The Joe Rogan Experience - #405 - Steven Pressfield, Aubrey Marcus

Episode Date: October 15, 2013

Steven Pressfield is an author of fiction, non-fiction, and screenplays, known for books such as "The War of Art" and "The Legend of Bagger Vance" Aubrey Marcus is writer, entrepreneur, and adventurer. Some of his writings and experiences can be found on his website, WarriorPoet.us, as well as links to his latest venture, Onnit Labs.

I like doing it this way. We should do it this way more often, where we get the commercials out of the way before the guests arrive. Otherwise, it's annoying. We've already been busy without you people, ladies and gentlemen. We're here. We're live. Aubrey Marcus is here. Oh, look at that. That's my laptop. Old school. Making noise. Again, not old that. That's my laptop. Old school. Making noise. Again, not old school. It's this week. I've done it three times. Aubrey Marcus is here, my brother.

And Mr. Pressfield. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for being here. This was very exciting for me. We've tried to do this a few times. I have been giving out your book for years. I found, you know that sexy beast John Mayer? You know who that singer is? You know who that guy is? John Mayer? Mayer? Whatever the fuck his name is. Handsome bastard. I found, you know that sexy beast John Mayer, you know who that singer is? You know who that guy is? John Mayer? Mayer, whatever the fuck his name is. Handsome bastard. I was reading his Twitter

and he said a long time ago something about if you're really into for creative types, there's a great book called The War of Art. And then somebody else brought it up too. So I said, alright, let me check out this book and see what the fuck is going on. And it's so good, I bought a stack of them and I kept it in my office and when podcast

guests would come over i would go community lazy bitch take this and go right go get something done man get something done make it happen and the the inspiration of that book it it really works man your book like it inspires me to get more shit done like you you have unwittingly or wittingly, knowingly or unknowingly, you've like set an avalanche of creativity loose with your book. Well, like I say, I brought you a half a dozen of these jokes so you can give them out to deserving, worthy recipients. I was one of those recipients from the early days. Yeah, I gave Aubrey one.

Pre-Honit days. Yeah, it was before Honit I gave Aubrey one. Coincidence? I don't know, man. How, it was before on it I gave Aubrey one. Coincidence? I don't know, man. How long ago was that? That was about three years ago. Yeah. Yeah, I gave it to every comedian I know that doesn't write new jokes.

Everyone that I know. I bought it for my family for Christmas after you gave it to me last Christmas. Well, you know what? It's applicable even to to non artists. I think it's, it's, there's a lot of lessons in that about what you talk about. The, the, the term resistance is a great way of describing it because it sort of names this fog that a lot of people have gone through this, this weird thing that people have where sometimes I'll wake up in the morning and I'll just, I'll get online and then I'll say, well, what do I have to do today?

I've got to work out eventually. So from between now and when I work out, what should I do? Should I go watch TV? I know the remote is right there, and I know I really should get something done. I should just sit in my fucking office, close the door, and start writing. But there's this weird thing that happens

where all these other options come up, and it's just so easy to just fuck off. Let me ask you, Joe, because I don't really know about how comedians work. What is the thing that resistance stops you from doing? Writing jokes, sitting down and writing jokes? I would say writing material is the big one because it doesn't stop you from performing. Performing is really fun. Performing as a stand-up is something that we all look forward to,

and it's a great exchange with the audience. This is a great time. So that's not something that anybody resists, but they do resist the writing, the solitary sitting by yourself with your thoughts, the going over the ideas and trying to make them work and trying to restructure stuff to make it quicker or have more impact. You know, sometimes you have to, sometimes you go over a bit and you'll practice it on stage

and you'll try to work it out on stage and you'll eventually get there. But really what you need to do is do the real work. Sit by yourself in front of a computer or a notepad, whatever you prefer, and actually write. You know, it's interesting to me as just an audience member, because when you watch a comic that's really rolling, you figure they're just winging it. It's just coming out of them, you know, on the moment. But it's not true, is it? I mean, it's really hard work behind the scenes doing it. There's actually both.

There's definitely a lot of hard work behind the scenes, but there's also a lot of winging it. And when you get good at winging it, it sort of comes from already having put in the work and also having your mind free. If your mind is troubled, that's another thing that I found as I matured as a man, especially over the last 10, 15 years, I realized the less clutter I have in my life,

the better my mind works. Like there's a, it's a very valuable thing to keep your mind free of bullshit. So whether it's people or things you do that you don't like that you do or habits that you can't break, if you can get rid of those, your whole thing will work better. Like your mind will actually function better.

It'll function without the regret of not being able to take care of whatever it is, whether it's a gambling issue. I think I've heard you describe, too, when you're in the zone and doing your best comedy, it's like the comedy goes through you. Yes. You're just a passenger. And that's very much how you describe the muse in many of your books. Yeah, that's a very important. Stepping outside of the, getting out of the way, basically. Yeah, that's a very important thing that you brought up in that book. And you said it in

sort of a matter-of-fact way about what's this ethereal, sort of whimsical topic, the topic of a muse. But my best stuff, I have no idea where it came from. Everything that I've ever written, every time I've ever been on stage, at my best, I'm like a passenger. It's like the muse takes you over when you're actually on stage. Do you find, Joe, over time, when you look back on what you did, a set here, a set a year ago, that you're discovering who you are as you go along? Yeah, sort of. And sometimes I'm like, where the fuck is that even coming from? There's definitely a where did that come from element that can creep in.

But yeah, pay attention. But a lot of comedians don't like to listen to themselves, me included. Don't like to. But that's also part of the job, though. You feel embarrassed when you see your stuff? It's weird. First of all, you're weird if you like it. You're some weirdo listening to yourself.

Some guy gets off on hearing his own voice. Yeah, I'm awesome. And then it's also, if you're self-critical, which I'm very self-critical, it can be agonizing. There's parts of it that you don't like that just drive you fucking crazy. But it's a good way for creative, for structuring acts, it's a really good way to realize what bits are working and what bits aren't working.

It's to listen to them without having to do them so you can actually hear them and hear them take place in front of an audience. It's actually an invaluable resource that a lot of comedians don't take advantage of for just the reasons I stated. They get embarrassed or they get weirded out. But there's that thing that you talked about in your book. It's the muse. And the muse exists on stage. The muse exists in front of your keyboard

or notepad or whatever. The muse is some real shit, whatever it is. Well, I'm from the school of it being, of trying to keep it, trying to demystify it, it is. Well, I'm from the school of it being, of trying to keep it, trying to demystify it, you know? And because it is as everyday as where do you get an idea from? You know, when you're in the shower, you're driving on the freeway, where does it come from? And the point is, you know, to just get out of the way and let those things come. Yeah. And not forget them when they do come. Well, what was interesting about the way you wrote about it as well is it was very easily digestible to people because there's some people that talk about the muse

and I just want to smack them. I just want to throw them off cliffs. Just shut up. You're killing me with your nonsense talk. Because there's people that, obviously I'm joking, but there's people that go so far into the whimsical that it becomes this self-indulgent, artistic expression dance. You know, it's like their whole thing about the muse. She comes to me in the night.

I leave the window open. Shall she grace me with her presence? In front of my keyboard, I await her arrival. Shut the fuck up. You know, Jesus Christ. But what you were being honest about is I believe a psychological or a mental state that you're in when creativity, whatever that is, works at its best. And by putting it in your no nonsense terms and putting it in this really like very very honest term like the way you the way you are honest uh description the way you describe it is that's what it is like he nailed it and i think

that's what john mayer that's how you say it mayor that's what john mayer saw all of a sudden expert well you like him are dreamy so you might as well be. Oh, shots, Joe. So, you know, whatever it is that creative people, when they read your book, they go, that's it. This guy nailed it. You know, that's very important. What you did was very awesome. I haven't even read your fiction. I've been privileged to watch some of your movies

that people have turned into your fiction, but I'm just a big fan of your nonfiction. I'm going to have to start reading your fiction now. Well, I brought a couple here. What do you got there? I think that you'll like these. One is Gates of Fire and the other is Tides of War. That sounds like some manly shit. Yeah, I read Tides of War.

Dun, dun, dun. What is it about? Yeah. What is it about? Gates of Fire is about the Battle of Thermopylae. It's not 300. It's not that movie. Right.

But it's like a good version of that. Oh, okay. And Tides of War is also set in that era. It's a different story about them. Alcibiades, Socrates, a bunch of really cool, powerful figures from history. It sounds daunting, Joe, but it's not. No, it sounds awesome. I'm a huge fan of history over the last few years especially,

but I'm a big fan of history podcasts now. And we had Greg Proops here yesterday that schooled us on Columbus. Proops is a huge history buff, especially when it comes to Columbus. And he's a brilliant guy, so he's rattling off the history of what an asshole Columbus was. It's really embarrassing that there's still a Columbus Day. Who knew? I didn't know. What a bad guy. He was really a bad guy.

But I'm a huge, huge fan of that stuff. It's so fascinating to me that it was only a few hundred years ago that people were living this outrageously. Yeah. And you've got to read some more of his nonfiction, too. I just finished The Authentic Swing. Really cool book, especially for writers, I think, because it really goes through his process

of writing The Legend of Bagger Vance and talking about that. Really cool to see you kind of refine some of those same concepts. And for me, as you were talking about the muse and getting really ethereal, for me, one thing that you kind of drove home here is that the muse can be that higher part of ourself that we're just tapping into. And for me, that's been one of the key things in my life is finding the ways to tap into that.

And I have a bunch of tricks and tools like crazy psychedelic medicine in the jungles of South America, things like that that help me get there. But really, the muse can be finding that highest part of yourself, that part of yourself that's tapped into everything else around you and that kind of quantum soup, as you call it, the magic, the source of the universe itself. And I thought that was a really kind of cool way to draw that in. Well, maybe we'll get Joe to read that and they'll still get it. I'm sure he will.

Yeah, I would love to. The idea of getting out of your own way, that's a big one. How did you figure that out? I mean, probably the same way you did. I think it's anybody that's trying to do anything in art or filmmaking, painting, whatever it is, or sports, or golf particularly. You find that the tendency is to try too hard, right? You're so – you want it so bad. You don't want to screw up.

You want to get it right. You want to not embarrass yourself. Right. And so you wind up trying, trying, trying so hard that nothing comes. And finally, like over time, I'm sure this is the same for everybody, you kind of say to yourself, man, I just have to lighten up a little bit because when good things happen is when I'm not trying so hard. And in many ways, I think that's the hardest thing of all. I mean, Aubrey, what you're saying about being in the jungle, you know, psychedelic jungle, what that's really all about is not trying. It's like the hardest thing in the world is to say, somebody says to you, relax, right?

Or be yourself. Just be yourself, Joe. You know? I mean – and yet I think as we become more professional and better at what we're doing, when somebody says to you, be yourself, you can. You can – you know, you're not burdened by these false selves and these things that you think you ought to be or what you ought to say or how you ought to look or what you ought to be, you've kind of gotten rid of those, you know, over time, deliberately, very deliberately. And I certainly have, you know, I mean, I've very deliberately tried, you know, when I feel myself going that way to pull back and let go. And I think in many ways that's what any artist does as they become a professional at what they do.

They learn to kind of get out of their own way. And it's the hardest thing of all, I think. And the people, we talk about resistance or the way people screw themselves up, right? That's how they screw themselves up is they're getting in their own way, right? They're listening to their own bullshit. They're believing it, and they're blocked from whatever they're trying to do. I'm sure that's with comics, right? When they get on stage and they bomb, right?

That's what's happening. Yeah, that definitely is a big part of it. What I think you're doing that I think is really cool is that by living your life and figuring things out and then documenting and sharing them, sharing them like in a really honest way, we are all providing together what's basically a direction manual on how to live your life and avoid a lot of bullshit that most people get involved with. This is the stuff they don't teach you in school. Exactly. Because they don't know it. That's what we're trying to do now. The real problem is the human body and the human mind is probably the most complicated vehicle that the world has ever seen.

Forget about all the rocket ships and all the different things that you have to go through years and years of school before they let you fuck with. Whether it's F-'s fa18 fighter jets or helicopters there's i watched a friend get his pilot's license just studying all aerodynamics and all these different things you have to know to take the test and wins and you don't have to do shit to be a person you're just a person i mean it's way crazier to operate this thing i mean it has emotions attached to it it can make other people with its penis, which it likes rubbing. This is ridiculous. It's a ridiculous

animal. And it's a ridiculous sort of a thing to try to manage with no help. And by you writing this book and people sharing their own personal experiences, and that's one of the things that young men appreciate the most about old men is an old man who will tell you what he did wrong.

Like when I meet young kids, I'm always like, dude, listen to me. I'm not going to bullshit you, but don't do that. Whatever you do, don't do this one because that one's stupid. And, of course, nobody listens. People do. But it is that old expression that a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Right. A fool makes his own.

Makes his own, yeah. I thought one of the concepts that you brought up that I really like as well is that, you know, it's not so much learning new things, it's remembering what we've decided to forget upon, you know, upon birth. You know, you come from, if you have that kind of paradigm of belief, I don't even think you need it, though. So let's say you come from source, some kind of near-perfect knowledge, and then you're born, and through whatever reason you decide, all right, I'm going to forget the rules of this game. And Alan Watts talks about it in a really interesting way of, you know, if you did have omnipotence, what would become interesting? Well, interesting would be to figure it out all over again, because any known future

is a past. You know, if it's a perfectly known future it's already happened it's happened in your mind it's happened there so you make this pact to forget and you forget everything upon birth and then as you go through life you try to remember again as much as you can by tapping into that eternal part of ourselves and that's a little bit i might have gone a little a little astray with what you're saying, but there's a lot of that that you talk about. No, you haven't at all. With the authentic swing. It sounds airy-fairy, but it isn't. I mean, there's the various myths.

