist and as a person at this pivotal juncture.

I started to understand that I had been doing the role for all the wrong reasons. To impress people, to gain accolades, to gain fame. I was looking outside myself, trying to be something I wasn't for. others London Assurance that's the name of the play you were in broke me open like an egg I didn't want to be that kind of faky art artists anymore performing out of obligation neediness and desperate need to be liked I knew that I ultimately needed to be myself and screw whatever other people thought of me I felt this newfound commitment to freedom in my bones and it was a revelation after this Broadway fiasco I learned how to relax

breathe and play. I embraced the natural nerdy oddness that was me. I was never going to be the same, some formal idea of a classical actor man, beloved by casting directors in the New York Times and rocking an ascot. As the previews went along, I did see some eventual improvement. I was able to relax a bit here and there and get a few occasional laughs in the role. Was I good? No, but at least I wasn't completely horrible. I got almost, I got mostly poor to middling reviews, but at least I didn't get raked over the coals. More important, after the show closed, I was. was filled with a much greater purpose and inspiration in my life and work. Yeah.

Keep going. Read the rest of the book. There's only about 170 more pages. That's kind of, this had a huge impact on you. I mean, obviously, this is like a pivotal point. This is a story that I tell young people a lot when I speak at colleges. And it's something you've covered on your pod a lot. But it's like what we learn from failure, you know.

and how important failure is in making us who we are. And we kind of, in modern society, it's like failure is a weakness and it's bad and you're wrong and you should never fail. But by sucking in this Broadway play and kind of going through the fire, you know, I was on the anvil being pounded because it, you know, I mean, you've been in fire fights with mortars dropping on your head. I'm not comparing it to that. But I will say that when your longing is to be an actor and you're doing your first lead on Broadway and you're doing eight shows a week for four or five months and then you suck and you have to go in every single day

and perform and you know you're not good and you know the audience is like, it's really painful. And then it caused a lot of soul searching. I'm like, I was trying to be Mr. Actor Man of New York to get the New York Times. and like get some kind of accolades or a Tony nomination and I was doing it for the wrong reasons and trying to be someone or something that I'm I'm inherently not and after I sobbed and

talked to Holly on the phone after I was praying on my knees after I was like I just went through the ringer on this thing I was like fuck that I'm never doing that again I'm never going through that again. I'm going to bring exactly who I am to the roles that I play. And if they don't like it, screw them. I have to be myself. This helped me find my authentic voice as an actor and as a human being. And I'm so grateful for one of the most painful four to five months of my life I've ever gone through. I'm grateful for it because on that, on that forge, again, no mortars dropping on my head, But on that particular forge, it showed me a path. So my failure, my struggle, my pain forged me into someone that could eventually play Dwight on the office.

I never would have played Dwight on the office if I had not bombed on Broadway. So what I thought was like the biggest failure of my life actually turned into the greatest success in my life. So embracing roles like Dwight where I could just draw on my own natural, quirkiness and I and come up with my own vision of how to play the character. I wasn't when I started Dwight I wasn't thinking about Emmy Awards or money or stardom or any of that stuff that showed me the way. So it's it's a really important lesson for for young folks especially to learn. Sometimes it's kind of like you talk to young people and like I'm failing, I'm struggling, I'm hurting, good. When we were talking

earlier about giving you're giving a hundred percent right and you you were saying hey you've got to give yourself a hundred percent to acting or writing or whatever it is you're going to do and i i've had conversations with people um about two things that are somewhat similar to that but writing books and doing a podcast right and right now of course everybody has a podcast right now and you can write books really easily but when people would to talk to me about it, they'd be like, well, I think I'm going to start a podcast or I want to write a book. That's the two things that a lot of people have said to me in the past 10 years, or I guess it's been seven years or whatever, however long I've been doing this stuff. And one thing that I tell

them is you've got to do it because you want to do it. Like even this podcast, if we were to, if someone said, hey, or if I said, hey, I'm going to do a podcast. Here's what the podcast is going to be about we're going to make it three four five hours long we're going to talk about war death genocide we're going to talk about the most horrible subject it's going to be me I'm going to be reading from old books that are out of print and that's what we're going to do there's no one that would have said oh that sounds like it's going to be a hit that sounds like a right sign me up you've got but I I did it and the path that we went down is just because this is what I'm into this is what I like this is what I'm interested in

Same thing with books. If you're going to write a book and your goal of the book is to be a New York Times bestseller or your goal of the podcast is to be the number one podcast, you're going to be like Rain Wilson in that play trying really hard to get a good review. And it's like it doesn't, that's not what brings it. You're looking for something outside of yourself for validation and for happiness as opposed to an inner motivation. And you do, you know, there's a lot of people that, that write to me and talk to me about the exact same thing.

And they want to start a podcast because they want the, they want the accoutrement of the successful podcast. They want like accolades and people looking up to them and they want to be invited on other podcasts and they want to be published and they want to be, get a speaking gig, lecturing gigs at colleges or whatever it is. And yeah, you got to find your authentic voice, which you have done. masterfully. And I was able to do as an actor and it gave me some success because I jettisoned all of that shit. And I was just like, I'm going to play weird, fucked up roles. And this is who I am. And if you don't like it, that's fine. You don't have to watch. Screw you. And it's the same way today with social media and, you know, with podcasting and voicing your opinion and stuff like that. It's like, I got to be me. This is who I am. This is what I think. And I get a lot of backlash

sometimes and it's like, all right, that's fine. You can pull your hair out and threaten to kill me on YouTube. It's all great. It's all fine. I don't give a fuck. I really don't. I've just passed that. So I do want to be part of a much larger conversation of how do we make ourselves better people

and how do we make the world a better place? Let's just engage in that conversation. These are good conversations. Yeah. Yeah. And have fun doing it. So now you get this, I'm going to fast forward a little bit timeline. The next section that I'm gonna go to is welcome to Los Angeles and I had to throw this in there.

Hollywood for the seven of the you that don't know is not anything like you think it is from the association with that famous grandiose name. There's nothing tinsely or fabulous or razzledasly about that place. This was especially true in 1999. Busy and yet somehow completely destitute. It was populated with drug addicts, strippers, schizophrenics, and Scientologists. besides a wax museum, some sickly palm trees, and occasional confused Dutch tourist, and the stars on Hollywood Boulevard,

there was nothing there to let you know that there was a show business industry in its history or in the vicinity. But if you wanted marijuana, wigs, a taco, or a taco, it was definitely the place to be. It is weird. For people that haven't been to California and Hollywood, it's really like you wouldn't know

that there's anything there. Yeah. It's different now. There's kind of more glitz. There's the mall there and some, right? It's kind of a little better, you know, but you can still buy a wig and a taco and any drug you want. Probably. So, yeah.

You can still join Scientology readily if you want to. Oh, yeah. You can walk right in. They'll be glad to have you. But, yeah, it's so funny because all the magic gets made on the soundstages in the studios, but there's nothing in Hollywood that has to do with that. And even then you go into a studio and it just looks like this. It's just like these rooms and there's a couple cameras and, you know, some trailers and some dollies and a bunch of cables and lying around.

It's nothing really that fabulous. And you would come out, you guys had had made a show, what is it, New Bozina? The New Bozina. Yeah. We did a, me and my friends did a clown comedy, sketch comedy, weird, surreal comedy piece that we'd created in New York and had done pretty well. in New York and we brought it out to L.A. And this was David, was David. Costable.

Yeah. He's on billions and he was on Breaking Bad. Yeah, he was. I was in billions with him. No kidding. Yes. Oh, that's awesome. What a freaking good dude.

Yeah. That whole place was, it was interesting. It was the first time I ever did anything like that. Yeah. And so I didn't really know what was going on. And I didn't know how popular billions was. And so I got hooked up. Tim Ferriss is a friend of mine.

And they asked him, if I would want to be on it. Like Tim and I were on the same episode. Anyways, I said, like, sounds cool, whatever. I was going to New York and I went out there. And actually, I showed up and David was like, he was like super cool, but he's like, I showed up and I'm like, oh, hi. And he's like, welcome to billions.

As if, like, and I was kind of like, well, that's kind of weird. I was like, that's a little strange. Because I had only watched, like, on my flight to New York, I watched the first like three episodes. So I really didn't know what's going on and I didn't know how freaking good that show was. Then I was hook, line, and sinker and I've watched the whole thing. But yeah, I was, that was another thing like I'm with those guys. And these guys are studying lines.

Like I'm sitting there and that's the other freaking jacked up thing. So I had it got a script, right? And I kind of thought like, well, you don't actually like read the script or whatever. Like in a show, you just kind of make shit up. And so I hadn't memorand. the, I don't know how many lines I had, but however many lines I had, I didn't memorize any of them. I thought I was just going to be me and just talk

because I was literally myself, right? Yeah. So I get there, and now I'm watching what's going on with the, as they're filming other sections. And I was, and they like, oh shit. They do the same thing over and over again. Over and over again, like 20 times.

And I was like, holy shit, I've got to do the same thing over and over again. I'm totally a bit, so now I'm like sitting there trying to memorize my nine lines or whatever it was. Yeah. But what a good, what a great dude. Actually, everyone there was awesome. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Copelman and Dave Levine have been just, they were just super cool and still super cool. But yeah, and then David from when he was in Breaking Bad and the whole nine yards. Yeah, yeah, he's one of my oldest, dearest friends, and it's great. He's had a great career, and we started doing these weird sketch comedy clown characters.

It's hard to describe what it was, but that's what brought us to L.A., so. Yeah, because, like, your director or something was there. Our producer had moved there to work in TV and film and he brought us out and we did the stage play a bunch of different theaters and we got a TV

deal at Fox and you know just started getting the whole TV and film thing going. And meanwhile you do five editions you eventually get almost famous. Great San Diego movie by the way. Galaxy Quest.

That's my first two movies. The expendable That wasn't the, not the movie you're thinking of. It was a different show called the Expendables. And you say, suddenly I thought I had this whole LA thing figured out. I rolled into town and gotten a pilot and a couple of film rolls without a single hitch. We set up the new Bozina at Fox to do a pilot presentation and made more money in a couple months and in all the previous years combined. I was in and feeling like a maid man.

Holiday and I decided to settle down in L.A. and make a go of it. She would finish her book of short stories and I would be an actor who could actually pay the bills. Then within a few months, the new Bozina got rejected by Fox and I was unemployed for a full year Showbiz eventually do house of a thousand corpses for Rob Zombie yes Yeah, yeah 20th anniversary just passed hell yeah 20th anniversary You did the movie America's sweetheart's CSI Law and Order couple pilots And canceled shows that no one ever heard of the pay the bills and continue to build my career you get you're one of the final actors for arrested development to play to play job yeah

damn yeah yeah yeah you say this about that after several auditions i was once again being tested for the project there were two final scenes that we jobs would be doing along the side the rest of the family who had already been cast in one scene there were one or two lines and in the other scene there were a couple of pages of really funny dialogue and a great chance to show off what you could do with the character we all filed in one at a time to show that ahead of Fox, the first short scene. The other Jobs went in to do the second bigger scene. I waited nervously going over my lines and bits and preparation.

I waited and waited and waited. I was sitting all alone in the waiting room and after 10 or 15 minutes I wandered out of the hallway. Everyone had left. I mean everyone. Actors, casting agents, Fox executives, janitors, everyone. I finally saw a casting assistant cleaning up in a corner and asked what was going on. I guess they saw all they needed to see from you.

She chirped merrily and I slunk away, embarrassed and miserable. having only auditioned with two lines for the best comic role I'd ever read. Yeah, that was, I still, that just kind of staggers me that there were like three of us. The other one was Michael, what's his name from Succession, who plays Connor, the older brother, Michael Root,

Michael Rudd? I'm forgetting his name. A brilliant actor. A brilliant actor who's on Succession. He was, and it was me, him and Will Arnett, who was obviously brilliant. And, yeah, do the first little scene. And they're like, okay, go wait over here and we'll call you back in for your next scene. And they just bounced. And I wait, and I wait, and I wait.

I'm going over my lines and wait. And I wait and I wait. It's like, and a half an hour later, everyone's gone. And no one thought to go over. This is how Hollywood works. No one thought just like the common decency to just be like, Rain, thanks so much. they're not going to see you for the next scene.

They saw what they needed and they're going to go in a different direction. Thank you so much for coming in. No one could just do that. And it was humiliating. It was pretty humiliating. But it's par for the course. You just keep going.

And Will Arnette was great for that. And I'm grateful I didn't get cast in that because that wouldn't have played Dwight if I had been cast on the rest of development. He's had a great career. I've had a great career. And it all works out in the end. I was up in L.A. talking to a company, but wherever I was talking, there was an audition going on for something.

And there was 500 teenage girls between the ages of like 11 and 14 lined up around the block. With their holding their pages and stuff. It was like crazy. One of my friends works in L.A. and he like runs movies and shows and stuff. And he says it's the worst thing. Like every person that walks in that room, you are holding their dream. Right.

You are just holding their dream and they seem like the nicest and they're good for the role, but there's someone that's just a little bit better and you just take their dream and just throw it away. And you don't even have time. Like what you're saying,

he's like, yeah, I mean, you had three people but when there's 500 people in the line, it's like, oh, here's your dream. I get, smash it next. He said it's though he hates it. He wasn't doing it anymore. He has a casting director and you just like won't do it anymore

because it's heartbreaking. Yeah, yeah. It's a brutal process. But one thing you realize when you're, because I've been on the other side, casting, on stuff that I've produced or I was starring in or whatever, and you, especially when you see people in the room,

or now it's mostly on tapes. You see kind of on the cloud, they upload their auditions or whatever. But you know in like 30 seconds, whether they're right or not. And it's nothing to do with that. It's nothing to do with their talent or anything. Like you just see them and their vibe.

It's all a vibe thing. their vibe and how they're doing the lines and stuff like yeah yeah so that's what my buddy said like someone would walk in and he did not even 30 seconds he looked at the person like they can't play this role but he's like you've got to let them do their thing they've worked for hours or days on it and yeah it's tough freaking awful by the way your son was born 2004 this is in this time frame um you got the harrowing story of the birth of your son and the book so get the book um you end up in this in this show six feet under and um that as you mentioned eventually leads to chapter 14 Dwight k shrewd assistant to the regional manager um you say

i was the very first person to audition for the office literally our incredible casting director alison jones who casts all of judd aplo and paul fiegs as well as Veep and a myriad of other brilliant comedies had recently gotten to know me as an actor and I was starting to get some notice because of my role on six feet under she called me into addition for both Michael and Dwight and I was excited beyond words as I loved the project so much I sat in the waiting room clutching my pages literally more eager for this audition than any of the hundreds I had been on in the past yeah and that's just because you knew the the story I knew the British office I had seen it early on I thought it was amazing. And everyone was like, oh, they're going to ruin it. And they can never make an American version. And everyone was shitting on it, especially British people. But I was like, well, why not?

You know, and I still am like, there's still people that are kind of like, I like the British better. It's like, okay, you can watch all 12 of the British series over and over again for the rest of your life every single day. No one's taking that away from you. Meanwhile, we went. made 200 episodes of a different kind of version. And it needed to be different because British has subsidized television.

They have no commercials. So they get literally government grants. They can do much shorter seasons. We've got to do long seasons. And with commercial breaks, we have shorter episodes. Anyways, the list goes on and on. But I was a huge fan of the British show. And, man, I was so excited.

And it was one of those things where, you know, Wakan Tonko was smiling on me. You know, like I knew from the second I read Dwight, I was like, that's my role. I absolutely know how to play this role. And I was like, there's no one else that can do this the way that I can. So I did a terrible audition for Michael. I went in and just did Ricky Jervais. I literally was like, so I'm, you know, I'm a manager here. And, well, you know, it's hard.

Everyone knows what he loves me and like world's best boss. And it was, it was just really not right. And then I went in for Dwight and I was like, I can and do drink my own urine. And, you know, and they were just like, yeah, okay. This guy knows what he's doing. But it was, but even then, like I,

I really killed the audition, but the callbacks weren't for months later. And the callbacks were, this is back in the day. And they, they spent so much time and energy and money on the casting. I mean, it was really, they spent months on the casting me. I saw everybody.

