Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 3: Brian Koppelman

Episode Date: March 18, 2016

The filmmaker and co-creator of the TV show "Billions" talks about his practice of Transcendental Meditation. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out. .com slash playlists singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey, this is Dan Harris. I am a fidgety skeptical newsman who had a panic attack live on Good Morning America. That led me to something I always thought was ridiculous. Meditation.

I wrote a book about it called 10% Happier, started an app, and now I'm launching this podcast to try to figure out whether there's anything beyond 10%. Basically, here's what I'm obsessed with. Can you be an ambitious person and still strive for enlightenment, whatever that means? Hey, it's Dan, our guest today, or my guest today, I guess I can say it's my guest today, this is kind of like my show is Brian

Coppeland. He is the co-creator of the new show on showtime called Billions, which is a great show if you're not watching it, you should be. He's also written a bunch of movies like Rounders, which is a cult classic, Ocean's 13 runner runner. He's also written a bunch of movies like Rounders, which is a cult classic, Ocean's 13, Runner Runner. He's also, and this is important, given the context, the Meditator. And Meditation shows up really prominently in billions, where in the first episode you see two of the main characters.

One is a hedge fund billionaire, and the other is the US attorneys, out to get them, both of them meditate. So Brian, thanks for coming in. Appreciate it. It's my real pleasure to be here, man. I just met you a couple of minutes ago. I already really like you.

Yeah, we're like both. We could be friends. We actually could be friends. You have the same drum kit that I can have. There is, so we're in my office. I should have said that at the beginning, we're in my office, which is the first time we're doing a podcast in my office.

And I have an electronic drum kit. The lay, that makes me look 75,000 times cooler than I actually am because the truth is I've never played it because until today it was blocked off by like boxes and pictures which in anticipation of your arrival we actually hung up the pictures. I just love the idea that you have it because it says something about exactly the right kind of aspiration for how you want to spend your day. Like even if you never can, the idea that it's possible that you could put the headphones on, crank up back in black

and try to play it in your office at ABC News is awesome. But doesn't it kind of suggest that I'm like, really not into actually working? No, it's the right kind of silly. Right for a meditator, it's the right kind of silliness. It's, I think, the sort of Dodd-Eye spirit of that is really a good thing. And no, I think, the sort of dot-a-spirit of that is really a good thing. And no, I think

there's no question that you need in any kind of hard endeavor that requires a certain kind of focus creativity. The opportunity to blow off the exact kind of steam that playing the drums allows you to blow off is probably should be required. It shouldn't be something you have to excuse. I just love that you just added a sheen to my distractedness and laziness. So let's talk about meditation because you brought it up. And because this whole show is about meditation, you, as I said, the two main characters right in the pilot are seeing meditating.

One is a hedge fund guy and the other is a US attorney. Why did you have your characters do this? I mean, for a few different reasons. Story-wise and character-wise, it makes sense because as you do, even a little research into the world of high-performance New York Greenwich Westport people, you find that they're chasing, if not inner peace, they're chasing a kind of actualization

as performance enhancement. And one of the key things that they seem to look to is meditation. So that, it fits the world and it's true to the world. Dave and I, David Levine was my creative partner. He and I both practice trans and on meditation. And so does Andrew Russ, Andrew Russ,

Andrew Russ, and his third co-creator as well. He also does meditation though. Maybe you have to ask him, what's the name? He's told me it's TM, I thought it was. Yeah, he does TM, or he certainly has done TM.

And so when we have found tremendous benefit in it, and would go to events in New York occasionally, watch people speak, look at the ways in which people are using meditation now. And you know, there was this idea that, or there isn an idea of people carry around that it'll necessarily make you a kinder person or a gentler person or a more giving person. I mean in fact they don't even promise

in TM, they make none of those promises. That will make you more of the best of what you are is what they promise. Which seems like an idea really that's really fits the hedge fund world and the world of prosecutors who are driven by the kind of ambition that our characters are driven by. So I want to talk at length about what meditation does for you, but there are a lot of people and I hear from them who are critics of the growing popularization slash commercialization of meditation. And the idea that masters of the universe and people who are complete jerks would be using meditation not to make themselves better, kinder people, but to make themselves better at

what they already are. For example, your US attorney character played by Paul Giamatti, you see him meditating and in the next scene he threatens to put his father in handcuffs and arrest him. So this is not making him a kinder person unless his baseline is incredibly low. So what is your thought about? Well, he does say I love you dad. He does. He does. He does say right before he threatens him. I love you dad. I'm sure that's a mitigating uh... mitigating detail but do you think do you have any problem as a guy who meditates

with people using meditation just to make themselves more effective even if they're going to be actors in the world how should they use it well i mean we say you know i'm not comfortable with anyone using uh... anything to be a bad actor in in the world right but um... i mean someone could decide to drink uh you know, a cancacola and go get all hopped up and do something bad. But look, meditation is a tool.