You know, this thing on our upper lip, this little indentation, where does that come from? The myth is that before birth we knew everything, and an angel just before we were born touched us right there, and nothing came out again. Or another myth. Makes sense. That's what we call an angel. We're a bunch of self-hating assholes.

In the Greek world, there's a thing that when you had to cross into the underworld, you had to cross the river that the ferryman took you across. And when you were born again, you had to drink of the river, the river Lethe, L-E-T-H-E. And from that, where lethargy, the word, comes from, as soon as you drank of that, you forgot everything. It was like men in black when they flashed a little thing in front of your eyes, you know? Well, that's probably analogous to psychedelic experiences because certain psychedelics, especially DMT,

one of the aspects of it is that your memory of it goes away almost instantly. You have this incredible trip, and then trying to remember it is like really difficult. And one of the ways you remember it is actually you remember the way you described it before. You don't necessarily even remember the experience itself, which is one of the most incredible experiences of your life. But there's some mechanism that's erasing that memory in the human mind. It's really interesting, Joe. It's the same one that works on dreams. Yeah, dreams.

You forget dreams like that, right? And there's a way to help retain some of that. One of the things that we sell is a supplement called AlphaBrain. It's a nootropic, and nootropics are essentially vitamins and nutrients that have been shown to have a positive benefit on cognitive function. And this AlphaBrain stuff, one of the things that it works great on is lucid dreaming. They found that people that are practitioners of lucid dreaming, this interesting combination of nutrients. Which means what? You can control your dream as it's happening? Yeah, apparently they say that what they can do, that lucid dreamers

say that what they can do is when they get in a dream, then it's like the people that are really good at it, they're basically in a movie. They can fly, they're one of the Avengers, they're basically in a movie. They can fly. They're one of the Avengers. They're fighting off aliens. They control the entire show. It sounds amazing. It seems like something I should probably look into. But for whatever reason, I haven't been drawn to it.

Yeah, there's definitely resistance on that. Because it's a really fascinating idea. I've had lucid dreams. And the ones that I had once I started fucking around with nootropics they got a lot stronger um choline there's which is one of the um ingredients and uh alpha brain and one of one of the big uh nootropics that seems to have a of an effect as does a paracetam and as i say paracetam and a lot of those are still working on the acetylcholine mechanism, which is kind of controls the REM state and that's your dream state. So, wow. You guys are into this deeply, huh? Yeah. It has an effect.

We like messing with our minds in a healthy way. Well, once you find out that there's stuff that actually allows you to think a little crisper, you know, I started looking into it many years back because, um, I read about Bill Romanowski, who's a football player. Right. Who's getting a lot of concussions, obviously, when he's playing football and he's having issues afterwards. And he developed this supplement called Neuro One. And that's his supplement. It's added to water and it's, you know, this interesting mixture of things.

And I took it. I was like, wow, this is kind of crazy. Like this is really having some sort of an effect. wow, this is kind of crazy. Like this is really having some sort of an effect. But the point being that that's the only thing that I've ever found that can counteract that sort of legendary thing of erasing the memory of the fantastic event because that's a theme. The erasing the memory of the fantastic event,

the erasing the memory of the brilliant knowledge by the angels, you knew everything. When you're on DMT, you know everything. You figured it all out. It's you've you know everything you figured it all out it's you've got it i got it i got it i got it you sure you got it i got it dude i got it whoo let me back down to earth i swear to god i'm a different person i get it but that that goes and it all goes away yeah and it seems like this touch of the the lip and the drinking of the water it's almost almost like they're trying to mythologize this chemical process of the mind. I think Aldous Huxley did a really good job explaining what's going on. We have this cognitive filter that decides what is useful to not get eaten by tigers

and to procreate the species. And it's like this gate. He calls it the doors of perception or cognitive filter. And it's this gate, and it only lets in what is best for the animal to survive. And so anything else outside of that, you know, the brain says, ah, we don't need this, get rid of this, get, you know, deprioritize this because this isn't important. And so what psychedelics do, what dreams do is they open up the walls of this filter. You know, you look at the mechanism of action of something like psilocybin, it's not adding something to your brain it's actually shutting down certain parts shutting

down the default mode network it's called which is one of the filtering devices in the brain so just more comes in and if you let more in more of that stuff from the beyond the quantum soup as you say you let more of that in well you can get a little bit closer that's because you guys are shutting off your brain like a bunch of fucking morons. What you're doing is you're still listening over there. You're taking this fucking mushroom and shuts your brain off and you think that's good. You think that's a good thing. Well, that's what the science is saying.

What do you think, Aubrey, about the idea or the theory that when we're children, when we're infants, we're seeing all that. It's like an acid. If you look in a kid's eyes, right, they're not the same as our eyes. When they're looking at the room, God knows what they're seeing, but it's not what we're seeing. And the process of growing a little bit older is a kind of a throttling of that aperture, right? A closing of that aperture. We're building the walls every year that we live. We build more and more filters, more and more walls.

And we accelerate whatever we do. We're trying to push for a promotion at work, so we're putting in extra hours, and I've got to bring home some of my projects, and your kids are growing older, and they're in daycare, and you don't see them. But eventually we're going to get that vacation house, and then everything's going to come together.

And we complicate our lives deeper and deeper and deeper as we get older, almost as if to avoid silence. You know, we claim to all be looking for it, but we're just fucking avoiding it at all costs. You feel so much lighter after like a flotation tank experience. Yeah. It's just like you can peel off some of these layers and recover just a fragment of those child's eyes, that kind of lighthearted sense of the soul. In a way, to me, this is sort of what producing art is about. You know, you sit, well, like, for instance, these two books that I'm talking about here, Gates of Fire and Tides of War. At some point, I, it's a long story, but I had to come up with an idea for a book.

And so I wrote Gates of Fire, which was about ancient Greece. And next thing I knew, I had done five books about ancient Greece. I had never in my life thought about that. I had no, it wasn't like I was obsessed with it or anything. I didn't know anything about it, but something sort of pulled me into it and kept me going. So I think in a way that's the, if you're painting or you're making a film, you're discovering what you already know, right? And it's like it was in you, but you didn't know it was in you. And you don't know it's in you until you see it on the page or it's on a song or something

like that. And what's kind of weird to me here, I've written like whatever, five or six books about ancient Greece, but yet I'm not remotely interested in ancient Rome. I just don't give a shit. You know, it's not. So why? Is it a previous life? What is it? Some people love the Civil War. They love, you know, ancient Ireland, whatever.

Almost all. Nobody wants to play the North in the Civil War reenact, you know, ancient Ireland, whatever. Almost all. Nobody wants to play the North in the Civil War reenactments. They're always playing the South. But it's like, why are we drawn to whatever it is we're drawn? There's a reason. It's not just nothing. Yeah.

I don't know about that. An incredible combination of your genetics, your life experiences, your atmosphere, your personal experiences that you've sort of developed your personality around. There's so many different variables that could lead you to be really, like, I love werewolves. What the fuck is that all about? Yeah, what is that about? Yeah, I got a four-foot-tall werewolf in my lobby. It doesn't make any sense. Like, what's wrong with me? I don't know.

I don't give a shit about the mummy. I'm not scared of Frankenstein. It's just a guy who came back to life. And what's even crazier about that, Joe, is that there is no such thing as a werewolf. Exactly. It's so stupid. So it's not like I could see being obsessed with wolves, but werewolves? So that tells me that on some level there is such a thing as a werewolf. Really?

It tells me I'm a retard. You're not alone because there are a lot of people watching werewolf. At least some archetype that's represented by the werewolf. Right. You know, some itch that that's scratching. Yes. It's a deeper, you know, well... I think there's also, we know that humans vary. We vary radically. We vary in our own lives. We're not like beetles, where we essentially move the same way. There's no explosive weird actions. Humans are constantly varying, varying whether or not you're enjoying your interactions with other people or in pain because of them, varying whether or not you're in ecstasy because of your movements or just terribly like stressed out and stuck in traffic and coming from a job that sucks to a marriage that's fucking poisoning you there's the variations are massive so because of that the possibilities of each individual interaction that you have with people

is crazy so you could run into someone that feels like a wild animal and you know that that's a part of people and you know that you vary. And that if someone threatens your children or something, shit does come out of you that's so primal that it doesn't even have a language attached to it. The movements have nothing to do with morality or ethics or law. They have to do with primal DNA seeking to stay around, seeking to stay alive.

And that's a wolf. That's a wolf. That's a wolf. That's what a wolf is. I mean, a wolf is primal. If you've ever had an interaction with an animal, a real interaction, even if it's a fucking squirrel that wants to kick your ass, it's scary as shit.

Because we were talking yesterday about baboons and about how evil baboons are. And Greg Proops is saying that they'll rush women in Africa, where they're local, and they'll rush women at the grocery store and just fucking steal their shit and look at them and like, you're looking at a monster. And just because it

hasn't decided to kill you and eat you, doesn't mean it's because it can't. It certainly can. It's much stronger than you. It has a face of a dog. It's got a brain of a monkey. And it's stealing your groceries. That's a werewolf. That's this thing of having

this interaction with something that has no law to it. And that it comes out of a person. I've seen that anthropomorphic side of a thing. We have this idea that the wolves are clever like a person as well because wolves are really fucking smart. And they do a lot of creepy shit.

Like, they set up people. Like, one wolf will come out and actually walk with a fake limp so that it can, like, get other people or predators close to it. Yeah, they're creepers, man. They're really smart. So you're a student of this stuff, Joe. Of wolves, yeah. Wolves, yeah. I'm fascinated by anything that can kill me.

Have you ever done any vivid dreaming on the subject of wolves? Well, I've had some nightmares. Yeah, definitely. I had one really weird dream that wasn't a nightmare. A wolf and a gorilla, right? Yeah, the werewolf and a gorilla were having sex, and I was trying to get out of the room before anybody noticed, and I was creeping around the edge of the walls really slowly.

And then someone actually sent me a wolf and a gorilla having sex. They put it together in this structure. But the weirdest dream that I ever had, it was, I don't know if I was a wolf or some sort of an animal, but there was some sort of another animal next to me. It's weird to try to remember exactly what it looked like. It was like something canine, something like canine, not a cat.

And we're walking through this rainforest and water's dripping everywhere and water's like hitting my nose and I can smell shit that I have never smelled before. And I can smell fear. I can smell this deer and the deer hears... Sounds like Game of Thrones. The deer hears a stick snap,

and the deer's fear comes out like a puff of mist, and then I wake up. It's a weird dream. It happened a couple of times where I had this glimpse of an animal stalking things and smelling things, but it's most likely just my imagination with all the things that I've read about dogs. Brandon Stark. I wonder,

I wonder if there's a like a part of us that's kind of repressed in the society we live in now, you know, like we have to keep a good amount, you know, there's a huge part of us perhaps that we're keeping under wraps and saying, no, no, no, you can't come out and play. You can't come out and play that kind of savage beast of the animal that's inside of us that not many of us get to explore at all or release at all you know back many years ago as you know in these tales there was opportunity for almost every adult male to enter this hand-to-hand combat where you could unleash this whatever beast was inside of you you got to let it out and perhaps they didn't really care that much about werewolves at that point because

they got to itch that scratch directly the sword so do you think that there's something you know if you're going to diagnose the the male species in particular and then probably another one for the female that's kind of we're struggling with because we don't have that outlet in our society where absolutely i mean i think and that uh i was just i'm just reading a book about the comanches you know and whatever it was 1860 in texas and the incredible horror that these cruelty and and and also incredible endurance clevernessness, cunningness, rapaciousness, you know, that they exhibited. And that's like 150 years ago. It is so far gone, the world that we live, to drive into Santa Monica, get a Carmel Macchiato, you know, come back, whatever you do, right?

And, I mean, I can see just sitting here in this room with you four guys, there's tremendous testosterone hanging around in this room. I feel like I want to put an M4 in everybody's hand and tell you, go out and start killing people. And you'll be not here, of course. But I think it's, and I really think you see this dark side, to me, everywhere. In marriages, in, you know, kids to to parents in the dysfunction of the government look at the government now with this shutdown and all this stuff you can't tell me that that's not some kind of force that found expression a few hundred years ago and doesn't find expression anymore. Right. So, you know, Norman Mailer had this idea years ago that to help stop crime, he had this idea of an adventurer corps. Have you ever heard about this?

One of his deals was, you know, the old windjammer ships that like would require a crew of 150 to go up in the sails and sail around Cape Horn. And it was like, you know, adventure, wild. He had an idea to have like a hundred of these ships and just get young testosterone crazed kids out of the bad environments that they were in and get them, you know, facing real shit out there in the real world. And he thought that, you know, that would be very interesting for them and for everybody. And I think there's a lot to that. Why do people join the Army now? Why do they want to volunteer for Afghanistan?

Because they care about bringing peace or the American way? Well, there's also people don't know what the fuck to do. There's also that it's a job that people can get in places where there's no jobs. It's a guaranteed living. You have family that's been in the military. That's the people that I know that joined the military. It's usually those things. And it's a poor substitute for a rite of passage, too.

Because I have a lot of people that read my books are in the military. They write to me and da-da-da. And I can tell you that they respond to the concept of a code of honor, the concept of the warrior ethos. And in fact, what's frustrating to them about the military, unless they're in really elite units, is that they don't get that. It's just the bullshit of, you know, whatever it is. And they're not called on to really perform at the high, high level that they know they wish they could. And you guys are into that with your supplementation and the stuff that you do. You're trying to get to some level that's, you know, beyond.