And it was a really important project to NBC. And then they mixed and matched us over a course of a weekend. And they filmed us, which hardly. So a test where like the studio executives decide in a test, a TV test, or pilot test, who they're going to cast. It wasn't like coming into a room and performing for a bunch of executives. They just watched the tape, which is a much better way of doing it. So I got matched. up with Bob Odenkirk, who was up for Michael.

He was like, it was between Bob Odenkirk and Steve Karell. Two brilliant talents, but Bob was a little dark. Yeah. He was a little dark for the role. Yeah, he could play the British one, maybe. Yeah, yeah. But he, you know, God bless him. He's had such a great career.

He's such an amazing actor. And, you know, as soon as you saw Steve Karell do it, it was just like, I hadn't seen him act before. And they sent us into, like, improvise with each other. and I was like laughing in the in the audition and I had never seen an actor like that before or since I mean his his ability he's just so facile he can just improvise off of anything and that's the that's the amazing thing about I know I'm skipping around here a lot but that's the amazing thing about about Steve is like you talk about learning lines like he would learn his lines but he's a kind

of actor like you could throw anything at him I did it over two 200 episodes and it would never break him and he would never, it couldn't, you couldn't throw him off. You could not, he had done so much improv, you could not throw him off. You know, if you're doing a scene and you're talking about how, well, we better go to the Italian restaurant on a lunch break and you're like, and you just throw in a line like, you know, I really never loved my mother. And he would just be like, Dwight, what are you talking about your mother right now? We got to get that Italian restaurant. It wouldn't even like phase hand.

He would just take anything and weave it in. And that was incredible to learn from. Because I came from this Shakespeare background, right? Theater background and memorizing lines and performing and stuff like that. And Steve was all about just like, just mercurial and just being able to do to turn on a dime. Who's Greg Daniels? He's the showrunner. He was the main writer for our show.

So kind of he shaped, he took the English thing and. shaped it for the American audience. And he's kind of, when they showrunner basically means they make all the decisions. So casting, the edits, the cuts, the final scripts, the budgets. They're really the big executive producer overseeing the whole thing. And would you say he's the guy that like had the vision of, because they were obviously putting a lot of effort into this. Yeah.

Is he the guy that thought like, hey, this is going to be, if we do this right, we got, we got a freaking gold mine here. 100%. Yeah, he, Greg Daniels is, he doesn't get enough credit for what he did, but he's very meticulous. And he really just had lists of like, here's what I love about the British office. And here's what is not going to work for an American audience. And he really wanted more heart. I don't know, here's a good indicator of that. Look at the difference in Michael Scott from season one to season two. So in season one, Steve himself was a little overweight. He would admit that. And he had. they had Michael Scott, like Ricky, slick his hair back, is thinning a little bit. And like, he was much more like, just unlikable, just kind of like a greasy used car salesman a little bit. And they realized, even though season one is pretty brilliant

and pretty freaking funny, they realize, like, we need to make Michael Scott more accessible, approachable, because he's doing so many more horrible things. So they kind of like did his hair better and they dressed him a little better. They lit it a little nicer. Just look at the difference even in the lighting. And they gave him a little more heart, just a little bit more. Not all of a sudden he's hugging puppies, right?

But in fact, they say that on TV. Like, if you've got an unlikable character, then you've got to show them early on being really nice to an animal. And then the audience will like them and then they can forgive all the dastardly things they do. But it wasn't like that with Michael Scott. but they just gave him a little more heart and a little more warmth and you felt for him a little bit. You realize like, oh, he's kind of a lost puppy dog himself. But in season one, he was a little more like the British show.

But so Greg Daniels is the one making those decisions and going, you know, and being really sure that. And he said early on, he said, listen, because at the time, I don't know if you remember this, but American television comedy 2005 was not very good. Putting Seinfeld and Friends aside, which were brilliant. There was a lot of crappy shows out there. Everybody Loves Raymond was great. There were some classics and then a sea of crap. And so he's like, you know, if we can take the world of comedy and just turn it,

it's like a comedy is like an ocean liner. We could turn it one degree in the right direction. we can influence comedy in the right way. And that's what the office did. It didn't do one degree. It did like five degrees and made comedy a lot smarter. But it was so revolutionary what we were doing at the time. Single camera, poorly lit, like fluorescent lights,

really average to unattractive characters. And even like Jim and Pam, like Jenna and John are really good looking. But they're not like models, right? They're just real people. They're real people who are kind of good looking on the good looking side of things. And at the time, they were casting all these like models and these sitcoms and stuff. And that wasn't working out so well. So the fact that it's real people handheld, like shaky camera, there were a lot of things that really broke.

And we almost got canceled so many times. I mean, we did not do well. We got terrible reviews. Go Google the early reviews of the office. They were terrible. like oh not as good as the English office and some haters on that English office oh my God oh my God it just never it just never it still doesn't end it's still it's just incredible well British people have a different sense of humor like I said I'm married to

a Brit so I get some of that English humor but Americans don't have that same sense of humor right we needed the American office yeah and we needed it bad yeah like the British If you're an American watching it, you're depressed. You can very well end up depressed. You're like, oh, this doesn't make me feel good. It's funny, but I'm like laughing at these people and I feel guilty about it when I'm done. It's like not a feeling. It's pretty cynical.

Yeah. And the American office is, it's American. Yeah. Well, and I think the interesting thing is about the office, which no one saw coming, by the way, was when it started to stream on Netflix in 2016, 17, and 18. I don't know, I don't even know when it started. So much of Google that, get on that. Yes.

Never been called Sir before. The, and all of a sudden you had, and this probably applies to your kids, you had teenagers watching the show over and over and over again, and all of a sudden I was meeting 14-year-olds who had seen the entirety of the office like seven times. And this was way, but now, now they've seen it like 70 times.

That's my, that's my kid. kids 100%. They just leave it on. But I think that little bit of heart that Greg Daniels, the reality and the heart that Greg Daniels put in every episode and he always wanted, he said, listen, the show's got to be just 85, 90% just comedy, but just that 10 to 15% of reality and heart that we that we sprinkle in will go a super long way. I remember that even as a kid watching MASH.

I remember because I was always interested in war and I'd get to watch this show and It was like funny. And then every once in a while, you'd be like, I'm a kid. And I'd be like, oh shit, this guys are at war. I remember this one scene, Alan Alder. It was towards the end of the series, Alan Alda's talking about like this woman.

He's like, oh, she had this chicken. And chicken was making noise. And they were on this bus and blah, blah, blah, blah. And she killed the chicken. And, you know, and then you find out that she actually killed her kid to get the kid to be quiet. And I mean, I remember watching that as little kids. So it was this funny show,

but then it would have these impactful moments. And the office definitely had plenty of those impactful moments for sure. You've got this one section in here where you talk about Greg Daniels kind of early on pulls you aside and says like he told me in a very diplomatic way. He loved my acting during the improvs and he liked my acting much less during the scripted scenes. It's true. It's true. That's not. And I had already gotten the part and I was like, oh, God.

And then you go and watch the videos. And you're like, oh, I see it? Yeah. So I convinced the one producer who had a management company and I had a manager at the same company. And I was like, you need to let me watch the auditions. He's like, I can't. Like, just let me, I just need to see what I did that what Greg is talking about. Because we hadn't started shooting yet.

We would be doing table reads and just rehearsing and stuff like that. So I got to go and watch all of my auditions. Wait, so the guy you talked. the guy into it. Yes. So he showed, he had just on his little, like,

laptop or whatever, and I got to watch my auditions. And I was just, like, zoned in. I was like, and like, there's scenes that were scripted where I had my,

you know, my lines. And then there were scenes where they said, you know, you and John just have an argument about getting coffee. Ready, go.

And I would look at the, and I saw it. And I saw what he was, and it was still a little bit of that theater actory, kind of thing where I kind of like would do a line reading or I'd make a line a certain way or I'd decide kind of how a line should sound or something. And it wasn't bad.

It just was a little more presentational. I don't know how else to put it. But the improv stuff was just much more real. It's just talking and shooting the shit and being weird and in a real natural way. And I was like, and it really, it was like, I'm so glad he brought that up. I'm like, oh, thank God. good. This is good. So then I just made the scripted stuff to sound more like improv stuff and then I'd improvise off the scripted stuff and I ended up working working out

great. You say this after we were all cast on the show, me, Steve, John and Jenna went out for lunch at a nondescript little sandwich place down the street from the studio. We had a conversation that grandiose as it may sound is etched into all of our minds. We giddily discuss the very real possibility that this show could go on for eight years and that would change the course of lives and how these parts we were about to undertake would most likely be our most defining roles just think about what we're getting into the journey we're about to go on could be amazing i remember saying i remember steve who was just coming off of doing anchorman and the 40-year-old virgin saying all of the role of all the roles i'll end up doing

in films i may shoot i believe that michael scott may be the role i always be most known for it was one of those moments when destiny when our destiny was seen with complete clarity like a country road from a hot air balloon all while eating a tuna sandwich. But the weird thing is, like, you guys saw that. The magic. You guys saw some of that magic. We were like, early on, we're like, this could really be something. This could really be something, you know.

I mean, it exceeded even that. I mean, it's become this cultural phenomenon. I walk into Target and like my face is on a mug and a hot plate and a, and an apron and shoes and like we have we have a freaking lot of office merch at my house oh do you yeah we got freaking pajamas with your head on it and shit like that um but the weird thing is it didn't come out like you just mentioned it didn't come out of the gate that strong as a matter of fact it wasn't it was like getting picked up ones and twosies right yeah yeah so the second season the first season was only six episodes and they kind of backdoored us in and then and it really was

only because the success of the 40-year-old virgin and they were like, hey, you've got a movie star on this show. But like, yeah, but it's so weird. These were the Jeff Zucker years. It was not a good time at NBC. They made a lot of colossal errors. And so they were like, okay, well, we'll order five more episodes.

And then we did. And then like, well, we can afford two more. And then, well, one more. And then it just started to bluddle-l-l-l-l-up. And that second season started to take off. And then this thing happened with iTunes. Yeah. Which holy, I didn't recognize this.

So the first iPad, what do they call it, an iPod came out, but it had video on it. Yeah. Vers video iPod came out in 2005. And they put, what, the first season of the office or the second season? They put the office Christmas episode preloaded onto every video iPod. So every rich kid. kid in the country, you know, whose parents could afford a $200 or $300 video iPod player, MP3 player, he got it and he had an office episode on there and they were watching it.

And they're like, these kids are like, and that was our, was the weirdest thing too. It's like, we're doing a show about people working in an office. We thought the audience would be people that had worked in offices. And our biggest audiences were high school and college kids, which advertisers love, by the way. So yeah, that was another thing that kind of 40-year-old, so many things had to happen

in the right way for us to have the run that we had. And that was another one of them. And then it goes like this. Then all of a sudden NBC put a giant billboard of us in front of their Burbank offices. Someone on the crew had taken a photo

of that billboard while driving past and I, John, Jenna, and Steve huddled around looking at it, laughing ecstatically. After about 100 elated high fives, we settled back down to do the scene at hand, giggling secretly. A photo that billboard was hung on the wall just outside of our set and stayed there for the duration of the show. We knew then we were going to be on the air for a long, long time. We were off and running. So that's it. You see the billboard.

then you made it you know people don't understand about acting is to get on a TV show as an actor in any capacity

is really really hard to do even if you're really talented and trained you've got to have representation you've got to get the right things

just to get a single role if you get a recurring role on a TV show that's even harder if you get a pilot and that pilot gets picked up

to if you get a pilot, it's so hard to do, and it's a miracle that you get a pilot. And that pilot gets picked up to series. That's a triple miracle. And if the series gets picked up and does multiple seasons, that's a quadruple miracle. And then if it has a full run, like nine, 10 year run, then if it wins awards, then if it lasts 10, 20 years after you started it, like, I mean, it's like hitting the jackpot over and over and over again. It's like hitting the roulette wheel. I put 20 black, boom, hit it.

Again, hit it, hit it, hit it. That's what it's like to do the office. So, you know, I'm just, even today, like 10 years after we have finished our last episode, like I'm just in awe of what we were able to do. I'm so grateful for the role, the experience. I mean, it was, it was a miracle. And with one of the greatest, like, ensembles ever assembled, I mean, The amount of talent in that room was just preposterous.

And there's got to be some level, I'm guessing, of like the Beatles, right? The Beatles were only the Beatles because of that group of people. And like when they all split off and they were doing their own thing, yeah, they made some stuff, blah, blah, blah, but no one really cares about John Lennon or even Paul McCartney or like they don't care about what they did solo. Really. It's about the Beatles. Yeah.

Same thing with, well, with Black Sabbath, right? You had Black Sabbath, then you had Ozzy break off, Tony. Like, I love those guys, but it's about Black Sabbath. There's something special about that chemistry. Led Zeppelin, same thing, right? Yeah, you got Led Zeppelin. When Led Zeppelin is Led Zeppelin. And once you, once John Bonham dies, it's just not going to be the same.

So there's that miracle as well that you get this group of people. And if it had been a different, you know, Michael Scott or a different Dwight or a different Jim or a different Pam, it might have just been just a little bit of chemistry and then you don't get what you get. Yeah. And maybe we would have done the six episodes that been canceled or canceled halfway through the second season if we didn't have that. You know, if Bob Odenkirk had been cast and brilliant. Bob Odenkirk's one of America's best actor, writer, directors, brilliant. Nothing against him at all. But if they had gone in that direction, you know, who knows, you know.

Well, he's also highly present in my house as, you know, Saul. Yeah. Yeah, very highly present in my house. Okay. So I guess we would have been winning possibly either way or maybe losing on both fronts. Well, he found a better, he found a better outlet for his acting. God, he was good. You know, better call Saul universe.

Well, that's what you're saying earlier. Like, when people, like, you're meant for that role. Like he's meant for that role. It's hard to picture someone else pulling it off. Yeah. It's hard to picture someone else pulling off the way. It's hard to picture some. And I guess now we're kind of all just, it is what it is.

That's just the way it is. But if you throw someone else in there, it's just a miss. Could have been a miss. Yeah. Yeah. You got nominated for three Emmy Awards. Mm-hmm. How'd that work out?

It didn't work out very well. I lost two of them to Jeremy Piven. Who's Jeremy Piven? He was on entourage. He played Ari and Entourage. The agent on Entourage. So is that the leading role? No, it was the supporting, best comic supporting role.

Okay. So you lost him twice. Have you ever sent him hate mail secretly? Okay, we can edit this part out. No comment. I didn't send him hate mail per se, but he received some mysterious packages is in the mail.

Check. I want to, I'm going to break into his house and steal one of those, one of those Emmys. He should just give me one of them. I know. He's got two.

After, yeah. He did great and Ari. It was great. Yeah. Just give me one, scratch it out. Be easy. Yeah.

You got a whole section in here, random office memories. Just go, people, go get the book. Freaking hilarious stuff. I'm not going to try and do it justice. And by the way, you read the audio book, too.

So I obviously suck at reading you but I just did it for this podcast that's the way I'm doing it anyways get the audiobook if you don't want to get the book book because you're too lazy to read get the audio book then you can hear all these stories from Rain himself chapter 16 soul pancakes after some long consultations and soul searching with some spiritual philosopher friends mine co-founders Joshua homick and Devon Gundry we decided to create a destination for the web for people interested in exploring big ideas through the portals of philosophy, creativity, and spirituality.

We wanted our endeavor to be a successful business venture and not a nonprofit because we felt there was a large young audience out there that was longing for positive content. And you talk about in the book here about it's just at this time, what's on the web is just a bunch of freaking negativity. And you guys want to do something positive and cool. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Hence a soul pancake.

How does that go down? Yeah. So, you know, I talked about, you know, what a lottery win it is to be on a show that's going to be going for a long time. So all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I'm like 39 years old, going into my 40s. And I know that I'm going to have five to 10 years of like real paychecks, solid paychecks. I've never had that before. Remember, there's a guy first 10 years of my career, never made over 20 grand in a year, in a year. in a year.

What do they pay you for a pilot? Like when you're doing the first, what did you do six first? No, 13. Yeah. So pilot fees vary for actors. I mean, there can be a big star. They bring in for a pilot and they pay him a million dollars to a pilot.

