Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Learn the Secret Power of Seduction & Discover What Makes You Different to Inspire Your Unique Life’s Purpose, with Motivation Expert Robert Greene!

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Seduction, Power & Motivation EXPERT, Robert Greene EXPOSES the Hidden Forces of Power we are all impacted by!   Bestselling author Robert Greene (The 48 Laws of Power & The Art of Seduction) blows the lid off the DARK FORCES actively working against you!    Discover how anxiety can be your SECRET TEACHER. Learn to find your unique form of intelligence and how this leads you to finding your true purpose. And uncover the real relationship between power and NARCISSISM straight from the master himself!   PLUS...learn why leaning into your emotions can unlock your CREATIVE GENIUS and the scandalous ways power & SEDUCTION are intertwined. Robert reveals the HARSH reality of burnout in your 30’s and 40’s and his FOOLPROOF method for finding your life’s purpose.   Robert also breaks down:  - Why Mayim’s personal fears reveal BIG truths about power - How seduction can be used for both GOOD and EVIL in dating & politics - Parental patterns of “deep narcissists” & how to dodge their emotional traps - Qualities of an effective seducer & difference in ways men and women are seduced - Why "we all have some level of narcissism" within us that we should learn to embrace - How to deal with romantic rejection in a healthy way - Importance of vulnerability in the art of seduction - How online dating and social media are causing people to lose social skills & their empathetic muscle - Why the music biz is the ULTIMATE shark tank!  - Why power is an AMORAL realm - Harriet Tubman’s NEAR-DEATH experience and Robert’s own brush with death!   No wonder Robert's book is BANNED in prisons! TUNE IN to MBB today to increase the influence over YOUR life!   The 25th anniversary edition of The 48 Laws of Power: https://powerseductionandwar.com/books/   BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wanted people to be less stupid and less incompetent in dealing with power. So their lives would be easier so they wouldn't have the pain that I had. I just wanted to reveal it so everybody knows about it so everybody can share in it. Power is this word or book of knowledge that basically was limited to white males for so many centuries, millennia. Only certain people knew these laws. I'm not interested in power. That is a maneuver in the power game. You are implicated in it.

You were trying to pretend that you're moral, that you're above at all. That is a power move. Powerlessness, feeling that we have no control over the world, is very built into our nervous system. And we cannot stand the feeling of being powerless, feeling helpless. It's very primal emotion. And so we're all scrambling for some degree of control over the world.

So the idea that I cannot influence at all my children, I cannot influence my spouse. I have no influence or persuasive powers over my boss, over my colleagues. It's deeply, deeply painful. We can't stand it. And I wanted to reveal what goes on behind closed doors. I just wanted to reveal the truth of it and level the playing field. It's my ambiolic's breakdown.

She's going to break it down for you. Because you know she knows a thing or two. Hi, I'm Biolik. I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so you don't have to. This is the place where we gain power. This is the place where we find out how power can work to our advantage in work, in dating.

In life. In life. This is the place where we learn how to seduce anyone and what things you are doing that you don't realize are anti-seduction techniques. Here's a little hint. I've done them. all. Today's guest is really an unbelievable author. His books have changed culture. Robert Green has written the 48 Laws of Power, which is a book that attracted the attention of Jay-Z, of Drake. He ended up writing a book with 50 Cent. He is a very unlikely author of this

kind of book. He essentially was tired of being mistreated by people in power. And, And at 38, after having upwards of 50 different jobs that didn't suit him, decided to study the history of what is governing power. And he wrote this book, which is now banned in prisons, because it is very, very powerful, for lack of a better word. He's also written a book on seduction, on mastery. He's a really, really interesting person who, by his own admission, is an unlikely person to be mingling with all of the,

these mega superstars. 25 years in, this book that Miami's holding is selling more than when it was published. He's taken information that used to be siloed, that only a certain elite group of people had, and he has disseminated to the masses. Anyone can follow and learn how to increase their influence over their life. Also, how to understand the forces of power that are often working against us. and we end up talking about everything from polyamory to hating your job and finding your passion. Spirituality, near-death experiences, how anxiety can actually be a teacher to help you find the thing that you're meant to do in this world, and that each one of us is imbued with a unique set of DNA that has never existed any time in the past, and will not exist any time in the future, and that each one of us has,

as a life's purpose that we should be looking for and finding to help us along our way. He also has a way to figure out what your true, like destiny and passion are that is based on something that you probably haven't even thought about in decades. And I was really, really impressed when he gave us this tool. And at the end of the episode, we have included a little snippet that was recorded before we sat down to officially begin the episode where he describes his first meeting with 50 cents. So stick around right to the end and Robert Green. Welcome to the breakdown. Break it down. It's very exciting to have you here. I'm scared of you. I'm scared of you.

I'm scared of her. So we're all even. The reason I'm scared of you. I'm scared of you. Never heard that before. I'm scared of you in a friendly way. I'm scared of you in a way that I'm open to learning ways to not be scared of you. But, you know, for lack of a better word, I'm scared of the power that you have as a writer. And, you know, we're looking at this beautiful 25th anniversary edition of the 48 laws of power, which is really gorgeous. And if you tilt the side binding one way, it's your lovely face. And if you tilt the binding the other way, it's Machiavelli's face.

Lovely, too. Also lovely. And, you know, when you're leafing through all the different laws of power, you get to choose, you know, am I thinking about Robert or am I thinking about Machiavelli? The reason that I have a certain amount of, you know, trepidation is, you know, I'm a person who was raised to really fear power. I was raised to, you know, to distrust people in power. And my parents were, you know, liberal activists. And so I was raised with this very, you know, this, I think, somewhat healthy notion of be afraid of the people who wield power. That the underdog will not be spoken for unless someone speaks for them, that the disenfranchised. need a voice. And for me, I was really raised with this notion of like, nobody really knows what

I need to accept me. I shouldn't trust the government to tell me that or even rabbis or, you know, like have to find it for myself. What this book is and what sort of, you know, I mean, you've written several books, you know, after this one. You're really, you know, distilling down a tremendous amount of information, largely from a historical basis. Why should I not be afraid of you? Well, I'm not necessarily the person. I don't exemplar. I don't operate by all 48 laws. Then you should be afraid of me if I did. I basically, prior to publishing that book, I was somebody with not very much power. I did work for a while in Hollywood. I was low-level positions and I was an observer. I'm an observer of power like Machiavelli himself. He was a mid-level

diplomat during the Renaissance. He was not a powerful figure at all, right? But through the prince in his books, he became powerful. So you shouldn't be afraid of me as a person because I'm actually more like the underdogs that you think about. And where the book comes from, which I think I'm now in many podcasts have broadcast this, but some people don't understand is, I was sort of angry and pissed off by the people I saw in Hollywood, how hypocritical they were, how they would pretend to be these nice liberal people, but they were incredibly manipulative. They were incredibly powerful, hungry. And I didn't like that quality in them.

And I wanted to reveal what goes on behind closed doors. People have these, you know, like this law in there, crush your enemy totally. How evil is that? Well, I mean, in business, that's a law that people operate by Google, Microsoft, Facebook. They can't abide having any kind of competition. They crush their enemies totally. I just wanted to reveal the truth of it and level the playing field. Because power is this word or is this kind of book of knowledge that basically was limited to white males for so many centuries, millennia. Right? And only certain people knew these laws. And I just wanted to like reveal it so everybody knows about it so everybody can share in it, you know. So like people like 50 who read the book and said it helped him a lot because he said that he didn't really need help, but he claims that it did.

That the music industry is by far the sharkiest environment of all the businesses you could possibly enter into. and, you know, laws like always say less than necessary. That's not something you necessarily learn on the streets because he had street knowledge. It's the kind of thing that a king would use or a powerful person in the past or the head of a Hollywood studio back in the 30s or 40s. And so it kind of opens up the door to everyone to understand how these laws operate. So are you still afraid of me? No, I'm less afraid. Less afraid.

Less afraid. Well, I mean, I think... Okay. Yeah. And I don't... Well, you should be a little bit afraid of me. I don't want you to like... We don't want to get too comfortable here.

Yeah. Well, I guess then I think what I'm more afraid of, if I'm, you know, being more accurate, I guess I'm more afraid of the people who would, you know, live by all of these. And some of these make a lot of sense to me. Yeah, they're not all evil at all. No, they're not all evil. And actually, I hope you don't mind. I reviewed them with my 18-year-old.

who's about to enter college. He's, I think, a very thoughtful, very... I'm sure he's very smart. He's a very smart guy. He's intellectually oriented. He's a thinker. And we went through them. And surprisingly, a lot of them made a lot of sense to him,

meaning he was thinking about them sort of in the framework of the society that he's been raised in, the culture that he's been, you know, raised in. Try as I might... you know, not have him see lots of these things. One of the questions that he had, which I also had, is where does ethics come into this or morals for you? And obviously, when you wrote it, you weren't writing a guidebook for living.

This is a really an historical and kind of philosophical treatise. I mean, it's phenomenal. But where do you see kind of a notion of ethics? or morality here? Well, I say the realm of power is an amoral realm. And I'm not saying that that's good or bad. I'm just saying that's the reality.

Okay? So I'm generally, when I entered the work world, I was a naive person. And I got hurt a lot. It hurt me a lot. So I'm very sensitive. So things like never outshine the master, I would outshine the master.

I would get fired. And I wouldn't understand why I got fired, right? So being naive is very painful in this world. And so I wanted to kind of help people a lot with the book. But if I'm preaching and if I'm going in the preface, you know, only use this if you're good and behave, I don't think that's the right tone to have. I like to see my readers as adult, not as children.

I don't like preaching to people. I like them to make their own decisions, their own mind up. Ethics is up to you as an individual. So if you try telling an 18-year-old, you know very well, this is how you should behave. This is what's ethically correct. He'll say the equivalent of, you know, go buzz off. Right.

Right. I want to do things my way. I don't like preaching. It's something very innate in me. I want people to find their own way to it. So I'm showing you what the laws of power are. You know, and I, you know, to pick out one that is, I'd say, particularly nasty. And I own it.

You know, I wrote the damn book. Get others to do the work, but always. take the credit law number seven. Okay. I mean, that's Hollywood. That's literally Hollywood. That is how I, that was the story of my life. Yeah.

I worked for a screenwriter. You know, it was a good man. I don't, I'm not going to say anything bad about him. But he would write whole parts of dialogue for his screen for his movies that he would direct. Never got any credit for it. Nobody ever acknowledged that. You know, I did all the research for his stuff. I never got any credit for it.

Basically, I wasn't saying I was the brains behind the operation. No way. But I did a lot. and nobody ever put my name on it. And at first, it kind of hurt me. You know, like, I want to have people acknowledge that I did all this work that I was, that some of this witty dialogue

they were laughing at was actually mine. But, you know, that's just the way the world is. And you have to accept it. If I had accepted it at that time and understood this is how the world operates, I would have been able to deal with it better instead of getting defensive and neurotic

and upset about it. I would have just said, all right, Robert, This is how people operate in Hollywood. Someday you're going to turn the tables on them. You're going to deal with it calmly and rationally. You're not going to get all emotional about it. So I tell you my view of ethics is, it's not my complete,

I have my view of ethics is more complicated than that. But I'm studied ancient Greek. That was my, I was a classics major. And the Greeks had this notion that more harm is caused in this world by people who are stupid and incompetent. by those who are truly evil. Because often the stupid and the incompetent think they're good and they do all these horrible, they launch wars that are awful.