Yeah. I think to summarize what we're saying here is that the problem with the world is weak bitches. There's a lot of dudes out there that are weak bitches. And we all could have been a weak bitch or could have been at one point in our lives a weak bitch. We all could have been a weak bitch or could have been at one point in our lives a weak bitch. And that's the lack of discipline, the lack of quality character.

That's the one thing that we find most distasteful in other people. When you see some weaselly guy that's going to sell his friends down the river. I remember I was watching Punk'd once. And we don't have to say anybody's name. But somebody got Punk'd and they sold their friends out to this fake FBI guy. And I watched that, and I go, that guy is a bitch. And to this day, if I ever see that guy, I don't say hi to him. I avoid him.

I'm like, that's a weasley dude. That's a weak bitch. Violated the code of honor. There's no character there. What you're supposed to do, it's a fucking card game, okay? What's the worst thing that's going to happen to you, you dummy? The FBI comes and they, you know, they tell you they're storming, you go, what? I gotta talk to my lawyer. I don't know what the fuck you're saying right now.

I'm talking to my lawyer. Like, I'm done. We're done talking. As soon as you say you're the FBI and you're breaking up a card game, I'm like, what? Yeah, okay. Take care. Good luck with that. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not going to give up my fucking friends like a bitch. But those people that do do that, they're scary. They're creepers.

They're around us all the time. And that comes from a lack of doing the work. It comes from a lack of self-analysis, objective thinking. It comes from a lack of meditation. It comes from a lack of being actually aware of the true nature of your actions, the true nature of your behavior. Let me change the subject slightly, although it's not really changing the subject. But to ask you a question, Joe, why did you start this podcast? And what is your intention, your long-term

intention here? There's zero, zero long-term. And this is one of those things that sort of made itself. We knew of a few friends that had a podcast that they did. My friend Anthony Cumia, who's on the show Opie and Anthony, he has a basement in his house where he set up a full studio with HD professional cameras and a green screen. And he'll put space behind him or New York City behind him. It's amazing. It's really cool, which, by the way, we're going to get one of those things. It's called a TriCaster, and my friend Justin,

who was in the other day, he uses him for the action report. But he did it, and it looked cool. It looked like fun. He would just have a couple of drinks with his buddies and do karaoke while holding a machine gun. He's fucking crazy. So Brian and I started it. It'll be four years ago, December? Yeah, it was.

No, Christmas. That's crazy. Christmas Day. Yeah. Did you have a plan? Did you sit down and say, we want to do this? Nah. Brian's been.

We were looking for something to do for Joe's fans. Because Joe had so many fans, and we would make these videos. And they were nice but they it was so hard to edit all this video and only came out once a month so we were kind of looking for something that so Joe could interact with his fans faster for someone who's on the outside looking at the podcast because you guys are right in it and I've obviously been a part of it I think what what has happened there is Joe is one of the best examples I've ever seen of somebody living his authentic self. Like I have in all of my travels and journeys everywhere, have I ever met a person who I could count on to be 100% Joe fucking Rogan, you know, himself always, you know, at any point

in time. And so I think even without a plan, his authentic self, what he was bringing, what's inside his heart and his spirit was going to play out on this stage regardless. He couldn't help it. He couldn't strategize or plan what was going to be. He could just be himself and do the podcast and then here you go. Here it is. Here's the manifestation. And that in itself was in lieu of a plan. I mean, I see.

I could tell this sort of embarrasses you I mean, I see, I can tell this sort of embarrasses you, Joe, for me to ask you this stuff, but bear with me because it certainly seems, I'm from the outside coming here. It certainly seems like in a way you're, you're a teacher and this environment here has definitely has to do with maleness, right? So it seems to me like I'm the it's asking the question. He was on Oprah, by the way. You know, you're joking about that, but you are. They need it.

Bunch of weak bitches out there. Well, there it is. Toughen up, son. Like Chopper would say, hotten up. So you might not have known that when you and Brian started this, but I think it was kind of oozing out of your pores, you know? It could be. That's why, let me ask you this. Let's put it a different way.

What characteristics do you look for in guests that you invite on to the show? Oh, they're so varied. Funny, either Joey Diaz type dudes who are just funny. You know, I have friends that are just funny. I just want them to be funny. We have just laughs. And then there's other people who are very philosophical. There's people that I don't necessarily even agree with,

but they have a very well thought out opinion, and I like to explore their opinions. What I think happened is because of what I do, because I'm a professional comedian, I'm always looking at things. But it's also that that's who I was anyway. And it's just I found a good job for trying to analyze. When I was a young boy, my parents split up when I was about five years old. And it was a really bad breakup with a lot of domestic violence. And if I had to pinpoint a moment, that part of my life made me go, you know what?

I have a feeling that I've just been shit out into this world that no one knows how the fuck anything works. And everybody's just bumping into walls. And as a five-year-old, I remember looking around because I just started going to Catholic school, which I realized was utter horse shit. I'm like, oh, great. Religion's not real either. And then my family like, oh, great, religion's not real either. And then my family's not real. Religion's not real. So being like five, six years old,

I think it made me just start thinking about things constantly. My brain is never rested. It's very rare that I can just chill out. Even when I'm watching something, I'll have two things going on in the background. I'll start playing games with myself in the back of my mind it's like it's a weird thing like I have there's too many things going on in my head at all the time so because of that like the best way to exercise that is like to find

something like a podcast where you can have a conversation with people for three hours and just sit down and shoot the shit about things and then explore subjects, and no one looks at their phone. No one takes any emails. That's a rare thing in this society today. And to be able to do that and to have that sort of an environment, for me, is perfect. So it's being a student as well as being a teacher in a way.

It's your learning. Being constantly fascinated. And I think if you're paying attention, how can you not be constantly fascinated? The world is just every day there's a river of slippery salmon of knowledge. And you can't even hold on to it all. It's just too much is coming. There's just too much going on right now. And you look at the scientific, just on the side of astronomy, just the new discoveries that they're showing every day where they just found a new planet that's floating in the middle of nowhere with no galaxy.

It's just floating around. They're like, shit, this planet doesn't even have a solar system. It's just fucking flying through the universe. There's all kinds of stuff that could fill your day every day with information. And so more than a teacher, what I'm is like a portal. I'm a portal. Like I'm out there looking for it, but it's not me. It's me going, hey, look, do you see that? Holy shit.

And then somebody else goes, do you see that? And I go, fuck. You know, it's a portal thing. And having a voice, like having a podcast, it allows people to all, like, sink in. And your fascination, what you describe, is key. Because that enthusiasm that you bring to this is really important. There's so many people who are no longer enthusiastic about anything. The world does no longer hold wonder and awe and fascination.

How is that possible? Who are these people? Who are these people? Where are their socks? Do they have one sock on? They just get numb. You know, you get numb by the world. You look at the world as this dark, gray place, and it kind of beats on them,

and it just wears them down until they can't see that anymore. And then, you know, seeing that in someone that they look up to, like, whoa, Joe is really fascinated by this. Maybe I think you can kind of inspire that back in there. And you keep that going just from your natural self, but you also work at it too, your meditation, your flotation, different things that kind of peel off the weights that can kind of hold you down and keep those perceptions there, keep that fascination alive.

And you never win. You never win. It's a swim. It's not a climb. You don't get to the top of the mountain and plant the flag. No, you keep your head above water and you keep moving, bitch. And you have to because if you stop, you're going to drown. And that's just a fact. No matter who you are, no matter what you do, if you stop working on everything, if you stop being aware, if you stop being present, it'll all go away

and you'll be a shithead again. I think we all battle with finding our optimum self. And I think for me, having things like the podcast, having things like stand-up comedy, having things like martial arts, they've all been these avenues where I can figure out how to channel my energy to be my optimum self. There's a quote that I read when I was a young boy when I was doing Taekwondo. They had a little pamphlet they gave out at the school. I got really lucky, and I went to this J. Kim Taekwondo Institute in Boston, which is one of the best Taekwondo schools nationwide ever.

It was a really amazing school because this one guy who was the main instructor, he was this brilliant guy, Jae-hun Kim. And that's where I got my black belt from. And he was a brilliant guy. He had several degrees outside of being a martial arts instructor. He went to Harvard, graduated from Harvard Business School. He was a super smart dude, incredible hard worker. But he broke down martial arts in this pamphlet that they would hand out. I'll never forget reading it. It said that martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential.

And that stuck in my head when I was like 14 or 15, whenever I was. And I've carried that with me my whole life, that quote, because that's what what it is It's something you can plug yourself into to feel like find out what you're capable of and to find out how to optimally be yourself And to do battle with your own resistance on a microcosmic level, you know in this small You're gonna have so many things weighing on you the day before a match all these different voices and doubts and superstitions and fears and things that you can battle and try to overcome so that when when it really matters in life you get these bigger challenges ahead you got practice you know you know how to defeat it you're like oh i've seen that old foe and i slayed him a hundred times yeah well what's great about something like that i think like martial arts is it, is it's a structure. It's an entire culture that has rules, rituals, orders, and a young man or a boy comes into that with just this amorphous energy

exploding out of his ear and his eyeballs and everything, and suddenly he's given a structure. This is how you learn. You start here, learn to do this one move. And then when you've learned that, I'll teach you the next move. And it kind of channels everything. And I think we don't get football team or whatever that is, which is again, a structure. And that's, again, that's why people join the army, I think, because they're young guys, because they're desperate for some kind of a way to channel that into something that means something, that kind of provides significance to something. And I think, like it or not not and most people i would say not we have caveman dna i mean it's just in our system period absolutely you either accept that and manage it or you deny it and go fucking crazy in traffic and wonder why you're screaming and sticking your finger at somebody because their car got in front of your car like you you find yourself lost lost in the wave of

rage that's possible too i've seen i i saw this woman screaming at some woman of some sort of a traffic thing just going i'll never forget her face going fuck you just fuck you i don't know i don't know what i don't know what happened i mean mean – Yeah, we've all seen that. But that fucking blind – when you're just zero and you see that blind rage, it's – Here's the other side of that, at least what I was just saying about a structured thing like learning martial arts is something that an individual can join. And there are others who are also students and there's a teacher who's teaching them and telling them what to do. But the other side of that is art, is trying to produce whatever it is you're trying to produce, a movie, a painting, a book, or something like that. This is where, at least in my opinion, you go as an individual and where there are no rules, where or there are rules but you have to discover

them yourself and so this is what we're talking about before about entering into another dimension of reality or tapping into another dimension of reality which is not which is the dimension of potentiality it's like this podcast existed before you and Brian put it together. It just existed on another level and potentiality and on it and the stuff that you guys do that also existed and or a book that I might write or a movie that somebody might do. And so I think that is a kind of without trying to sound too phony baloney here. It's a warrior pursuit. It's something that taps into that wolf energy or that pure testosterone energy, only it's not channeled in a path that already exists. You, the artist or the comedian or whatever, discover that path one footstep at a time. And you sort of put your foot out and you go wrong. You go into a puddle or you step on a punji stake or something. You go,

well, shit, wait a minute. Over here, this is solid ground. And this got a laugh. This made people, I killed when I did this, right? And so you are kind of in the dark, like somebody moving through the dark, trusting your instincts, trusting whatever little starlight you can see. And when you finally get to the end of that forest and you turn around, you look back at the path you took. For a writer, that's a book. And you look down and you say, where the fuck did that come from? And you realize that that was you all along. But you had no idea when you started. I remember reading that Jackson Brown says that he writes a song to figure out what he thinks about something.

Yeah, but he had sex with Linda Ronstadt, right? Back in the day, he was a stud. I'm only a John Mayer expert. Well, what's wrong with that? That's a very studly thing to do. Very studly. That's what I'm saying. He's not a regular dude singing those beautiful songs up there on that stage.

So anyway. Tired away by magic. You know, I think what you're saying is also like what Michelangelo said about creating sculpture, is that he removes the, he finds the sculpture in the thing. It's not like he makes it. He removes all the stuff that's hiding excellent at something you love. It could be trivial. It could be darts. I don't care. Whatever it is, just be excellent at it. Put yourself into it. And you'll discover something about yourself, whatever it is. You know, a lot of people are, you know, will look to me to see if they can get a job. And my question is always the same. What are you excellent at? Because if they can show me two random things that they're incredible at, they're excellent at,

I know that they've learned to apply their authentic self. Because you can't truly be excellent at anything without tapping into that aspect. Or even less than that, just what do you love? Yeah. What makes you happy? Yeah. What's fun? Well, that's the great Miyamoto Musashi quote.

Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things. That idea that there's something that you tap into and it manifests itself in a number of different ways, in athletics and artistic, whatever it is. But what you're doing is you're tapping into the same thing and that is excellence. You're tapping into the real thing, the way. And then when you're on the path that's going to give you the fruits of your destiny, so to speak, whatever it is that's that channel that's going to bring you to the ultimate higher level. You already have practice being excellent. You know, you know how to do the work. And that's another key thing that I love about that you always go back to is just, you know how to do the work. You know how to take

the initial steps, that one foot in front of the other to get there and to see progress and to apply yourself in that way. Yeah. I'm definitely a believer in just doing the mundane thing. You know, walk into the room, sit down at the keyboard or walk into the dojo, start to do whatever the first thing is. It's the same thing. Yeah. But just something is occurring to me as we're talking here. I might be, I haven't even thought about this in a million years, but you were talking about, Aubrey, about people that don't seem to care or don't have the enthusiasm for something. Wonder and awe in the world, yeah.