So, and it's a really effective tool. And so, someone's going to use that tool to be more, to me, to be more of what they are to help them in their own aims. Now, is it possible that if you really pursue meditation and you are doing TM, so you're doing it 40 minutes a day, that perhaps some thoughts or some feelings of calmness or that your cortisol levels will adjust to a place where you're just naturally a little less hair trigger. Yeah, could that be nicer for the people around you? Yes, but I don't I don't think that there's a value positive or negative in terms of societal good to any of these things. There's not a societal value to yoga versus doing sprints

or tabata, right? It just has a certain Eastern accoutrema that makes us think that it must be more peaceful somehow. I don't necessarily think that that's the case. Look, there's philosophy. You could read alongside a meditation if you want. There are a ton of other things you can do, but what I've found it to do for many people is just make them more what they are.

Or true, like a more distilled version. It's possible that I disagree with you, but I want to think out loud. I want to understand how. Yes. Okay, so I'm not sure. So let me think about that. Before I think out loud, I think it might be useful to define terms. Because so you're talking about transcendental meditation, which is the type of meditation

you do. And just for the uninitiated, I should explain that transcendental meditation is derived from Hinduism. And it was popular, basically invented if you want to use that word by the Maharishi Mahashiyogi. That name may be familiar to some of our listeners, slash viewers, because he was the guy who was for a prepare-to-time, the spiritual guru to reasonably well-known rock band known as the Beatles. And so he kind of rocketed

to global fame as a consequence of that. So he was teaching transcendental meditation, which again is basically a form of Hindu meditation which uses a mantra, which is a silent word, you repeat to yourself. And as you repeat this word to yourself often in conjunction with your breath, you can achieve this level of concentrated absorption that allows you to shut out the discursive thinking mind and can put you in touch with levels of calm and even bliss and maybe even creativity that here are too far unavailable. You know, you're not chasing bliss in TM as you're meditating, right? One of the sort of central tenets of TM is that what happens in that 20-minute period

The way in which you perceive what happens doesn't really matter so that I am not looking for a blissful state all I'm looking to do is say that mantra to myself and If thoughts come I can they can they can exist and then they'll move past and I just keep saying the mantra but what happened to me And I'm not a spokesman for TM. I'm an a first one. I'm an atheist and I'm keep saying the mantra. But what happened to me, and I'm not a spokesman for TM, I'm an atheist, and I'm like a hardcore atheist. And one of the first things I said when I went to talk about learning this was that the cult-like aspects of any organized meditative group freaked me out.

You don't have to believe in any sort of ideas that came from uh... Hinduism you don't have to uh... believe that the maris she had tapped into some mystical thing at all but he you can look at the sign that he you can look at the e g's you can look at the scientific studies that show what happens to cortisol levels when people do this.

Or blood pressure. Blood pressure, cortisol levels, heart rate, all these things that just happen, and you know, the controlled studies, I mean, I know you've gone through this stuff, but you know, if you just sit quietly for 20 minutes, there's some benefit to that and breathe. But if you sit quietly and repeat the mantra, I think there are more tangible benefits that are greater than if you don't. And for me, it was a save for an way to control anxiety. And I found that the physical manifestations of anxiety just dissipated by about 85 or

90 percent. And so that was a gigantic life change to not get feel a fluttering stomach to not get stress headache. We're you a JIA, Jew and Agony? That's pretty good. Well, I'm an atheist, but I'm a Jew. I mean, I guess I was raised Jewish and culturally. I didn't make that term up,

was just some of my Hebrew school friends. No, I guess when a fascistic leader comes to power and decides to kill the Jews, he'll kill me, whether I identify as Jew or not. So yes, I guess by that definition. I am, whatever the anxieties are being someone trying to make a living in show business, or more to the point of a parent who loves his kids, You know, whatever the anxieties are being someone trying to make a living in show business,