You know, the people who launched the Iraq War in 2001, thought they were good or whatever that was. They were doing the good thing. They were moral people, but it was stupid and it had terrible consequences. You know, so I wanted people to be less stupid and less incompetent in dealing with power. So their lives would be easier. so they wouldn't outshine the master

so they wouldn't have the pain that I had. They'd understand it better. I'm not saying I'm a paragon of virtue and I'm not at all. But ethics is complicated. It can't be reduced to something simple. So I hope I'm in my own way. I'm kind of answering your question.

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So being more aware of it. But let's start like sort of the beginner's guide, the introduction. What do we mean by power? Well, the first thing is when you enter the realm of power, which when you're a child, you're not really in that unless you've got abusive parents in some cases. But it's more or less either when you enter college or more realistic when you enter the work world. Now you're in the realm of power. Okay. And so I'm saying that you cannot get out of it.

Once you're in it, that's it, right? And so if you're trying not to play the power game, if you say, I'm not interested in power, that is a maneuver in the power game. You are implicated in it. You were trying to pretend that you're moral, that you're above at all. That is a power move. So the idea behind it to answer your question more directly is the feeling, the human being is basically, we come into the world somewhat weak, right?

As a baby, we're crying. unlike any other animal, we spend an incredibly long period being dependent. So powerlessness, feeling that we have no control over the world, is very built into our nervous system, right? And we cannot stand the feeling of being powerless, feeling helpless. It's very primal emotion built in. And so we're all scrambling for some degree of control over the world. So the idea that I cannot influence at all my children.

I cannot influence my spouse. I have no influence or persuasive powers over my boss, over my colleagues, is deeply, deeply painful, right? We can't stand it. So we're going to try in some way to get power over it. So there's so much in life you can't control. If I were to pick out a number, I would say 95% of life is circumstances that are completely beyond control.

namely death itself, but a lot of other things. Okay? So power is the ability to maybe on the margins, to have a little bit more influence than you would have had if you're completely ignorant, if you're completely helpless, if you don't understand anything about power. Right. So it's the degree to which you can kind of influence and move people

and not feel that helpless feeling like, you know, when an animal is on its belly, it feels completely vulnerable and it freaks out, right? Well, we get that feeling too sometimes, and it's not a good feeling. So to the degree that you have confidence that you can direct the course of your life, that you're not just simply open to any circumstances

aren't pushing you around, that is the feeling of power. It's also the degree of power over yourself, self-mastery, mastering your own emotions, et cetera. So it's that slight margin of control that that kind of knowledge can bring you and I think is how I would define it. I like the idea of direct control or influence over your life. So I think tangential word that I hear is influence, agency, being able to direct control. And I've heard you speak about our emotions.

We're taught a lot these days to feel our emotions and process our emotions. but can you talk about sort of the risk there in terms of the relationship to self-control and mastery in the pursuit of power? Well, it's a misconception that you may have about me or about power that you want to suppress your emotions. Emotions are extremely important to the human being. You can't be creative. You can't think. You can't write a book.

You can't make a movie. You can't be successful without some kind of emotional background, something powerful, motivating you. Your desire to have power is what's going to make you kind of try and get it, right? Things like ambition or whatever. For me, it's a desire to write a really good book, something that's very true or real. So if I didn't have any emotions, I wouldn't be able to write my books. And actually a lot of anger is what impels me to write a book. But the thing about emotions is that when you feel an emotion, you know, so many, things are much more complex than we imagine they are. We use language and language is just kind of this

screen that doesn't really describe reality. Emotions are very complex. They're not simple. They're a mix of things. They're just basically these hormones churning up inside of these chemicals that we ascribe anger or love, etc. But they're more complex than that. And so you operate on an emotion, but you don't understand it. You're not thinking about it. You're not analyzing. You don't know where it comes from. And actually, your anger might be mixed with envy. It might be mixed with even love. It might be mixed with things you're not even thinking about. So you need to apply intelligence to your emotions, not suppress them, but try to understand them. So in the moment, if you're feeling a powerful emotion, you want to be able to have the ability to step back

not react, not send that angry, mean email or whatever it is you were contemplating, and go, what am I really feeling? You know, not just the word that I ascribe to it, but maybe there's something deeper. Maybe there's something about my partner that's irritating me, or maybe there's something from my childhood that's being triggered. I don't know, you're probably never going to solve the mystery. But analyzing your own emotions is just a really, really powerful tool. for people to start developing, I think.

It's not something anybody teaches, which shocks me, you know. It's not this kind of emotional intelligence where even a psychoanalyst would tell you, here's what the process that you go through to try and understand. Nobody talks about this. And so sometimes I wonder if I'm answering a question, if I've gone off the deep end. I think you are 100% answering it.

I mean, Maim and I talk a lot about the need for understanding what is driving us. and to unpack it. I mean, I've learned a lot. Miam has talks openly about her therapeutic journey using that as a space to better understand emotions and to try and both hold space for them to process them because as you mentioned, if you suppress them, then they cause us all sorts of other problems. And then if you act only on them without an analysis, then you're going to cause a whole other realm of problems that are equally devastating as if you were to suppress them. Just to give you a quick example, take for instance somebody who was very young,

let's just describe a genocide, it's a male, whose parent or mother or father wasn't bonding with them, right? They were kind of neglected. They felt abandoned as a child, right? And all sorts of issues kind of evolved. Our whole personality kind of formed around this sense of feeling abandoned. And later in life, they've completely kind of gotten over. They don't really think about this at all. They're in relationships with girlfriends, et cetera. And they're always, they have a pattern, which is, I could guess. Go ahead. As things are starting to maybe get good or intimate, they break it off. Their pattern is they have to be the one abandoning the other. That's the way of reversing that feeling.

of helplessness, of powerlessness that I'm talking about. It is over and over and over again, always blaming the woman. They'll always find her. She did something. She was being too in truth. She wasn't giving me my space, whatever. They don't have any self-awareness

of how a pattern is emerged from their two or three-year-old childhood that is ruining their life, right? So imagine all the people in this world wandering around doing things without any kind of basic awareness. Most humans. Yeah.

I mean, it really is. The psychologist, your parents probably knew about him because he was a Marxist, Reich, Phelheim Reich. He called it the emotional plague. And he was thinking that just people are walking around with this emotional plague, spreading it around to everyone else. How do you know all this? How do I know all this? Yeah, where did you learn it? Like, were you a person that was raised in an emotionally intelligent home?

Is this something you learned for yourself? Did you go to therapy and like it? No. Well, you know, my mom watches this show. My mom is 97 years old. Wow. So am I. You're not 97.

A little bit inside. You're half that. Yeah. Exactly. Are you 48? I'm 48. That's a good number. Anyway,

Anyway, so, you know, I was kind of neglected a lot as a child. I was, and not in a necessarily negative way. A lot of it's a generational thing. I was just left alone, right? So I didn't have a lot of support. And my sister, my sister, who I'm extremely close to, she's older, four years older. She was the person I was actually very close to and kind of saved me that way.

But when you're like that, what happens to a lot of people like that, and I've seen this pattern, is you become very observant of others, right? Because it's your protection. It's the shield. The hypervigilance, yeah. Yeah. So in order not to feel that kind of sense of neglect and being powerless and people can hurt you, you want to observe and you want to see through them and you want to understand them.

So since I was very young, I've always been aware that people are pretending to be something that they're not. You know? That, and a lot of adolescents, it's not that shocking. A lot of adolescents have that because they look at their parents and they say, God, you're wearing a mask all the time. Be real, man, be some, you know. And particularly my generation because your generation isn't quite so conventional like my parents were, you know. I just saw that they were, that they're wearing a mask. they're playing a role.

What is the truth? What is really going on behind them? So to answer your question, it comes from years and years and suffering and pain, making mistakes, observing people very deeply. And you build up a kind of a muscle.

So in my last book, I talk about nonverbal communication. I can sense things right away about people that are inevitably accurate because I've been doing it for so long. It's not like I'm superior or anything. So I've been doing this for so long. So therapy books, no, it's like observing people, being in the moment and observing them, because if you're filled with theories of Freud and all these

other people, you're not observing. You're using preconceived notions. And people are weird. They're different. They're individuals. I look at each one and I'm in the moment and I'm observing it. So that's sort of where it comes from. I wonder if you can speak a little bit more about this, I don't even want to call it a perception. I think in many cases it's not a perception. It's just an accurate understanding. The notion of, this is something Jonathan talks about a lot, you know, feeling as a child that everyone's working an angle of some sort. You know, I was often accused. And, still, I'm often accused of, well, you know what? I'm just going to, I'm going to pull it up.

Yeah, I believe it is, I'll tell you. I think it's 10. Infection? Yeah, infection. That's what I mean, I'm sure you know them all by heart. I do. So, law 10, I took very personally, which is not your fault. Avoid the unhappy and unlucky. You can die from someone else's misery. Emotional states are as infectious as diseases. feel you are helping the drowning man, but you are only precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draws misfortune on themselves. They will also draw it on you, associate with the happy and fortunate instead. So I took this personally. Because I actually, I mean, I don't want to say that, let's just go with happiness and a state of unhappiness.

For me, I feel like a lot of my unhappiness is based on what I see as a very accurate. reflection of the world around me, which I believe is quite depressing. And, you know, I was raised with a very strong, you know, a keen set of attention to injustice. And, you know, not to say that that's all that I was raised with, but my DNA, you know, created a person very, very sensitive. And I think that that has made for a very specific profile. And I think it's a lot of other things, you know, like add trauma, add intergenerate, add the Holocaust, like add whatever you want. But this made me anxious because it kind of feels like that's a reaction to what you're talking about. Like if you have a perception that people are not well-intentioned or people are

abusing power, it's made for a lot of unhappiness for me. And then I got nervous that like now I'm an infection. Now I'm Law 10. I'm the person that you're warning people about. You mean you're the infecting person? Yes. Well, I'm unhappy if I'm unhappy. And I can be a real downer. You want to attest to this? It's true. Well, yeah. You get what I'm saying. Like, I'm taking, I'm taking that sort of like that sensitivity, that vigilance. Something struck me while you're talking that I haven't realized about you before. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. And whenever somebody says something like that. Now I should hold hands with Robert because I don't know what's going to happen then.

Well, I want to actually bring this to the group and get Robert's perception. While you were talking about that, seeing the things that are troubling you about the world, what I heard was that you have an enormous amount of anger at the system. And if that anger isn't channeled some way and expressed towards a purpose and that we can tie this into finding one's purpose in life, then you're going to be depressed. Like depression as a signal as a messenger versus as a genetic state. There's a difference there. And I'm wondering if, you know, you are highly sensitive, highly attuned to the things that are

troubling in the world. And maybe it is a practice of seeing the positive things. And we know that the brain can adjust and, you know, reorient to be more focused on positive, but also maybe there's a repressed anger. Do you feel like you're infecting the people around you? Sometimes. Like your son? I have two boys, so I've infected both of them. I will say that, yeah, I think that, I mean, I think for a lot of our, you know, a lot of our listeners or viewers, like for people who experience some level of, you know, mental health challenge, you know, depression is a really, really sticky one, you know, but aspects of anxiety.

or trauma. Like, when those things stay with you, like, you know, it's impacted the whole house. You know, and now that I have one going off to college, it's kind of like, hey, I didn't drink or do drugs, but I bet at times it felt like something was going on that you couldn't understand. And for people who grow up in alcoholism,

it's like, oh, when you realize it, it's like, oh, that's what was going on. Our house was driven by someone's, you know, dis-ease, you know, and they were trying to fix it and make it better. So, like, even though my kids didn't grow up with that, they grew up with, you know, someone carrying this, like, this weight. And I mean, I don't know.