I can remember that I used to be, for years I struggled like that, where I was bored with things. I was bored with myself. I was beating my brains out saying, why don't I love something? What is missing? And sort of my conclusion was that I really did have tremendous ambition and tremendous aspiration, but I had buried it under layers of fear, you know, as if if I would ever admit to myself that I wanted to be excellent at something, that that would be more than I could, I could take, failure would be more than I could take. And so when I finally sort of admitted to myself, and actually it's in the authentic swing, I think, or maybe it's not. But when I admitted to myself that I did have ambition, I did want to do something, suddenly everything changed. And then enthusiasm did come.

But it was fear. So I think when we're running into people that are not, don't have enthusiasm, don't have that fire, I don't believe it's not there. I think it's buried under fear. And I think that's why great teachers, coaches, will put a young person in a position where they can exceed their expectations or their belief about themselves, where they thought they couldn't do it, and then the guy kicks them in the ass enough times they actually do it and they go, wow, how did that happen? You know? And then that's the spark that can then burst into flame if it's, if it's guided properly. And I see, I see that everywhere. I'm sorry to say, you know, in this country, it's everywhere. Well, I'm glad that you brought up that it was you at one point and you, you

passed it because one of the really important things about your book, I think is that you, you're really objective, obsessment, assessment of your own life at one point in time when you were like 40 years old, you know, you were talking about this. It was a long time ago. Yeah.

This script that wasn't working. And, you know, you know, you were like, what the fuck am I doing? And then how did you go from that to completely getting it together enough to write these books about getting it together? How did you get it? How'd you go from that to completely getting it together? Enough to write these books about getting it together.

How did you get over that fear? I think at that time, you mean the fear that I was just talking about? Yeah. Well, same thing. Same question. How did you figure it out? I realized that there was something I wanted, that I wanted to be a writer, which I had refused to admit to myself because I was so afraid of failing at it. Then I just sort of said, well, you know, there was a moment, it's actually in the war of art, where I just sort of realized the way you get there is one step at a time, you know, like an alcoholic, you know, one, one day at a time, and that it was a, uh, a process that could be demystified. It wasn't airy fairy waiting for

inspiration. It was just sit the fuck down, put a piece of paper in a typewriter and start, you know, and then do that the next day and do it the next day. And when, and the other aspect for me was I had no choice that anytime I would try to stop and try to sell out, I was like so depressed that I, that, so I just had no choice to just keep going, going, going. But it was before I wrote The War of Art, I probably had been writing for at least 30 years or at least trying to do that. That book came out in about two months, just because it was so clear in my mind that that's what I had been fighting all these years. Did you find that putting it down on paper helped you? Very much, because it became very clear to me.

Like a law almost. helped you? Very much. Cause it became very clear to me. Like a law almost. Yeah. I mean, for me, you know, it's like the way the war of art kind of started for me was that, uh, and I'm sure you guys get this too. It's like friends will come to you and they see that you're getting it to get, you're doing something, you know, and they'll say, you know, I've got a, I've got a business in me or a book in me or a movie in me. And I found myself sitting up with friends, you know, until 2 in the morning kind of psyching them up, saying, you know, you can do it, you know, and explaining what the negative force was of resistance and how it was all bullshit. It was all in your mind. You could overcome it, blah, blah, blah.

And after doing that about 10 times, and, of course, nobody listens to you, finally I just said I had like a two month break. And I just said, I'm going to write this down on paper. And then when somebody comes to me, I'll just say, here, read this. And you know, shut up, you know. So that's sort of how that came out. But it was very clear in my mind from experiencing it and talking about it for years. I don't know if that answers your question. No, I think you're honest with yourself, and anyone who's honest with themselves, after enough information comes in, that's sort of the conclusion they all draw. Like, I'm kind of fucking myself here.

I'm sabotaging myself. I know what I need to do. If I had to give myself advice, what advice would I give? Just do it, bitch. Just get working. You know, do what you got to do. I can't lose the last 10 pounds. Will you please shut the fuck up?

Because that's not true. If you were in a wheelchair from the neck down paralyzed, you're right. You can't lose that. Okay, that's out of your control. But that's not what's going on here. This is weird. Like with this thing is a weird little struggle you got going on. There's people out there that are struggling for real.

And I think in the absence of that, there's something to be said about these hunter-gatherer cultures and the happiness and hunter-gatherer cultures. It's very strange. It's like almost devoid of insanity, almost completely cured of mental health issues. It's really weird. They have alcoholism if alcohol is introduced into their environments. But other than that, when they don't have that, like happy people, Life in the Taiga, did you ever see that documentary? No. It's a Werner Herzog's documentary on these people that live in Siberia. And all these guys do is live off the land. All they do is hunt and fish and

trap. And they're trapping furs. And that's how they buy, like, snowmobiles and, you know, hatchets and shit like that. But the majority of their time is just shooting animals, eating them, fishing, and everybody's happy as fuck. There's a whole village of people that are so happy. They're just smiling and laughing. There's, like, no disputes. Everybody's just working together to try to get meat.

You know, they're showing how to, like, the craftsmanship involved in making these snowshoes and sleds. They make their own skis. I mean, it's really, really interesting because in the absence of that real day-to-day struggle that these people have, we're almost like we're, like, waiting for something to come along and kick us in the ass. It's almost like we only react by nature instead of act in some ways. Well, I'm actually fascinated by that stuff too, Joe. I'm fascinated by tribal cultures. Yeah. But there's no going back to that.

No, no, no, no. At some point, there was an invention happen, and the invention was the individual. At some point, there was an invention happened, and the invention was the individual. And once that was invented, I think the ancient Greeks invented it somewhere around the time of Socrates and before that. And at that point, we no longer had the tribe. We no longer had that wonderful thing enveloping us. But the other, you know, also if you look at Afghanistan, you know, which is a great place for us to study because we see it in the news and we've had seen it, which is like in Pashtunistan, you get kind of pretty much tribal culture the way it was way, way, way back when. And I'm also, like when I was talking about reading about the Comanches

a little while ago, the other thing, one of the things about tribes is they are unbelievably cruel to whoever, if they capture anybody else or if there's anyone who violates the tribe. You know, it's not such an idyllic world when you get into that side of it. Wait a minute. You mean it's not like Avatar? Yeah, that was the side they left out of in Avatar. But it's almost like that's a, it's almost a cheat code to happiness. You know, that kind of simple life where you're doing, you're constantly out there doing. This world where it's, it's just, we don't know what the hell to do.

And we don't have action as this kind of through line in our life of, okay, got to go achieve that next goal, which is meat. That next goal, which is fish. That next goal, which is shelter. It's just this amorphous world and we got to figure it out. And I think one of the things you said is really important is you got to just do the work and then, but at the start, it's always a leap of faith, whatever that is. Like you don't know exactly how it's going to turn out, but you know, you take that first, that first step, you know, and then just trust that if you stay and you show up and you do that every time, you know, then some momentum is going to start going. It's, you know, it's kind of a cliche. It's that old Maslow pyramid, you know, of where the basic needs of hunger or, you know, clothing, da-da-da.

And then when you get to the top, which is where we are, the needs become, you know, because we have grocery stores, you know, there's no bombs going off in the street. So now it becomes self-actualization or asking the questions, you know, who am I? Why am I here? All those tough questions, right? That the tribesmen don't have to ask because they're too busy. Fighting off grizzlies. Right. And to me, this is where something like martial arts or any kind of a discipline or art, period, the production of art, this podcast, your comedy, whatever it is, is – anded from the tribal structure or from any structure

where we're kind of floating in space, you know, like George Clooney and, you know, trying to figure out who, you know, who am I? Why am I here? What do I want? Tough, tough questions, you know? Yeah, very tough questions. Very interesting questions. I think that what you

said is really important, that thing of cheat code, that it's almost like a cheat code to life. I think what's going on is that's how we're designed. We're designed to live that. And the variables that we encounter on a day-to-day basis are so beyond our genetic capabilities. The idea of keeping track of 7 billion people's lives, that's insane. But that's where we're headed. And I feel like in the industrial age, from the creation of the machines to today, we're essentially entering into, slowly but surely, into a completely new dimension of reality. It's like what we've created in just this short amount of time that we've had electricity It's like what we've created in just this short amount of time that we've had electricity is staggeringly crazy.

The idea of the Internet, the idea of computers, big screen TVs, projections, the things that we can do today, Wi-Fi in a plane, insane, insane stuff. And it's just begun. think that what we're facing and what we're going to face over the next 100 years, 200 years is essentially going to be like a new dimension, like some sort of a virtual reality where we exist symbiotically with computers and the internet and with each other. And I think that our puny brains, the three or four or five of us in this room, we're not designed for this new world. Our brains are going to have to catch up just much like the apes who spoke in grunts had to catch up with these clever motherfuckers that figured out how to talk with a slippery tongue and actually say names. I think it's all a part of growth. We're not done. The human race, this is not the finished product. This is one step on a long road, probably an infinite road, and our creations are a part of what's enhancing or changing or altering the world itself.

Well, you were saying, I think you're absolutely right, Joe. You were saying before that we're cavemen. Yeah. It's true because if you think about the history of human beings from the time we were hominids to today, you do that long line, right, And you find that like the last, only the last one-tenth of an inch is when we were civilized. And it's like, you know, 8,000 miles, the rest of it, when we were tribal people. So we come into this world, I believe, with this tribal template in our mind, you know, where it's important to us what our friends think of us.

You know, we act to please others, like in high school where, you know, you have to be in the right clique and wear this and that. And it's only in these last few seconds before midnight that we discover that we're individuals and we're not wired to be individuals. And that's where, to me, resistance and stuff like that comes in. That's what sort of would push us back to being in the tribe, in the mass mind and that kind of thing, as opposed to going forward each morning one step at a time in that dark forest, finding out where we are, what we think, what we believe. I think this is a very important point you said about people not being designed to be individuals. And it's very ironic that the people that live in cities are way lonelier when there's 20 million people around than the people that live in a tribe where there's 20 people around. That's so ironic and so strange, the loss of community. I keep saying with my friends, why don't we just buy houses in the same street? What are we doing?

Why do we live so far from each other? Wouldn't it be cool if you were right there and I could just knock on your door? Why don't we figure that out? But we're so used to this idea of cars driving to homes that no one lives next to their friends anymore. And our sense of community, depending upon where you live,

can get really sketchy. I was talking to my friend jim norton who lives in a giant apartment building in new york city it's fucking huge and he doesn't know anybody there are all these compartments in this giant cement box that he shares with all these people i mean literally if he could walk through a wall he could catch he could touch someone while they're peeing i mean mean, they're right next to his head. Yet he doesn't know that guy at all. That's a weird thing that we've created.

And I don't think we're designed for it. I don't think we're designed for it. But I think there's hope. And the hope is that we're kind of like this meat vehicle with a computer. You know, a meat vehicle with a computer. And then out there somewhere is new source code. And just like the iPhone will just plug in new software, a new operating system, when you plug it back in, I think that's what's going to help us navigate this path. We've got to plug back into the mother code, the source code, and then download new instructions for this meat vehicle that we're all walking around in.

I think you're right. And that's the only way to do it. And so in doing so, you'll have all kinds of ancillary benefits, not only of how to fit into society, but as you said, define your authentic swing, your authentic self, because that's there in that code too. And you just got to find the ways to plug back in. I mean, the flip side to what you were saying, Joe, is like you were saying that, isn't it a shame that we're all isolated? We can't live with our friends. We can't have kind of the tribe. And, you know, there's a big element of truth in that in our heart.

But the flip side of that is, and I feel this a lot, is I want to be alone. You know, when I'm in a group and I got to do shit that other people want to do or I have to conform to what their expectations of me are, fuck that, you know, I don't want that at all. And the other thing is, and I'll just blow it up if I have to, you know, and the other thing that's really a mystery, kind of what you were saying, Aubrey, is nobody's ever figured out why we have this big brain, right? We never, it's not like we incrementally evolved it because we had to learn to throw a stone and then we had to learn to shoot a bow and arrow.

It's like all of a sudden, this is why they have all these crazy sci-fi movies, you know, that talk about, you know, whatever. Aliens, Prometheus. But where did it come from? And I know, I mean, I can feel it in my own head right now. I'm using like 1, 0.00 of what's up there. And I know we all are are so who knows what's out

there we got that we got the hardware we just don't have the software right yeah yeah a lot of the software and we don't i mean it's obvious too that there's ways to maximize this hardware absolutely and we're some of us have grasped certain areas of it some of us have grasped it athletically some of us some of us have grasped it athletically. Some of us, like yourself, have done it creatively. There's all these weird little, like, this guy's figured out this thing. Now you know how to work your this. But the thing is so complicated, the brain, the body itself. It's such a weird vehicle. It's so complicated. It's almost impossible in this day and age to get it right. But back in the happy, the Taiga days, you know,

if you were one of those crazy guys living in Siberia, I mean, there's some shit you got to learn. Yeah. Don't go in the river when it's frozen, you know, don't, uh, don't fall through the ice. Don't do that. When a moose comes run, uh, what else? Uh, this is how a saw works. You know, there's a lot of shit you don't have to know. But if you were there, Joe, they would kick you out of the tribe. And if they didn't kick you out, you'd leave yourself. No, you know what I would do? I would just manipulate those fools. I'd figure out a way to start my own cult,

and I'd just make up a bunch of shit and see who's with me. You know, speaking of tribes, this is a little off topic, but one of the coolest collections of photographs I've ever seen, it's from this artist called, it's at beforethey.com, and check it out. It's like all the tribes and the ideas before they pass away, before they get assimilated into society. The photographs are stunning. They have the eagle hunters in Mongolia and the different tribes from Africa.