or more to the point, like a parent who loves his kids, any kind of outsize worry that I might have. It doesn't mean I don't still have concerns, right, or I don't still worry as we all do. I'm not still aware of the thin existential, we all find ourselves in. But the physical manifestations, the actual sort of the way that I walk through the world and feel, change the dramatic amount when I started meditating after probably three weeks of meditating. So just back to the sort of clarification of terms, when I described TM, I've never really done TM. So when I described it, did I describe it more or less accurately? Yeah 20 minutes 20 minutes

twice a day as soon as you wake up in the morning and then at some point in the afternoon before dinner. I sit quietly close my eyes and repeat a mantra for about 20 minutes. And so the difference in this sort of goes back to what I was saying before about how maybe I disagreed with you, but I want to talk it out. The difference is that the kind of meditation I practice is called mindfulness meditation, which is derived not from Hinduism, but from Buddhism. And actually, to be honest with you, I'm a Buddhist, right? But that kind of means more and less than you might think.

I mean, I don't view Buddhism as a religion. It is practice as a religion by some people, but I believe Buddhism is something to do, not something to believe in. And I too, I wouldn't know, I don't know if I call myself an atheist, but more like a respectful agnostic. So I don't believe in anything I can't prove. Although I'm willing to entertain other people's arguments on behalf of those unprovable metaphysical claims. So in Buddhism, in fact, the argument is that there is an ethical component, but the interesting thing about it

is not a finger wagging ethical component, that if you act like a jerk, we're not allowed to swear hair, so they would use the words I would use otherwise, I can't use, but if you act like a jerk, it screws up your meditation practice because it's very hard to concentrate when you're trying to keep your lies straight or dealing with a lot of problems. So we dramatized that on the show.

There's a moment in the show, a couple episodes in, where Damien Liu, it's our version of the King trying to pray in Hamlet, which is not strictly Buddhist text, but I think it has the same idea. The universe has to, right? Yes. Hamlet. And so when there's Damien Lewis's character Bobby Axelrod

is in a particularly tight spot, he is trying to meditate and he can't, and you see it. So yes, of course your life bleeds in to your meditation practice, your meditation practice bleeds into your life. But what I don't like is the fake spirituality that gets grafted on to this kind of practice. So that people, I don't agree with this idea that if you meditate, you will become a better person, a more spiritual person, whatever that means. For me it's simpler, like the more I can reduce this stuff down and distill it, this more you can make these things simpler.

It's basically breathing with some stuff attached to it. It probably makes you feel better, it makes you feel better, maybe it'd be nicer people, wouldn't that be great. But I don't think you can say it's going to make people nicer. It's like, you know what, if you have less anxiety and less, most people, given less stress, less anxiety, clear thought are going to act like better versions of themselves. But I don't think you can promise it. I think I would agree with that like 98%.

I would give that a huge amen. The only thing I would say is that there is a difference between, and I don't fully understand this because again, I don't know enough about TM to speak about it with authorities. I want to be clear about that. But my understanding about the difference between TM and mindfulness is that mindfulness goes with extreme prejudice at mindfulness, which is lowered emotional reactivity. And while I believe there's a huge mindfulness component to TTM, because every time you notice that you're thinking and you just notice that these are just thoughts. It makes you much less reactive.

Absolutely, because you see that the voice in your head is just like a compulsive mind. Well, you know, when they look at the EEGs, the mindfulness lights up these certain parts of the brain that are targeted towards empathy and TM lights up a broader area. So it includes that area, but absolutely fires other things as well. Yeah, many friends of mine practice mindfulness. You know, what drew you to that practice as opposed to TM or one of the others?

The science. There's definitely some science around TM that appears to be quite good. I mean, look, I think, in fact, all of the science around meditation needs to be delivered with a big grain of salt because it's in danger at times of being hyped, because it's really in its early stages. But having issued that caveat, I think most of the sciences really have been done around mindfulness.

And initially, what I liked about mindfulness meditation was it is really thoroughly secularized, whereas TM is associated with sectarian organization. It's promulgated by the Maharishi. And so for me, as a pretty hardcore, I was raised by scientists, I'm married to a scientist, And so for me as a pretty hardcore, I was raised by scientists, I'm married to a scientist, mindfulness seemed like the more interesting thing. Also, I was reading a lot about Buddhism,

and I thought that the philosophy, the sort of intellectual infrastructure of Buddhism, was really compelling, so I was also drawn to Buddhist meditation. But I'm not as snobbish about it. I actually think mental exercise of whatever variety you choose Should you should do yeah? I just knew I needed the Technology like I needed some access to it and TM I had friends who'd done it

Friends of mine introduced me to Bob Roth, the runs David Lynch Foundation I'd read David Lynch's book really catching the big fish and his book really spoke about the connection between his art and meditation in a way that was incredibly compelling. And that and a few other things, Russell Simmons' book, as well, Russell, who had lived this really big, kind of crazy life, really saw huge changes and became by his own account a much better person through TM. And he also had studied with Bob broth from the David Lynch Foundation.