I think, you know, in fact, is a strong term. And with all of these, I was like, I see where he's like, I knew enough about history to be like, oh, I get where this law comes from. Or I knew enough about Jay Z and 50 cents to be like, I get it. I understand why this is banned in prisons. But, yeah, I think that for me, like Law 10 was, gosh, can I be a mom? people or am I going to bring them down to the point that I'm like taking their power away because I'm affecting them with my sadness. Okay, well, a lot of the problem people have with the 48 laws

of power is they, they read that initial paragraph, but they don't actually dive in deeply into the chapter itself. And what I'm really describing in that chapter is mostly people who are deeply narcissistic, right? And they're addicted to drama, right, for whatever really. And that's their form of getting attention. That's their form of getting power. And we see this in political people whose names I will not mention right now, right? Who use that very much to continually, continually stir up drama on a national stage, right? And they're going to infect you with that.

But they don't appear to be that. So I don't think this fits you really. Okay, I feel better. So they appear to be charming people who were very character. charismatic they're they they've learned confident confident yes they've learned to to and it's attractive to people and then you get in a relationship and you realize that you're continually caught up in their emotional maelstroms right and they they pick on people who they know are caring and you know giving insensitive because they're easy prey and so you get involved with them not realizing

that they have this infecting quality. And they draw you down deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper until, you know, you're feeling all sorts of emotions because their whole thing is to create drama to make you emotional and to react. So, sorry. No, go. So you're not doing that to your boys, right?

No. And you're not like a deep narcissist like this. So this is what you're describing. and we've talked a lot about narcissism here, and it really is this sort of like, you know, for lack of a better way, it's a little bit of a pop psych. Like everybody, he's a narcissist or she's a narcissist.

Of course. But when we talk about classical and clinical narcissism, what you're describing is in many ways what a lot of people who have a truly narcissistic parent experience. For sure. Like that's really interesting to me. I mean, that is, it's a tool of power, right? Narcissism is a tool of power,

or is power a tool of narcissism? Well, some people who are deeply narcissistic don't get very much power. Right. Or they find ways to get power however they can, like from their family or home if they can't have it in other ways. The deeply introverted narcissist who is very, very low self-esteem.

They're not going to be... But the ones, like the Elon Musk's who are out there and he's what I call a deep narcissist, I make the comparison, human nature, that we are all self-absorbed. We all have a touch of narcissism. So get off this idea that there are just some people out there in all humans. So don't be so judgmental, okay? But there are deep narcissists who can't control it.

Their level of narcissism is at a different level. So people like this have learned early on. They're like seven or eight years old. and deep narcissists generally have one of two parental patterns. I know I'm simplifying, and I'm venturing into the realm of pop psychology here, so excuse me. But they either have the incredibly neglectful parent that has abandoned them, right? And it's often their own world, right, like a narcissist themselves, or the suffocating parent that was on top of them so often in helicoptering them, et cetera. So they had no space to kind of create a self inside of the.

that they could love, that they could appreciate. So they learn when they're six or seven years old that by acting out, by being dramatic, by getting attention, they have power. Attention is power for them. And they use that continually throughout that life. And because they learn when they were seven to do this, they become great actors. They know how to put it on.

They actually become actors, a lot of them in life. Right. So it can become a form of power. It depends on, I mean, I know some narcissists who are very deeply troubled, and they're of that introspective variety. So I think it just depends on the type of bonding and some of the genetics, because like Jung thought the introvert, extrovert thing is a genetic thing, which we still don't know to this day, but anyway.

You've spoken about narcissism and that we all have narcissism. Yes. And that we should embrace that to some degree. not to the depth of an absolute narcissist who is using it as a power tactic. But can you talk a little bit about the embrace of our dark side and why that's helpful for people? Well, so the most important thing for a human being is self-awareness. If you're aware of yourself, if you're aware of what motivates you, if you're aware of what you truly love, of what you truly hate, you're going to be a more fulfilled human being.

But so many people have lacked complete self-awareness, right? And so they become, they like to moralize, they like to judge other people. Well, he's the narcissist. She's passive-aggressive. They're full of envy. They have the dark. They never look at themselves, right? You are all full of this dark energy.

It is built into the human being. When you were three or four years old, you acted out on all of these raw emotions. You weren't socialized yet. you were a complete natural creature. I like comparing it to like a round ball. And then slowly you become half of that. And you have a mask and you repress all of those other things that are going on when you were a child. And you become this person that is socialized that's learned to get along with other people.

But it's not really who you are. And so to become aware, for instance, when I wrote that chapter on narcissism, I was going, whoa, Robert, you actually are quite a narcissist. You never thought of yourself as a narcissist, but man, you've got these qualities here. And it was kind of painful. It was kind of weird. And I'm still thinking about it.

It still kind of hurts me a little bit, you know. But it's better that I'm aware of it, because now I can see it in operation. I can see how I'm doing this, how that narcissist within me is coming out and how it can hurt other people. What was the voice? What was the thought?

that you were having, like when you realize that about yourself, what emerged that you were like, oh, wait a second, that's coming from a place that you didn't realize you had? I can't remember exactly what it was that I was writing about in that chapter, but I was recognizing some of the patterns. So I had some key figures that I was analyzing, like Joseph Stalin is to me the greatest narcissist who ever lived. But there was also Robert Oppenheimer.

And the actual figure, Robert O'Pheim, is much more interesting than that movie portrayed. But he was a deeply flawed individual. And I know, I recognized when I was in my 20s, my narcissism probably was kind of hurtful. And I'm much more in control of it now then. But I think a lot of it was recognizing it when I was young. And I would do things like, I remember I was staying with this family in France.

They let me have their apartment. for a month in the south of France. And then they come back to California, and they were so angry with me. They left this message. They visited my parents. I had rung up a phone bill of like thousands of dollars, and I never realized it, you know?

Just kind of using people for things, using them and not thinking about it, kind of seeing what in psychology they call self-objects, the people are kind of objects that you can use for your own benefit. I had some of those traits, you know. Reviewing things where I hurt people in the past inevitably stemmed from my lack of empathy

and my lack of self-awareness. But the place that the place where sort of that pivot point is, like where you're not a sociopath, is that you can learn from, well, I don't know, but I'm guessing that we, the ideas for us to learn from those, right, to learn to have a sense of me, what we try to teach in children is a sense of,

remorse, right? Or teaching sort of consequences. Like, oh, when you do this, that person is crying, right? But I have a lot of issues with, you know, kind of this notion, you know, of like forcing children to say they're sorry, forcing children. Right. And it's like, to me, I was always about, I'm trying to teach an understanding of an association that elicits what, if you don't have a sociopathic child, is a human response of that person is crying because of an action. What's the dynamic here? And you teach that in an age-appropriate way. You know, teaching these things, I haven't had children,

so I'm just bloviating here. I'm able to say whatever. I haven't gone through that trauma. But, you know, it's very complicated to, like, teach that kind of remorse sort of thing. Because if you impose people on them, you say this is how you're supposed to feel. Right.

It's not real. And they'll apologize, but they're not feeling the emotion. Right. It's not registering deep within them. Maybe you should have had kids. I don't know. Yeah, but you have to be tricky.

You have to lead them to things without them knowing that you're leading them into it. You really have to be cut out for it. I don't know that I was. Here we are. Too late now. I wonder if we can move into how we get children, which is seduction.

How we get children, which is seduction. So besides the 48 laws of power, you've written books on, you know, many other kind of equally significant and, you know, important ideas. And one of them is seduction. And seduction is, I mean, this is just my sort of paraphrasing. It's part of power, right?

In any system that has power typically is going to involve some element of seduct. To me, like when I hear seduction, like, and maybe this is just because I, you know, was raised as a female person, like, all I hear is manipulation. And I feel badly to say that. You just deflated Robert. Robert Green. Folded in half. No, and I think.

Balloons all the air left out. You know, and looking at sort of the, you know, some of the examples that you, that you draw on, you know, for. understanding seduction. You know, a lot of, a lot of these are difficult and complicated personalities or,

you know, entities. What do you mean? Some of them are very positive. Okay, go ahead. You go first. John F. Kennedy. His campaign in 1960 was a mass

political seduction. Correct. I am. Yes. I'm sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. No, no,

no. I... And he also publicly had, you know, a very specific, you know, affair with Marilyn Monroe that, like, you know, at the time, obviously was like, it's like a funny little thing, but there's complexity here, I think, in light of the generation that, you know, we're in now of like, you know, it's power, right? Those are, those are, anyway, okay, help

help me through this. You know, things, things are more complicated. So can we say that maybe Marilyn Monroe seduced John F. Kennedy? Also possible. Yes. Why? Well, I don't need to tell you about a feminist perspective, but a feminist perspective would also say that when women are raised in the structure of a, you know, a patriarchal girl power system, you know, we're taught to use certain tools because in many cases and in many times those are the only tools that we've been given. And I'm not, I'm a second wave feminist. I'm like a Hillary Clinton pantsuit or die kind of person.

So, you know, I understand that third and fourth wave is. turning that on its head, I'm just 97 years old, like your mom. Wow, boy, am I being put on the defensive here? No, I'm asking you to help me if anyone can. I have a way to help you if you want a map here. Well, I'll try and then you help me out. Perfect. You bail me out when I get in trouble.

You know, I think of it in kind of primitive ways. So seduction is kind of like a mating ritual. It's sort of a ritual that we go through where we're kind of having this sort of back and forth dynamic with the other person. And we're playing on their psychology and they're playing on our psychology. And I come from a different background

than you obviously a different generation. I've always been fascinated by like the 18th century, particularly in France, sort of subject I studied a lot. And although Casanova is Italian, it was this kind of culture of seduction. heavily involved with the theater. Okay, it's a patriarchal culture, right?

But I can still understand it without going back using those kind of labels here, right? And so for women, yes, seduction was the only game that they had, right, for seducing the king, et cetera, you know, for Madame de Pompadour, et cetera. But I loved... Esther. Yeah.

Esther and Queen Esther. Yeah. So I love... the theatrical playfulness of it, right? The element of play where I'm not so involved with my ego and who I am, but I'm entering this kind of theatrical realm where I'm playing with appearances and men are doing this to women and women are doing this to men. And it's kind of like this elegant dance that people are doing. So seduction involves vulnerability to another person. And to me, it's a kind of mental disease that I see a lot in the world today where people are totally

invulnerable. They don't want to open themselves to they don't want to open themselves to any kind of hurt. What does that look like? To me it looks like somebody that can't fall in love. So the ability to let go and to let somebody else into your psychology, into your psyche, and to let them kind of become a part of you to the point where you can become pain, where they can hurt. you, they could abandon you, but you learn from it and you grow from it and you develop from it. And the ability to be vulnerable is what makes a great artist in any kind of realm. It makes a person creative. And I think there are a lot of people now who are desperately afraid to let go, desperately afraid to be vulnerable. And I think seduction, you know, it's a book that has all

those evil connotations that you're referring to. But people are so fascinated with it because I think they recognize that it's actually something that they want. They want that kind of power. Who has more power? The seducer or the seducy? Well, they both have power. So in the classic example that I use in the art of seduction, comes from dangerous liaisons, one of my favorite books.