But you weren't a big star. I was not at all. So somewhere between, you know, per episode rate for actors is somewhere between 20 grand to 50 grand an episode, you know, kind of early on. on, then you renegotiate your contract, then you start getting more. You start getting into the hundreds of thousands per episode and stuff like that. So this was like exponential money for you.

Oh my God. Yeah. So what that did is, well, and I had already bought a house because we bought a crappy little house in Van Nuys, California that cost $260,000, a little 1,100 square foot house where my son was born. And then we upgraded once the office was going. But there's a responsibility that I felt, and maybe this was my upbringing, my faith tradition. I'm not quite sure.

It was like, hey, I'm going to, all of a sudden, I'm going to have this huge platform. Like, I'm going to be this guy who's on this TV show. People know who he is. I've got something to say. I felt a responsibility to try and do something positive in the world. I don't know why when you talk to other people and they're like, oh, I just want to have a nice life. I'm not saying I'm some saint or something like that. I'm not at all.

I'm a colossal screw up. But I was like, what am I going to do? And that's where SoulPancake came out of, a long series of discussions with some friends about like, what can we best do to make the world a better place? What's the biggest need? And what we went to was like positive uplifting content for young people that dealt with life's biggest questions. We were doing videos on mental health stuff kind of before anybody was.

and uplifting joyful videos, videos that asked probing questions. I had an interview talk series in my back of my van called Metaphysical Milkshake, you know, and we had kid president. We had a lot of different shows. It was right at the time when YouTube, it was a lot of crap. It was a lot of like Kardashians and auto credit score stuff and porn and just kind of fails. Remember like fails were really big. And it was just kind of the worst of humanity on the web.

Can we make something beautiful and uplifting and important, but it doesn't take itself too seriously? So we made this, it started as a web destination, quickly morphed into making a digital media media content company, mostly through a YouTube channel. And we had a YouTube channel that pretty early on at two or three million subscribers. And we made over 3,000 pieces of content.

that was very positive and uplifting, very shareable. And we had a lot of brand partnership deals. And we took the company, we sold the company to a place called Participant Media, which is an even bigger media company. And they had it for a couple of years. And then it kind of like faded away. But we had a long, good 10, 12-year run with that and got over a billion video views and made the world a slightly better place.

so I'm really proud of that work. Yeah, and you were doing charity work in there as well. How do you say the thing that you started in Haiti? It's called Lidei, Haiti, yeah. Got it. Yeah, we still work on that. And that's, you know, it was a really interesting part of the book where they were asking these young Haitian girls,

what's your favorite color? Yeah. And which is like the common question for every single. seven-year-old kid in America like, oh, what's your favorite color? That's just what you do. And these girls didn't even know what that meant. It was like a foreign question to them. And these were older girls, teenage girls.

And it was very clear that they had never been asked this question before. And if that's the case, you know, how are they being seen or how are they not being seen? Because we asked one girl and she was like a deer in the headlights and she was like, blue and they were like okay blue great oh great and then what about you what's your favorite color and just like blue they all said blue because they just like what's right what's the right answer what's the wrong answer they had never so we realized that um and we we came in after the earthquake my wife and i and we were working with sean pen and some uh in his refugee camp that he set up he was doing amazing work and we started doing these classes for in the arts and literacy for adolescent girls and we saw how incredible

what an incredible bonding community it created in the girls like we left doing our workshops and they still gathered and kept meeting and we started doing the workshops and they were so shy and self-effacing and insecure and by the end of like our two-week workshops they were like expressive and sharing their poetry they had written and their photographs they had taken and the drama they were doing. And we saw like how powerful the arts are for creating community, healing trauma, which I'm sure you know from veterans work, and, you know, opening the way to seeing these girls for who they really are. And I never forget that when we started doing this work with Lide, This girl was like, you know, at first I didn't understand what you guys were doing because other people come here.

They give us shoes. You know, they give us places to live. They give us food. He said, but you, you give us hope. And that's really what we're trying to do is educate the whole girl. We're working with over 800 girls in 12 different locations. We have a Haitian staff of 40 and very excited and proud to be a co-founder, but it's really Haitian led and run. And we just support it.

And I whore myself out as has Dwight to raise money and send it over to educate these girls. And it's funny because in a couple weeks, we're doing a dinner with, it's called the office dinner party. So it's me and Steve and Angela are having dinner. And you could buy raffle tickets to win or the highest bidder to go to this dinner. And we've already raised a massive amount of money just to have dinner. Yeah. So it's. Yeah, I can see where you raise a massive amount of money to have.

Yeah, you'd want in on that dinner. Oh, 100%. 100%. Yeah, I'll definitely be there for that one. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. You close out this book, the Bassoon King. You close out this book with a section called 10 things I know for sure. One, the deepest happiness comes from service to others.

Like 100%. If you think you're being funny, you're not being funny. This is a heads up, isn't it? It's a real important thing because it's not just to think you're being funny. If you think you're being cool, you're not being cool. You know what I'm saying?

This applies to a lot of things that we try and do as humans. Well said. Gratitude changes everything. Rome is the greatest city on earth. Yeah. So you put that in there as a thing you know for sure. Yep.

Fair enough. Need to spend some more time here in San Diego. No. But no, I'm, I've been to San Diego. I'm the worst. I'm the worst person. I don't want to leave my house. Like nothing, I don't want to go to Rome.

I don't want to go to anywhere. I don't want to go to Paris. LA. I don't want to go. I definitely don't want to go to L.A. Oceanside, perhaps. You make a little shot for Rome there. The opinions of other people are not something to worry about.

That's number five. Yeah. That's a very good thing to learn. the early you learn that, the better off you're going to be. Now, is there a dichotomy here where if I'm like, I don't give a shit what anybody says, I'm going to freaking spike the punch or whatever, whatever thing you're going to do?

Like, there's a certain point where if everyone's telling you're acting like an asshole, sure, that's something you might want to pay attention to. Yeah, I mean, that's common sense wisdom. Like you, we learn, we're social creatures.

So we learn like, oh, I keep, when I greet people, I punch them on the balls, but people don't seem to like me very much. Maybe I should stop. punching them in the balls.

Like we, you know, you learn that way. But my sponsor in 12 steps actually said this. And I just thought it was the simplest thing. And it's so, it's so profound. He said, like, what other people think of you is none of your business. What you think about other people is all of your business. So it's always being mindful of like, how am I, am I treating people? Am I respecting them?

Am I listening to them? Am I taking them in? Am I filled with resentment? Do I have a huge, I know people, and they have like this resentment list, like, oh, he's an asshole. I'll never talk to them like this. And that's, and that's, it's like a big cancerous tumor on their shoulder. You know, it's hard to live your life with all of that resentment. Like, how, how am I feeling about other people?

Am I keeping that clean? People are going to, whatever they're going to think about me, it's fine. That's, that's, it's completely out of my control. I'm going to try and be my authentic self and bring myself to every, occasion with as much authenticity and integrity as possible and I don't always succeed but that's what I'm going to try

and do and that's what's in my control number six Game of Thrones is our greatest teacher a few things I've learned from the greatest TV show in the history of everything A get a wolf B get a dragon C women should rule the world D politics are a waste of breath and time

dude I'm not I haven't watched it yet what are you doing with yourself? I know. You say you never leave the house. I know. So watch fucking Game of Thrones, bro. What the hell? And my middle daughter, who you met, she's like, she's like,

says it's freaking awesome. Yeah. Yeah. The last season. Uh, but, uh, yeah. But I don't know.

See, the weird thing is, I mean, there's like kind of a thread here of dungeons and dragons. And like, I couldn't get into that. And now, and like Jason Gardner,

who I told you about, earlier who's like full on dungeon dragon kid he loved game of Thrones freaking game of Thrones all day yeah I mean but he's but it's about it's not about spells and dragons as much as it's about politics and the human nature and like and power and it's it's all it's a game of Thrones it's literally like a giant chess game a little bit of magic here and there but it's not like prancing elves and wands and Harry Potter and stuff like that so wait are you bashing Harry Potter right now can I give you an unpopular opinion.

Yeah. I think Harry Potter sucks. Okay, we can edit this out, dude, because I don't, you. I know I'm going to get, I don't care the opinions of other people. I said unpopular opinion. It's funny, I've gone on podcasts before and I'm like, okay, unpopular opinion and then I've laid out my unpopular opinion. And then people are in the comments are like, I can't believe he said that.

That's so stupid. It's like, yeah, I said, it's an unpopular opinion. I don't like Harry Potter. I don't like the books. I don't like the, and I especially don't like the movies. How come? It's endless. and who cares?

And it's poorly written. And it's really, really good for 12-year-olds. And all the adults that have read it like 17 times, I'm really sorry, you need to grow the fuck up. Damn, dude. Because it's all about like, I wonder if she likes me and I'll pick out a new wand. And I wonder if the girl in my spells and potion class likes me.

That's great when you're 12. It's great when you're 12. And the movies are four. hours long and they just they they look like a stupid CW show and they make me sick okay well I'm gonna go ahead and just tell you please when you get done watching the comments from this go to rule five which is the opinions of other people I'm not something I worry about any other sacred cows you want to slay at this time I've got so many I could I could get me started here's one that would be a good podcast by the way what's that unpopular opinions just bring on a guest

Just say you get one unpopular opinion. They would be like, I don't like sushi or whatever it is and just like go, why, you know, whatever, whatever it is. Whatever it is. I don't like sushi. But rule number seven, rule number seven, this is for you, Echo Charles. Yes, sir. Sushi is about the fish, idiots. Yeah.

Meaning all the sauce and rice and stuff. It's not the sauces. It's not the rolls and the crispy onions and the fried dough and dressing it up with all of that crazy shenanigans. It's about the fish, bro, right? You're with me. He's a sushi. You want to get some sushi after this? The answer is yes.

You're not invited. I don't want to come anyways. You can go read your Harry Potter. I don't watch Harry Potter. Actually, I haven't read Harry Potter. And see, anything that's magical and fantastical, fentical? Fantical. Yeah.

Anything that's that, I have a hard time, like, just getting into it. That's just the way, I don't know. All right. Fair enough. Once I saw the 19-sided dice, I was like, yo, this is too much for me. Number eight, my son is my sensei. Beautiful, man, learning from those kids. Number nine, stories make the world go round.

Very important thing for people to understand. You know, it is. We humans are storytellers and the earliest evidences of human kind of culture is the cave art, right? And you think about shaman's in the cave by candlelight. and people putting their hands in like powdered dyes and putting their handprint on the cave walls and the shamans telling the mythologies, the stories of the hunt, singing the songs,

and carrying those stories on generation to generation. Like humans need to gather like we're doing right here and tell stories. We do that in a movie theater. That's why we've really lost something by just having streaming all the time. I went to go see Mission Impossible in the theater last night empty empty theater i had my clown salad do you know what a clown salad is uh i do not

popcorn popcorn peanut m&ms poured in the popcorn i had my clown wait do you order that do they know what it is or do you mix it together yourself it's a do it's a DIY check yeah i brought in my clown salad who you with or with the fam solo solo solo operation my wife's in china right now studying tai chi okay and uh my son's off at college okay and i was like a kid in the candy store. It was so... And no one was in there. No one was in there.

No. Which one? The first one? No, Mission Impossible. The new one. The new one. Dead Letter Office number seven or whatever's called. It's fantastic.

I loved it so much. Have you seen it? No. I, again, unpopular opinions. Like, movies with a lot of explosions and a lot of that kind of stuff going on, they're not my thing, man. They're Echo's thing. This is my favorite action movie of all time.

Really? Favorite action movie of all time. There was one of the James Bond that was really, really good. I forget what was called, one of the Daniel Craig ones. But this was like... But anyways, the moral of this is it's stories, right? We're huddled in a dark room and there's a... They call it, you know, the flickering myth, you know, the story that's in front of you

and the story of heroism and courage and explosions and trains falling on cliffs and stuff like that. And I just love it, you know. And the Office of Stories, your podcast, to stories, humans gathering, sharing stories, 12-step meetings are sharing stories. Like, there's something healing, powerful. We need to share and listen to stories and create stories. Yeah, that was going to say that as much smack as I talked about this podcast that we do. No, we're just reading books from the historical stuff.

But, like, really, that's what it is. It's these long stories of war and heroism and loss. And it's... And nerdy actors. And then occasionally bring in me and... Theo Vaughn. I had Gary Senise on here. He's another actor.

He's awesome. Have we had any other actors on here? I don't think so. Is Theo Vaughn an actor? He's a terrible actor. Barely a comedian. He's just a funny guy who tells stories about snakes and toilet paper.

Yeah. One time I met a girl, she had three legs. We called her three legs, Susie. She's great. She gave a mean blow job. Anyway. way yeah that's pretty much it uh number 10 the last thing of 10 things you know for sure is that i don't know anything which is an important number 10 right it's an important number 10 that's again tons of stories and bassoon king um but it seems like your next book soul boom it seems

like you're trying to figure out what you do know or what you can know or what we're trying to learn. The soul boom, why we need a spiritual revolution. Is it, you know, is this book trying to learn? Is it trying to figure things out? What are we doing in soul boom?

Yeah. So when I wrote Pessoon King, there's kind of a thread that runs through it that a lot of people are turned off by, but I talk about kind of my faith journey and my spiritual journey, kind of it's woven through the funny stories. And the great thing about Pousoon King,

and I told us, them when I was writing the book. I'm like, listen, it's going to be 85% funny stories. 15% is going to be faith, God, questions, and finding my spiritual path and whatever. And, you know, some people love that stuff. And some people are like, well, you can just skip those paragraphs. But after I did that and then COVID hit and COVID kind of shut everything down, right? Of course, we all know that, but it shut down the whole acting industry, too. I'm like, oh, shit, what the hell am I going to do? And I had just been jotting down a lot of quotes and ideas and thoughts and stuff like that.

I use the notes app on my iPhone, and I'm always just putting in notes and if I can find a quote that I like. And I was like, you know, I do know something. I have spent 20 or 30 years thinking very deeply about spirituality and the big, big questions about like God and the meaning of life and the nature of love. and what happens when we die and what is the soul. I've read a lot about this stuff. I've thought a lot about it. Now's my chance. This was kind of my COVID project.

And, you know, I wrote up, I went to my book agent. I wrote up a little outline and part of the first chapter and kind of the thesis of what I wanted to say. And I sent it out, we sent it out to 13 of the top publishers and immediately rejected by the top 12. just immediately rejected. What about the people that published a bassoon care? Oh, they passed so fast it would make your head spin.

Damn, dude. Yeah. They never really liked the fact that I put my spiritual journey in that they just wanted funny stories. They really didn't want that in the book, but they begrudgingly allowed me to put some of that in. And so finally, and number 13, Hachette, God bless you, Hachette, they came in and they were like, we love it. Totally get it. I think it's important. Totally see you doing that.

We're on board. They've been a great partner. It's pretty rare in this business. Now, granted, part of the reason is because I'm a known name and they know I'm going to sell a certain number of books just because I'm the guy who played Dwight from the office. But yeah, so this is really my passion project. This is my like, I can get hit by a bus and die tomorrow. I'm fine because in soul boom is like anything I've kind of. thought about felt deeply. I share a lot about my mental health journey and recovery journey.

And I truly believe, Jocko, that we do need a spiritual revolution, that we keep trying as a society in contemporary America to put band-aids on a cancer. And there we have to go deeper. as a culture, as a global culture of humans, but as an American culture especially, to get to the spiritual roots of the diseases that are afflicting our society. And we're not doing that. We just talk about Democrats and Republicans, like, oh, I'm going to vote for him or we're going to pass this legislation that addresses this. And, you know, it's like, you know, one of the examples I started off talking about pandemics, right, the global pandemics. We're in the COVID pandemic. Everyone knows what that's like.

But we're actually under a pandemic. There's a number of pandemics that are going on worldwide that are afflicting humanity. Now, there's a lot of different solutions for those pandemics, right? You've got income inequality as a pandemic. You've got, you know, 12 billionaires that own as much as half of the world's population. That's not fair or right. Now, there's a lot of different solutions. You know, already I can feel people getting a little prickly.