And so I got in a room with Bobbi and I asked him all these questions about its ties to religion. And they really, they no longer really draw that connection. They draw that connection to the, myhi, definitely brought it to America and they love him and regard him, but they do view it as a technology that he figured out. Yeah, I don't actually, you asked me why I was drawn to mindfulness over TM. Those are the reasons why at the time, six years ago, but I don't have a TM. I did a one medicine, you know, Tony Robbins,. Tony Robbins does the one meditation that he brought over.

Yeah, I did that once with Tony and that was a really great experience too. TM as a repeat for me is a practice I can repeat. Always sit arthas one of my favorite books and the idea of the Buddhist kiss and that kind of enlightenment because I know you're interested in this idea of enlightenment is really compelling. It just seems like a lot to get there. And you got to go out to the river and there's just a lot of stuff. You have to be hungry for a long time. It's a lot.

It's a lot of stuff to us to have. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm in this weird position of being interested in pursuing something, enlightenment, that I don't even know if it's real. So it's kind of a funny dilemma. And yet, my hair is on fire with curiosity about it. Who have you met? Who you think is enlightened? I've never met anybody who...

Actually, I've met somebody who claims to be kind of in the area of fully enlightened. I, my meditation teacher, when you ask him, are you fully enlightened? His guy named Joseph Goldstein is like a menchied Jewish guy from here in New York, went to Columbia, joined the Peace Corps and ended up like in Thailand,

finding meditation 50 years ago and he's been teaching it ever since. He comes from a school of Buddhism where there's these four levels of enlightenment, these four experiences that you need to have before you're fully enlightened. If you ask him, where are you on this spectrum? He'll say, occasionally, somewhere between the first and the third. But you didn't ask, you asked about who do I think is actually enlightened.

And I have to say that of all the human beings with whom I've ever had contact. Joseph Goldstein is the closest to being sort of behaviorally, he is behavior attitude, speech are all things that I emulate on my best days. That I just... Clarity of clarity of thought cares about what he should care about. Yes. Doesn't sweat the stuff that he shouldn't care about.

Yes. I mean, I've seen him on having bad hair days. He would joke that he doesn't have that much hair. I've seen him get mildly personicity about stuff, but not really that much. And I just the innate, uncontrived integrity to the man is hard to in the tribe integrity to the man is hard to describe and so to me that gives me some confidence even though i'm not sure that like miss a real or this whole map that he's that he's subscribed to is a real thing i don't know as soon as you start i mean as soon as you start laying out a

metric by which to measure i'm checking out there's something about that that feels like um belts in karate or something. And that, you know, nobody who's really good at that stuff ever talked about the moment they went from the blue belt to purple belt or something as the thing, right, the people who really can practice it or on a different kind of continuum. That was only about learning and knowledge and mining their abilities. So to me, when I've met people occasionally who seem to really have the ability to be present, because I think you can really just really take it down to, can I exist right here in the present right now with my full like empathy and all my

antenna out and ready to just like react listen not worry about the consequences from external forces can I be right here that's really challenging but that's the closest thing that I can imagine to the idea of that kind of enlightenment which is like to live without fear for even those little moments. And so if you can have two seconds, we're here living without fear of judgment, then you have those. If you can look at somebody else and really be there, because if you can just be present, you'll do the right thing, right?

Because you're not thinking about the other stuff. So then you can be really good. You can help. And so there are very few people I've met who really are like that. I mean, you know, there's Teddy and Salinger's short story. But that's not a real person. Sadly, he's enlightened.

That's good that you know that. He's enlightened. I mean, there have been times that I haven't thought so. But to the extent that meditation allows you to string a few more of those moments of presence together than perhaps it's a road toward that kind of enlightenment. But if you go back to Siddhartha and the idea that the chasing it, right, Govinda is chasing it the whole time. Sidhartha is not chasing it. He's just following in a very present way what feels like the thing he needs to do. And of course that leads him to it, and it's not something you can share other than by

a kiss. And so by a kiss that transfers the feeling, not any kind of knowledge that you can gain. So, you know, for some people it's listening to a great song, or reading a book that transports them, and maybe in that like little moment that lingers after you finish a great piece of art, there's a moment where you're just like right there. And maybe that's the closest to enlightened that we get to be. So whatever ladder you need to climb, like whatever that thing is, is worth trying, I think,

as long as the idea of trying doesn't become the thing, right? As long as we remember, the goal is to not be trying. It's to just be right here. Well said, all of that. And it's also possible that there isn't a thing called enlightenment, but there are things called enlightenment. And there may be lots of different experience.