Les les en dangosue, it's very good, right? You do not speak French. Okay, okay. But you got the tongue. You've read a lot of Sartja, a lot of Camus, and some French movies. Well, your pronunciation was very good. Thank you.

An actor. So the main character is Valmont, who's this evil seducer of women. He ruins all of their reputations, right? Daniel DeLewis in the American version. Yes, that's right. And Michel Pfeiffer, that's right. And so he decides he's going to seduce

La Président de Truveld, which I think is the Michel Pfeiffer character, because she's a prude. She's the most prudish woman of all. To seduce her would be the greatest feather in his cap, right? Because she's impossible to seduce. And that what ends up happening, he tries, she's completely not into him at all because she knows his horrible reputation. And as he tries further and further and harder and harder, he suddenly falls that he's falling in love with her. He's never fallen in love with any woman before, perhaps

because she won't yield to him, whatever the reason is, he's falling in love. And as he falls in love with her, she begins to open up to him. And then the seduction happens. And to me, the lesson is, if you're completely a cold seducer, it doesn't really work. There's no pleasure involved. And if it's a man being that to a woman, the woman kind of sees through it and is put off. But if you're the kind of seducer that is falling in love with the seducing, if the seduced is seducing you, you will be a better seducer, right? Are you going to rescue me now? You did a great job.

That was very, very lovely. You didn't need me at all. But it sounds, it removes the level of manipulation. If two people are exchanging an experience, both of them opening up and being vulnerable, it removes that element of being done to or something wrong happening. Let me not make myself out to be the angel that I might appear to be. There is manipulation involved in that book, for sure. I don't deny it.

I own it. But that's certainly not all. there is to it, you know. And I'm fascinated by the psychology involved in there and what ties it all together. So what ties a great courtesan seducing some French businessman in draining his bank accounts? What ties that to John F. Kennedy seducing the American public? What ties that to Pamela Harriman seducing all these different men as this incredible charmer? What ties that to Josephine Baker and Marlene Dietrich, et cetera, et cetera. What is the psychology involved?

Fascinated me. And I couldn't find a book written on that subject. So I wanted to tie them all together and show that there's some very elemental form of psychology involved, which is essentially creating the lure of pleasure, right? Because we're all kind of repressed. We don't have enough pleasure in our lives, right? particularly nowadays, and to give somebody the sense that through you, they can have some kind of adventure, they can have some sort of weird, pleasurable experience is incredibly powerful.

And it ties John F. Kennedy's seduction of the American public in 1960. I'm going to return you to the, it's called the New Frontier. We're going back to the 19th century. We're going back to America the way it is. The frontier will be outer space. We're going to create this, that, and the other thing. It's incredibly seductive, incredibly pleasurable. It was built on all of the myths that America is built on.

I mean, you could argue that the movement of Obama enthusiasm. I mean, that was also, it was... A total seduction. I think we should have established that when we're talking about seduction, we're not only talking about sexual seduction. Yeah. That we're talking about... I like this notion of the infiltration of ideas.

The notion that you have to be vulnerable enough to have... be able to consider something else. Well, I just very quickly, one of my favorite philosophers is Friedrich Nietzsche. In one of his earliest books, he talks about empathy and he says, when he reads a book, he tries to understand and get inside the spirit

of the person who wrote it. Not trying to judge it at all, but trying to genuinely feel the voice behind it and who wrote it in why. So he drops all of his critical skills and he just kind of lets himself immerse in the book. He lets seduce him. He uses the word seduction all the time. And I feel like people often come to a book or an idea with their own preconceptions, their clothes. That's what I talk about invulnerable. This is what the world is like.

These are the labels I prescribe to it. And they don't understand what someone else is trying to say, right? So you can disagree with it and I try to read books that way. Like I have people whose books I absolutely loathe and I disagree 100% with. And I will name a name, Stephen Pinker. I never like his books. I just, I'm the opposite of him, whatever that would be in, you know, science fiction terms. But I try and read his books and I try and say,

well, maybe there's some wisdom there. Maybe I'm missing it. And I let him seduce me initially. That's a very old school perspective, though. Like, meaning I agree. I was raised to read things that I don't agree with and find the reasons why. And I went to graduate school. And for like seven years, that's what you do.

But what I've noticed is very unpopular is people really are resistant to being seduced. That's what I'm talking about, the invulnerability. Yeah. So let an idea seduce you. Like they want to read things that they agree with. Yeah. And follow the people that they agree with, right? Do we think it's an increase in camps and division?

Or do we think it's also a part of people don't know how to come back to themselves? So they're so concerned about having their mind changed or having their identity changed because they think that their identities associated with, I believe this set of narratives that only exist over here on the left or over here on the right. I have my answer, but I'm curious what Robert said. Well, I mean, it's a million-dollar question I could go hours for, but there's I believe there's a great book that I often refer to called The Fall of Public Man by, oh, God, I'm sorry, I'm just blanking out.

Senate, Richard Senate. Richard Senate, that's right. And he traces the narcissism in our culture back to the 8th, 19th century. And it's a book that it heavily influenced me when we talk about theater and seduction because he talks about cafe culture in the 18th century and then how in the 19th century it all became about your identity and your politics and who you belong to in the group that you were with. He became very defensive, very close-minded.

his model is kind of the urban environment like a New York City where you're mingling with people from all different ethnicities, all different races, you're getting in all these different ideas, all these different perspectives are flooding through you and it kind of makes you a rich urban person, an intelligent person. So a lot of it is that, but I think a lot of young people have grown up in a very, very chaotic environment. A lot of it from technology, however, and then there was there was 9-11, there was the crash of 08, there was the pandemic, etc. And when you're dealing with chaos and crises,

the tendency is to become very defensive and very insecure. And you don't want that openness to other people's ideas. You want to get into your camp where everyone thinks is certain and secure and you know all the answers. And to me, knowledge and wisdom is something, you know, I go back to Salk, is admitting that you're ignorant that you don't know. You don't know anything. That's the beginning of knowledge. And that's so alien to our culture, how people are today. I mean, I think we're seeing it play out politically also, not just here, but, you know,

some might say in France. You know, you're seeing a really strong desire for someone to fix it, for someone to tell you absolutely what's wrong and how to fix it. And what this leads to is, you know, this kind of extreme tribalism. And it leads to scapegoating. And, yeah. So kind of adjacent to this sort of cafe society, which I admit I don't know as much about as I would like to, you know, a lot of kind of going back to the sort of seduction playground. Well, you know, many people are, you know, are. using, you know, online dating sites, for example, as a way to meet people or people are meeting,

you know, in ways that don't involve, let's say, the old-fashioned ways we used to do it. And, you know, I always lament, like, once I left grad school, I kind of didn't know how to socialize because that was where I socialized. And, well, like, you know, like, you'd go to talks or you'd go to lectures or you had students that you knew. Oh, I see. Like once I kind of left that, it's like bars, like, what is this? Clubs?

Like, that's not for me. But I wonder if you can talk a little bit. It sort of combines a question about seduction, right? And I'm really taken with this notion and it kind of is throughout, but definitely in a few laws in particular, you know, about this persona that we create, right? The masks that we wear, which, as you sort of pointed out, for those of, us who grew up in any state of sort of hypervigilance, you see that everyone's wearing a mask, even the people who are supposed to, you know, protect you and care for you. How is that,

how do you see that sort of playing out in this sort of field of trying to find connection and love when we literally have a system that is designed for people to create a persona that in many cases is really not even close to them? Yeah. Well, the online world, because I'm so old that I have no experience with it at all. For me, back in the day, it was bars, it was clubs, it was meeting people through friends and having to literally put your whole self-esteem on the line by asking a girl on a date or something like that, right? So I don't really have much understanding, but I think it's very destructive because we're humans. we have mirror neurons, we have things where we relate to people on a physiological level

that cannot be replicated through any kind of technological or algorithm. Right. And so people are losing social skills. They're losing the ability to enter into the spirit of another person. They're losing the empathic muscle that happens when you're constantly socializing. So when I read like a Jane Austen novel, from like 1820. It's astounding how she is so insanely observant about people

because that's all they had. They were continually socializing. They had no internet. They had no television. It was just parties, salons, people playing the piano, et cetera. Social, social, social. You develop this muscle where you understood people. That's all atrophying with this new generation, right?

Yeah. So seduction is the ability to enter into the spirit of the other person and understand them on a deeper level and get into what makes them tick. So it's actually, it can be on my scale a very healthy thing. Yes, that can be used for manipulation. So a lot of sociopaths actually are good at figuring out what you like and then using it to manipulate. So I don't deny that. but if you are not a sociopath, you're using this to actually understand what other people are like and what is making them tick. And so I forget what your original question, because I wanted to get back to them. Yeah, I was talking about just online dating and the wearing of masks. Oh, wearing of masks.

That is literally the tool of seduction is to sort of create this persona. Like here's the, here's me holding a beer on a boat. But then. But then you're going to meet the person and they're not at all like the, the, persona they created online, you know? Well, I think, I mean, I meet, I mean, I live in Los Angeles, you do too. I meet plenty of people who are just about what, just about the mask that they create. Meaning there's not a lot there, right?

Because there's been so much emphasis placed on what I look like and what my body looks like and, you know, where I'm eating and what designer yoga bra I'm wearing. Uh-huh. Well, to me, that's not what seduction's about. Right. seduction is a psychological game. It's not about the lipstick you wear and the low-cut dress and the beefed-up body that you have. It's completely antithetical. And what I like to use in the book were examples of men and women who are not very attractive, but who are masters of the game

of seduction of playing on people's psychology. This is the title of the episode. Can unattractive people be good seducers? Well, one of the greatest seduces of male seduces of all time was an Italian poet named Gabriel Dancio. You can look him up. He was hideously ugly. He was short. Unfortunately, Mussolini was very much inspired by him. But he was not attractive and women would say that.

But he had a gift of language. He was, you know, he could entrance any woman off her feet by how he talked. And I say in seduction based on all the research, that is generally a weakness that a woman have. I was going to say, women and men are seduced by different things, right? Women, it's words and men, it's visuals. It's unfortunately, it's the obvious physical appearances of things.

That's not to say that they can't be seduced by other qualities. Sure. Well, and attractiveness is different than seduction, because usually for attractiveness, historically speaking, like I, you know, needs to put all the caveats. Like every caveat that's politically correct, please place in here. But typically women list, you know, money, property, and prestige as things that are important because it indicates, you know, evolutionarily, it indicates an ability to be supported. And attractiveness indicates an ability to make children who will also make children.

Like, I'm just, again, I'm a scientist. I can't help it. That's true. Yeah. Scott Galloway talks about. No, I think, Jonathan sent me something. that I think is really very misogynistic. Jonathan sent me talking is foreplay for women.

And what I think is lying is how men get women to bed. Talking doesn't necessarily mean lying. Yeah. Really? If your lips are moving. There's that song. Your lips are moving. Your lips are moving. No, but that's one of the lips are moving.

No, but that's one of the earliest lessons I was ever taught by my parents was that women will use sex to get love and men will use love to get sex. Men will say anything. They will say anything for the purpose of... I deflated him again. It's going to be a shell of this former self. I'm just shriveling up, just hearing all of this. No, I hate that.