You're like, uh-oh, he's a socialist. No, I'm not. God bless those billionaires. They worked hard. They deserved their money. But we've got to figure out a way as a species. Like, it's still, there's still people living in garbage dumps, you know, like how do we, how do we rectify this, you know, under God, under the Bible, under understanding that

we're all beautiful, divine sparks and shards of creation. And we're all light and love and heart. And how do we take care for the poorest among us? as Jesus would have us do. So these questions like income inequality, it's not so much about, I mean, yes, you need to pass some legislation that does certain good things, right? Whatever that is. But we have to go deeper.

Racism is a great example. Like we've passed a lot of legislation, anti-racist legislation over the years, right? They haven't solved it. If anything, it's worse now than it was a long time ago. So, but we have to go, what's the cause of that? Why are we in this imbalance? Obviously, there's slavery and stuff like that. And we look at the past injustices.

But what do we do now putting that aside? How do we learn and go deeper? And again, it's not going to be with a bill or the right politician or this. You can pass all the bills you want. If people are going to hate other people and dislike them for the color of their skin and for their culture, then we're screwed. So anyways, I could go on and on. but it's about looking at using spiritual tools for a personal transformation, Kung Fu, TV show, personal transformation, using spiritual tools for social transformation.

Star Trek. Boom, jinks. You don't get coke. So, I mean, I could go on and on, but it's a passion project. It's something that I feel is really, really important. and people have been digging it, so I feel good. Well, one part of the book that I think kind of captures a bunch of this stuff is you have, you spend some time with the idea that we create a religion.

Like you're like, all right, blank slate, I'm just going to create a religion, the religion of soul boom, trademark. And you kind of go through, and again, this all builds throughout the book. and it starts off with sort of, I guess you might say, the traditional things that religions generally contain. And you go through these sort of initial things that this... Ten universal truths about religion that all religions share in common. And you apply these to this new religion,

which, you know, is fictional that you created, we created, we put together. So number one, a higher power. Number two, life after death. Number three, the power of prayer. And again, this is coming from the fact that you research, you read all these different books, you've gone down all these,

you've had this spiritual journey of your own. That's where you're putting these things together. Transcendence. Talk to me about transcendence. How does transcendence play into this? So these concepts are, it's really easy to look at the differences in religions, right? It's real easy to kind of say, well, Hinduism has a hundred different or a thousand different gods and it believes X, Y, and Z.

I'm a Christian, and I'm a Christian, and I'm believe in God, the Father, and Jesus' Son, and the Holy Spirit, and redemption, salvation, and resurrection, and et cetera, that's totally different, right? And that's true. And it's easy to look at those differences. But we need to stop sometimes, pause, and go to the underlying foundational similarities that connect and bind all the world's religious faiths so that we can work together in even greater harmony. So this section right here, I'm talking about, the things that all religious faiths have in common, which is harder to underline at certain points.

So transcendence is this idea that we are more than just our material selves. We have in all of us, in our hearts, in our souls, in our guts, a longing to belong, to find meaning, to rise above just shitting and fucking and eating and working and working and trying to have a good life, right? We have some longing for something more. And this idea of transcendence, which we can know through God, we can know transcendence through prayer,

we can know transcendence through meditation. We can also know through art, you know, and great art, whether it's Hamlet at a theater, or it's going to a Metallica concert, or whether it's looking at a beautiful painting or hearing a beautiful poem or dance, whatever it is. like the art at its best is transcendence. And we all know when we feel it,

that feeling of upliftment and inspiration. So this key element that we are more than just our material bodies. We have souls and hearts that long for some kind of meaning, bonding beyond just being flesh is part of every faith tradition. Number five, community. at soul boom, our diverse community will embrace inclusion at every level. More on that a little bit. A moral compass.

This is interesting. People argue about this. Unpopular opinion. What's wrong? Unpopular opinion. But I do believe that our faith traditions and that God or a higher power brings us our morals in our sense of right and wrong. and that there's that's different than ethics.

So ethics is, you know, hey, it's not cool to take the drink that you want to take off the counter at Starbucks just because it's been sitting there. But I'm not going to do it because, I mean, it is like stealing or whatever. But morals come from a higher place, right? Like, you know, it's the Ten Commandments come down from the mountain. And those don't really change. A lot of things about religious faiths change from religion to religion to religion. You know, eat this. don't eat this, celebrate this on this day, you know, give to the church in this way,

financially, et cetera. But this underlying moral compass about we are answerable for our deeds when we pass. We, you know, the golden rule is a perfect example of this, you know, do not do into others as you would have them do unto you. Like that's in every religious faith in the world. That increases compassion. So we, we. As a society, we've jettisoned religion to a large degree,

especially in the secular cities and whatnot. And that's understandable because religion has done a lot of bad shit. But we've also lost a lot, and we see that in the decades that have followed since this has been happening since the 60s or 70s, a lot of falling off of kind of basic human decency, common sense morality leading with love and kindness and mutual support. So I think there is a religious backbone and inspiration for a living and walking a moral path. Be hard.

Don't you think it be hard to get people to agree on what that thing looks like? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think you can do the same thing around morality and you can break it down into like 10 basic kind of morals. You know, just even go with the golden rule, you know. That doesn't, again, it doesn't have to do with politics. It doesn't have to do with, you know, it's, yeah, it's not, you know, it's leading with kindness,

love, generosity, and compassion and letting that, letting that guide us. Well, that's the next one. Number seven, the force of love. Mm-hmm. That's in every religious faith. Yep. You give a warning here that this is going to get all corny. Yeah.

I try not to use the L word on the podcast. Just kidding. Increased compassion, certainly something that everyone could use. Service to the poor, number nine. And number 10, strong sense of purpose. Mm-hmm. both the kung fu-esque individual answers we seek and the Star Trek like big picture stuff. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

We, culturally, we've kind of lost our sense of purpose. We've lost our goals. And again, I try and be as universal as possible. I would love for a Hindu to read this, a Muslim to read this, an atheist or agnostic to read it, a born-again Christian to read it and go, I relate. I get that. I want it to be inclusive of all of those different voices. But one thing that, again, we've jettisoned religion, again, for a very good reason, because a lot of them have been very corrupt and done really terrible corrupt things.

But in the doing, have we lost a higher sense that there is God, the Father, and I am in service to His will, the capital H. and I want to make the world a better place and conform my own behavior and standards to a certain measures to certain standards of morality and serve the poor and make the world better and bring light to the world, just as Jesus did, brought light to the world in so many different ways and the apostles. I don't want to follow in those footsteps. And we can do that individually. We can do it as a family. it as a community and we can do it as a nation. And that doesn't mean converting everyone

to a certain religion, but honoring these kind of basic foundational aspects of faith. And we didn't go like you said, you talked about 15% of the bassoon king talks about the spiritual side and you give a

pretty good, which I didn't really cover, but the Baha'i faith. This is very Baha'i faith-ish in the fact that it seems like Baha'i, the prehist, the is very open-minded with like, yep, all religions have good aspects to them. And it's all the kind of the, there's a lot of similarities. Would you say that's an assessment that's accurate?

Yeah, a lot of it is very Baha'i inspired. I try and not make it a Baha'i book or it's not about the Baha'i faith or to convert people to Baha'i. You know, it's mentioned a few times in the book, but this idea that there are universals in religious faith and that these universals are beautiful and true, we should honor those and you know there's only one god and we're all ultimately in service to this one god and let's work together arm and arm side by side with our sleeves rolled up Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Christian, Baha'i and make the world a better place. That's really that's really a key part of the book and

a lot of that inspiration does come from the Baha'i faith which I'm still a practicing member of. I came back around about 20 years ago or so and kind of have dove in. And I really, it's a beautiful faith. I really love it. You go on to say this. There you have it. The soul boom takes on religions of fundamental verities. These elements alone are beefy enough for any upstart belief system, but for our ultimate goal of making soul boom as relevant to the present moment as possible.

I offer up an additional 10 principles. The goal of these next. 10 qualities to show how this new faith community will embrace the ideals needed to remake and progress our modern world. Again, this is like a thought experiment that you're basically doing. Just to let people know you're not like literally trying to convince me to be a member of the soul boom. But again, it's important to understand that there's a lot of young people that have just rejected

religion. And they're like, oh, religion is bullshit. Oh, can't take it. And it's like, okay, but what have we lost? And if it allows you to think about religion in a different way, well, what if we just just took the best elements of different religions and put them together in a stew, you know, would that work for you?

So it's just, it's kind of re-investigating, re-imagining, rebooting the concept of what a religion itself is. Yeah, and I love this opener, no clerics. Like, what would you think about a religion with no clergy? So this is, there's not gonna be some people that are in charge of the rest of us.

Yeah, yeah. The Baha'i faith has that. The 12-step meetings have that. The 12 steps, the 12 steps in AA is the most successful spiritual religious movement of the 20th century of the last 150 years by far. How many people are on A.A. or 12 step? Do you know? Is there a number? I'm sure there is. Can you get on that? Echo? Yes, sir. Echo doesn't do that stuff. He doesn't. The other pods have someone Googling in the corner like, yeah, bring it up right here. Other podcasts have people that sit there for a long period and they go, you know what, I could probably

We serve a purpose here. So they say, you know what? I'm going to get a computer. I'm going to start Googling some stuff if anybody asked me. But you know what? Echo, he's over there. You know, he's made a couple notes and whatnot. And he pressed record a few hours ago.

He did. He checked the mics. We're getting no information from Michael. He's security. If someone came in that door, he'd be all on them. He's a black belt. Yep. Protecting you.

He is indeed. I wonder how many people are into 12-step. Yeah. I mean, there's got to be in every city. thousands. Yeah. Yeah, no question. Tens of millions.

When did you get into that? I kind of got into it backwards when I started doing therapy and I was really unhappy and then I realized that I had been using drugs and alcohol for super long and porn and you name it to kind of like soothe, escape, medicate my pain. And then my therapist, like, you might want to check out the 12 steps. because there's a room full of people that have gone through the same thing. So I was already, it was kind of weird.

They call it white knuckling it, where you get sober without the support of 12 steps, but I was sober at that point, and then I, but then I started going to meetings. So you don't do any drugs or alcohol right now? I don't know. How long have you been clean for? It's been a long time, about 20, 20 years.

Nice. Yeah. Nice. And that 12 step, you said you got into it, backwards because you... I had already been sober for, I think it was a year and a half before I entered 12 step. Was there a rock bottom to that? Oh, you want to go there, don't you?

I mean, let's do this. You already talked about freaking Harry Potter, you know? Oh, because I insulted Harry Potter. Yeah, now we're bringing the thunder. Yeah, so my story is a little different and I would love to indulge you and say, there I was, Jocko, covered in my own vaugh. Lomit lying in the gutter and my life wife had left me. My left eye was gouged out by a hobo with a spear.

But I don't have that, I don't have that story so much as just a lot of time of just being, for me it's mostly about anxiety. So I have an anxiety disorder. For a while I was on medication. Now I don't go on medication for it. But I was trying to medicate in all these different ways. So it just was years and years of unhappiness,

of unbalanced. there was, you know, difficulties in my marriage, difficulties in my life from, from the stuff that I was using. And, you know, I went into therapy and was just deeply unhappy and felt really lost. And then realized that this is what was wrong with me. So I'd love to bring you that hitting bottom, kind of that beautiful podcast hitting bottom story. But it's not really about that so much as like, I was imbalanced, I was unhappy, I was trying anything and everything I could to medicate.

Even career ambition can be a medication for anxiety and hating yourself, right? So part of it for me was like trying to get that next level as an actor was like, that'll make me feel better. And that's a culturally sanctioned one. You know, we live in kind of a workaholic world, right? where it's like you're nothing without your career success. And that's not true. You are something.

You are beautiful. You're a special. You're a child of God. You're a spark of the divine. And your mission is to bring out your greatest possible jaco. You know, your greatest possible echo. Your greatest possible, Rain Wilson, as under the eyes of the all-watching, all-powerful God, which is love.

And so it was, it's been a long process in therapy and in 12 step and in service. And, um, but, you know, I used to be crippled by this stuff. And now I wake up grateful and, um, and content and focused on doing the next right thing. And this process of, you know, this threefold process of therapy, 12 step and then my spirituality. in my as a bahai and studying and writing spirituality the meditation and prayer that i do that this combination has really made my life so much better and uh i'm just i'm so grateful so anxiety yeah what what is that like what does that feel like what is it what do you when you're like i have anxiety what does that feel like what are you thinking about what's going to

through your mind. I actually really love this question. And it's a really important question because people don't, people don't ask that question. So we're not able to kind of start at the very beginning. So for anyone interested in this work, and you should have him on the podcast before he dies, Dr. Gabor Mate, and I know he's been on lots of other podcasts, he is the authority on addiction and trauma. And the way he speaks about it is like he is, he's incredible. I mean, he's the Albert Einstein of addiction and trauma. And he's been on a lot of other pods. And he's so, so brilliant.

So there's a couple of different ways that anxiety works. So number one, there's normal anxiety. Like, oh, I'm doing this podcast here in San Diego. I wonder what the traffic's going to be like to L.A. Like, oh, I'm supposed to be on that call at six. Am I going to make it? Like, that's anxiety, right? But that's normal anxiety.

And that's going to come every day. That's going to come 20 times a day to you, right? Young people don't quite understand that. It's okay to have that kind of anxiety, to worry about the future and, oh, is this going to be okay? Or is that person mad at me or whatever it is. So that's one part of anxiety. For me, picture this toddler, and we had a lot of laughs at the size of my head and whatnot, but there's nothing more traumatic or sad than a toddler being abandoned at a year and a half.

and not having a mother. Have you ever seen a year and a half year old? When your kids were a year and a half, what was their relationship to their mom? Yeah, 100%. Just all about the mom. Mom. I was like a foreign being.

I mean, maybe a year and a half they were starting to be okay with me, but that for, yeah, this is all about the mom. Yeah. So for me to have that taken away, there's something working on my nervous system that is like, where's my mom or,

where's my place, where's my meaning, where's my, how am I going to be held? Am I going to be safe? Like, and that's primal, right? That's in the hippocampus. That's in the base of the brain. You know, that's the animal flight fight response stuff. It's physiological. So that showed up in a lot of different ways throughout my life.

And it showed up in anxiety attacks in my 20s where I would literally, so funny, I was talking to this young woman and she was saying like, oh, I had an anxiety attack. I was so afraid that my tax bill was coming in the mail. And I saw it and had anxiety. It's like, you didn't have an anxiety attack. An anxiety attack is you think you're going to die. Your heart is pounding. Your lungs can't get in enough air.

You're sweating and you're on the floor and your muscles are tensing without you telling them to do it. That's an anxiety attack. And they're still very common. I used to get them by the dozens in my 20s. and guess what? A little vodka made me feel better. A little toke made me feel better

and kind of took that edge off. So I thought, but it was a short-term solution. So there's that kind of anxiety that has to do with trauma, and a lot of people have that link to anxiety and trauma, and maybe they were abused as children or beaten or had a difficult time, whatever, bullied even. So those are two different kinds of trauma. I mean, anxiety, excuse me.

And then the thing that I had a therapist say to me once, which I really loved, which was trauma is merely an unidentified need. So I keep saying trauma. Anxiety is merely an unidentified need. And I love that. So if you're feeling that like unsublished. shaky, fearful feeling inside. The next thing is like, you don't have to be a victim to your anxiety. So how do you proactively tackle anxiety? Here I am. I'm having this. It doesn't have to be

a full-on anxiety attack, but I'm feeling it. How do I, what do I need? Do I need a hug? Do I need a nap. Do I need to work out? Do I need to get into nature? Do I need to put my phone down and the screens down and away from me? Do I need to go to the beach and watch the sunset? Do I need to call a friend? Do I need to get some therapy? Do I need to, you know, stop drinking caffeine all day long? Do I, you know, whatever it is, there's so many different ways to, do I need to meditate? There's so many different ways to to tackle that. But it's, it's, and I love this idea that anxiety is, what is the canary in the coal mine. It's, it's there to help you. It's saying you need something. So it's a good thing. If you feel anxiety, oh, it's a good thing. It's telling me I need something.

But what you don't need is, you know, a shot of whiskey and an edible to soothe it. Because then you're not really getting it, the real need that's underneath that. So when you go into therapy, they're starting to talk about like what is the need that you have because you can't identify it yourself? Yeah, I needed a lot of help. I needed years of help to kind of identify those those needs. I was really not good at it. Can you think your way out of anxiety? So if I'm me and I'm 20 years old and I graduated from high school, didn't go to college, I got a girlfriend.