You should brand and sell those things. I actually feel really good selling enlightenment. You should get out there and do it. I believe my mother-in-law actually gave me them in my Christmas stocking. I married a non-jewishist. Anyway, but back to what, but you raised something and I just want to address, which is you talked about your,

your worry about like a map that you wouldn't want to be part of. So let me just play devil's advocate and defense of the map and the maps because in the various religious traditions within Buddhism, but also I believe within the mystical strains of the Abrahamic faiths, there are the sort of stepwise progression toward, you know, you can start with a few moments of presence and empathy, but then you can get to protracted periods of it and then you can have it become not just a state but a trait. And so the argument for the map is that actually you can do things, practices, and that outcomes will be predictable and reliable outcomes.

So the maps to which I'm referring don't involve like you have to study with this person, you have to pay X amount of dollars at this point. What they are is simply monastics over 2600 years have found. And this I find truly fascinating that if you sit and do the practice in a certain way, certain experiences will happen in your mind reliably and predictably. Again, I don't know if there's any truth to this because I haven't had these experiences. But it is fascinating to me that there's something going on apparently in the human mind as a baseline capacity that you can have these experiences if you said and do follow the instructions and that this has been happening for millennia is is a really really interesting thing. Again if it's true. So I don't I'm not referring to some sort of shoots and ladders type of

thing where you have to study with x person and pay this fee and then X is revealed to you That's not really what I'm in. No, and even as a skeptic which I am like I can read Tony Robbins book awake in the giant within and I can Find the stuff in there. That's useful and I'll just I like to look at those things like well Is there a discovery that someone's made about like a tool or technique that I can try? And then I'll be able to measure whether it's helpful or helps me find a direction in my life. And so I definitely look for that stuff. I'm more skeptical of it when it's in the religious sphere because I that stuff's been used to can even, every religion has been used to control big groups of people.

Hey there listeners! While we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduka Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Koto Paxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from

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things which is to get, give our audience a sense of like how you became who you are so let me let me just say a Few things about your past and then let you pick it up from there I know that you went to Tufts. You grew up here in New York City your dad was a long Island long Island Sorry, your dad was a music executive. Yes, and when you in in college. I understand it you actually started getting interested in and Recruiting artists you discovered Tracy Chapman, if I have that credit. I did. But it wasn't, yeah. So I started going to the recording studio with my father

when I was a very little boy. It was an incredible thing to get to do. In fact, there's a little Easter egg in for my dad only. In the last episode of Billions, someone says that Bobby Axelrod has a Laura Mars eyes. And my dad produced the theme song from that movie, The Eyes of Laura Mars. And so, and it works great because his eyes are fade on the way eye.

It all worked great. People loved the line. But, and I didn't tip it to him and I got a text from my dad saying like, I can't believe you put Laura Mars in, which is great. I remember falling asleep before they started recording that on the studio couch and Jeff Skunk-Baxter, one of the great musicians of all time, played this guitar solo at the end of that track. I was from a nine years old and I remember just sitting up and watching him do it over and over again and it was mind blowing experience. But when I was in college, it was at the time that, so because I was around music and listening to songs all

the time and I'm says, music fan, I learned how to figure out what was good. I learned about what made somebody a good songwriter, a good singer. We would talk about it all the time and I spent hours and hours listening closely. But then when I was in college, I was very involved in student government and colleges pick them in the Northeast. There was a big movement. The endowments were invested, many of them, in companies that did business in South Africa and this is during apartheid. And so I was one of the two or three people who led the movement on my campus for divestment,

which was to get the boards to agree to divest from these companies that were doing business in South Africa, because the endowments were, you know, $100 million, whatever. And in doing that, I organized an all day boycott of classes and got speakers from all over New England to come and speak, and a friend of mine, named Peter Zizzo, said there's this folks singer that I might wanna go see,