I don't know. I don't know if my. parents were right, but you know what, I'm 48. I could say that like 9.9 times out of 10, at least in those formative years, we're talking about in the years when you're learning to navigate, junior high, high school, even your 20s, and I'd say this day and age, well into your 30s, I feel like it's still true. Ladies, I'm going to throw my hat in and put a vote for that there is authentic connection that is possible, that there are many people who are good, who are trying to form connection, and who can use these skills and these tools, I should say,

to increase their ability to make connection because they're doing things that they may not understand are off-putting. And if I frame it from that perspective, I might pass it back to you, Robert, and say, from a good place, from a, I'm trying to make connections, and I may not be sure, what I'm doing. For example, I may be showing my anxiousness, which I don't realize I'm doing. Give us the bit of an overview. How does one become a great seducer from a good place? Yeah. Well, to me, the word doesn't have negative connotations. I know it does for a lot of people, but I don't see it that way. So the word doesn't make, put chill up my spine. It actually thrills me and excites me because I was raised on, not raised, but reading the great literature

on seduction, the libertine fiction of the 19th century, etc. So to me, it's extremely exciting. One of the most important qualities is to have a lack of defensiveness and a lack of insecurity. I'm taking notes. So the typical rake is a man who is very, who loves women, who's addicted to women, has a lot of femininity in his spirit, actually. It was probably raised by a mother that was kind of dominant. And so he's extremely into feminine female psychology, but one woman can never satisfy him, right? That's mommy issues.

See, you like to turn these things around. But maybe, maybe. It's a bad thing. Yes, you are. You have a binary, like, good or bad. You like something that's either good or bad. You don't like a gray area. No, that's true.

Okay, sorry, go ahead. That's called a rake. I didn't know that term. A rake is. I have my list of seducers. Yeah, a rake is a man who's obsessed with women who really, and I've said it before. I was a rake in my 20s. So you can go ahead and hate me.

I mean, that should be the title of your next book. I was a rake in my 20s. Yeah. Well, they call them a reformed rake. So I'm a reformed rake. But you know, You're kind of obsessed with women. You're very interested in them.

A lot of men have no understanding of women. They're not interested in them. They're not interested in their psychology and their world, how they think differently than a man. But rakes are, they're fascinated by it. They're fascinated by their psychology, by just the clothes they wear, by everything they do, their activity, their energy, etc.

But they can never be satisfied by one woman. I have to have more and more and more. They need different ones constantly. But for that one month where they're interested in you or two months, they are so keyed into you, they're so completely absorbed in you. They love you so much to give you so much attention that is very hard for a woman to resist it. This is the kind of the Lord Byron or the Duke Ellington or the Arrow Flins of this world.

But getting back to your question, the lack of, insecurity. So a lot of men, for instance, they think that they're interacting with a woman, let's say, in a bar. It could be a woman, but I just think I'm a man, so it's easy for me to go from that perspective. Thinking a heterosexual man. Yeah. Just trying to be. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Is, am I saying the right thing? Am I doing the right thing? Does she like me? What am I doing that's not connecting or what am I doing that's right? They're absorbed in their thinking.

They're absorbed them in themselves. And the other person, the woman or the man, can pick that up, can sense it. And it's kind of off-putting. They can sense that they're thinking about themselves in that moment. If you flip that around and you're not thinking about yourself, but you're absorbed in the other person not to use them or manipulate them, but you're genuinely interested in them. You don't have that defensiveness, that insecurity.

It's massively seductive. Because think of it, how rarely that happens to you in life? How rarely does somebody talk to you and actually appears interested in what you have to say? It's actually interested in your spirit. It's actually interested in your ideas and where you come from in your childhood. That's classical courtship. It's just, it doesn't really exist anymore. It doesn't exist anymore.

Right. Right. Yeah, it is, it is courtship, but it's a skill. It's an ability that you have to let go of yourself. Well, not to argue for social conservatism, but when there used to be a lead-up to sexual intimacy, there was an extended period of time, sometimes, sometimes, just sometimes, not always, where there was a process of getting to know the other person and learning about them.

But when sex is expected or when both parties expected, as a first night of getting to know someone, there's really not a need in that sense, meaning it becomes more transactional and not to be Marxist about it. It becomes a commodity. Like it really is. Like sex just becomes a commodity.

And this component of intimacy really, you know, is kind of gets sidelined. Well, seduction depends on tension. It depends on resistance from the other person. So if the other person doesn't resist, you, there's no kind of, you don't have to do anything. There's no effort. You're going to sleep with them tomorrow or they're going to leave you. But the fact that they're resisting you makes you go like, what can I do to change that? But isn't that a manipulation? So what's wrong with manipulation?

If men didn't manipulate women and women didn't manipulate men, there would be no children in this world. I don't know. It doesn't feel so good. Your parents wouldn't have had you, Mom. I don't know why they had me. They don't know why they had me is the line of the podcast. There has to be some kind of manipulation involved. So if you don't manipulate, all that happens is I just wear the clothes that I wear, I say whatever I want to say, and the other person falls in love with me. We have sex. We have babies.

Beyond that, there's an app that tells me how close someone is who'd like to have sex with anyone. And all I have to do is open that. I'm not saying me, but people, all I have to do is open that app. And I mean, like, we've kind of, we've literally. We've lily padded this whole thing. We have lack of defensiveness. We have lack of insecurities, confidence.

Yeah. What other qualities are essential? The ability to get involved in the other person's spirit, which I've already talked about, is very important. And then seduction is a language basically without words. And so you have to master this language. It's a language of gestures. of you take someone to a certain place. There's no words involved,

but by taking to this particular place, which may have romantic connotations or whatever, you're gesturing something to them. When you give a gift, there are seductive gifts and they're non-seductive gifts. A non-seductive gift is just spending a lot of money $10,000 on a ring. Whereas if you spent $10 and you gave them something

that reflected something they had said, something from their childhood, something that they, some story that they were relating to you, it reveals that you were listening to them, which is very seductive, right? So I tell people, if you're talking to someone for several hours,

which nobody does anymore anyway, but let's say that's involved in your seduction, you're talking to them, if later in the conversation you come back to something they said hours ago and you kind of bring it up again in a different context, it's going to register that you were listening to them

and you remembered it and it got under your skin and it's deeply seductive because you're listening to someone. People don't listen anymore. They don't reflect, they don't mirror you anymore. It's something we're all missing. That's why I don't find the word seduction evil at all. We're missing this so much in our pleasureless, completely political world

where people aren't open to the spirits of other people. They're just so closed off. So you're listening. So that's a gesture. It's not the words that you say, but the fact that you remember what they said, right? It's how you smell. It's how you look.

I mean, don't get me too literal there. But it's a physical communication as well. It's the theater that you create. So you don't show up every night wearing your shorts and your t-shirt. You wear something that shows that you're actually, you know. Not depressed.

Yeah. Not depressed. Yeah. She's teasing me because I wear the same type of T-shirt all the time. I have a great t-shirt. Oh, I was teasing myself. Oh, you're teaching yourself.

Yeah, but that's because you're here. You're not seducing here. I hope. So. So. What they say, foreplay is everything from the last orgasm to the next one. Sorry.

So, I mean, those are the main things, lack of insecure. confidence in yourself, entering the other person's spirit, and kind of understanding this nonverbal language. You don't have to say, I love you, but you show that you love the other person. You have to say a word, but you show it to them, the things that you do for them.

Well, especially this last part about the language without words and the listening and the mirroring someone. That's why I don't think it falls under manipulation. It falls under showing up, being present, and you are going to find a match. Again, coming from a good intention, people have a natural instinct to be on guard to say, is this person going to cause me harm? Yeah, right. And if the manipulation, as we're calling it, which again, I don't think it is manipulation,

but I'm addressing the words you're using, mine, if the manipulation is to put you at ease to say, I am not going to harm you because I actually am listening. Well, the listening isn't a foil. It's actually, the person is showing up and doing the work of what it takes to bond and be in connection with one another. And so what you're saying is, hey, you've forgotten society how to connect because of these digital tools, because we are no longer required to do so, because there are alternatives, because for all the reasons we know. And you should remember society that these are the things that are required. And yes, they can be used for nefarious tactics. Well, yeah, and I think a clarification might be helpful here, which I think you absolutely, you know, can make.

And I think there's a little bit, you know, of an obligation here that we should make. The notion that if someone, let's say, doesn't want to go to bed with you, right, that needs to be respected, right? If someone does not want to, right? I mean, like, I think that's pretty clear. But what you're talking about, if I'm understanding, is we're talking about threading the needle in terms of the way that human primates, interact. And there's a verbal and a nonverbal interplay that is largely missing because of a lot of interesting, you know, features in our culture. And honestly, it is. It's in our lifetime. One of the, one of the skills that I was taught was most attractive to females when my parents

were growing up was if a guy was a good dancer. And I think it's interesting because what it, what it communicated was, you know, a physical kind of interplay, in some cases of playfulness, in some cases a romance. It was artistic, right? It was an understanding of like music and movement. Right. There's an element of sort of like peacocking. But when I think about, you know, what dances were like when I was in junior high, which was totally, you know, like I think the last phase of when people would actually like sway and things like that. But I'm thinking about, you know, sort of the romance of courtship is where I think some of this lies. But I just want to be really careful that we're not talking about seduction being,

you know, a tool for convincing someone to do something that they don't want to do, right? Like, no means no. Well, a lot of men... I'm not into you as I'm not into you. A lot of men have a really hard time now dealing with rejection, right? And so what I tell them, because they've come to me for advice and I've, talk to groups of men for this very purpose is, rejection is a good thing. It's fine. You just move on to the next person. If somebody says no,

sometimes people say no, and it doesn't necessarily mean they're completely not into it. You're not going to force them to have sex, but you can still try and charm them in some way. But if it's very clear that they don't want anything to do with you, that you're even frightening them, fine. Don't take it personally. Move on to the next person. and keep, but I think a lot of men can't handle that kind of rejection. They want everything to be easy. They want every woman to sleep with them. Well, and my fear is that then you're dealing with, you know,

well, and I'm not saying you're doing this, but I'm saying what we see a lot is men then adopting a persona that is false, that they are sensitive, caring, or interested so that they, you know, don't have to deal with rejection because they're getting, you know, in theory, what? Well, do I sound like a horrible person? Like I'm so cynical about it. But women can see through that.