I'm starting to think like how am I going to pay for her And I don't really have a good job lined up And all of a sudden I don't know where I'm going to be doing in five years And she's starting to look at other guys Because you're like so this is to me like what I think Would cause anxiety to a 20 year old me right Like I don't know what the future holds everything seems I don't know what I'm going to be doing

And if I just think about day to day like hey I'm going to the ball game tonight I'm going to whatever then I can kind of it's okay But as soon as I start thinking about the future And like what's going to be where am I going to be How am I going to pay for this? And is that like an example of where anxiety comes from? Well, that's one of the aspects of anxiety. That's kind of the first kind, which is, and it's very real, like, how am I going to pay this rent?

You know, and am I going to lose my job? Am I going to lose my girlfriend? Fear of the future can be an anxiety, right? So in the 12 steps, we learn the serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. There's certain things you can't, there are a certain. things you can control, show up to your job and do a better job, go to your girlfriend, tell your lover and be good to her. That's in your control. But whether she leaves you or whether

you get fired, that's out of your control, right? So that, and it's called the serenity prayer, because you gain serenity by using that particular tool. So anxiety can be, and it usually is a little deeper than that. It's kind of like something is wrong inside. I mean, something is out of balanced and I am deeply afraid for myself. And oftentimes you can't really put your finger on what it is. And that's what you see so many kids in their teens and 20s right now living in anxiety. And it's an anxiety-filled world, right? So we've got climate change. Climate anxiety is a very real thing that, you know, young people are feeling. There's political discord and rage. social media is really divisive and you know we live in this technological world a lot of kids are

being raised by all their different screens they got their phone and their iPad and their laptop and their TV and that's how they're being raised so you know this we've seen anxiety go through the roof but yeah so we've talked about a lot about not a lot but we talk about depression sometimes on this and we talk about that people get stuck in I The way I've described it is like people get stuck in like a cloud like a storm cloud, right? And like let's say you are all depressed and you're sad and you're bummed and I'm looking at you from the outside and I can see that the storm cloud is just around your head. You just need to like come to, hey, you know, rain, come here. Walk three steps forward and you're going to be out of this thing.

But you look in 360 degrees. You don't see a way out. Right. It's all around you. And it's the same thing with addiction. Like you can see people that, hey man, drinking is ruining your life right now. and you need to stop, but they don't see that. Or this girl that you've been going out with that's a psycho

or this guy that you've been going out with the psycho is ruining your life. We can see it from the outside so clearly and yet they can't see it. So when it comes to anxiety from like, hey, listen, Rain, like the things you're worried about, you don't need to worry about these things. But it's like impossible for me to tell you that.

I can't explain to you that you're addicted. I can't explain to you that this girl's horrible for you. I can't explain to you that you don't need to worry about this thing. future. I can explain to you that you don't need to worry about like, hey, you know, who cares about the reviews that you get? It doesn't matter. You're like doing great. It's going to be great. You're like, no. Like, I can tell you that, but it's like something that you have to discover for yourself. Is that what happens? And if that's what happens, do you have a pathway to talk yourself through these situations? Or is it what we talked about? Is it the 12 step? Is it the faith?

You know, is that what we're doing? I love it. And such a great question. And you had asked before about can you think your way out of it? Yes and no. So you had Ryan Holiday on here, right? Love Ryan and stuff, the work he's doing, the stoicism stuff. I've learned so much from him. He would have some really key things to say from the stoics that I don't really know. Yeah, he'd be quoting like every one of them 14 times in the next five minutes.

And I'm sure because I'm sure that the stoics dealt with this exact same thing. And probably let's all go to his YouTube channel and check out, you know, what he would say. So and there, and so much of stoicism. is like just about having wisdom and thinking clearly. So in some regards, some thinking can help. There's a type of therapy called cognitive behavioral therapy. And for people who are skeptical of therapy and think it's too ooey-goey, that is a very,

CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, is very meat and potatoes. Kind of like, oh, you're afraid of flying? Okay, let's look at the data around flying. Let's pretend you're on an airplane. Let's talk about that. Why don't you journal about like it's really about getting the stuff that's what they call limbic, which is at the base of the brain where you're in that animal fight, flight response,

and getting it up into your conscious cerebral cortex, which I have a gigantic one. Yes, and I was thinking about renting out space here, like a little billboard, a little neon billboard. We'll put taco fuel on there. I get you some money for that. Seriously? Absolutely. Done deal. Oh, my God.

That'd be a great science fiction thing, isn't it? You rent out space on your fore. head for advertising. Oh my God. This is great. Yeah. We're doing this. It's on. So that's very much about thinking, but the problem with thinking is that, and this starts to get a little bit, crazy. Do you ever meditate? No. Okay. So in meditation, there is this element where you're, the Buddhists call it the monkey mind, right? So it's like a pop-co. machine up in your brain. But they look a little, little, right?

You're talking about someone in the fog and they're not able to see it. So you meditate. And then your thoughts are still bouncing around. You kind of let your thoughts go. And then you hit a certain point, and it's really not that difficult to do, where you're kind of up above yourself, not floating above hippie-dippy stuff, but you're just literally seeing yourself in your thoughts and you're a little detached from your thoughts. And maybe you have some thoughts, but you have this other part of yourself that's kind of like

witnessing the thoughts. And that's the witness part of ourselves. And that's our higher self. That's our, that's our true self. So then you can kind of look down on your thoughts. I'm like, oh, I wonder if I could call them back. Oh, I didn't return that text. Oh, shoot, I was supposed to pick up a mango for dinner, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And you realize, oh, that's not me. That's my thinking brain, which is really important. We need that. But that's not who I am. So meditation gets you closer in touch with your real self, your present self, your ancient self that is the witness. So I would say that thinking can be very limited, as we know, because it's very hard to think yourself out of a situation. But even like what you talked about, like you have to find it for

yourself. Yes, you do have to find it for yourself, but we can do that in community. We can do that in relation with each other. So therapy is simply a process of like you're paying someone. You ultimately gain their trust and they trust you. So you're not, no bullshit, no one else is listening. You can lay everything out on the table. You can be like, I hate this motherfucker. And I'm a less.

And one time I did this. And when I was a kid, I stole it. And you could just lay it all out, get the shame out of the way. And the therapist is just so present for you. And then the president, the therapist is very keen at seeing all those behaviors. you know, the girlfriend, the drinking, whatever it is. And it isn't going to tell you what to do, but it's going to tip little breadcrumbs,

lead you down the path so that you make that decision yourself. In the 12-step program, it's a similar thing in that you share at meetings. So you turn your anxieties, your fears, your issues into stories, and you share them. And then you pick up the phone. A lot of the 12-step meetings is just staying in touch with guys from the program and then laying it out. I do it all the time every day. vent about something and like pissed at this or I'm afraid of this and and and you share and

there's healing in that and sometimes you get feedback or you solicit feedback if you trust someone enough what do you think you know and so that's part of that healing of anxiety too so there's a lot of tools out there and there's a lot of people know this stuff way better than me but it's it's the disease of the modern age okay so I'm glad I really like dove into this because okay so I wrote a book called Leadership Strategy and Tactics. In this book, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, I talk about this idea of detachment, which I call a superpower.

And I explained where I discovered it for the first time. I was doing some training, and I was assaulting a training target. And in order to figure out what was happening, I had to like take a step back, literally take a step back off the firing line and look around. And I was able to see what was happening. And I was able to make a tactical decision

when no one else really did. even though I was really young and really junior. And when we got done with this training evolution, I was like, wait a second. How did I know what to do and no one else did? It's because I took a step back. I detached. I looked around and I could see.

And then I started doing that when I was having conversations with people. When I was starting to feel like I'm getting mad about something, I could just learn to detach. And so that's why I'm curious about this stuff because when like we're talking about anxiety, I literally don't know what it is. And the reason I don't know what it is is because I'm taking a step back mentally

looking at it going, oh, you're freaking out, that's your ego talking, that's your emotions talking, you're worried about something that you can't control. And I've always kind of wondered why I don't know what it is and why I'm able to deal with things because I am able to deal with things. You know,

I've been through some pretty relatively hard things and I'm like, okay with it. and now I'm from hearing what you're describing, I'm like, oh, yeah, I have seen those things in my brain, but it's from a detached perspective. So I see myself, oh, you're getting caught up in the fact that you have lost some friends and you can't bring them back and you should be mad about that. Oh, that's your emotions and you're getting too emotional and you're letting back. Or, oh, this person did me wrong and I'm going to make them. Oh, no, that's just your ego talking. They actually won and beat you fair and square.

And that's why you should just congratulate them for doing well. So when I was when I was asking you, can you think your way out of it? That was the wrong way of describing what I was thinking. Because to you thinking is like getting wrapped up in the emotions and the ego and all that chaos. To me thinking is like, hold on a second. Take a step back. What I should have said, can you detach and look at it and see it from the outside? Because that's truly what we want to do.

You know what I'm looking at you and I see that you're caught in a storm cloud. what I want to be able to do is like, hey, bro, just come over here. Everything's going to be okay. You can just come a little bit forward. But like you said, I have to get you to see that for yourself. I have to get you to see that this woman that you're involved with is a train wreck or this drug that you're using is a disaster or this job that you got is you need to get away from it or whatever the case may be, I've got to get you to be able to see that.

I can't explain it to you all day. You won't listen. You can't. It doesn't change your point of view for me to explain it to you 20 times. At some point, I can try and explain it. At some point, you've got to step out and you've got to take a look at it and go, holy shit, Jocko, I see what you're talking about. This is bad.

I'm going to quit drinking. I'm going to get rid of that girl. I'm going to quit this job. Whatever that thing is, I'm going to lose my ego. I'm going to stop thinking, comparing myself. I'm going to stop reading the reviews in the New York Times about my acting or whatever. The shit doesn't matter. The shit doesn't matter.

Okay, I get it. I'm going to put my ego aside. So to me, that's a very powerful thing. and again, it takes work. I stumbled into it as a young frog man. I stumbled into the fact that, oh,

taking a step back and looking around is very beneficial and I added it to everything in my life. I was actually one of my questions I was going to ask you, it's like, what are you doing therapy? Like, what do they do?

And you've kind of explained it now so I don't have to cross that. I've written it down. Look at this. Three times I've written down. Therapy question mark, therapy question mark third. I don't know what the hell happens in there.

But I'm like, how does it help you? Now you've explained. Like, oh, they're asking you questions. they're luring you out of your brain. They're luring you out of your brain so that you can see what it looks like and go, oh, shit. Let me amend that a little bit. Because if you're just talking from a physiological perspective, like Huberman might, you know, you're not luring it out of the brain.

You're luring it from one part of brain to the other part of the brain. So so much of anxiety, fear, aggression, depression, depression is happening. at our lizard part of our brain, and it's just firing down there. And then, and again, therapy may not be your bag. There's a lot of different ways to do it. You know, you might do it in church or through a group or just with friends or whatever, but you're physiologically taking all of that activity in the brain stem and you're moving it up into the cerebral cortex.

So by talking about it, you're then able, because this is where all the higher functioning stuff happens. So you take it out of the lizard brain and you move it into the angel brain trademark, Rain Wilson, 2023. You said it on my podcast. So how much IP do you own of angel brain? That's my intellectual property. Thank you. I never should have come on here.

But that's part of the process. So part of the talking and therapy, it's like, and it gets a bad rap. But part of it is to take your fear, your shame, your anxiety, your depression, those deepest darkest things that are like going on way down there in the shadows in the corner of the closet, bringing him to the front of the closet shining a nice light on it. And then you're able to make some decision. Okay, once that's happened, now what are you going to do so you're not a victim? What choices are you going to make?

Some therapy is bad because it just stays there in the talky talk. And it's like, talk for a while, get it into the light. and like what are the three things you're going to do every day to make this better? And a good therapist will lead their client toward making proactive decisions where they're no longer a victim. Yeah, that was another thing that I found when people would ask me about like grief. And one thing is like I unfortunately have had to write a lot of eulogies, right? And I realized that in doing that, oh, that's... was a way for me to process that was a way for me to think through that was a way for me to

bring some of those emotions to the surface and be like okay I can see them now I can let them out here we go and that's why you know what you're saying about therapy is something that I've done through writing yeah and even if it's just writing a eulogy which is a horrible freaking task you know it's been 17 hours hey they want you to talk like or you know hey are you going to speak yes I am. It's like, okay, it's been 17 hours. And now I have to write and I got to get these things out on paper. And that stuff is so helpful to be able to do that. Um, which is part of journaling is a very valuable tool that does that exact same thing. And that's what you're talking about. And then in 12 steps, you do step work. So you're doing that same thing. But again,

that's always a process of taking it down from the limbic system to the higher part of the brain. There's more to it than that, but that's one of the elements of it. Okay. Uh, Going back to the soul boom religion here. Number 12. Diversity plus harmony. Number 13. Centrality of the divine feminine. Talk to me on that one.

So in some of my reading and research, I noticed that the humanity put kind of the feminine divine at the center of conversation. of worship early on in humanity's history. And then around 3,000, 5,000 BC, it became all about the conquerors. And the god of, you know, the god of Er, the god of Babylon or the god of Baghdad or the god of Judea or whatever that conquered, then you, oh, you guys have to worship this god. And it's usually a battle god and a war god and, you know, the Greek war gods and stuff like that. So, but before all that, it was much more of goddess and feminine qualities. Nature, it had to do with birth. It had to do with the seasons. And a connection to the divine was found

through kind of feminine, more feminine qualities. And I do think that we, you know, I'm sitting at a table covered in knives, but I do think that we've kind of, we've, we've, over masculinized our contemporary world. And I don't mean that to be at all like some kind of criticism of masculinity, masculinity and leadership, honor, integrity, being a provider. Knives. An occasional knife, an occasional gun when necessary.

I don't know about having 45 guns in a closet, but this stuff is really important, right? But we've just got, we've just skewed in the balance a little bit. And so it would be good to kind of re-examine some of that, some of those feminine elements, especially of the divine and worship and connection to like Mother Earth and just like the beauty of nature and the birth cycle and springtime and what happens with flowers and with baby rat. We have all these rabbits in my property and all these baby bunnies hopping around. You know, and it's like the Easter bunny. It literally is the spring.

And it's these little Easter bunnies everywhere. You know, but a reconnection to that, I think, is something we could benefit from a conversation about. Number 14, cooperation between science and faith. Number 15, profound connection to the natural world. I surf. Usually when people ask me if I meditate, I say I surf and I do jiu-titsu. Because from what I understand, that's a lot of... Can you do both at the same time?

No. Well, no, I can't. You need to detach a little bit more. Detach harder. Profound connection to the natural world. No, but you're absolutely right that, you know, we think of this as meditation, but walking in the woods is meditation. Walking on the beach is meditation.

And certainly surfing is meditation, the act, but also all that time you're out there like on your belly, just like, you know, like it's so soothing and healing. Also, it's important to understand that walking is a meditation in and of itself. They've done studies about what we stopped walking 70 years ago. Humans used to walk for 100,000 years. All we did was walk around all the time. And there's something healing about walking. And it literally heals the brain.

Like your left hemisphere and right hemisphere, the impulses go back and forth while you're walking. And it's brain healing. And they've done studies about how walking reduces anxiety, how it reduces depression. Because then you've got kids all day sitting like this and they're not using their legs. So that's a different kind of meditation as well.

There's a lot of physiological ways to do it. And I play tennis and I find very meditative because in tennis you've got to just look at the ball. That's it. You can't be thinking about your email you need to write. You're just like you just have to see the ball. I imagine in jujitsu it's all about being completely in the moment. Like what's your opponent throwing at you and what's you're in and stuff like that?

So all of a sudden you're out of an hour and a half session. You're like, what an hour and a half just went by? Seriously? like holy shit you know and I feel that way coming out of a out of a tennis game I never heard that thing about walking before but it definitely makes sense because it's one of those things where it's like it's like when you're a kid like go for a walk like to calm down right yeah you need to go for a walk around the house and then you think about when everyone got locked down during COVID oh my God I never thought of that before they're like yo you can't even walk anymore you just sit here in your room wiping down your groceries oh my God. It's not crazy. Number 16, centrality of justice.