So if you want to kind of take a look, I think the book is about to go on sale. Now, here's another kind of fascinating part about tribalism, take a look. I think the book is about to go on sale. Now, here's another kind of fascinating part about tribalism, that if we were to really insert ourselves into that world, they live in dimensions beyond reality. We like to think of these primitive tribes as just these guys, you know, pounding stones onto, you know, acorns. But in fact fact there are things like well uh whatever tribe it is where you need to know where the deer are so you dream and in the dream you're told where the deer are or take combo this frog medicine where they burn themselves and take this poison and put it on their skin it's this frog toxin and then apparently they can see all the animals in the forest. That's what they do. I believe it.

It's the same sort of thing as psychedelics. And then they just start running. I want to do that. It's like there's one two days away if I run this way. And then they find it. We should, that should be an episode of Joe Rogan Questions Everything. We should take that frog toxin and see if we can find it. How dangerous is it?

Not dangerous. Does it kill your dick or anything? I need to know anything? You go to Suriname, and it's dangerous to the frog. Only to the frog. The's only to the frog. The frog does not have a good go of it harvesting the toxin. But as far as the humans, it's perfectly safe. So that, you know, when the Native Americans would look at the white man, they thought we were just a bunch of idiots.

Because we were not tapped into that other dimension at all. If I was a dick, I'd go, how'd that work out for you? Yeah, that's because of the invention of the Winchester rifle. But other than that. Yeah, and polio. And the smallpox. And the smallpox and everything else we brought over. But that was to show you there's no justice in the world.

Yeah. Because they would have won if there had been any justice. I learned that from Ice Cube. No justice, no peace. Yeah, I was in Peru and they and they still you know some of the old shamanistic traditions those cultures still exist and they still have the words for the spaniards and the people that came and in their mind you know part of the reason for the rainbow flag is that's the colors of the chakras that they see like visually see inside a person who's connected

and then these other people came in and invaded their culture and they called them the gray ones because they didn't see that shit there was like whoa what is this human walking around that has no colors you know and for them it was because all of that was blocked up and they weren't kind of tapped in and connected so for them it's a very visual thing you know and you ask me like well why what are you talking about he's like what are you talking about because i see it what kind of psychedelics were they fucking around with ayahuasca yeah see there's a different reality when you're consistently altering your neurochemistry with psychedelic drugs there's a there's a dip i've had moments there's the last moment that i did dmt where i said yeah time to take a break where reality got super slippery for about two weeks and when i say by

slippery the the psychedelic experience was so profound and it was changing my regular everyday mind so much that i felt like a different person who had to relearn life like i was thrown into this life with a manual of this is what you've done so far why the fuck did i do that it doesn't matter that's what you did and this is who you are now and ready go like it felt so unreal for a while that i'm convinced that there was some sort of a permanent change in the structure of my brain or the way my brain accepts certain chemicals are produced it seems like it produces ones in a different way now and i think that if you're doing that on a regular basis, every

day, day in, day out, these people are almost unrecognizable. I mean, their reality is they're probably seeing like, we had David Cho in here. David Cho recently did ayahuasca and now he says he trips every day. He says, I don't have to do anything. They're all in front of me right now. I see a dragon

in front of you. It's flying through the air. Like, he sees flying snakes. He goes, I don't have to do anything. They're all in front of me right now. I see a dragon in front of you. It's flying through the air. He sees flying snakes. He goes, I can just see them. They're around us all the time. Remember that shit? You're normally used to seeing one layer of the onion, and then all of a sudden you get to pierce through all the layers and see all these layers. But David's not an idiot.

He's a brilliant guy, and he's cool as shit, and he's not a liar. So if he tells me he's seeing those things, I believe him 100%. So what happened to him? What changed his mind? What did that to his mind? It's fried. Well, I don't know.

It's not fried because you're only putting something in that already exists. The real issue with psychedelic drugs or anything that's a non-native chemical that you're introducing into your body you you have ld50 rates you have rates of toxicity where it becomes deadly to 50 of the people that take it what is it for dmt no one even knows because it's a human neurotransmitter it's a part of your natural human brain chemistry that's what they're doing when they're doing ayahuasca they're doing an orally active version of this DMT so if this is if he's seeing fucking floating snakes maybe they're there we're just not seeing them maybe we're not getting enough DMT on a regular basis yeah but if you if you

take if you drink blood or if you take put stuff in your body that really bad analogy I mean like like you're saying because it's from your body it's not bad because it's you're putting it something something that's already in your body back in your body. Well, that's, you know, more than you had before, you know. I know what you're saying. Like if you're not taking out some of the food from there. If you add estrogen, if you eat too many soybeans, it's bad. Right.

You're not taking out something and putting more in. You're adding more to it that you're supposed to have. So if you have too much blood in your body, it's probably bad. Or if you have too much, you know what I mean? Anything that's in your body doesn't mean it's healthy if you put it back in. That's a good point, but it's not like blood. And it's also the most transient thing ever observed in the body. Your body brings it back to baseline in like 15 minutes from a full blown trip into another dimension to back to completely sober 15 minutes. It's because yourown trip into another dimension to back to completely sober 15 minutes it's because your brain knows how to handle it your brain knows what it is it's it's

there all the time another but but you've got a good point though it's a really good point as far as hormones go that's a very big point what's what happens with guys when they they do steroids if you see like bodybuilders after they stop doing steroids they usually have to take a bunch of different drugs to try to boost back up their body's production of testosterone because they just shoot themselves up with so much raw and they become the hulk i mean they're taking like hyper human levels 10 15 times what a person would be you know putting into their or just having their body grow. They're just pumping this shit in their body all the time, all sorts of different. So the balls just go,

you don't need us. And the balls just check out. So obviously putting too much testosterone into your body is dangerous. Putting too much estrogen has consequences as well. So in that sense, you got a good point. You know, I think we've talked a lot about the drug way to do it, but there's so many non-drug ways to do it. I mean, I've had visions as intense as, you know, some of the visions on psychedelics in, you know, deep meditation. You know, when I went and floated, I had really deep visions. When I do a breathwork ceremony where you do the shamanic breathing, where you kind of hyperventilate yourself and get to a state of heightened awareness, you start to see some of the similar things. So for me, you know, see some of the similar things.

So for me, I hear David Cho's story, and he's already taken care of all of his needs. That guy has no Maslow 1, 2, 3, 4 are taken care of. And he's a visionary artist already, and then he takes something that pries open his doors of perception temporarily, turns the Venetian blind sideways for a while, and then all of a sudden maybe his brain decides, you know what, I don't really need to turn them back closed again. I can leave them open just a little bit because I'm going to be fine,

and there's a lot of cool information and visions and things out there. So I think that to me that's the alternate explanation. That's a possible explanation, but he might be right too. He might have fried his brain. He might have gone too far and the brain's just not – it's just – The other aspect of this is if we're trying to imagine ourselves into tribal cultures that are seeing visions on a regular basis. Like if it happens to you, Joe, you're just an individual without any structure around you. There's no teacher. There's no shaman. There's without any structure around you. There's no teacher.

There's no shaman. There's nobody who can guide you. But how do we know that in these tribal cultures, I mean, for hundreds and hundreds, thousands of years, the elders have known how to navigate it. Here's how you do it. And when you enter that crazy space, if your uncle is there and he can teach you and show you how to do this and your brother, maybe that's the way it goes. And maybe they're living in that world all the time and seeing the dragons and seeing all that stuff, you know, it wouldn't surprise me. I know, I know my ayahuasca shaman pretty well, Maestro Orlando Chuandama down from Peru. And he, he drinks ayahuasca in ceremony ceremony probably five, six nights a week.

Tell me what is ayahuasca. I don't know what that is. It's crazy. So it's a psychoactive oral tea that they brew from DMT, which comes from the chakruna leaf, which is like 0.27% DMT or whatever. And they brew that with an MAOI, which is a vine that allows it to be orally active. And so they drink this brew, and you have a DMT experience that lasts for four to six hours, something like that. See, DMT is killed in the gut by monoamine oxidase.

So when you take, like if you're eating grass, like phalaris grass, it has DMT in it. And if you were eating that grass, you would just start tripping your balls off if your stomach didn't produce this stuff, this monoamine that keeps the DMT from being orally active. So when they combine the two of them, they combine the harmine and the— The inhibitor of that compound that breaks it down. So MAOIs. You guys are deep into this shit, huh?

It's one of my tools in the shed that I use to tap into my authentic self. Well, it's also, to me, it almost makes me sad when someone doesn't know about it because it's so crazy and it's so real and so vivid and so memorable and so life-changing. Amber Lyon, who is our friend from, she used to work for CNN and now she's become a crazy psychedelic adventurer from the podcast. We were on the podcast, and she asked me about ways to change the world. You know, she's seen a lot of shit, and she's been all over the world and been involved in, you know, covering like some intense conflicts. And I said psychedelics. I think that psychedelic drugs could change the world. I think that, you know, I mean, for some people it doesn't.

For some people it just gets them high. For some people they don't want to change. They don't want to explore. But if you want to really see some shit that you didn't even think could be possible in a movie, there's some ways out there. There's some methods. You can find those methods. And like Aubrey said, a lot of them aren't even drug-related.

You can have a naturally occurring psychedelic trip in an isolation tank. And that's what Terrence McKenna believed when we were talking about the growth of the human brain, the doubling of the human brain size over a period of 2 million years. Terrence McKenna had a whole theory about that having to do with climate change and primates experimenting with psychedelic mushrooms. That the rainforest receded into grasslands and that these chimps started following around, or our ancient hominid ancestors started following around these cows, wild cows, and eating the mushrooms that grew on their shit.

And they're prevalent in that area. And he had it broken down he died but he had it broken down in in terms of the the time of the the climate change and it's very controversial theory but one of the best ones and it's poo-pooed because it involves psychedelic mushrooms but the reality is anybody who poo-poo psychedelic mushrooms has simply not done psychedelic mushrooms because if you've done them and you blow your mind out and have this in crazy the the egyptian icons dancing in front of your eyes and fluorescent colors and explaining to you the nature of life through a

voice that you can understand but you know is in english that once that that experience has happened you'd go okay that exists that exists. That exists. How many people have experienced this? How many people have this? If you gave that to monkeys, what would happen? And I think that, without a doubt, that's the most likely candidate. It just seems ridiculous because we've demonized all drugs. We put them all under this big, stupid blanket. And so things like psychedelics, which may very well be vehicles for evolution.

I mean, it might be there looking like a big dinner plate sitting in the middle of a field because it wants you to eat it so you can tell you things. And visual acuity, increasing visual acuity. He had a whole bunch of points that led to this idea. The stimulation of male genitalia, increased erections when they're eating psilocybin mushrooms, in small doses, measurable increase in visual acuity, which would lead them to be better hunters, which would lead them to survive better. All these different points, besides the psychedelic experience, all these different points lead to this idea that the animals that embrace that into their diet would have a better chance of surviving.

You know, to bring this kind of back to some of the stuff that you wrote, I know for myself and the psychedelic experience for me, you wrote in your book, The Authentic Swing, if we find ourselves lost or tormented or in pain, the reason is that we have somehow become estranged from who we really are, from the ground of our individual being. And for me, when I find myself in those kind of states where I'm a little sad or a little lost or a little depressed, for me, the psychedelic experience, like I said, with or without drugs, could be a deep meditation, could be anything, it shows me back to my true self. And then it can allow me to be happy again and fulfilled and full of life again. Can you define, Aubrey, your true self? Yes, I can. What is it?

Well, I've seen it and I've felt it and I've been it. I know when it's there. I know when it's operating the ship. I had a long experience that actually allowed me to see the differentiating parts of myself, the highest self, than the mind, which I called mind boy because it was very juvenile in the way that it kind of loved puzzles, loved to figure things out. And then there was the monkey part of me,

the flesh and blood and testosterone. And all of those things were all kind of coalescing together. But the highest self, that part of me, which is my authentic self, is very clear to me. And it's something that I try to get it to run the ship as often as possible and push the mind out of the way because the mind constantly wants to take over. It's, ah, I got this shit. You know, leave it to me, buddy. You know, I can solve all these puzzles.

But then when the highest self is in charge, that's when you're doing your best work. Tell me a little bit more about the highest self as you experience it in yourself. I feel like you're in therapy. Yeah. Does it sound like it? I feel like you're being analyzed. You know, the highest self for me is very happy. And it's very content.

It loves the creation that it's in, first of all. And it loves the creation that it's in first of all and it loves the people of this creation and part of what it's here for is and i'm saying it it's me and it's kind of weird to separate it like that but part of what it's here for is to uh you know i had i had a vision of it being a nutcracker of sorts to just kind of go through and roll along and spread ideas and tools and different tactics and things that people can kind of open their shells a little bit too. So I saw myself, my highest self, cast like a bowling ball, just a bowling ball of light that just kind of rolls around through the earth. And that to me, I know when I'm in that mode, not only can I feel it, not only can I see it, you know, visually in my mind's eye, but I know that that's what I'm here for. You know, that's my highest calling.

That's my authentic swing is when I'm that bowling ball that rolls through and says, hey, guys, have you heard about this thing called ayahuasca? Hey, guys, have you tried, you know, working out with a kettlebell or whatever it is? You know, part of that opening up the horizons to other people. Let me ask you this. that opening up the horizons to other people. Let me ask you this. Is your highest self content with the way the world is, or does it want to help it evolve to something else? No, it wants to fight like hell to help it evolve. It feels that it's off track a little bit. And there's some beautiful things. And I'm not disparaging the world, but we've taken a veer to the

wrong way and it's ready to the human race you mean the human race yeah red because you know the earth itself is in natural harmony but the human race puts the Earth's harmony out of balance as well as the harmony amongst it so to bring it back into balance it wants to fight like hell and it's only happy when it's fighting like hell you know and when it doesn't want to fight it's like what the hell am I doing? I think we're in the middle of it so we can't see it I think it's a giant mathematical equation the pros the cons the good the bad The sucky the awesome it's all together and the resistance almost battles you to make you appreciate

When you accomplish something even more so. It almost motivates more movement. The worst thing that can ever happen to you is you win the lottery. Win the lottery at 21. Good luck, fuckface. You're never going to figure out shit. You have $500 million and you're 21. You're going to be a dummy for the rest of your life. You have no opposing force to apply your strength against.