They should be able to. No? Sometimes, yeah. Back in the day, they could see through it. So, yes, and I think that this is where when we talk about power, I'm interested in power differentials. And I'm interested in sort of places where women are not conditioned, you know, to be able to, you know, have a lot of agency,

which can breed situations where it's, it is hard to distinguish. Like, if you're taught to always smile and say you're okay when you're not, that obviously translates into much larger issues of what happens in the dating arena, right? You're taught to never, I mean, don't make him feel bad. Like, if he went through all that trouble,

if he bought you that expensive dinner, like that's, I think, still a factor for a lot of women. Really? Yeah. That's sad. It is sad. I mean, a lot of women have written, me from the art of seduction, some complaining and I feel bad. Mostly they say, your book really

helped me see through this really evil guy who was trying to manipulate me. I saw that he was using some of your tactics. I saw through him. Wow. You know, and it helped me. I'm fine with that because a lot of it is just opening up the game and showing you how people operate in this world. And I think there are some of there are obviously malevolent seducers out there, probably more men than women, but there are women who use it for nefarious purposes as well. Sure. Yeah. So we've been taught by men. It's nothing. Quick list, Robert. What are the anti-seducer qualities that quickly make people uninterested? Well, I call it the moralizer. So seduction is not a realm of morality, right? Okay. It's an arena of

playfulness. It's theater. Okay. And you're enjoying yourself. It's a realm of pure pleasure. And if you're always judging the other person, oh, you said that? You believe that? Oh, I can't believe it. You're wearing those clothes? That's incredible turnoff, right? So the moralizer, drop all of that, drop all your judgments and be completely open to the other person. There's no, there's none of that involved in here. There's no good or bad. Okay. The second thing is generosity, not being generous. So not paying when, when, you know, it could be men or woman, but being very niggly and cheap with your money, with your gifts, et cetera, and being ungenerous with your attention and your time. But being generous with your time and your attention,

your money is very, very seductive. Okay. I call this the bumbler. There's somebody who's always thinking about themselves. And did I say that? the right thing? Did I do the right thing? You know? Self-centered neurosis. Yeah. That's very anti-seductive. This might not be true anymore when I wrote the book, but I had the

character of the vulgarian who's very vulgar. Everyone's vulgar now, Robert. I know. How do you pick? I know. I know. Also, people who talk too much. This is something that men will have more than women, the mansplaining kind of thing. But they're always, they know of so much,

about everything they know about cars, stereos, wines. You know, they can tell you exactly what you're doing wrong, et cetera. Talking too much and thinking that you know everything is very, very anti-seductive. These are a few of the qualities. I know there are like five more, but I don't want to bore the hell out of you, but you get the general idea. That's very interesting. That's very helpful. How did you reform yourself from your 20s as a Zerzreik? Well, it gets tiring and it also gets a little bit pathetic. You know, I mean, like, you know, Warren Beatty maybe be able to get away with it. But when you're like in your 40s and your 50s and you're still like a rake and you still have

that mentality, I think it feels kind of pathetic. It feels kind of like, you know, and it's also sad because you're going to be lonely. You know, when you're in your 20s, you're having a lot of fun. You're not worried about loneliness because there's so many different women you're involved with, but eventually you maybe either want a family or you want to settle down and you don't want to have this kind of chaos in your life and you're facing a life or you're going to be alone a lot. So facing those kind of factors, you know, thinking this is kind of pathetic a little bit and it's tiring. And I had my moment, I, you know, I whatever the expression is, I made hay when the

sun was shining, part of the expression. It's over. All right. I'm getting older. So I was such a bad thing to get older. And I found a woman that I've been with now for a while. And she basically reformed me. She put the collar around my neck. She tamed and domesticated me. Wasn't an easy transition? I've heard, you know, some people who have lived a certain way and then transitioning to that other way, you know, when you start to become more close with someone, when there's an increase in vulnerable. It becomes challenging. And it could be easy to be, oh, wait a second, that other life was maybe a little bit lonely, but a lot of fun and exciting. And I didn't have all these emotional challenges that I'm having now. Yeah, for sure, definitely.

And you're always lured back into being a rake again, unfortunately, because you do have very pleasant memories, et cetera. So it is a challenge. You have to work on yourself and you have to grow and you have to mature a little bit and understand that if you're fooling around, that you're not going to have that relationship that you want that you think is very important, you need very much so. So the woman I'm with, you know, we have a very deep connection intellectually and emotionally. And, you know, we kind of help each other very deeply and each other's work, et cetera. So we're invested very deeply into it. So,

you know, you weigh that factor and you go, that's much more important than those momentary pleasures I had in my 20s. And not all for not all men are going to feel that way, but that's, that's my particular journey. Yeah, that's beautiful. And the involvement in each other's work and helping each other in that way and the intellectual connection, I think, is something to look for in partnership. I have a question. And I know it's not necessarily fair to make you sort of comment on current, you know, dating practices because, I mean, none of us are really in that current pool. But I do think in the, you know, in the framework of what we're talking about, of seduction and power and, you know, sort of that interplay.

Many, many people are having, you know, non-monogamous relationships. Polyamorous, right. And, you know, I, I'm fascinated by this just because I think it's very interesting. And, you know, what I hear, you know, from a lot of women is, like, two can play at that game. And if he wants to have lots of partners,

like I should too, and I'm a sexual person. And so is he. And, you know, all these things. things. But I wonder if you could speak a little bit to where that kind of comes into this notion of, you know, is that a reaction to men being rakes? Is it, you know, a response? Is this something that that women experience in the same way? And, you know, at what point is there a neurotic or compulsive feature to the need to have multiple partners? Does that come into any sort of understanding of power or seduction that you can understand?

Well, everybody is different. Some people, I think maybe it is a healthy thing where they just have an incredibly powerful sexual drive and they want different partners and they found somebody. So I don't like to judge with broad strokes like that. And sometimes it's not just the sexual connection. It's like having committed intimate relationships with more than one person. Yeah. But then there's the sex addiction.

part of it that becomes compulsive where you're dealing with issues, probably stemming from your childhood, probably stemming from your connection to your mother. I know you probably heard of Neil Strauss wrote the game. He wrote this book where he tried to get out of the game where he called the truth. Have you heard of us? Yeah. Where he tried to reform his ways as a pickup artist. And he went to these retreats in Arizona. And they taught him all these things about who he was and why he has this compulsive need, et cetera. And he essentially reformed himself. So I think he did.

I can't say for sure. But it came from an unhealthy place. But you have to have self-awareness also to be able to access this kind of information, right? Well, I think he, in his case, he was getting... I'm not saying in general, not... Yeah. Sounds like he went through a rigorous process.

He did. He wanted to have children. He wanted to have a family. And he thought, you know, I don't want to be someone's, you know, constantly sleeping around and, and trying to also have a family. I don't know.

I don't know. I'm not going to go into how he thought. But as far as, you know, I do believe that men and women are different. I'm sorry to say that. It's very radical notion. I know it is. And I think women think differently about sex than men do.

Generally speaking. Generally speaking, they have more at stake, obviously. Yeah. Well, one egg a month, you know. Yeah. So the women that are involved in polyamorous relationships, I don't think it's the same as it is for a, man. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't women that are naturally drawn to that kind of lifestyle,

and I'm sure there are. But I don't think it's the same drive and the same, I don't think it's as prevalent as it is for men. Excuse me for saying that. I know I'm being a quote-unquote gender essentialist here, but I do believe that it is different between men and women, biologically speaking. Let's talk about mastery. Yes. Mastery is seduction. hour. Well, they do interrelate. They do interrelate because you talk about people finding their life's purpose or finding their life's task. And in order to do that, you are able to have more agency and influence on your life potentially. But can you start us off, you know, explain a little bit about the notion of finding a life's task to someone who may be like, well, I don't know if I have

one. Well, everybody has one. And of all of the chapters in all of my books, it's the most important one of all for fulfilling your life, for having what you want in this world. It's extremely important. And I believe I'm a complete egalitarian in that sense. I believe everybody is born with this capacity. Everybody is born with a life's task. And in the book, I kind of reduce it to a genetics. The DNA that you possess will never be, has never been replicated in the past nor in the future. It is one of a kind. It is a mix of hormones, of chemicals that are completely unique. You are a unique phenomenon in the history of the universe. And it's something that may sound like cliche, but if you think of it as very, very powerful, there has never been anybody like you.

And you can add on top of that your parents who are also have their own. uniqueness. They're raising you in a unique way with a chemistry that has never existed before. And you can also say that about your earliest experiences in life, the people that you interacted with. So you are a unique phenomenon in this world. And that uniqueness, what makes you different is your life's task. Understanding what makes you different from everybody else clearly will indicate to you the career path that you should be following. Should indicate, what it is you should be studying in high school and college and when you enter the work world.

And it's for a lot of people, I believe for every child it's very clear, but you don't remember it, right? So when you're like two or three years old, you're attracted to things, I call them primal inclinations. Abraham Maslow, the great psychologist, he called them impulse voices.

You have these impulse voices that say, I like this fruit, I don't like that, I like this person, I don't like that person. You have these definitive tastes early on in your life. And a man named Howard Gardner wrote a book called The Five Frames of Intelligence that I tell people that is very essential. That we associate intelligence with just intellectual power. But that's not true. There's intelligence in the body, kinetic intelligence.

There's a connect, there's intelligence, a social intelligence, is to deal with dealing with people. There's an intelligence that was with words and language. There's intelligence with patterns, which has to do with like math and music. There's kind of visual intelligence. And you have one of these, right? Just like from doing nothing, just from being born.

Yes. Genetically. Genetically. Genetically. Well, usually it's one, but there can be a second one that you can combine that with. So we can look at a great person like Da Vinci. and he has like, he's like visually oriented very much so,

but he also had that mathematical kind of brain. He also had that visual intelligence of being able to design mechanical things. Mechanical intelligence was the other one I was thinking. So you have that. You have that and it's almost, we put too many words and labels on it. It's something that's deeply ingrained in you.

It's actually a chapter I'm writing about it in my new book. And I'm going back to the ancient Greek concept of the daemon, that you're born with a kind of a guardian spirit and a fate that you are trying to follow. And you have to key into what it is that separated you at birth. All right. So you have this. But what happens is you get five years old. Your parents are saying, oh, you should be studying this. You don't want to go into dance.

You want to start playing a musical instrument. your teachers start saying you need to be studying you need to get better at geometry even though you can't figure out anything about math your friends start telling you things those impulse voices that you were hearing when you were three or four get drowned out by your parents by your teachers by your peers you don't hear it anymore you're 18 years old 19 you're confused you enter the work world you haven't a clue anymore what it is that you actually love your parents say go to law school so that you make some money you go to law school you're like 29 you're 30 and you go God, I don't really love this. I'm burning out, you know, and you start taking drugs.

You start getting into some bad habits because you're not connected to it. You don't love it, right? So it's something that everybody has. And I used in mastery the example of Temple Grandin, a woman born with deep, deep autism, non-functional autism. At the age of two, her parents were committed to a hospital where she'd spend the rest of her life, right? but she met a woman, a teacher who thought she could teach this deeply autistic child language. And slowly she brought her out of temple out of her shell.

And she realized she had a fascination like a lot of autistic people do with animals. Right. She had this deep connection almost she could understand their language. I mean, she revolutionized the way we think of slaughter and animals. I'm a vegan person, so we know about her. Okay. Yeah, she revolutionized the way that we understand, I mean, essentially food production because of her understanding of animal, you know, psychology.

She had a connection to cows that was just insane. She just understood them deeply, very early age. So I say if someone born with high, high level autism can find their way to a life's task, I'm not saying it's easier. That's for everyone. but it shows that everybody has this potential. So I'm 100% egalitarian in the belief that everybody, even from the worst background, has this potential.

But it's a lot harder for some people to realize, I understand. But you have it. And I counsel a lot of people who say, I don't have any idea what that is. Help me, Robert. I'm completely lost. You have to go through a process that I try and lead them through. I don't have as much time as I used to have to do this kind of thing.

but it is the process, it's a process of connecting to who you were in your earliest years, to those impulse voices, to what excites you, to what doesn't excite you. And I believe if I had the time, I could do that for everybody that came to me for this. I've had a lot of success in doing it. But I understand why it's not easy.

I always felt attracted to words and language in an obsessive way. almost an unhealthy way. I just loved word games, right? And I loved history and prehistory. It was my obsession. So, you know, I knew it from an early age. So it's easier for me to say that. But I understand a lot of people don't have that for various reasons.