because she might be great to play at this rally and I'd like her. And I went to Sierra and it was Tracy Chapman. And I got, I broke down in tears watching her perform because my whole life had set me up to recognize what it was that she was able to do. And I mean she played talking about a revolution that night. And so I got Tracy to play the rally and then spent the next two and a half years trying to get her to agree to let me record demos with her and to make record and then I brought her to New York and introduced her to my dad and got him to fly off. It took a long time, but that didn't end up becoming that first huge Tracy Chapman

album. And you then spent many years post college as I understand it as an A and R guy. I was an A and R guy in the music business. I went to law school at night and um, and then when I turned 30, uh, I mean, we're skipping steps. But basically when I turned 30, I realized that if I didn't, I, my first child was born, our first child, he made my first child. And, uh, I looked at my son, he was a nine months old. And I, I realized that there was a big lie, which was, I was going to tell him to grow up and chase his dreams, and I realized I wasn't chasing mine.

I realized I wanted to be an artist, and that if I didn't go out and chase it somehow, if I didn't commit to it, I wouldn't be able to tell him that and look him really in the eye. And I realized, I was a block writer, I'd always been a block writer for a long time. And I realized that if you're a block writer, it becomes toxic. And that toxicity, when that dream kind of dream dies, that toxicity spreads. And you end up, I think, becoming toxic to the people around you.

And I didn't want that. I wanted to be like a great husband and a great father. And so that's when my best friend and I went into a basement, every week, to meet in a basement every day, and we wrote our first movie, which was Rounders. And the research for that movie was involved. You're getting involved. I was playing a lot of poker. Yeah, so...

Years of poker. Underground poker. Yeah. And so how did that... That was all part of the realization that I wasn't happy. I see. The realization that I wasn't living the life I was supposed to be living was I found myself in my office one night and I'd like gain weight and I'd never been a cigarette smoker

my entire life and I was 29 and I'd never been a cigarette smoker. Something I was like smoking and I was playing cards like and every opportunity I had and I realized what the problem was. I wasn't living the life I was supposed to live. So you've gone on and built a fantastic writing career. So you said that was at 30 or 49 now. 49 years of doing this. Yeah.

And when did the meditations start? So what I did then when I was 30, I wasn't meditating yet, I was doing something very close to what I still do, which is Julia Cameron's the artist's way, which is these free writing for a half an hour in the morning, three long hand pages, where you write anything that you want to write. In fact, you can't censor it, it's not what you want to write, it's just what you happen to write. And so they are something very meditative about that practice because you are not censored, you're free flowing, you're not in any way reacting to the words. Any anything that comes into your head, you're putting out. And for me, it has a centering effect. And I started

taking very long walks. And so I did those things. And that's when I read Tony Robbins' book, A Week in the Triumph, and then try to figure out why I wanted to do what I wanted to do and how. And I started meditating five years ago. And because I felt like the stress and pressure of all this stuff was becoming intrusive. And I'm always looking for a way to fine tune whatever it is that I do. As for me as a parent and husband and then as an artist. And as I say when I read that book by David Lynch and then Red Russell's book and then

talk to a few other people, I had the thought that I should really investigate it and try it. Does it help with creativity and exactly what is the mechanism by which it helps with creativity? Well, being, so anxiety and fear to me are the greatest blocks to creativity that I know. Because for me, I need to be in a state where I feel free, where I don't feel burdened, and where I don't

feel the pull to the monkey mind, right? And to those, where I don't feel the pull to that stuff, to reactive thinking. And so it helps because I think, you know, the science says it changes your cortisol levels and it does all this stuff to make you feel less anxious And then also There are I have just found a few different times and you don't push for it In fact, it's the opposite right. You're just saying in mantra Someone's not be sitting there and like the answer will just show up or it'll show up 10 minutes later and

I mean an answer a huge answer to something that happens in the season finale of billions. Just, you know, I did all the stuff that I always do to generate ideas. And then I remember I just sat down and closed my eyes and like this whole thing just popped into my head as I was meditating. And did you stop meditating and get up?

It's funny. I asked Bob Roth the other day, what do you do? And he said, if it's really one of those ideas, you get up and i asked bob roth the other day what do you do he said if it's really one of those ideas stand up and you write it down and then you come right back and meditate get out of your head why do you think tm specifically has taken off in such a big way in among celebrities and and also like uh... in hollywood generally

well you know ten ferris do you know if you know ten ferris i don't know the friend of mine and uh... he says that it's like seventy generally. Well, Tim Ferris, I don't know if you know Tim Ferris. I don't know. He's a friend of mine. He says that 75 or more than 75% of his guests, we interview all these incredibly high achieving people. They do it. Do TM or meditation. Meditation, but I think a huge percentage of them do TM.