What was that all about? I think that there's, we think about justice in terms of like the court system, right? Or Congress or the Supreme Court or something like that. But there is right and wrong. It's connected to morality. There's like right and wrong and justice. What is right and what is wrong is inherent in belief systems.

And for me, it would be really important to, if you're creating this made-up fake religion, to have justice be a part of it or conversations about what is, again, it's just what is just, what is fair, what is right and wrong. And then how can we use spiritual tools to help move that forward, not necessarily the court system, but how can we rectify injustice by using greater spiritual powers? Number 17, a life of service. Number 18, practical spiritual tools. What's your top spiritual tool?

Well, you know, I talked about meditation. That's one of the tools about like detaching from your thoughts. That's a, that's a spiritual tool that literally I can sit down in five minutes. and my life is a shambles. I'm like, and I can just kind of go like this, and I can breathe and just detach with love from my own thought process, and I can gain greater clarity, right? And really anyone can.

Just taking some deep breaths. Just taking some deep breaths as a form of meditation. Who taught you how to meditate? I just taught myself. Cool. No big. It doesn't have to be fancy. You don't need a fancy teacher or an app or anything like that,

although there's lots of great tools out there. A lot of them are free on YouTube. but Russell Brand has a great, he does some meditation. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Talks on podcast. And I will, here's one from the Baha'i faith, the son of the founder of the Baha'i faith, whose name was Abdul Baha. He said, if a man has 10 good qualities and one bad quality, focus on the 10 and forget

the one. If a man has one good quality and 10 bad qualities, focus on the one and forget the 10. And that's a lot easier said than done. So we work with people, right? And maybe they're just great all around, but they've got one asshole quality. Maybe they don't listen very well or they interrupt you or something like that. But otherwise, they're kind, they're good guys or this. And isn't that funny how we just are like, God, this guy always interrupts me?

And we don't look at like, oh, he's compassion, he's kind. he's smart, he's funny, he's this or that. We just look at that one thing, right? And likewise, you've got to work with people that have, the office is a great example of this. You know, they have 10 bad qualities. You know, they, sometimes, sometimes I have dealt with people that have tried me so much and tested me so much.

And I'd love to hear the, the military version of this when you're with a platoon of guys, like in each other's sweat and you're shitting in the same bucket and stuff. what that's like. But, you know, I've had to work with people where it's literally like everything they say and do drives me baddie and bugs the shit out of me. So I just have to find that one part of like, oh, they have kind eyes or, oh, they're very well groomed or they seem to be patient or whatever it is. You find that one thing like focus on this.

It's a practical spiritual tool to make your life better and make your day better. So you're not spending your whole day going like, jacobah. does this and Echo does this and why does Bobby always do that and you're just spending all your time focusing on all of the negativity around you it's a way to focus on the positive had a guy named captain charlie plum on this podcast he was a pilot in vietnam he was shot down on his 75th mission which would have been his last mission he was shot down and captured and he was putting the honne hilton for six years Jesus and he had this they had a rule those prisoners of war had a rule and the rules because they would be putting prison cells and they'd have a roommate and usually they'd have a roommate for like six months a year year and a half and then they'd get another roommate sometimes they were in three man rooms two man rooms four man but this is the deal this is what they're dealing with but they had a rule that if your cellmate did something that annoyed you it was your fault and to me that answers the question you just gave like like you like you and I are living in a cell

and every night while I'm trying to go to sleep, you're like picking your nose and like flicking your boogers onto the wall near my head. It's like you know me. Exactly. You seem like a bugger flicker. I've sensed it immediately.

But I don't sit there and go, why is you doing this? Instead, I go, this is my fault for letting this annoy me. It's my fault. And that's just a great way to do it. It's a great way to turn it. And it's a survival skill.

Because if you're going to sit in that cell and just be annoyed by everyone for six years. I went to that Hanoy Hilton last year. Did you? Yeah, when I was arrested by Lake Forest Park Police Department in 1981, no, I went on vacation to Vietnam, which is awesome. Did you have flashbacks when you're in the Honohy Hilton of the Lakeshore Police Department? I did.

Holding cell. Like, oh, man, they got me. Where's Terry, man? They killed Terry. Terry, come back. It coming. In the words of Theo Vaughn, everybody's got their Vietnam, man. That's great.

But, yeah, Vietnam is a great place, by the way. And the Vietnamese people are so awesome and beautiful. And they love Americans. And they really actually don't like the Chinese, but they love Americans. And they totally, because people go, and I even went, like, am I going to look weird? Like, we invaded your.

country and bombed your By the way, yes, you are going to look weird, but Well, anyways, you were saying? They looked up at me. Like, who was that giant white Macy's Day balloon of a fleshy corpussel above me? But it's a great place. People are so warm and wonderful.

And Hanoi is a gorgeous city, but the Hanoi Hilton, wow. It's like visiting a Holocaust memorial or something. It's just, anyway. Yeah, six years. Six years. Yeah. Totally insane.

And all right. Number 19, emphasis on music and arts. Yeah, I think all too often we lose the side of the fact that so much of religion and faith and spiritual celebration at its best incorporates music and dance and arts and drama and storytelling. Look at the success of a lot of the Christian films recently. and you know how uplifting music is at church and stuff like that. So in this fictional religion of soul boom, think that arts need to be a part of it. I access so much of like heart-based spiritual feeling through art and through music.

And I could never be a part of like some kind of boring practice that doesn't feature the arts. Yeah, you pointed that earlier, you're talking about the veterans. a lot of like art therapy that guys will go to and they'll start doing whatever freaking crochet or pain or whatever and it like makes them feel better yeah so there you go yeah uh and the last one i can see you crocheting your crocheting is a big one for me yeah yeah yeah number 20 humility and last but certainly not least soul boom faith admits that it doesn't know the best way to do anything. We don't have any absolute answers. We're in a humble posture of learning. We provide

but a few markers, guidepost and clues along the winding path of the spiritual game of life. A morsel of meaning. A supcon of serenity. Is that the word? Supon. Supe son. It's a French. Okay. A colonel of the eternal. I like that one. Hey. And plenty of questions along the way. So you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you know, to me and I've always right and say humility is the most important characteristic for leaders and for people to have. And it's what we're lacking a lot of in the world right now. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Because I actually think I know exactly what the answer should be and therefore I hate you because you don't agree with my answer. Everyone does. Just look at Twitter or X. All you have to do is read X and everyone knows the best way. Yeah. Yeah. So Soul Boom, our fictional religion is a humble religion.

Yeah, I think that one of the things. that has turned so many young people off from religious faith is kind of like this kind of like certainty and judgment, um, pronouncements. This is the way it is. So we just have to, you know, as we walk our spiritual path, keep openhearted and keep questioning and, um, and stay humble and, you know, not always think we know the best way. You know, it's hard, it's hard for me because I know a lot and I usually do know the best way. I'm kidding. But, uh, but, uh, but, But it really is important. And I love that you say that about leadership because it's, I know it's part of your dichotomy,

you know, of leadership. But the, you know, humility and service and really surrender. And that's an interesting thing about 12-step recovery, too, is that you find strength and surrendering. That's, like, weird. And it's counterintuitive. Like, strength is willpower. Like you have a, you know, an alcohol problem or a sex problem or a shopping problem or an eating problem or a relationship problem.

You're like, you just kind of will yourself out of it. And, you know, and will and determination are important qualities, human qualities. We wouldn't have our civilization without it. But sometimes there are things that you just have to, that you have to surrender. And then in that surrender, you find great strength. And that's an interesting one as well. Yeah, that's an interesting one too. When it comes to like leadership from a humility perspective, you have to have a like a high level of confidence.

in order to be humble. So it's always the people that lack confidence that don't act humble. But if I'm actually confident, and I'm like, oh, you know what? Rain, it sounds like you got a better plan than I do. Why don't we go ahead and use your plan? Yeah.

Whereas if I'm, if I lack confidence, then I'm like, you know what, my plan's better we're going with my plan. Yeah. And that's problematic all day long. Yeah, indeed. And you do have one bonus thing, which I think is a big hit here for your religion.

It's a potlucks. Potlucks. Potlucks. Because potlucks. play a huge part in bringing people together. It's one of the greatest contributions to human civilization brought to us by our Native American brothers and sisters.

Everyone brings a hot dish. And my dad had one recipe. It was a tater tot casserole. Nice. And it was cream soup and I think a layer of tater tots and then more cream soup and then cheese and the tater tots.

and then cheese bake on 350 for like 20 minutes. You just put the frozen data. Hell yeah. And then it's so good. I thought you were going to say potato chips on top because I know my mom would make like the whatever kind of casserole she was making. Whether it was tuna casserole, hamburger helper casserole or a chicken canned. There was potato chips on top.

How about this? Crinkled up. Clown salad on top. So this clown salad's a thing. It's a thing. it's a nerd thing you wouldn't understand um all right so that that's kind of like one small section of soul boom and again really cool read you did the audio book which is which is great I listened to the sample of the audio book as well and a ton of stuff to ponder in here a very

idealistic book. Yeah, it is. It's a very idealistic book. And I actually caught myself being like, hold on a second there. Was you freaking think everyone's just going. And I caught myself being like, uh, kind of a reactionary to some of your thoughts in there. And then I thought to myself, wait, wait, why can't why not be idealistic? Why not trying to do I have to agree with everything that is said before I said? Oh, wait a second. What, what does he mean by that? I caught, I found myself being a victim of my own what I just talked about like well he obviously has never been in that situation before otherwise no it's like oh what is he trying to say and are we not better to have an open mind and this is again this is one of the things I got asked recently you know talking about going to war

somewhere was China or Russia or whatever people are asking you oh what would you be thinking about and I said you know the most important thing that I would be thinking about if we were to go war there would be having an open mind because I don't know what's going to happen I don't know what the enemy is going to do. I don't know the way things are going to unfold. I don't know what we haven't thought about. And where people get trapped is they have a closed mind in battle and in life. They have a closed mind.

They already think they understand. Kind of like, interestingly, you said playing that role where you bombed on Broadway. You already knew in your mind how you were supposed to act. And that's what you were going to do. And you were going to stick with it. You had a closed mind and not an open mind. And not a humble mind either. and not a humble mind either.

Well, at the end I put in seven pillars of a spiritual revolution, because I really do think it needs a revolution, and one of them is to foster joy and to squash cynicism. So being cynical and pessimistic and negative is an easy fallback position. Anyone can do it.

You can just be like, ah, that's a bunch of shit. That's never going to work. Ah, bullshit. That's an easy, it's an easy answer. It's an easy way to live your life. And I'll join right in with. you because that's easy too. Like you want to complain about something? I'll just jump on and complain with you. We're brothers now. So if you if we think a little bit deeper, you know,

squashing that cynicism and instead turning that to joy, like I'm not helping anyone. I'm helping myself and I'm not helping the world staying pessimistic and cynical. I need to bring joy to the world. I'm going to bring joy to the world. But I want to bring, I want to uplift people. I want to inspire people. I want to come into a room. One of the things, you know, my dad passed during COVID. He died of heart disease. But when he passed away and in my grieving process, I thought a lot about his best qualities, like, and something that I want to emulate is like every room he went into, he made a better place. Every room he went into, even if it's like the cleaning lady or the hotel made or he, and the Starbucks or whatever it is, like he was,

always like, hey, brother, nice to see you. Like, how's it going? Like, oh, that's a nice watch. What is that like? Or how do you shave your head that way? Like, whatever it is. Like, he's curious and joyful and uplifting and, like, and at his remembrances and memorials, like, that's what was shared.

Like, he always made each room a better place. And I'm so fortunate that I got to, he was fucked up in a lot of ways. He made a lot of mistakes. He had a lot of issues. But that was just a beautiful. quality that he brought. So if we're going to have a spiritual revolution, we can't, when you're pessimistic and cynical, you sit back, right? When you're joyful, you're proactive and you're making choices to try and make things better and positive. And we talk about a lot about giving service,

right, and service to others. But spreading joy is maybe the most important service that we can do. So we can go into room, you can make someone laugh, you can compliment them, and you can go into when someone is sick and tell a joke or sing a song and bring them some jello or whatever and you've uplifted them and made them better. That's one of the best services that any human can give to another human. So if you're feeling a little bit lost, squash that cynicism, just try and give a little bit of joy each day. And guess what? You'll feel happier by giving joy to others. And then the cycle repeats and we can spread this like a virus. And yeah, it's a little bit kumbaya and a little bit, a little bit idealistic and hippie-dippy,

but I believe that world peace is possible, and I believe that humanity can mature. I think our lives can get better, and we can make the world a more beautiful and joyful place. We've just got a lot of work in front of us. Got some work to do on that. Yeah. On that front.

I was talking to some young seals the other day. And they kept going back in the water. Now, I was talking to these young seals the other day. And, you know, even once you're in the SEAL teams, you still do a bunch of training. And I used to run that training. And, but I, I had been through that advanced training. I've done seven deployments. So seven times I'd gone through this cycle of training.

And one thing I did, I always did was no matter what we were doing is I took it as seriously as I possibly could. Like, not serious like, oh, we're not going to have fun. But like, okay, this is what we're doing. We're going to do our best at it. Not being like, oh, we got to do this again or, oh, this isn't realistic or, oh, I can't believe it. No. It's like, oh, oh, this is what you want to do. We're going to knock it out of the park and just that reframing that taking a positive attitude on what you have to do

It just makes all the difference in the world and you can immediately change a whole platoon their attitude if you have a shitty attitude Your whole platoon's attitude will be shitty if you have a good attitude like oh this hey this training might seem a little bit strange, but it's gonna I bet we can knock it out of the park and all of since like oh yeah, I think we can and it really does Spread so what you're talking about on a large scale definitely happens on a small scale as well So that's soul boom. I don't know. If we're going to go in depth on soul boom, you have to come back, bro, because I mean, this is already getting long.

But you have other stuff going on right now. You have a podcast. Metaphysical milkshake. Yeah. Is that not a podcast? It is a podcast. It's kind of, that one's kind of winding down.

It's suns setting. Okay. And I did it with Reza Aslan. We talk about big metaphysical questions about the meaning of life and love and pain and wonder and being a human being. It's been great, but I think I'm going to move and try and do more of a soul boom podcast.

That's a little bit more about spiritual ideas. Okay. But in the next couple of months at some point. TV show. Yeah. This thing is not sunseting. The geography of bliss. That's correct.

So what's up with geography of bliss? Well, it's on the Peacock Channel, and you can stream it, and I travel around the world looking for happiness, and it's a wonderful, delightful show that I am not allowed to promote because we're on a strike and please support the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America

in their quest for ever more fair revenue streams from the streamers studios. So that's what's going on right now. Yeah. How long is that strike going to last? Oh, dear God. You know, it's really hurting a lot of working class fans.

families. People think about, oh, Hollywood, elites on strike, boo-hoo, who. But the majority of, I think it's like 80% of Screen Actors Guild actors make less than $20,000 a year. So it's a lot of working class families trying to feed their kids and pay their homes while being actors and writers and working in showbiz. A lot of writers, you know, you look at the end of a show and like the writers that are there. Like, you know, they make a good. living, don't get me wrong, but they, you know, it's, it's about middle class homes. So the entire business has changed. So we've got to understand this is not just a strike of like, oh, I want a 5% raise, not a 3% raise. It's like, show business changed. Do you remember what show business was like

seven years ago? It was completely different than it is now. Everyone had cable. You watch network television. And then there was this Netflix upstart and, oh, should I pay my $9 a month to watch what's on that one. But this whole subscription revenue streamer kind of thing is a whole new thing. And the contracts don't reflect the new business model. So that means the people that wrote them and act in them are not getting the pay that they think they should get. The office, I forget what the number is.

Echo can Google it. Yeah. And then pull that up, Echo. He'll Google it tomorrow and the next Thursday we'll hear from him. Like, hey, I got that information you want it. Um, the, uh, uh, but the office when it was on Netflix, there was some number that came out. It's like 17 billion hours of the office streamed or something like that. My family alone streamed one billion.

I mean, it was. And yet the checks that we got in residuals from Netflix for those years, I don't want to say any numbers, but it was, it was pathetic. I mean, it was, it was pathetic. Like you couldn't pay your credit card bills from it. And we were being watched billions of hours. Now, I'm fine. Steve's fine. John's fine.