There was something I read yesterday or today earlier about the prince of one of those Brunei or something like that who pissed away $18 billion. $18 billion. And that's what happens when you're born

with all that cash. You can't figure that shit out for yourself. You're not going to. You're not going to. You can't figure that shit out for yourself. You're just, you're not going to. You're not going to. You're at least at a disadvantage. Yeah. It's life. You need struggle.

You need all of it. And I think that we as a human race, if in the macro, from the microcosm of the individual to the human race itself, it almost seems like all that stuff is necessary. It almost, I don't like it. I don't like it in myself. I don't like it in other people, but it exists. It's always existed. There's never been a day on this planet without war. What, what is it? What is it? And what's going on really? If

you were objective and you weren't attached to the life and death of the individuals that were a part of this race, we call humans. If you weren't a part of that and you were't attached to the life and death of the individuals that were a part of this race we call humans, if you weren't a part of that and you were looking at it objectively, if you were an alien from another planet that wasn't even made of flesh, you might be going, oh, I see what they're doing. They're forcing themselves to move. They're forcing themselves to do things. They're battling over the fucking blood of the earth.

They're forcing themselves to accomplish more and more amazing technological feats so they can kill each other quicker. They're doing these crazy fucks, and the whole while they're shitting out kids at an alarming rate, doubling, tripling the population like rats on a sinking ship, hanging onto every piece of floating wood. They're nuts. They're sucking all the fish out of the ocean, throwing all their shit into it. They're fucking crazy. What is that?

18-foot oarfish just found off of Catalina Island today. Oh, my God. It's dead? Yeah, it died of natural causes. What is that? The previous one, longest one that they have found was, I think, three foot. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Is it radioactive? Did they check it for Fukushima? I don't know. Holy shit. That's incredible. Well, they say there's a lot of fish that just grow until something meets them. They don't really necessarily have a lifespan. They just keep going.

It's not built in there because you've got no chance. Like, good luck. You know, there's leopard seals out there that are looking for your ass seven days a week. You're not going to make it. So here, live forever if you can. And some of them live forever, I guess. That guy did. That guy's a bad-ass fish or fish.

Or fish. Are you writing right now? Yeah, I never stop. You don't take a day off after you complete a book? I take days off, but not – I have a theory about finishing a book, and that is that you should start the next one – you should already have the next one or the next two going. Otherwise, you fall into the abyss, you know?

You need nothing to talk about abyss. Yeah, well, I mean, what I mean by that is resistance and negativity will come up and you'll get over to your worst side, you know? So to me, I've always got something going. And only when I've kind of established a beachhead in a new project, when I kind of know I'm OK, then I'll take a little time off. That's exactly the same with stand up comedy. Ah, how so? When you produce a CD or a DVD or a new special is what we call it.

We call it specials because they used to be like an HBO comedy special. You're once it's over, you throw that out. Like I don't do any of that material anymore. I might do one or two bits on a request or if it's poignant, I'll point it out. But I'll even point it out that it's an old bit. But from then on, it's all new stuff. So when I go into a new hour, I have to scrounge up all the shit that I'm ready to you know to really ready to piece together i have to have something already ah so i have to have something that at least i've attempted on

stage or worked out on paper i can't just go up raw and clean and then finish finish my hour special and then go okay now all that material is done i have no idea what i'm going to talk about next like i always have a few things ready yeah Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. How do you, um, how do you ration your time off when you're, when you're writing? Do you just write until you feel like you don't want to do it anymore? Like, do you, do you have like a specific amount of time? Do you make yourself work every day? I do work every day, you know, within reason. I mean, maybe I won't work one day a week or something like that. So six days a week. I found, yeah.

And if I could do seven, I would do seven. Sometimes I can do maybe 25 in a row or something like that, even if I only do a little bit one day. But I always try to do something. What's a little bit? No, an hour or something like that. But I max out at about four hours. At that point, when I start making mistakes, when I start making typos, then I know it's time to stop. And it's kind of like working out at about four hours. At that point, when I start making mistakes, when I start making typos, then I know it's time to stop. And it's kind of like working out at the gym. You can push it too

far and then you just, you know, diminishing returns start to kick in. But I do think, you know, physical fitness, I think, is a real parallel to that, to my experience of how I work, you know, that you can get out of shape and you can work yourself back into shape. And when I've been, when I'm working steadily on something, I can work longer each day, you know. And when I haven't been working, it's just like going to the gym or trying to run or something. You poop out, you know. You just don't have enough. But I'm definitely a believer that the muse comes around every day and she wants to see you ready to rock and roll, you know,

even if it's only for an hour. What you're saying parallels comedy in so many ways because you get in comedy shape as well. Like stand-up comedy shape, it's really critical to get to. You can get along without it, but I've had periods where I've gotten outup comedy shape, it's really critical to get to. You can get along without it, but I've had periods where I've gotten out of comedy shape, and even though I'm capable of killing still, there can be a moment where it just, ooh, this is a little off,

and it's because I'm not in comedy shape because I'm not doing comedy four or five shows a week. And if you're not doing four, you don't want to do too much because if you do too much, it gets boring, and you don't want to ever get to that part. So you want to keep the fun alive with it, but you definitely want to keep it sharp. And when you want to keep it, when it's sharp, then it's like a part of your natural consciousness. Like you plug right into it.

You don't go, oh, this is that thing that I used to do. How does this go again? It's just blip, blip, blip. Your mind is firing. And I think that applies to writing as well. I think that getting into that mindset and when you're there on a regular basis, you get in writing shape. And I think that applies to jujitsu. I know it does to jujitsu. When I train, if I'm not training on a regular basis, then I go train. Even if I'm physically

in shape, all that extra thinking that I have to do, if it's not coming completely natural, it might, it might look natural to someone who's watching it. But to me, I'm thinking like an extra one eighth of a second more than I should be. Whereas if I was in shape, I would be thinking at all. I would, when you're in doing jujitsu, it's just like doing comedy, just like writing where when you're in it, you're in it, you just flow. Everything moves together and you're a passenger. You're just letting it all happen. All your training sort of manifests itself in the experience of rolling. Going back to what you were saying, Aubrey, about seeing your higher self and then your mind boy, how would you apply

that to what Joe just said? Well well the mind boy wants to think about everything wants to think about the moves plan it out think about your opponent or just be distracted and think about what you're going to do when you're finished rolling or what you're going to do the next day or about some old injury or something like that and you need to kick that guy out and and roll with that that presence i play songs in my head when i'm rolling like i'll sing the entire song. Yeah, distract the mind boy. Well, I don't know what I'm doing.

Sometimes it's raining, man. Sometimes they're ridiculously silly songs, you know, and they'll just start playing in my head, and I'm going over it while I'm rolling because I won't allow anything else in there. I'm just like, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet. Especially if it's not a life or death struggle. You mount someone and you got

them pretty much. You just got to cook them. You got to wait until you can tap them. When you're in that sort of situation, you could force it. You could lose track. So I fill up the part of my brain that's not required with a song. Yeah, that's a smart tactic. It's a constant

battle. And to me, I'm a big proponent of the warrior kind of code, the warrior philosophy. And people think about that in an external sense, like, oh, well, what are you fighting? Who are you fighting? Who's your enemies? Well, that used to maybe make some sense. But to me, the warrior is, it's a constant battle with your own mind, with the parasite of that part of your mind that constantly wants to be active. And that's why you're a warrior. The mind boy, in other words. Yeah, the mind boy, the parasite of that part of your mind that constantly wants to be active. And that's why you're a warrior. The mind boy, in other words. Yeah, the mind boy.

The parasite is what the Toltecs call it. There's a lot of different things. The inauthentic self. You could put a lot of different names on that. But a warrior is someone who fights against that resistance, which is another aspect of your mind. Well, you know, that was the original term for jihad. The real jihad originally was a fight against your own vices.

It was a fight against your own weaknesses. It became a holy war. It was somewhere around the war. They hijacked that. Yeah, the Mujahideen and the Soviet Union and the CIA, somewhere around that area. I don't know who caused it to change. But then it became a term for a holy war. But before it was a holy war, it was a war against your own self inadequacies.

And I think that's a war that we wage every day. Yeah. And that's the key. The key is deciding that, okay, I'm going to be a warrior and I'm not going to accept that part of myself that is deficient, that is lacking, you know, but still, and another concept that I think is important is to have what I call ruthless self-love. And that's just not this coddling self-love of a spoiling grandmother. Oh yeah, eat the candy, love. It's that ruthless self-love. Like this is what's best for you. I'm looking out for you long-term. I want you to thrive in your life and i'm going to give you what you need to thrive

and nothing else you know my self-love does not talk that nice my self-love is the get up pussy let's do this shit it makes a lot of noises come on bitch yeah don't be a bitch that's why it's ruthless you know but it's not cruel it's not going to be that it's not cruel it's not going to punish you unnecessarily oh you fucking fat slob. You lazy piece of shit. It can happen. It can happen. And that's what you got to watch.

You got to have that. That's the self-love part of it. You know, the ruthless is that intense, like, come on, do it. Get up. Get yourself done. This is what's best for you. And then the self-love part is not to unnecessarily antagonize yourself. Because we can be brutal to ourselves.

I mean, who, who would we allow talk as much shit to ourselves as, as ourselves? Right. You know, nobody. Yeah. I think this, the, um, the, the term self-love is a funny one because people do, you love yourself, don't you? You always knew you loved yourself. You know, people, there's a weird thing about, well, if you don't love yourself, why the fuck would anybody else love you? You know, you should be a person worthy of your own love. And if you're not, you're doing it wrong. It's really that simple. It doesn't mean worship yourself.

It doesn't mean pretend that you're something awesome if you're not. It means let yourself know when you're not awesome. Let yourself know everything you're doing wrong. Be completely honest with yourself. And until you do that, you're doomed. You're doomed. You're doomed. You're doomed. You're never going to get it right.

You're never going to get it right. If you don't look at yourself the way other people look at you, or even more harshly, you're fucked. And then the other component is forgive yourself for these past deeds. We'll rehash these old things that we've done so many times. You are not the past. Yeah, that becomes new resistance. You know, these old past deeds that we're constantly lashing ourselves.

The way to look at it, in my opinion, is just let yourself know you are not the past. You are who you are right now. And you could have fucked up your entire life. But right now you wake up, and the way I always describe it to people, pretend that you are a hero in your own movie. And the movie just started now.

Your life is in shambles. What would the hero in the movie do? A movie that you would want to go see. What would happen? How would you get your shit together? How would the music start picking up? How would it start sounding like, you know, good morning, waving at people, smiling.

All of a sudden, you know, you're at the gym, sweating it out. You go through this whole montage of scenes where this guy gets his shit together. Do all that, dummy. Do all that. Be the hero in your own movie. And it starts now.

You could be a total loser. It doesn't matter. The movie will be even better when you turn it all around. Yeah, you used to be a total fucking loser. People love those movies. And a liar and a piece of shit. You were fat and lying about it. You had a fucking belly sucker on. There's a reason they like Jared from Subway. It's not because he was skinny

his whole life. There's plenty of people skinny their whole life. Yeah, it's not Michael Phelps. Jared from Subway used to be a fatso. That's the whole thing. And I think going back to you and your books, that's one of the things that I found really refreshing about your book is that you were really honest about how you felt about yourself at that time and that you knew you needed to make changes. And when people read that, it inspires people to get things moving. Did you know you were going to do that when you made that book? Did you have any idea it was going to have the kind of impact that it's had? No, not at all.

And those little anecdotes that are sort of stories on myself of the most excruciating moments, da-da-da-da, those are the things that people respond to the most excruciating moments, da-da-da-da. Those are the things that people respond to the most. It's like the worst shit that you can tell on yourself, the more people can relate to it because we've all experienced that same thing ourselves. But no, I didn't, Joe. I didn't have any.

But this thing has been out since 2002, and it's just slowly, one at a time found you know its way into the into the world well now that you were just on oprah it's going to be on a lot of other people's radar that helps a little bit you have the oprah and the male oprah yeah i think that what you've done is so important, and it's helped me tremendously. It's helped a lot of people that I've put in contact with it, and Aubrey, for sure. It probably had something to do with him starting up on it. So many of these.

I mean, even Turning Pro, which is very analogous to the War of Art, and I actually wanted to ask you when recommending between War of Art and Turning Pro, what are the distinctions? But for me, that Turning pro concept was something that i bring with me you know every day you know it's like all right what does the pro do today you know the pro goes in he doesn't screw around his check his emails and look at his facebook likes the pro goes in to the meat of the problem you know and that helps me kind of prioritize my day as you of the company and the other endeavors that I have to do is like, what does the pro do right now? Well, it's kind of like your warrior concept as well, right? What would he do?

Yeah. Do it right. You don't have to do it wrong. And that's one of the things that we see involved in politics. It's one of the things that we see in the corporate world and the impact on the environment the corporations are having, the impact on societies that they're having by going into third world countries and setting up shop and what's going on in China where they're making iPhones in a factory that has nets around it to keep people from jumping off the fucking roof.