First of all, it's very simple. The fear many people have with meditation, mindfulness, is everyone who does that, most people who do your kind of meditation, constantly talk about how hard it is. People who do TM, constantly talk about how easy it is. And we're not selling because I get nothing by talking about it, it's just easy. And so it's easy. And let's say for the sake of argument, let's say that you're, maybe there's slightly more benefit to you than to me

if you're looking at the science or whatever. Maybe mindfulness practiced every day correctly. Let's just say for the sake of it, gives you 5% more of something. I don't know that to be true to you. No, I don't even think that that's true, but I'm saying let's say that it does. The thing is, I know I'm not doing this stuff that I'd have to do to do the mind for this. The TM, I just sit down to say mantra and whether I can do it or not doesn't matter.

All I have to do is say the mantra to myself. You can't fail at TM. The whole point of it is that you can't fail. The whole way you relax into it is to know, I don't have to feel like it was a good meditation. I don't have to succeed at blocking thoughts out. I don't have to notice my breath on my upper lip. I mean, I was an actor all through college, and so we did stuff that was similar to mindfulness.

You did breathing stuff, and I hated all of it. TM, I love how I feel afterwards, and I love every part of doing it. It's, um, look, in our culture, I think we feel like if something's not hard, it's not worth doing, maybe, and or how can I make gain if it's not challenging. TM is great because it's simple to do. You just have to carve the time and you get results. So I think that's why I think that's why it catches on. Also, you know, the fact that Bob Roth who you've referenced a couple times is available

to T. You know, he's he works for the David Lyd Foundation. I've never actually met him, but you have a great guest. I'll bring him on for sure. I want to reach out to him. He seems like such an interesting guy, but he makes himself available as far as I understand it to pretty prominent folks to teach them one-on-one. And I think that I think that has made a big difference. He does and his team will, but I mean they're not a leadist in that I've walked into that office and Bob is teaching somebody for free who's the furthest thing from famous. Like the whole point of the David Lynch Foundation is, I mean he'll tell you the numbers. Again, again I'm not I'm the furthest thing from a spokesman for any of it

They I thought hundreds and hundreds of thousands of inner city kids to meditate and veterans who have post you know Post-traumatic syndrome to to meditate. Yeah, and high schools for sure sure you know switching gears just slightly You you've you've mentioned the name Tony Robbins a couple times. Yes. And I know you're producing you're involved in producing a new documentary that's going to come out about him. Yeah, Dave and I are executive producers of the documentary. Joe Burlinger who's a great documentary and you know one of the legendary documentaries. He made some kind of monster and he made the

Paradise Lost movies, which is a incredibly important film that were really important in figuring out who was really innocent and who's really the West Memphis 3. guilty in the West Memphis 3 murders. Burlinger made the film. David and I just introduced him to Tony. So what is your view? Because you have established yourself in the course of this interview, I think, in a sort of rock solid way as a skeptical dude.

What is your view of Tony Robbins? I mean, I actually, I will admit again, as I feel like I'm having to admit this a lot in this interview, that he's not somebody about whom I have a knack in psychopedic, inside in psychopedic knowledge, but I know he does have his critics. So what is your view of him? Well, we all have our critics.

And... That's true. But I think Tony has fewer and fewer critics, is your view of him we all have our critics uh... and uh... but i but i think um... tony has fewer and fewer quirk critics now and i think we if you see burlingers uh... movie you'll get a are really clear sense of what it is that uh... tony romans does again i'm not a spokesman to tony but i i'm a huge fan the walking on coals thing yet well the the walking on calls thing to me is met a

metaphor and he talks about it as metaphor in his events but that's the performance piece of what he does um... what works about what tony romans talks about is that's a, to me, he found a way to codify some questions that are really important.

I think the easiest way, if you watch his TED Talk, he gave a TED Talk with Al Gore in the audience a few years ago. It's like one of the most popular TED talks. If you got, maybe you guys will link to it in the show notes or something, but it'll give you a really clear sense of what it is that he's interested in, which is like human beings and their why, their reason for doing the things that they do, and how he can help you figure out whether you're doing things just reactively or whether you're doing things for an actual reason.

And I can tell you there are a few different times in my life where I read something that Tony said, or I listened to something, and I was able to translate into language that made sense for me and help me to get to the next level with something. Sounds like it's been- I mean, I can give you specific little things. There are tiny things.