We're all fine. But like some of the guest stars on the office and people that are, you know, the more work-a-day actors and stuff like that, not the fabulous stars. You know, that's a real struggle. That's a problem. So we have to figure out how to make that more fair and equitable without shutting down the streamers. You know, so I hope they're talking. but it's probably what month is this? This is early September,

but it's not going to get fixed until December or January probably. It's already been a couple of months. Is there like a head of the union? Of the SAG union? Yeah. Fran Dresher, the nanny is the head of our union. Remember her?

Oh, hi. I'm Fran Dresher, the nanny. I don't echo. That was a mediocre to poor imitation, but yes. Oh, hey. Oh, we're coming out of family. He says one thing, the whole pod.

He hasn't listened to anything. I said, look at the 10 good qualities. There we go. Not my Fran Dresher impersonation. Oh, Frantresher, I knew exactly who it was. Thank you. Whatever, whatever. So what I'm saying is,

okay. If we're trying to indicate who friend dresser is, that wasn't as accurate as maybe it could have been, you know, to trigger the memory. But if you heard her real voice, is a TV show called the nanny? The nanny is a TV. She'll...

There's a sitcom from the 90s, I think. Yeah. Okay, so she's like the head of the union. Yeah. And she's talking to all the different execs? So they have a producers coalition. It's not really a union. It's called M. Pat, I think.

And an association of, I don't know, media producers or something like that. And they have a couple of key negotiators talking on behalf. But here's the other weird thing about the strike is... the streamers have a very different business model than the studios. So you think about like Warner Brothers has HBO Max, but it also puts movies out in theaters. It also has Harry Potter. It has theme parks.

And it makes TV shows that it sells to networks and to streamers as well. But Netflix has its own business model. You know, it doesn't actually make anything. It's just the platform. And then Apple and Amazon, they're making billions of dollars selling shoes in computers and then they make some content on the side, they don't care about these contracts and stuff like that. They're trillion-dollar corporations.

So it's a very weird, it's such a weird time when you have like Sony, which is very specifically a studio. There's no Sony streaming platform. It's a studio that makes content working with Netflix, which is only a streamer, working with Apple that mostly sells phones. And they're all like working together, but they kind of have different interests. Whoa. It's a weird time.

And so, and the other thing is because, like I said, I've been on a couple of these TV shows. There's a whole, there's, I can't imagine all the other people out of work. Yeah, the crew. The crew, the people that make the set, the people that feed you, people that drag you around. And there's like 12 actors or 14 speaking actors on a, on a roll. There's 200 people. It's crazy. 250 people of the camera loaders and the people doing the snacks and the people cleaning up afterwards,

driving the trucks, the Teamsters, and those guys are hurting too. It's hurting a lot of people. And you think hopefully by the end of the year there's been some progress made. I hope so. What's the outcome? Like what's the most positive outcome for the writers and the actors? Is like a slice of the... Yeah, a bigger slice of the streaming pie in a fair way.

Because we used to get a nice fair slice of the network pie. That's all been worked out. If you go still now and go do a network show, you know, you're going to, you do Bob Hart's Abashola or, you know, FBI or you do, you know, law and order, you know, Chicago or whatever on network TV. That's all been worked out and you get paid very fairly and residuals get paid fairly in compensation and pension and all that's. Oh, but when law and order goes to a streamer, you don't get jack. You don't get jack, yeah. And they're and they're getting like suits. is the number one show on Netflix.

That was made on TBS or TNT 10 years ago, and people love this show, suits. Oh, okay. Actually, David Costable was on suits. But those guys aren't getting paid didly, and it's being watched for billions of minutes on Netflix. You open your Netflix in the top shows. Suits is right up there,

but they're making hardly any money for that. Oh, because it wasn't in the contract, but 10 years ago. Yeah, for to stream it on internet streaming. you know that what that wasn't really a thing up until five or seven years ago so damn and those contracts are already signed sealed and delivered yeah we got a so stakes are high it sucks um hopefully everyone can find a solution all right um does that get us up to speed does that like are we there yeah we there for the most part yeah i think we're good any more insults you want to

throw out at people echo charles uh where so where can people find you right now so you got soulboom dot com Yeah, and Instagram on Soul Boom, at Soul Boom, if you're interested in spiritual conversations, I'm going to be trying to build that out over the next year. You're on Twitter and Instagram. Yeah. At Rain Wilson, there's two ends. Two ends. Because your parents decided an extra end was necessary. Yeah, I say the extra N is for extra nookie.

You're on Facebook as well. And you got this other TV show, which we can't promote because you're on a strike. Yes, the geography of bliss I will not be promoting on Peacock about finding happiness around the world. Yeah. Awesome. Echo, any questions? Hard-hitting questions.

Hey, why did they put the office on the iPod? They're like, why did that deal go through? Was that just... That's a great question. I have no idea why. I think NBC must have just done a deal with them to put it on. But I don't know, maybe it was an Apple thing. Maybe Apple was like, we need to put a show on that we think people will like.

And maybe... Maybe NBC was just like, oh, you can have the office. No one's watching it. Put it on for free. I don't know. I need to dig into that. Yeah, it seems kind of like a random thing for such a big deal. Yeah.

Yeah. Why didn't they put CSI on or something else? I don't know. That's crazy. Did you hear, you know, the movie Office Space? Yeah. Is it true that that's like a, you know, what do you call, like a spin-off or like a movie version of the office? Was it inspired by the office?

I think it was before the office. I think that came out in like 2002, but I don't think, no, the office is very, and you can look at it so specifically spun off from the British office. But I love office space, classic comedy, so many great characters, and there's definitely,

they have a similar vibe at the center, you know, the awkwardness and the, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Dwight, right, Dwight, are you allowed to be Dwight officially, like at certain events and like all this? Bro, we did a, how's this kid? So I did a show called the Henato Lorangea show. You might be familiar with it.

So we do like parodies of certain things. One of the best. I mean, I don't know. Is it good if you don't, if you're not in that world, is it good? It will be a percentage of good for sure because the, you know, like a, that whole idea is funny, you know, that trolling idea. But yeah, if you're in the jiu jitza world, it's going to be, you're going to get the full, the full experience for sure. But one of the parodies we did was remember the Incredible Hulk, the original? Sure.

The OG Leufrigna. So we did a parody of that. intro to that show, you know, David Banner, whatever. And so for the Hulk, we use this real famous wrestler for, because he's a black guy, right? So he turned into the Hulk, so he used a big black. His name was Ezekiel, something. He was like a super fan. Like WWE.

Yes, exactly. So boom, when he turned in the Hulk, I, you know, digitally morphed him and did all this stuff, colored him green and what, but it was this famous wrestler. And so we're like, yeah, it's going to be perfect when we do. do the credits and boom, we'll get all this exposure right through WWE or whatever. And, you know, it comes back, hey, we can't use that name because that name belongs to the WWE. Oh, whoa.

So you've got to make up, so we just made up some funny name or whatever, but it's a famous wrestler guy, Zeke something. And he like, I think he like retweeted it real like in Cousinito. So does WWE own the rock or own Hulk Hogan? I don't know. See, that's the thing. I don't know. The grave digger?

What's that guy? Yeah. Gras digger, Undertaker. Undertaker. Yeah. Grave digger's monster trucks, right? I don't know. Because, you know, Stone Cold Steve Austin, who I've been on his podcast, but he, when you look at, like, his Instagram and stuff, it's not, he doesn't often refer to himself as Stone Cold Steve Austin. So maybe there's the same similar thing going on.

And I would imagine, you know that, I do know that NBC Universal owns Dwight Shrewt, Dundermifle. Shrut Farms, the office, like all of that stuff, they own all that, right? If I went around dressing up as Dwight to like make money, they could come after me or something like that. If I, although there's so much merch out there with Dwight that people make on Etsy, like you go to Etsy

and find a thousand. And NBC isn't profiting from it, but they're not shutting it down either. So, yeah, they could probably, they do own that. Yeah. Yeah, because you do it in like charitable situations, right? Like how you said. Yeah.

So yeah, it feels like. I do some Dwight T-shirts and I suppose that I sell for charity, but I suppose NBC could be assholes and come after me and say, you can't have it. And everything that goes on in that show, if you would have made up shrewd farms, it's still owned by them. Yeah.

Because they're paying you at the time and that's just the way it works. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Kind of like when you said Angel Brain earlier on this podcast. Yeah, we own my property. Yeah, yeah, John. Exactly. No big deal. Exactly. Yeah. Angel Brain T-shirts. Sure. Sure. Shirt locker all day. The, um, so what if, and I don't want to go too deep into this, but we're talking about it. So shrewd farms, what if in shrewd farms, uh, what do you call, like, um, like the myth or the, the idea of it, there was maybe a worker in shrewd farms. Never materialized,

but let's say it as an idea. Then you made a shirt. You know, like on Seinfeld, right? I remember Seinfeld. Yeah. There was, George would pretend that he was like an architect or whatever. Yeah, import X Vandaway or something like that. Vandalay Industries was one of the things he purport to be like this guy of, right? Vandalay Industries.

So people will make sure it's saying Vandalay Industries, right? Yeah. So it's kind of part of the ethos, part of the, you know, or not the ethos, but part of the myth, you know? So I wonder how deep you have to go with Dwight and his whole, you know, atmosphere. Yeah, I think. Anything that you did that's related to Shrewd Farms or so like that. In any way, I think they're going to own that.

Yeah, yeah, you can't do that. And they will come after you. Yeah. Yeah. What about spinoffs? They must have proposed a thousand spinoff. Well, we tried to do a Dwight spin-off and they passed on it. What?

And they would have made a bazillion dollars off a Dwight spin-off. We'd had one episode in like season seven that was called Shrewt Farms. And what we were looking at was, what if Dwight, left Dunder Mifflin just to focus on the bed and breakfast at Shrute Farms. Like Fulty Towers sort of. Yeah, a little bit. Fulty Towers running an inn, you know, running an agro in where you get to see a working farm. Oh, my God.

That'd been epic. And the episode that we made, it was really hard to make a 21-minute episode that introduced a lot of these different characters and stuff like that. But ultimately, there were new people that came in to run NBC at the time. and they were like, they wanted to get more into big splashy, multi-camera sitcoms. And the office was kind of waning

in the last couple of years, especially without Steve. And so they were like, yeah, we're done with the whole office thing. But if they had done Shrewd farms and we had done even a couple of seasons, those would be streaming all the time. Would it have been as funny as the office?

No. And that's okay. Because even if it was 67% as funny as the office, it would have been really good. It's damn funny. But that's not going to like, all the people that listen to this podcast. Tons of them.

They're going to reignite that idea. And you just don't. I've talked to them a few times about like how do we do a reboot of Dwight or Shrewd farms or do we want to. And, you know, just mostly for me. So I've had some creative conversations and with some of the producers from the office and stuff. And it's like I just, you know, I had 10 glorious years. We made a great show. I'm really enjoying the other stuff that I'm doing,

other acting and writing and whatnot. Do I really want to go back there? Right now, I don't really. But who knows? Next year, who knows? Maybe I'll be like, yeah, that would be really fun. You know, maybe it's a Dwight movie, you know? I'm trying to think of,

is there examples of this that have happened? Well, Frasier is the famous spinoff from Cheers. Got it. Yeah. Right? That's the one that really worked where Frazier was maybe even better than Cheers. So there's been a few. Joey was a spinoff of Friends that only lasted a year or two.

Tenacious D movie came out, right? Right. Two of them, as a matter of fact. That's off that HBO series, you know. There's actually a lot of them that started and kind of, even like Seinfeld had a few. Like Kramer had one. Yeah, but it wasn't any character from Seinfeld. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Like based off of it. Yeah, that's kind of inspired character. Yeah, that's true, huh? He was similar to Kramer, but he didn't, his name wasn't Kramer. Right, right. It's like Cardoza or something. How often do you hang out with the office people? There's a lot of them I see a lot.

I see Oscar, Brian, Jenna, Angela. You know, I text with John and Steve and BJ I hung out in New York a while back. So I see them here and there, but we're spread out. We have a nice text chain. And, you know, we have a good time. Text chains are freaking awesome.

Like, you know what I mean? Like, my family group text is just, like awesomely epic you know what I mean that's funny and like the jiu jihitsu group yeah like the jih Trey Tread of shit talking and stuff like this yeah yeah freaking I think there's gonna be a book or a movie or something that's just nothing but bubbles popping up with words in them and then memes and and emojis and yeah yeah yeah it echo anything else that is it oh wait wait this is like off the topic hit me Yes.

Do you ever watch McGiver? Sure. That wasn't one of your jams. I guess that's a little bit, what's the opposite of ahead of your time? Like later. It's a little late. McGiver's a little bit late, but still it's in there. Yeah,

I was like in acting school in New York and I wasn't really watching McGiver then. There's a whole period of stuff that I kind of missed around that. That's like what you guys said about the 90s. Whatever show was in it with the girl in the 90s, the nanny. Like that chunk of period when I was like in the SEAL teams going on deployment, there's no TV. like there's just a whole era that I missed. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, but what about it? I don't know. I just seen what up because that was one of those ones that when you're in it, well, I was like a teenager at that time, but or a kid or whatever. But when you think you're like, man, this is the most clever, smartest show ever. Like he doesn't carry a gun. He just figures things out with the stuff around him, you know, like that kind of stuff. And then when you grow up, you're kind of like, bro, none of that was you had a real.

Like, right, you can't even do any of that. Yeah. Do you watch McGruber at all? No. Wait, what's a gruber? That's like the takeoff on the guy here. Oh, okay. Yeah.

From Cenary Live and then they made that into a show too. Yeah, yeah. I saw parts. It's pretty funny. The movie's funny. Watch McGruber, the movie is very funny. It would be probably,

I would think it's way funny now because back in the day, McGibert was the truth. You took it seriously. Oh, yeah, yeah. He used chewing gum and a piece of yarn to dismantle that nuclear bomb. You know, it's kind of harsh sometimes. I got my,

during COVID, got my youngest daughter all hyped to watch E. Like, oh my gosh. like we're going to have a night tonight. If I would have known about clown soup. What is that popcorn Eminem's? Clown salad. If I would have known about that, I would have done it. Clown soup is something very, very different.

I don't want to describe it here because it's kind of, it gets a little dark. So I get my daughter all hyped for E.T. And, you know, she was whatever, 11 or something at the time. And we sit down and watch it and it is so bad. I mean, it's, it's so bad. I know. I know, I know, I know. No, it holds up.

It does hold up. I watched it with my son. When? 10 years ago. Okay. It's still held up probably 10 years ago. If you go watch it right now, it's rough, man. That's all I'm saying.

It's rough. But there's a factor with this, though. So, and we're talking about it earlier where there's this factor, I think, it's not a secret or nothing like that. But back in the day, when you went in the movie theater, the lights turned out, you know, turned down. It was like, bro, you're locked in. So your attention span kind of was required for the whole two hours, right?

And we were all cool with that because, think about how you watch TV, right? Same deal where, bro, you can't pause, DVR, watch it later, watch it when I want. Br, it was on and you watch the thing. And okay, maybe later on you got the VCR, you record it, okay, but that's a pain in that. Generally speaking, you're just watching it go. And if you missed it, you miss it. So you better be paying attention all two hours, by the way.

Yeah. Now it's different. Our brains are trained different. And the kids, that's how they develop now. So now they don't need, bro, two hours of this. Sometimes I find myself watching a show and watching a YouTube video at At the same time, you need help, bro. You need more therapy.

That's real. That's real. No, I think that's kind of common. It's real, right? And then if I miss something in the show, I'll pause it. And then I'll just go back. Like, what did they say about the thing? Exactly right.

That's exactly right. Now think of, now think of like writing and producing and stuff. Now it has to accommodate that a little bit. Back in the day, and didn't have to accommodate it. Bray, you character development all day. Bray, you ever watch Predator? The first one? Bro, you don't see the predator until like freaking like an hour into it or something like this.

But I try to do that? No, they'd be like, bro, there's, This movie is boring. I just feel, I just, now, after I just called you out, I immediately had,

like, uh, internal angst and, and regret because, you know what I'll do? I'll look at Zillow and watch something. Like my wife, and I'll be looking at Zillow.