And there might be a component to people who understand deeply and don't lose that connection. There might be a reason why some people have that. like an Einstein, like a Steve Jobs, like a Martha Graham, people that I highlight in the book. There might be a reason why some people hold on to it better than others, that is genetic or whatever. I don't know. But I believe everybody can find their way back to it if we go through this process.

What did you like as a kid? Telling other people what to do. I remember being three years old and the girls wouldn't play with me because I was too bossy. And, you know, when I think about sort of like, you know, I mean, I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I wanted to be a doctor. And then when I got to college, I wanted to be a psychiatrist and I didn't have the grades for med school.

But yeah, I've always been interested in like therapy, talking to people, helping people, you know, and I'm thinking like, gosh, was that related, you know, as a three-year-old that's sort of managing and directing and being like, I want to play this way. Yeah, I don't know. It was two years ago, I think. Maim directed her first movie that she wrote. Really? And I wasn't there on set, but when I was talking with her,

she expressed feeling more at home and in herself on a set, which requires telling people what to do. But being a director, meaning being in charge of every aspect of, meaning like the visual, I wrote it, you know, so the words, like it was the best way of being bossy without it being an authoritarian. I see this, what is the movie called? It's called As They Made Us.

As They Made Us. It's with Dustin Hoffman and Candace Bergen. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I have to look it up. Had some big hitters there. And Simon Helberg from the Big Bang Theory and Diana Agron.

And it's like a character kind of study, but a very, very small film. But it absolutely felt like this is why my brain was made the way it was because I could see in angles and like I loved the cinematographer and be. being able to work with him. And that was my favorite thing, was designing all these things. And I was like, is this what my brain, you know, was kind of designed to do? Also therapist, as well as telling people what to do, as well as artist, as well as visual. Kind of put all the pieces together.

I think for, you know, a lot of women, I think of my mom's generation. I think of women probably for a host of history. You know, the, the proscenium was pretty limited, you know. And you were raised, you know, to have a certain set of skills that, served, you know, I'm watching 1883. And I'm like, that was what women's lives were, you know, like cooking, cleaning, making sure no one died and having enough children so that when some died, you still had left over, right? And so I think like, gosh, what a, you know, what a blessed time for me to get to live in where I did. I got to go to college. It wasn't this novel thing. It wasn't

crazy that I wanted to get an education or that I didn't feel the need to get married at 16 or 17. Yeah. And for people trying to find their. life's task now or their life's purpose now, you've described connecting with what they used to like as children, re-identifying or reconnecting with that. You also talk about sort of viscerally in the body understanding what those signals are. Well, the signals are things that you love and things that you hate. So, you know, going on my own life, as I said, I've had this visceral attraction to this day. Whenever I see something in the New York Times that has to do, with earliest ancestors, with things about the Neanderthals,

I get this thrill that I just got to read it because I'm so fascinated with this notion of who we were 50,000 years ago compared to now, right? Something from when I was four years old, but also things I hated. I hated working for other people. I hated office politics. I hated the bullshit going on.

I hated all the game playing. I held all the brown-nosing. I hated it, hated it, hated it. I realized I never held a job in my entire life for more than 11 months, right? That's why I had 50, 60 different jobs. So now I don't work for anybody else and I'm in heaven. Is it that simple? I've died and I'm in heaven.

Is it that simple? Like, what are the things that you viscerally like? What are the things that you viscerally hate? No, but I'm saying, is that a starting place? Because I was just talking with my 18-year-old and I was like, isn't it interesting that you're entering a phase of your life where you could, and he is a person who has really, you know, both sides of his brain, you know, running on a lot of cylinders. Like, he could say, I'm going to study science and I'm going to go to medical school and, like, that could be your

life. Or you could study philosophy and say, I'm going to write and I'm going to think. And like, we're at these points a lot of times in our life where, you know, options are open. Like, is it that kind of simple? I mean, mostly I went to school with people who thought they had to go to med school. Right. Because it's all that they were kind of, and in a culture that worships money and power, you know, that that is what drives a lot of people. But I really love this idea. And I think for those of us who are artists, like you play.

We live in a play world. Like as an actor, I literally like pretend for a living, which is a bizarre thing, you know, to do. But that's sort of some of what, you know, artists are able to tell. into, right? Like, I get to keep playing and seeing what moves me. Exactly, exactly. So it's, you have to make a living. You have to be somewhat practical. Well, Scott Galloway, who we had on, says, don't pursue your passion. That's not going to be, you know, what actually makes you successful and able to support yourself. Find the thing that you're best at that you can do, even if it doesn't move you. And like, that felt very loveless to me. I'm the opposite perspective.

I know. So. That's why you're here for you. longer than he because he made me cry. Okay. Well, so you do have to make a living. You have to be practical. I understand that. But what you'd want to do is you want to think of your 20s as a period of adventure, as a period of trying things out. You don't want to have this kind of monorail, linear perspective. I've got to go to law school. I've got to make $100,000 by this. You're not going to have any fun. You're going to burn yourself out and you're going to end up miserable. But that used to be when women had to have your babies. Now they're extending it, but many of us are geared towards like,

I got to have a baby when I'm most fertile. That's now in your 30s. Well, I mean, I was just more conservative. A lot of women waiting into their 30s these days. I know, but, you know, then you're geriatric after 35. Like, they flag you. It's like you can't do a homebirth. Yeah.

After 35 is considered a geriatric pregnancy. Eggs have been in there a long time. It's changing. It's changing. I have a lot of female friends who've had children in their late 30s. For sure. Whitney Cummings. She's in her 40s. But also like she talked about it. Like the journey is not necessarily linear or smooth.

It often involves, you know, a lot of. So much she had her career. Okay, she had a great time. You're right. But she also, but people and Whitney talked about this. She also was in a place where she had the, you know, financial and cultural support to do that, you know, for a lot of women. Like, I mean, look, you can't even.

have access to birth control or abortions, but we don't need to talk about that. But go ahead. 20s, adventure. Good times. I mean, even for a woman, like you're in your early 20s, you can, you know,

and then by the time that you've kind of got skills and you're ready to do something, you can have a child when you're 29, 28. Then they penalize you for leaving to have the baby. This is what she was talking about earlier with Law 10. I had my kids in breath. That's right. Law 10.

is coming from Robert's like, I changed my mind. You are toxic. You have infected the whole room and your entire field of neuroscience. I haven't quite gotten there yet. Maybe even. Another 10 minutes. Another 10 minutes. Well, you know, like my wife, she's a film director.

Yes. Right? So she knows about what you're talking about, about the kind of the chaos and all the people. you know, she knew that early on she wanted a career. Right. She wasn't a baby-oriented woman. Right. And so we opted not to have children.

Right. Which is a choice for some people. And a lot of people do it. And in this world with climate change and with everything. You know, there's a good logic behind that sometimes. So women can always make that choice unless they feel very deprived by that because they are a baby-oriented person. I mean, the pressure to be part of the baby-making. you know, machine. It's an enormous pressure.

Yeah, but I'm trying to tell you, have you seen those commercials? They look so happy. You're not supposed to be giving into pressure. A hundred percent. You're supposed to be figuring out what you want. And if you are a social person, if that's, if babies are a deep need for you and it can be an incredibly wonderful experience,

then do it. But to be someone who wants to have a career that feels the pressure on has a kid and it's not very good mother or father, it's terrible. It's very terrible. So women should have that choice and there should be no pressure. Right. All right. Anyway.

20s, excitement, adventure, exploring. But you have a reasonable idea of what excites you. And so you try different things. But there's a kind of a logic to it. There's sort of a parameter. It's not like you're studying philosophy and you're studying, you know, carpentry or shoe making. I don't know. I can't think about the other thing.

But there's a logic to it. There's a connection to it. But you're having fun. You're trying things out. You're not so worried about making money, right? I'm not being Scott Galloway here. The money will come if you figure out what you love. And so the human brain doesn't learn very well if it's not emotionally involved.

You tune out, you burn out. You're not listening. You're not studying. You're not absorbing. Right? And you can bullshit your way through that when you're in your own. your 20s and your mind is flexible and open, you go to law school, you can learn it. By the time you're 30, it starts boring the hell out of you and you're not learning and you're not developing,

you're not evolving, you're heading towards a disaster. So you want to feed your mind, you want to have adventures within a certain framework. And then when you're 29, you're 30, you've got skills, things start to fit. You start to say, this is where I can go. I can mix acting with neuroscience. I can become a film director and a podcaster. I can combine these different things that I love. And you start finding it out. And you've got these skills. And you know, you're, you become creative instead of just absorbing information.

And so nothing will happen positive in your life if you don't have that. I really honestly believe it. And a lot of people are disoriented and lost in their lives because they don't. have a clue. They don't have any idea about this. And it's tragic. And they enter the 30s and 40s. By the time you're in your 40s, it starts to get a little too late in some ways. I think in your 30s, you can kind of, I mean, I wasn't 38 until I wrote the 48 Laws of Power. It's unbelievable. So there's something really interesting about your trajectory being 38 when you wrote the book. You'd call yourself maybe a late bloomer in terms of finding that.

A very late somewhere I. Which I appreciate because it also relates to something that you speak about, which is the notion of anxiety as a motivator and, you know, your relationship with anxiety when things were not working for you. Can you talk a little bit about what you were going through when it wasn't working and actually how that helped you, you know, realize where you should go next? and was somewhat divine that you found a path towards a book? Well, it's weird.

You know, life is strange. In the moment that you're doing things, you're not really aware of a pattern, not really aware of a fate or a destiny or any larger thing. And then in retrospect, you start seeing this. So who's to say that it's all an illusion? It's all in your mind. But I don't believe so.

that I can discern a pattern looking back that actually was there. And so a lot of it was, I tried these different jobs out and it doesn't fit me. The fit isn't right. So I was, I started off in New York as a journalist. I lived in New York for several years. And, because I thought I could make a living and write. And I, I didn't like it. I didn't like the fact that I wrote something and it only was seen for a couple weeks, whereas I've somebody who loves history and I like things that last for hundreds of years, not a week, not two weeks. I thought it depressed me. The world of journalism and the people that it depressed me. And this one editor took me aside when I was maybe about 24 or so, 25, and he was on his third martini and he said, Robert, you're never

going to be a writer. You don't have the discipline. You don't have the skill. You're all over the place. You're, you know, you just go to law school, go to business school. You're not going to make it. That's terrible. Yeah. And I was, you know, I was seeing that he was kind of drinking martinis, and I understood that he was not necessarily the most reliable source of wisdom there. It hurt me. But then I realized, this is not the right world for me. So then I was young and adventurers. I just packed up and went to Europe. I wandered around Europe. Are these your rakish years?

My rakish years. I tried all these different jobs. It was going to be a novelist. I was going to be the next Hemingway or whatever. I was going to try all these different jobs. And I did. And I had a great time, but I never wrote a novel because I didn't have the discipline

and I wasn't probably very good at it. And so I realized I'm getting 30 years old. I'm living in Spain. and I'm teaching English, but it's not my path. I'm worried. I have that anxiety that you mentioned. So I decided my dad had just come down with cancer. I was going to come back to L.A.