There's got to be a way to do this better. Somewhere along the line, someone put humanity out of the line someone put humanity out of the picture put morals out of the picture and took advantage of the diffusion of responsibility that comes from people acting in gigantic groups where they don't feel responsible for their actions each individual feels like they're a part of something much bigger than them it's why people don't mind throwing cigarettes out the window they don't even feel responsible they're not throwing a cigarette in their own house okay they're not throwing it on the floor of their living room.

They're throwing a cigarette and someone else is going to do it. There's plenty of people out there that do that. It's a diffusion of responsibility. Too many fucking people, Steven Pressfield. It all goes back to that. We're not designed for this shit. So what do you think between The War of Art and Turning Pro? When I'm recommending these books, do you still recommend The War of Art?

What are the distinctions for different people who want to read one of these books? Well, I think The War of Art is probably the one to read first because it was written first, for one thing. But also it really sort of explains the basic kind of principles of this theory, whatever it is. You know, what is resistance? it is, you know, what is resistance, what is, and, and turning pro is sort of the answer, my answer to how you deal with this negative force in your life, you know, rather than blaming yourself or, you know, passing judgment on yourself, switch from being an amateur to being a pro, which sort of takes the judgment out of it all, the self-condemnation out of it.

So that, you know, turning pro would be kind of the second one to read if anybody were asking me why. Awesome. Or what order. What about these books that you gave me? Which one of those should I read first? Gates of Fire or Tides of War? Gates of Fire.

Tides of War is a very difficult read. What are you saying? I'm stupid? It's my favorite book. Dude, how dare you? But it's... Why is it a difficult read? Well, I'll open it up and you'll see.

Okay. Is it just because of the period it covers or the – don't tell me. The period that it covers is a really complex period. And also it's a period – it's like – I don't know. I feel sort of like blown – I don't know. But Gates of Fire is a really simple story with a bit – good and evil. And it's the kind of story that psychs people up and when you're done, you're ready to go out and kill somebody. And it's very – it's a very popular book with the Marine Corps and with elite military units because it's about kind of the warrior ethos.

Whereas Tides of War is a story that's full of ambiguity and the characters are not right and wrong. A lot of people are very flawed. A lot of bad stuff goes on. So it's hard to kind of find, you know, a character you can really root for in that. But it's much more interesting to me because it really gets into the ambiguities of things,

which is the way the world really is. Yeah. So read Gates of Fire first. Let me ask you this then, as an author and as a creative writer, what is it about people that want that good guy, bad guy, all the Joseph Campbell stuff, the ancient archetype or the ancient structure of the hero tale. I think that's exactly it, Joe, because each of us is in a battle with that internal monster, whatever it is, or in our real life, and we're usually being overwhelmed by that battle.

We don't understand what's going on or we're flagging in our passion for it. So if we can see a great movie where Rocky comes out and hangs in there against Apollo Creed or you name it, we kind of come out of that. It kind of encourages us. We say to ourselves, you know, it is possible. If I could suck it up, if I could be like you were just saying, be the hero of the movie of my life starting right now. and be the hero of the movie of my life, you know, starting right now.

And that's why it's a harder sell to do something that's more ambiguous. We like our fiction, like, with tidy endings. Like, No Country for Old Men pissed me off. I really loved that movie. In hindsight, I loved the performances. I loved the story. I loved Tommy Lee Jones. And who's the guy's name who played the psycho?

That Spanish gentleman? Whoever he is, he's awesome. But it's an amazing movie. And in the end, you're like, what the fuck? Why isn't the bad guy dead? Why isn't the ending wrapped up? Why doesn't the good guy walk off with the girl? What are you selling me?

I need to see happiness at the end. I need it to be. I think that's one of the reasons we like the Spartans so much is because you know what the Spartan does at every choice. There's those bracelets, WWJD, which is very ambiguous and confusing if you actually read the Bible. Who the hell knows what he does? Sometimes he brings a sword, sometimes he doesn't.

I don't know. But if you said, what would a Spartan do? The answer is simple. Go fuck a guy. That's what they do. Yes. But, you know, the answer. Don't say that in the real Spartan today.

Why? What happens? They get mad at you? Yeah, they don't like that. They don't like to live in the reality of the past. But, you know, for someone like you who knows the Spartan code, you know, the answer is pretty simple. You could say what a Spartan would do in each one of these situations. And that's some part of us admires that because we have such an ambiguous kind of life.

That strict adherence to a code is, uh, well, we do respond in stories to archetypes, right? To the knight or the Merlin like character or something like that. But of course, and that's, we love, that's why we love them in stories, the gunslinger, whatever it is. But of course, in real life, you know, we're a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and, you know, it's not quite so simple. Yeah, we respond to the samurai. That's the one that everybody loves when it comes to martial arts, the ronin,

you know, the one lone person who lives by a very strict code, and we like to watch them practice because we like to watch their discipline. Like in every Steven Seagal movie there'd be a scene where he was practicing like there's one where he's in a coma for seven years and he gets out all of a sudden and he's fucking running up hills and throwing punches

in the air and you're like, damn, he's back. He's practicing. Like leaving cigarettes out that burn more time underwater like catching his breath. That samurai mindset that burn more time underwater, like catching his – holding his breath. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. That samurai mindset that we know that the samurai will hold up in combat. We know that they won't – that their character will be bulletproof. They're not going to crumble.

Right. What is that? It's an inspiration to us. And I think why we like that samurai – I'm with you on that, Joe. It's a samurai as an individual as opposed to the Spartans that are a group or any other kind of things. Because we know that we're alone in the world. At least that's how I experience the world. And so when we can see the samurai train and have that discipline, when there's nobody cracking a whip over his head, nobody's paying paying him nobody's patting him on the back nobody's encouraging he's doing it

all entirely self-discipline self-generated self-reinforced self-validating that's very inspiring to us because we say well shit you know maybe I can I can do and I can tell from talking to you guys that's how you live your lives you know you try you fight that internal battle from the morning you wake up and the minute you wake up through the whole day one of the things i like to i like to train myself i like i write down like i have a workout routine i write down all the things that have to get done you know this is all that's going to get done today period this is going to get done you know x amount of kettlebell swings x amount of chin-ups x amount squats, and you're going to do all that. It's not going to say enough already.

I don't allow myself. So I train myself. So I write all that stuff down, and then I do it. But I love that I can motivate myself, that I don't need anybody yelling at me to get all this stuff done. That's very important. And I think when you can do that, like it's so daunting. The beginning is so daunting. You're like, oh, looking at that piece of paper. gotta do all that shit like right now i'm comfortable i don't

want to do that and then when you just say ready go and then force yourself it's it's the ability to create movement the ability to create a to accomplish goals like that's a that's an exercise that's a something that you exercise just creativity, just like your ability to write. And the stakes are high, too, because when you actually succeed and you do it, you start to build that personal power and that knowing that you can put something down and you will do it. But then if you pull up short or you cheat yourself a little bit, you start to build the other. Ah, I didn't quite make it. Ah, it's okay. You start to get that weaseliness about yourself.

Weaseliness. Great way to describe it. And then so the stakes are higher than just that workout. If you go out and set out to do something, you better damn do it. I actually had an experience today, and I like to play these games with myself too. Sometimes it's a full workout. Sometimes it's just a set. And I know because we were doing this podcast, I was thinking back to the warrior ethos.

And I know one of the things the Spartans had to do is they had to run a marathon with a mouthful of water. And then they had to spit the water back out at the end of the marathon. Right? And that was part of the training thing. So I was like, I've never tried that. That seems like it'd be really hard to do. So I set up the treadmill at, you know, eight and eight. And I was doing a Tabata protocol, which is 20 seconds of sprinting and then 10 seconds

of rest. You tried to do that with a mouthful of water? That's not a marathon though. That's a totally different thing. I couldn't do a marathon. I don't think the Spartans were running a full marathon. I think it would be way harder to do what you're doing because you're sprinting.

It was and it was. Mentally it was as hard as filibri. I said I was going to do a round of five. At three I was like, if I just drink a little bit of this water, more comfortable. And I said, no, like you can't, you can't do that. And then at the very end though, so I finished my five and the idea was to spit the water back out.

And then I thought to myself, ah, fuck it. I don't want to spit the water back. I'll just, I'll just drink it. And as soon as I drunk it, I knew like, damn it, I missed that little bit of my regimen. So I cheated myself of a little bit of what that goal was, was to run the five and spit the water back out. This water that you're just craving to drink. Let me help you out here. Let me help you out here.

That's silly shit. You did what you're supposed to do. The drink and the water at the end, you deserve that water. Thank you. You held that shit in your mouth. That's what I thought. That's what I was trying to tell myself. You're absolutely right.

You're going to drink water eventually anyway. That's what I was telling myself. You're not depriving yourself of water. Thank you. You held that shit in your mouth. That's what I thought. That's what I was trying to tell myself. You're absolutely right. You're going to drink water eventually anyway. That's what I was telling myself. You're not depriving yourself of water. The exercise is to get through the exercise with a mouth full of water. So you're drinking the water when it's done. I'll take the other side, Joe. Really? You had to spit the water out. The next time when you do spit

the water out, you'll feel a lot better. Yeah, and then you're going to get another drink of water. There's a fucking drought. Why would you do that? There's a drought going on. Drink the fucking water. That's ridiculous. Unless you spit it in a glass, then just drink it, and then you're an idiot. Why not just drink it? It's already cut out the middle, man.

It's in your mouth already. As long as you get... It's a silly argument. Yeah, it is a great argument. As long as you get through it. But I see your point. We could talk about this for a while. But isn't it funny, though, that you recognize that there's a thing about cutting corners

that's really dangerous. Cutting corners in life, settling in life is fucking dangerous. It'll lead to the it's the road to mediocrity. Let me ask you guys both here. Was there a moment for you in your life, your lives, when you understood this? Or is this, in other words, did you not understand this at a certain point or have this concept and then you suddenly learned it? I learned it slowly but surely through a lifetime of struggle and failure and some success and every success cling to it like it's a new log that you

found after you were swimming in the ocean to the point where you thought you were going to drown. Then boom, you find a log okay we got something okay ready and then jump off that log and keep going and make yourself to another log that slowly but surely I accumulated all this information along with a lot of books a lot of documentaries a lot of talking to people that I found inspirational a lot of martial arts a lot of talking to instructors that explained like what it's about to get through a hard training session, what it's about to achieve your black belt, what it's about to be a champion,

what it's about to hit the highest levels, and competing. Competing was a big one. Competing in martial arts as a boy shaped my brain, shaped who I am as a human being. You cannot have any bullshit when you're throwing your bones at people. When you're involved in whatever it is with some other trained killer, and you're both really good at knocking people unconscious, and you're planning on doing it to each other. Ready, go. You know, your brain does not accept any bullshit.

You have to know exactly who you are. And you have to have a very objective assessment of your abilities. Otherwise you're going to get brained. You're going to get a bone that's going to bounce off your head and you're going to get concussed. It's a very real consequence that very rarely faces you in everyday life. The choices you make very rarely get you concussed. But when the goal is for someone to

knock you out, that's their goal. They're trying really hard to do it. And you know that that's the goal. It's like one of the worst consequences you can get in everyday life other than dying. It's a really hard one. Your own health, your own consciousness, you're going to get knocked the fuck out. So that reality, I think, forced me at a very early age to just cut the bullshit. Don't cut corners. Look at it exactly what it is. Do everything you have to do. And also along the lines learning that every time I didn't

I felt terrible and that I felt weak. If I wasn't in shape, I felt pathetic. If I got tired in a match and that's why I lost it was unbearable. Unbearable. Just this stink on me would never wash off, you know.

So that's where I learned from. Good answer. For me, I'm still learning every day. Oh, me too. Definitely me too. It's like, you know, you think you know and you think you get it, and then all of a sudden you'll be on this weird path and you'll be like, how did I forget so much just now?

You know, like, where am I? What is this strange place I find myself in? And you have to retrace. This is not my beautiful house. Exactly. You have to retrace your steps back and realize that things go in cycles, where it's at the top of the cycle, you may feel like you have a good grasp, but then you'll swing back down again to some lesser state of forgetfulness, really, where you have to learn that, relearn some things back and be reminded of some other things but for me i think the process one of the defining moments for me

actually happened from a movie when this process was actually when i saw braveheart as a kid and i remember at that point it really like struck me that the impracticality of going through all that torture just to say the word freedom you know and i started i kind of kind of got i was like what i kind of got that there was something you know something else that some other kind of level that you could push yourself through and i remember i would go running and before i would work out and stuff i was an active kid i loved playing around loved every sport i could martial arts whatever but i was running on the beach, and normally when I would have stopped, I just didn't stop.

And I was like, William Wallace wouldn't have stopped. Oh, my God. And some part of me then, like some little inkling just planted. And then I know many other things, many books, many teachers, many internal things. Carlos Castaneda played a big part. You know, some of the Toltec beliefs. So many other different things. You knowaneda played a big part. Some of the Toltec beliefs. So many other different things.

Your book, Meeting Joe. All these things kind of come through. Well, these kind of conversations, too. People right now, guaranteed, are listening to this and they're going, fuck, I've got to get my shit together. And just that sometimes is all you need. You just need a little spark and then nurture that spark, turn it into a fire.

And that's really what it is. It's like we, Hunter Thompson had a great, I saved it on my phone because I read it online the other day and it's so poignant and beautiful. But it was about, his quote was about music and about some people say that music is inspiration. But what he says is, he says what they really mean is fuel and that I've always needed fuel. I'm a serious consumer.

On some nights, I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about 50 more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. And there's something about that. I find that not just in music but in conversations like this that if I could download this and listen to it as a podcast, if I weren't a part of it, I'd be so fucking psyched. And the same thing about your book. I found it through your book. I found it through certain songs. I found it through movies. I found it through performances of musicians, comedians, everything. It exists everywhere around us. And so it's all sparks. It's all sparks. You grab those sparks and you make your own fire. That's it. What are you still learning, Steve?