You're like checking properties. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? I've got like nine locations around the country where I'm seeing if there's a good deal today. Attention not required,

my friend. Just rewind that one. I'll watch it freaking one is more convenient. That's why I do love going to see movies in a theater like it's it's old school we need to we need to get back to that sometimes go see him i would my kids know this i would go to like see movies when they were little we'd go to see whatever movie yeah and i would 100% fall asleep like you know i was just tired i was working all a time and just like i'd go in there was dad's taking a nap and whatever it was and we just the last

movie we went to see as a family was it too yeah yeah you're familiar with this too yeah yeah dude i'm sorry but that That was not a good point. That was freaking. The first one was pretty good. Yeah, the first one wasn't too bad, but the second one, so I slept in when I woke up, I was like, this is absolutely. I remember going to see Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, too, with my son.

It was like eight years old. And it was so loud. It was just like, meatballs and things. And I just was like, I slept through half of the movie. And it was an assault on the senses, but it couldn't stop me. clown salad couldn't keep me awake just no clown soup that's what we're hoping anything else echo Charles no nothing else so cool to meet you right on

thanks for coming down rain Wilson any closing thoughts I'm not kissing your ass I love what you do I love this pod I love your authentic self and the stories you tell and you serve a really valuable role and I'm honored to be on your podcast thank you for having me well thanks for joining us And, you know, you talked about bringing joy to people. And thank you for putting smiles on a lot of people's faces, including my face, including my family.

Like I said, you know, we were going through the war. And we had a little office. And that could make us smile even in the worst of times. Thanks for what you're done. Thanks for what you're doing. Charity, the writing, the producing, the acting, everything that you're doing. Bring it a little bit more joy in the world. Much appreciated.

Right on. Thank you. Thanks. And with that, Rain Wilson has left the building. You get at Coach? Yes, sir. Good stuff. Interesting stuff, right?

Yeah. Very interesting journey. Yeah. Yeah, I can, I think a lot of us kind of can nerd out on the show business side of things, especially when you watch it, you know, when you watch a show. And then, like, you're so familiar with the show. and the characters and all this stuff and you don't know anything

not one single thing about the behind the scenes yeah or even about that what that person's actually like as a human yeah it's crazy very good that's an actor that's not who they are

yeah it's not Dwight now now there's some you know elements in there right like like like Rain even said he called on elements of his own life yeah to form the character

of Dwight K. Shrewt but it's still not he's not actually Dwight K. Shrewt he's Rayne Wilson. So it's very interesting. And it's weird.

Now you think about all those people in that show. And it comes across in the book, you know, when we were talking about like different rock bands and how, but a lot of times rock bands like the truth comes out, right? And this guy's an asshole and this person like was an egomaniac and this person was like a closet drug addict and this person was stealing all the money.

Like there's all these always or oftentimes these horrible backstories. Yeah. about what's going on behind the scenes. You know what I mean? Yeah. In this, in reading the books, like, it's like everyone's cool. They're all just like good people. They're all.

So it gives you a nice feeling, right? And they all felt good, and they all liked working together, and they all did a good job, and they all just enjoyed it. So it's kind of a good news story across the board. Yeah, fully. Yep, I felt that same thing. And, you know, I mean, now he's on this little spiritual journey, trying to find happiness.

And I'll tell you, I'm all about being happy. Yeah. Got to be healthy. Got to be healthy. If you're having health issues, you've got to do your best to get them squared away. And you want to maintain your health.

Pretty much that should be one of the highest focuses of your whole life. Should be being healthy. If it's not, it's going to hurt you. Yes. Right? It's going to hurt you. If you're not doing everything you can,

because look, you might be out of shape right now, but you shouldn't surrender. you should get back on the path. Yep. So he mentioned tennis. So I saw this article. It wasn't tennis.

It was table tennis. Okay. This article is what I was talking about where table. Actually, you know what? Yeah, it was. Article said table tennis is one of the better things to do to maintain cognitive function.

Interesting. Yeah, it's a fast sport. Right. So your brain, your hand eye coordination and the speed and the kind of the intensity of the hand eye coordination development slash maintenance

slash stimulus is like table tennis and I would imagine tennis even more because you're actually running around with your body more but it's not as quick yeah that is meticulous right

yeah that's true but yeah they said that like as far as cognitive function goes bro it's like one of the best things to maintain it please tennis it's like damn well table tennis

is what you're talking ping pong the article was about ping pong but he said he plays tennis which to me plays tennis which to me me is not very far off. Do you know who Jewel is? Yeah, Jewel, the singer, hell, yeah. She was on Joe Rogan's podcast,

and she was talking about, she runs, like, a school or like some kind of a camp or school, but to help kids, and they make the kids play tennis. And she didn't even play tennis, but she's like, it's a psychological game. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. That's good. Now, look, would I prefer they did that jiu-jitsu?

Of course, of course I prefer they did the jiu-jitsu. Of course. Nothing better for the children than getting them the Jiu-Jitsu but tennis also psychological warfare is happening right you see John Mackinroll be smashing his racket and whatnot sure you know what I mean they're frustrated there's something about tennis when you you can one miss like in Jiu-jitsu you make a mistake look most of the times you can recover yeah yeah yeah you know occasionally you get caught like you make one mistake but you

already made seven mistakes Yeah. You know, very rarely does someone just catch you out of nowhere? You know and you make two mistakes and now you're in a bad position and now you can't recover and how they got your arm. But you had three or four chances to correct that situation. In tennis, you hit it in the net. That's it. It's instantly dead.

Yeah. the match so it can be frustrating for some people gotta watch out wait so why did jules start this tennis thing because it was good psychologically oh yeah yeah because you got to like focus you got to now look again do i prefer the jiu jihitsu i think is the number one thing a person could do for life just to help them but kids even more so because kids they're gonna be they're gonna be scrapping they're gonna be bully situations like these things are happening so uh that's what we're doing we want to be healthy on your path to happiness. It's going to be a big part of it.

And look, sometimes you get side swiped. You know, you get side, you get hit from the, you get teaboned by like a disease, you know, some health issue. That's worst case scenario. But the healthier you are going into that or if you are born with something where it's like, hey, I got this thing going on, still being as healthy as you can be is the best possible thing you can do. So we're working out. Yes.

When we're doing Jiu-Jitsu, by the way, you're going to be sweating. You're going to need to hydrate. You need to rehydrate. Get yourself some jocco hydrate from joccofuel.com. That's in my everyday rotation. Every day. You think only when you sweat a lot or whatever, no, every single day. You know when I have it, sometimes I have it and I'm not sweating.

Sometimes I have it because it tastes good. Yeah. Like at night, I'll kind of want something sweet. Yeah. But I don't want to have a whole moke. So I'll just have just a little hydrate It's like a little juice Yeah, it's like a little juice

But it's good for you Yeah, I have one in the morning with creatine I'm on creatine by the way Oh yeah So it's it hydrate the creatine Are you threatening me? No, I'm just putting out word Right off

Yep, hydrate creatine Good greens Get your greens on Just you can just have greens once a day It's a nice little way to kick things off It's a nice little Bridge for me I don't do you eat breakfast

no it's a nice little bridge a 10 o'clock bridge to get you to lunch because it's a pain in the ass to stop everything and it has that make a Sammy right 10 o'clock no good a little hitter of greens you're good to go

all right so there you go joccofuel.com check it out get some milk I just had a mulk I just had a mulk in the break I had a mulk see uh mulk good to go joint warfare super cool you guys know the deal go to joccofuel dot com get some stuff or go to vitamin shop or go to GNC or go to the military commissaries, Afees, Hanford, dashed doors, Wake, Fern, Shoprite,

H.E.B. down in Texas. Meyer up in the Midwest, Harris, Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Sheels. And by the way, if you got a gym, a Jiu-Jitsu gym, CrossFit gym, weightlifting gym, whatever you got, if you got one and you want to sell Jocko Fuel there so you can help your students and your clients get better, Email Jaf Sales at joccofuel.com. Get yourself some stuff. Set up a wholesale account. Or if you go to one of those places and you want them to have it, tell them. That's what you can make it happen.

There you go. Joccofuel.com. Get some. Also, origin. If you want American-made stuff from it, like you don't want to support all this crazy offshore slave labor type stuff with your products, which you probably are in one way or another. It's hard to avoid nowadays. It's true.

But, you need to. Some relief from that origin USA.com when you get your jeans you'll know that everything about these jeans everything from the cotton those Harvested all the way to the person who made them with pride by the way Skill and pride made them here in America American made you can get a Gigi to Ghi and it's gonna be Hands down the best Ghee that you've ever had in your life. It's not even gonna feel like a Ghee Imagine if for your whole life you were wearing a burlap and wool Suit head to toe you know wool like real itchy. Yeah like a straight jacket or something Yeah, something like that. Yeah, sure let's say you were wearing that your whole life

Yeah, and then one day you put on like a rash guard and how good you would feel or like a cotton Shoup t-shirt. Yeah, that's what it's like would you if you've been wearing a normal ghee And you get an origin key that's what you're gonna feel like oh yeah that level of different differentiation and they keep keep getting better too by the way So I had the riff gear remember the riff came out We're all like, oh, man, no way, no way anyone can top this one right here. Topped it. Because like the cut and like the fabric, like the form of the whole deal. It's topped.

Oh, yeah. So I would just use that every single time. Yeah. The Rifky, the Rifky, the Rifky, the Rifky. And then the nanopurl came out. I was like, ooh, okay. So you guys just keep getting, making them better and better. I get it.

I see what you guys are doing. We ain't playing origin, USA.com. Go get yourself some gear, whatever you need to wear on your body. And don't forget about jocco store.com. That's what Echo Charles made up. Yeah. Well, it's your name, but yeah. But you made up the name of the store.

Yes. Jocco store.com. That's where you can get your discipline equals freedom. Hey, you want to support the X flag, Def Corps. That's where you can get it. The idea of good, which is very prevalent nowadays. Yeah, you know, Rain said that. At one point, he went through his whole experience and he's like, I went through all this good.

And I was like, wait, is this a reference to the good thing? But I didn't like say anything. And then we just moved on. I had some other thing, but maybe he was in the game. Maybe he was saying good, the way we say good. Very possible. I think he was. And even if he wasn't, it was an alignment.

Because he went through this terrible situation, freaking bombed at Broadway, did crap. And he was like, all that stuff happened. And he went, all this bad stuff happened. Good. Because that led him to the rest of his life. That's what happens. Imagine if he went down the other direction,

I can't believe that happened. Right. Yeah. Drinking, doing cocaine. Exactly. Shit could have gone wild, bro, but he got it back together. It's true. So, man, yeah, the alignment exactly right. So it actually doesn't even matter whether he was referencing your thing or not.

Is it even your thing? It's a thing. It's a thing. So, yeah, if you want to represent, we've got some shirts. We've got, you know, some cool stuff on there, jocco store.com. Also, the shirt locker. People seem to like. Been a lot of requests lately, hasn't there?

Few requests, yes, yes. Your locker, what it is, if you don't know. A new shirt every month. The designs are cool. People kind of like well sometimes we go a little bit deep, you know, we should make a freaking Something like you were talking about going off how many levels do you have to go off of The office right like how many levels before you're clear yeah we should do something like that Well from the office or yeah yeah from the office go far enough away from the office make up our own thing about the office

Like like the shrewd farms like there's another farm that competes with shrew farms right and we can't we can make their t-shirt. Right, right. Like the truly the best beats in Pennsylvania. No matter what any other places say. Yeah, no matter what other places say. And we can make a cool, and we can do that,

a bunch of those kind of look, I don't want to get too crazy, but let's face it, you know? It's not nothing. You know, the world's real best boss right here, you know,

like sell a coffee mug. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So we just need to go off one more level, one level of, One level of removal. Plausible deniability. We don't know what you were talking about.

We just thought it'd be funny to have a beet farm in Pennsylvania. Yeah. Right? Yeah. What are they going to say? Sue us. They're not even going after the Etsy people or the Amazon people. I wonder,

you know how you look at Jocko T-shirts and there's a bunch of freaking rip-offs on Amazon? Jocko Navy SEAL inspired T-shirts? Yeah, yeah. That literally say Jocko on them? Yeah. Well, don't get those T-shirts. but he said they don't go after you know whoever owns NBC doesn't go after the Amazon people that are selling Dwight K Shrewd T-shirts right they should be kind of sucks for

him yeah you figure yeah you know what it what they call it name likeness right name image likeness or whatever kind of thing well either way hey look to me hey man if you could go on the other spectrum or the other side of the spectrum where it's like hey if you made it it better than how we made it, that's your right. Get the better one. Up to you. But either way.

Let's just keep an open mind and we can request ideas. If you have a good idea for a one level removed office t-shirt, we'll make it. And we'll send it to rain. And we'll be like, rain, you don't need to take any of this shit

from NBC anymore. You're going to be in the game. One layer removed. Prove it. Prove that we're talking about shrewd farms. We're not. We're talking about the best beats in Pennsylvania. Yeah.

You know, not what the other guy sells. Yeah. Well, we don't like beats, bro. We like beats all day. But yes,

that's what you're going to get. We love beats. It's true. There you go. Sherlock. Sure, Locker. Shor Locker.

Get some. Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to Jocko Underground. Subscribe to the YouTube channels. Subscribe to Psychological Warfare, which is actually an iTunes thing that we put out. A long time ago. And for a while,

I was like, oh, I'm going to make another one. And I still haven't. Looks like I need more discipline in my life. Psychological warfare out there on iTunes and whatnot. Flipside canvas Dakota Meyer. Making cool stuff to hang on your wall from an American hero.

American made. That's what we're talking about. Also books. Clearly, today we covered the bassoon king and soul boom by Rayne Wilson. Good reads, funny reads. Check them out. Final spin. I wrote a novel.

A lot of people think it's the moment. the best novels ever written total lots of what I've been hearing so get on that a bunch of other books you guys know what they are get the warrior kid books warrior kid one two three four and five Mikey and the dragons these are books for your children help them help them figure things out also echelon front we have a leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership go to echelonfront dot com if you need help with leadership inside your organization also we have live events we've got well the Dallas October muster sold out a while ago the next

one's in San Diego it's not sold out yet but it will be so check that out women's assembly I think there's a couple seats left no there won't be by the time this comes out it'll be over so anyways eshlamfront.com that's what we do we also have an online training academy at extreme ownership.com learning the lessons of leadership for business and life you can do it online You really can. You really can get educated online. It's a true thing.

It's not a fantasy. It actually works. We've had incredible feedback on that. Go to extreme ownership.com if you want to be educated about leadership online. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families. You want to help Gold Star families.

Check out Mark Lee's mom. Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty. Warriors.org. Also, Heroes and Horses, Micah Fink, just got his latest class out of the field

where they went into the wilderness and got lost and got found. Heroes and Horses.org. If you want to connect with us, Rain Wilson is at soulboom.com. He's also got an Instagram and a Twitter at Rain Wilson. He's got a Facebook at Rain Wilson.

He's got a TV show, which we're not allowed to promote but if we were promoting it it would be called the geography of bliss it's on the peacock network and if you want to connect with echo he's at echo charles and i am at jockle willink just be careful because there's an algorithm there and it'll grab you by the throat and it'll put you to sleep and when you wake up you'll have wasted your life and you don't want that thanks again to rain wilson for joining us we got them stuck in traffic on the back he's got a long drive he's sitting in traffic it's miserable right now apologize for that mr. Rain Wilson but thank you for joining us sorry it took so long appreciate

the lessons from your journey and thanks for making us all laugh and feel a little joy along the way and thanks to the members of our Army Navy Air Force Marines we can live our lives because of the dedication you have made with your lives and we thank you for it also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all first responders thank you for your dedication to keep us safe here at home and everyone else out there I'm going to leave you with a couple quotes a couple quotes from Dwight K Shrewt number one whenever I think about whenever I'm about to do something

I think would an idiot do that and if they would I do not do that thing there you go that's quote number one this is actually important I said something similar recently don't do dumb shit it's a very similar thing this one takes a little bit more thought but it's a good thing to think about and then here's another quote in the wild there is no health care in the wild health care is ow I hurt my leg I can't run on I a lion eats me and I'm dead. Well, I'm not dead. I'm the lion. You're dead. So there you go. Don't do dumb shit. Don't do things that an idiot would do and then be the lion. And that's all we've got for now.

And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.