Dave and I were trying to get a movie made called Solitary Man, which was very difficult to do. It was a small independent movie. We had Michael Douglas wanting to do it and play the lead. I'd written it, took me four years to write it, Dave and I were going to direct it together. And we had this conversation with some agents who said, oh, you'll never be able to raise the money for this. And they gave us all these technical reasons why. And I happen to be able to raise the money for this. And they gave us all these technical reasons why. And I happen to be listening to a thing where Tony talked about the danger of listening

people who hold themselves out as experts or smarter than you in an area. If it's possible that you're smart enough to do the research yourself, read up on the thing, and figure out sort of deconstruct their language and figure out how to tell the truth or not. So I was like, I can do that. And so I started reading a little bit more about how far and sales were done. And he talks about ways to sort of remind yourself to take action every day. So I made myself a pair of Nike ID shoes that had the word solitary on them written a hundred times.

And I wore them every day until I got the movie Greenlit. And I would look at the shoes and they would remind me to do something to move solitary man forward. And I called these agents one day and I said, okay, instead of you guys having those conversations, Dave and I are going to go have them set us up with the meetings with these foreign sales people and they were like, they're bankers, you won't know how to talk to them. And I said, no, I'm not going to talk to them. Put me in the room with them. I'll get the money, we'll go make the movie. Within a week of making that call, we had the money because they realized we were going to go do it. Yes, it was hard what they had to do, but rather than being barrisped

by having us do it, they had to go out and figure out how to do it. And that was a direct result of like reading three things that the guy had said. Now, I don't, I'm not a fan of the walking on coal idea because I think it's possible people miss the metaphor and think it's actually dangerous. But I think that he's helped a lot of people, and I think that the work has helped me. And I'm looking forward to watching the movie. The movie was the best reviewed thing of our career. It was Roger Ebert's year-end best list,

The New York Times year-end best list. It was a small movie and art movie, like I said. But we knew that it was really an important thing to get made and this really helped us do it. We only have a couple minutes left in the remaining minutes. Are there any other things that you wish I had asked, any other projects you want to borrow? The only other thing I would say is that if people like this kind of conversation, I host

a podcast called The Moment, where I have conversations with people that are similar to this about the inflection points, what I call the inflection points in their lives, moments where everything was kind of in the balance. So I'll talk to someone like Seth Meyers about what it feels like to be on the cover of time and newsweek, you know, as like Bruce Springsteen before him, or I'll talk to Mario Batale about the night he had an aneurysm and what that changed. And so I'll talk to authors that I love, musicians, and really drill down about how they found the best version of themselves.

So it's also in the iTunes store. That sounds awesome, I'm going to subscribe. One last question. I was reading something you wrote the other day about the things that you do to kind of put yourself in the zone. And we have a lot of things in common because you listed exercise, you listed meditation, but the other thing you mentioned, which is a little obscure and some of our listeners or viewers might not know it, is you mentioned a band called The Hold Study. Oh yeah. Oh, that's the episode of my podcast you should start with is the episode. Craig Finn, Craig and Ted. I got both of them in there. Ted Cooler. So I did a long since deceased slash

euthanized show about Indy Rock many years ago. And it was called Amplified. And I had them on and they're incredibly nice guys. And they're also great bands. So what's your favorite hold steady song that we should play out to show with? Hoodrat. Hoodrat, I mean really probably sequestered in Memphis, but Hoodrat friend. Hoodrat friend because people don't know that song. It's a great song. And it's a great one. I mean, not going to say how a resurrection really feels, but what's yours?

The swish. Right, sure. Well, second song in the first album. Phenomenal Phenomenal song. Almost killed me, man. The hold steady. Almost killed me man the whole steady almost killed me My friend my new friend. Thank you very much for doing this. You were phenomenal guests What a pleasure great to talk to you about this and I'm really glad you're doing this research tell me what you find This is what I find out Everybody watch billions everybody check out the moment. Thank you again Brian. Appreciate it

moment. Thank you again Brian. Appreciate it. Okay, so that was Brian Coffman. Well, I think I'm gonna make one of my new friends. That guy's kind of awesome. I want to add, and I know, sorry, this is self-promotional, so excuse me, but I want this podcast to live for a long time and part of that is to is to beg you to subscribe to it to rate it preferably five stars I don't want to you know work the rest here but five stars be nice and to write a review it can be just a short little review anything but all that really helps us stay stay alive which we want to do because we want to be bringing you this podcast for a long time. Thanks very much for listening. We'll be back soon with a new one.

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