I was going to get into the film business in Hollywood. I can write screenplays. That's what I'm meant to do. And I can make a living, you know, make a good living. I do that and I come back. And I'm in it for like seven, eight years. I get this icky feeling. It's not me.

fit. So I kept having this recurring feeling it's not me, it doesn't fit. But then the point might be you reach a part where you go, maybe nothing fits. Maybe you're just a restless person that can't figure it out, you know, so you start to worry a little bit. Okay, but then, so this, you know, we're complicated creatures. So part of me that my brain is going, maybe you're never going to figure out, you know, the depressing part, the part that does get depressed and I was very deeply depressed. There's also another voice saying, don't give up, don't give up. There's still something there. You still, you know something. You have great knowledge of languages, of literature, of philosophy of history. There's still some,

it's still a niche for you, even in this weird world. Then I'm in Italy and I meet a man. There are one of my 60 different jobs. We're trying to launch a new media school in Italy. and it's a disaster and it's just all this Machiavellian politicking and he's a Dutchman and he's a book packager and he asked me do I have any ideas for a book

and I imprint we were in Venice, Italy we're walking along near the Piazza San Marco and I improvise what turns into the 48 laws of power and his eyes light up and it's like a revelatory moment for me

I could write books non-fiction books that combined philosophy, history, literature, psychology. I never intended to write self-help books or books for business people. Or books that would be banned in prisons because they're too powerful.

Yeah, exactly. I was a literary person, a philosophy person, right? Those are my references. But, you know, he believed in me. It was like a fortunate, but sometimes people say that you kind of draw that kind of thing to you. If he had come to me when I was 25,

I wouldn't have been able to write the book. I was at the right moment. Fate intervened, and it feels like it was meant to happen. I know that's ridiculous. I know that's woo-woo, but I still really, really believe it. And I was so desperate and even slightly suicidal at that point that this was my chance. And I grabbed it and I gave it everything I had all the experiences, all the bad times, all the manipulations of people have played on me.

I thanked them in the acknowledgments of the 48. laws of power, all the people who've done these nasty things to me, you inspired this book. Thank you very much. I had all this information to draw upon. And so, you know, at 38, you know, it turned my life around. I could have, I don't think I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't had that occurrence. I want to touch on the woo-woo part because I'm- Yeah, I was going to say this is like the most spiritual experience without you mentioning sort of like a spiritual experience. Yeah. I'm listening to the alchemist, the book The Alchemist with my son. He's 16 and he really loves sci-fi and magic. And I've been trying to get him to have a little bit more exposure to literary books or sort of

books that are on the lists of books you should read in high school. And he loves audio. So we've been listening to it in the car. And it talks a lot about, you know, the world is going to conspire on your behalf to help you find the thing that you're meant to do. in the world. You're a unique gift. And so as you're talking, it's like you hit the crisis of faith there being depressed, but that little voice, where do you think that little voice came from? Do you think it was divine intervention that or a spiritual world realm? I know you've talked about meditating. Do you have a connection to things greater than ourselves? Yes, I do. And it's a subject of my next book. I'm writing a book on The Sublime. And I had a near-death experience. You know,

with my stroke. I came this close to dying. I wouldn't be here. I almost had irreparable brain damage. I still have moments. And I'm writing right now a story. I have a chapter on what I call the day mom that I'm writing right now. And I talk in this book, each chapter has kind of a main figure. And the main figure for this chapter, believe it or not, is Harriet Tubman. And she, as I analyzed it, as a young girl, had a definite, really strong, strange, unusual spirit, born into slavery, but she was a rebellious, restless, a fighting spirit in her, right? But with slavery, you can't imagine the limitations are insane, right? But she kept finding her way. She kept struggling, struggling, struggling, struggling. And she did all these things

that eventually led to her getting to work in the fields, which was a great liberation where she learned about the railroad network where she learned all about black culture, underground culture. It opened her eyes up. She was kind of maneuvering her life in unconscious ways. And then she had that brain injury where someone threw a lead weight at somebody else. It hit her here in the head. And from then on, she was hearing voices. She had visions, yeah. And she hear the voice of the God saying, Harriet, I want you to escape to the north. Harriet, I want you to do this. Take my people out of slavery. I mean, that was then. And so

the way I'm trying to analyze it because the information we have from her life is very scanty and we don't some of it's pure legends, some of it we don't know. But I'm saying that she had that voice when she was

two years old. It was there. It was very strong. And it was kind of like underneath everything. Underneath so she has to go work in these house for these white mistresses, you know, fluffing up their pillows and looking after the newborns, but that spirit is still there underneath and it's saying, I've got to rebel, I hate these

people, I hate this world. She figures a way to trick them, deceive them, gets her sent out to work in the fields. That spirit is there. It's constantly moving. And then that accident happens. And I'm trying to say that the voice that she's hearing of the Lord, I'm not to say that there's, it could have been the Lord, who knows, but I'm saying it's that unique, that she had when she was two or three years old, now raised to the tenth level. She's hearing it. Right. So there's an element where that voice is in you, right? It's always there. It is always there inside of you. Was it planted by the creator? I'm not a religious person by nature. Okay, so I don't necessarily believe that, but I have nothing against it. I'm extremely agnostic. If I die and there's heaven,

I'm a believer, you know, I'm open to anything. But I believe that it's something in you is planted at your birth. A seed is planted. And that is what your voice is. And that voice communicates not just with words. It communicates with your heartbeat, with your skin, with how you feel about it, how you react to certain things, what repulses you, what excites you, what thrills you, right? it's visceral and you feel that voice and it communicates to you.

So even in my darkest moments, it wasn't like I was hearing a voice saying, Robert, you're really good. I was just not giving up. A part of me just wouldn't give up. So you can almost say that it was a voice telling me not to give up, that I felt like I was destined for something. I always felt since the very early age, I was destined for something strange and unusual. I thought I'd be a novelist that didn't happen,

but it turned out in a different direction, you know. So it was always there. Thank God it was always there because I was on the point of giving up. It's very powerful. You mentioned your agnostic. A lot of people have spiritual experiences. We actually had a woman on who had a near-death experience

who explained meeting God, going to the other side, having a download of universal information that exists in many literary texts that she had never read and came back with supernatural ability. What was your near-death experience like? Nothing like that. I mean, you know, I had like a slight kind of weird vision. Something, you know, I had a stroke where I was driving.

and my wife, a girlfriend at the time, was sitting next to me, and she forced me to pull over, and then strange things are going on in my mind. And, you know, it's starting to close down, but I'm not aware of it, and I'm talking, it's as if everything is normal. And then I completely blank out, right? And then I wake up, and I'm in a hospital,

and I don't know what happened. But I have, as I'm waking up, I have this kind of vision of my mother and my wife talking to me at my funeral. And I'm kind of seeing them. And they're saying, you know, and I'm getting a feeling. I can't hear what they're saying. I'm getting the feeling that everything is all right. Life has gone on, right?

Now, I don't believe that this is something from heaven or God, because as I said, I'm agnostic. there's a really great book that I love called Dying to Live. It's Susan Blackmore, I think. She's a neuroscientist. It's a great book. And you find it fascinating because she explains everything in very clear. But she's not condescending about it. She's not saying you woo-woo people are ridiculous.

She's understanding on a very deep level. And she relates it a lot because she, like myself, practices Zen Buddhism. She relates it to certain things going on in the brain when everything kind of shuts down. And you're actually in connection to reality, whereas we're not normally in connection to it. Also, Dr. Jill Boltey Taylor, you know about her? Oh, she'd be good for your podcast. She wrote a book, Stroke of Insight. She had a horrific stroke.

Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. My mom loved that one. and she explains it, she's a neuroscientist, and she explains it of what happens to the brain. Right.

Yeah, we actually, we gave a talk at South by Southwest about the intersection of science and spirituality and trying to explain some of the neurological substrates of prayer, of meditation, and a lot of these studies are done, you know, with practicing meditators such as yourself, but also the notion of, you know, what are the commonalities and, you know,

there's this overlap between, DMT and between near-death experiences. It's kind of a window into, you know, what is this thing that, you know, I think in our culture we associate with like, it must be God. But anyway, it's very exciting to have you here for the 25th anniversary of the laws of power. I really appreciate my very special copy. Okay. And it's just really been, I mean, it's been a thrill to talk to you.

I feel like we could talk to you forever. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. much fun talking to you. I'm not scared of you anymore. You're sure? Yes. You're just a little bit. Now you're scared of me. A little bit, yeah. She has that effect on people.

We'll have to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my and be all eggs breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down. Has it been wildly surreal to start to meet people like Drake and 50 Cent

and go from writing into that world? Well, it's even more surreal than that. I compare it to, there was a ride at Disneyland. I don't know if it's still there called Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Yes. Sort of like that. Because before I wrote the 48 laws, I was kind of this guy in his late 30s sort of a loser.

At least my parents were getting worried about me. I had like my girlfriend and now my wife we counted. I had like 50, 60 different jobs up until then doing writing, but just everything. I worked in a detective agency. You can't imagine the different jobs I had. But I had no success. And although I'm still the same person that I was back then,

nobody was caring about my advice. Nobody listened to me. Who's this loser trying to tell me how to get my life together? Suddenly the 48 laws of power come and people are like starting to consult me and stuff. But the really weirdest part was like six months after it came out, it got translated into Italian. And they brought me over for this like book tour, my first book tour.

And it was like an island of Capri. It was all these celebrities and paparazzi were following me around and taking pictures of me. And I met the ex-president of Italy. And I was like, what the hell's going on? This isn't right. I felt like an imposter, basically. And then the rapper stuff started having. But by then, I was getting a little used to some of the attention.

You got used to all the rappers being in love with you. Yeah. But, you know, as you can tell, I'm like this nerdy white guy, middle class from Los Jewish kid from Los Angeles. So meeting 50 Cent for the first time was an experience. but I love kind of crossing boundaries you know

people don't usually do that in America usually a writer who does this you're a rapper who does that and I like to just be extremely fluid and mix with all different kinds of people and just see them I see him as this brilliant strategist kind of I call him the Napoleon Bonaparte of hip-hop

and just seeing on a higher level his intelligence, his spirit as opposed to all the kind of identity things that keep us separated really pisses me off, to be honest, but pardon my life. I've heard you talk about the role that he plays and the role that we all play. Yeah. Did you feel like you had to play a role when you walked into that arena? Okay, so I'll give you a little story here.

So I first meet him in New York, and, you know, I'm a little bit intimidated, right? How did you choose what to wear? I can't remember back that far. It's 2005, 2005. Yeah, 2006. I don't remember what I chose to wear. I wasn't like blinged out or anything because I never do that. That looks so fake.

It's ridiculous. You know, I'm not like Ali G or something, right? I know my limits. Anyway, so, but I'm just one white guy and he's like nine of his entourage there, right? And I saw it feeling a little bit, a little bit intimidated. and he, you know, he's like just an very impressive looking person. He's got all this incredible jewelry. I was like transfixed by his bracelet.

All diamonds on it must have been like worth million dollars. I don't know what. Anyway, the irony of the story to get to your question was, I was intimidated. But he was also told me later he was intimidated by me. He thought he was going to be meeting someone who looked like Henry Kissinger, this kind of very impressive, maybe had a bit of a bit of, a German accent, who knows, who is kind of, you know, just so powerful.

And then he meets this kind of nerdy guy. And I meet this man who's really soft and gentle and sweet. He's very sweet. So we were both kind of surprised by the persona that the public knows, but isn't really like who we are. It's my and biologics breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two.

One fiction. And now she's. She's going to be.