Same stuff, you know, same stuff. Never stops. And I'm thinking, listening to you guys, I mean, my experience was not like in martial arts or something like that. It was more in writing. Day-to-day of would I fuck off today? Would I drop the ball today? Would I stop?

Or like Aubrey, you were saying you're running a little farther on the beach. Like what would William Wallace do? Can I push myself a little farther? Or even beyond the idea of like whipping yourself or anything like that, the idea of like being kind to yourself, being gentle to yourself. Like if you're training a thoroughbred racehorse, you're not going to beat the crap out of that horse. You're going to make it fun for that horse, right? Right. So to do that, and like you were saying, Jill, you find a log that's floating.

You know, this worked. Today I did this. It worked. Here it is at the end of the day. I feel good. So tomorrow, let me try to do that again, right? And then you don't quite succeed, you know? But then you find another log. And little by little, you put those logs together and truths start to form in your mind. This works. This doesn't work. And then also, like you guys say, you get it from other

people. You get it from books. You get it from conversations. You get it from music. It reinforces itself. Like this conversation now is reinforcing it for me, and I'm sure it's reinforcing it for you guys too. It's like what's interesting to me is it doesn't matter what pursuit you're in, the laws seem to be the same. I'm sure that if we had a weaver in here or a potter or somebody, you know, that made furniture, they would say the exact same thing. You know, I get a piece of wood in and that piece of wood is telling me it wants to be a couch, you know. So it's interesting that there are laws and we're just sort of learning them and uncovering them as we go. And again, this is what Musashi spoke of, and this is one of the things that Musashi put in his book where he described his pursuit of calligraphy, his pursuit of poetry.

Right, they're still trying to get at that same source, that pure source. Whatever it is, whether it's a cartoon or whether it's a Steven Pressfield novel about Greek history, whatever it is, it's the same thing. It's this weird creating energy that you're trying to tap into. It's getting rid of that mind boy and getting into the higher, nobler self. What the fuck is the mind boy there for, though? Doesn't he do something good? He's good at solving puzzles is what he's good at. He's good at pool?

Is he what makes you play pool? No, he's not good at pool. But he's good at doing the mechanistic puzzle work of the human life, figuring things out, putting on different masks, socially adapting, modifying behavior in a certain way. I would call it the ego as opposed to the self, self with a capital S. And maybe we're talking about tribal ways and seeing those mysterious worlds and all that other thing. Maybe that's the self. And somehow when we became civilized, we shrunk it down to the ego that knows how to build a wall or something like that but doesn't know how to access. And then what you guys are talking about and what I'm talking about is breaking through those walls and trying to get, even for just a minute at a time, to that thing that's got some magic to it.

Yeah, creating. And I feel bad for people who don't get to create. I really do. I mean, even if it's creating at your job, whether you're a carpenter or someone who puts. Like, there's something about making something that wasn't there before and now it's there. There's something about that, whether it's even just a performance or, you know, a song or whatever. There's something about that that's one of the few magical things in life. Well, that's what God does, right? Allegedly. He creates.

So we as human beings, when we can do that, that's pretty cool. Yeah, but he also creates nuclear bombs. You know, creating also meant what Oppenheimer did. You know, it's all creating. That's creating as well. So it's a very strange thing that what you drop out of the Enola Gay that kills a half a million people, that's creative too. It's kind of fucked. It's almost that destructive force is also part of the creation.

I was talking to someone who I really respect, and I was asking him about that kind of the demon force, that purely destructive force. And it doesn't have to be an actual angel or demon kind of conceptualized religiously. But whatever that destructive force is that's tapped in, and he's basically saying that you know when that's really high it's just it's just doing its job you know there has to be that that opposing force from which creation can push forward its strength you know and so yeah

these these nuclear bombs do it in a dramatic and terrifying way but that's one opposing force by which you know you can try and flourish life by which, you know, you can try and flourish life in spite of, you know, so there's some kind of weird harmony in, in all of that, that was created in the soup to begin with, you know, everything has to be, find the balance, but I do think that we get way off balance one way or the other in certain aspects, and you see that in people, and I think the key is you can really only – there's only one corner of the universe you can be sure to change. And I think that's a quote from Huxley, actually, and that's yourself.

And that's what you can be sure to change. So bringing yourself back into balance. Everybody does that. Guess what? The world's back in balance. So you can be sure. Take that step to get yourself in balance. And then slowly all these other things will start to lay out the dominoes will I want to ask you a question about writing do you have when

you start writing you have an idea like but I'm reading Stephen King's book on writing it's really interesting yeah really good book yeah and one of the things that he said that I found was incredibly fascinating is that he doesn't make a plot before he gets going he might have some ideas but he he Yeah, really good, the Stan. Yeah, that was crazy. What? That just came out of your head? Like, you didn't even plot that out? That's crazy. Do you plot your stuff out?

Do you have, like, a cork board where you put, like, index cards on it and you move them around? How do you write? I do sort of. I mean, you have to do that eventually. Do you use Scrivener? Do you ever try that? No, I don't do that kind of stuff. You don't do anything on, it's just a, it's one of those programs that shows you a cork board and lets you move index cards around. Virtual cork board.

Yeah. That's a little too much mechanical for me, but I do try to, I mean, a lot of times I will start purely on instinct and just take it from there. But I think I'm always asking myself, what's the, what's the finish? What is this going to, you know, I'm always trying to get the final moment, the climax, and then work backwards from there. Because within any idea, how can I, let's see, one of the books I wrote was about, it's called The Virtues of War, was about Alexander the Great. And the way it kind of came to me was the first two sentences came to me. And the first two sentences were, I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. And when I heard those in my head, I said, oh, that's great. But I had no idea who was saying it or where it went. So in a way, it's like

finding the tippy top part of a buried asteroid or something. So I sort of try to just partly follow instinct and say, well, okay, what's the next sentence? You know, what's the next scene? But then I'll kind of pull back out of it and say, what is this fucking thing about? Why, what is buried? What idea is buried in those two sentences? And then, and then I'll try to, does this make any sense, Joe? Yes, yes, yes, yes. and then I'll try to is this making any sense, Joe? Yes, yes, yes. And then I'll try to push it forward to the finish. What's the climax

of this thing? Because otherwise, I think maybe Stephen King is a genius and he can just kind of plunge in and just throw shit against the wall and it'll stick. But I think most of us, for me, I'll get lost if I do that. I'll just write this scene

and that scene and the other scene and I'll get lost if I do that. I'll just write this scene and that scene, the other scene, and I'll get lost in it. So I kind of need to know if my sailboat is heading to Tahiti, that helps me a lot. Then I know I got to go south of Hawaii and north of wherever the hell Tahiti is. So for me, in other words, it's kind of a combination of instinct and just winging it, but also then pulling back to the left brain and asking, what's this about? Where is it going? And then structuring it back from that. I don't know if that answers your question. I don't know.

It's interesting because he didn't go too far into depth as far as what I've read at least that he – I don't know if along the way he writes things down or sets up an ending along the way, or he might, he's one of those, he might fucking write the ending first. You know what I mean? Who knows? I have no idea.

But his point being is that when he's writing, he's just sort of, he's not following like today he's going to write down that Sally meets Betty and Betty can light things on fire with her tits. But if you have the idea of Carrie, you know that the climax is going to be Carrie blows everybody away, right? Right, right. So you don't have to be too analytic to figure that out. So he kind of knows what's coming.

Maybe. He might not have known that that was going to – The Carrie one is a really interesting one because he was throwing that away and his wife pulled it out of the trash. Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? That was his first big break. His wife pulled it out of the trash and was like, listen, don't quit this one. But that goes to show you, though, how a lot of times we don't even recognize what great stuff we've done. Well, it's also probably because he was drunk and on coke.

It was that as well. Maybe the opposite. Maybe he was sober. He goes off about his massive amount of drug use when he was writing books. He wrote entire books that he doesn't remember at all. Cujo, apparently, doesn't remember at all. He doesn't remember. You can read it for the first time.

What a joy. It's awesome. Whoa! This is great. Boy, talk about a movie that doesn't hold up. I tried to watch Cujo the other day. I was like, shut this fucking... Dude, that dog's stupid. Shoot that fucking dumb thing. This movie sucks. It wasn't scary at all. You've had quite a few of your

movies, your books rather, that have become movies. Is that a frustrating process? Not really. Well, The Legend of Bagger Vance was a big one. How many different books have you written that have become movies? I think that's the only one. I've written screenplays that became movies, but let me put it this way. I've never had a good experience yet.

Oh, wow. Maybe I'm unlucky, but I've never had a good experience yet. I'm sorry. I thought you had at least two that had become. Maybe it's just I've read about screenplays. Maybe I'm unlucky, but I've never had a good experience yet. I'm sorry, I thought you had at least two that had become... Maybe it's just I've read about screenplays. Maybe I'm forgetting something. How many screenplays have you... have been made from your books? I'm not sure. Maybe five or six or something. Okay, that's what I read.

So, you're... All terrible. What is it about that? Is it because they're trying to condense it to an hour and a half, two hours? I don't know. Maybe I did a shitty job from the start, you know? No.

Is it the Hollywood machine that takes something and can take your ideas, which are, like, as you were talking about, the tides of war. There's some ambiguous characters. I wish I knew, Joe. You know, I think sometimes writers get really lucky and, you know, The Godfather comes out fantastic, right? You know, every scene is perfect, you know. And other times, you know, and then there's the sort of the politics of Hollywood where, like, if you're casting the character of Bagger Vance, let's say. And you want to cast Morgan Freeman, who seems like he would be the perfect guy,

but they run the numbers and they say, well, Morgan Freeman is not going to justify a budget of XYZ, so maybe we need to, so we can't cast him. We have to cast, you know, in other words, decisions are driven by factors other than Instinct you know I would have to disagree sir I think some of your

movies are amazing including King Kong Lives Above the Law please you made Above the Law I'm Free Jack I was one of three good movies

three people that was the only one I ever actually liked Above the Law was great Andy Davis the director I mean look everybody goofs on

Steven Seagal but Above the Law was fucking great. At the time, it was a great movie. It's a homogenous Steven Seagal movie that lasts 14 hours. It shouldn't, because there's the one that launched him. That was the one that was the best. Above the Law was the best one. There's a lot of silliness to it.

Of course there is, but it's a goddamn cop movie. It's about a badass guy who's kicking ass and fucking people up. There's no way to do that where it's a goddamn cop movie. It's about a badass guy who's kicking ass and, you know, fucking people up. There's no way to do that where it's not silly. And Army of One with Dolph Lundin. Did you really do that? Oh, please. Holy shit, man. You had all the kick-ass movies.

I knew you guys were going to do this. What was the... Someone told a fib and Brian caught him. Why is it about King Kong? I mean, what is it about the Kong I mean what is it about the terrible terrible that was that was the movie

that was going on when you were 40 when you yeah right you were talking about your life being in a shambles yeah yeah that was that movie

yeah what is it about King Kong that we keep making that fucking movie over and over again happens he's an archetype the big strong gorilla

same thing as the werewolf, I suppose. But it's the same, no, it's worse, because it's the same goddamn story. He always falls off the fucking building. The American Werewolf in London is different than Wolfman with Benicio Del Toro. There's a lot more places to go. When they keep redoing that goddamn King Kong movie,

the same fucking thing happens every time. It's like nobody ever figures that they can make a King Kong movie where he doesn't die you know do you understand that it was a movie that like somebody made it to begin with it's not written in a stone tablet yeah you can do a whole different king kong story but nope nope get a blonde girl get a building climb shoot him down done what is does that frustrate the shit out of you as a creative guy like would they want to keep doing the same goddamn thing over and over again? Well, I'm not even sure how to answer that, Joe.

I mean there's – I want to do the same thing over and over again sometimes. I mean there are sort of principles of storytelling that you want to do. But I mean I know what you mean and it is pretty frustrating. What do you – you give a lot of advice for writing fiction in this, especially the authentic swing. But what about some of your nonfiction works? How is that process different than crafting a story and characters? Because you've done an amazing job writing nonfiction as well. Well, of course, the only nonfiction I've done is stuff about the writing process rather than something like, you know, All the President's Men or something like that.

Right, right, right. So that's kind of – it's sort of a specialized genre. Yeah, but that kind of didactic kind of self-help. My theory is that it has to be a story anyway, you know. that it has to be a story anyway. My partner, Sean Coyne, is a big believer in Act I, Act II, Act III, no matter what it is, even if it doesn't have any characters. It's got to start somewhere, have a middle, and then have an end.

So I sort of try to follow the same process, make it a story a little bit. Where the reader plays a role then. So the reader is kind of the protege and you're the mentor? Or the reader follows along rooting for you, or even if your character is only salted in there a little bit here and there, going from one fiasco to another to another. But it all sort of, if you do it right, it has a flow to it and it builds to a climax. Like the war of arts starts kind of out with, it's in three parts. My partner, Sean, figured that out. You know, it's what is the enemy, resistance. Second part is what's,

how do you overcome that enemy, turning pro. And the third part is getting into the metaphysics of it. What does it all mean? And that's sort of a natural progression. You know, what's the metaphysical aspect of it at the end? What's the spiritual side of it? Right. That's the aspect of what you've written in your book that makes it not really a book about writing. It's not really a book about the creative process. It's a book about achieving. It's not really a book about the creative process. It's a book about achieving a mindset. It's a book about achieving a victory over this resistance thing

and achieving this state of mind that there's no nonsense, cut out all the nonsense, and get to it, state of mind. It's a psychological handbook. Yeah, the writing, as you know, I think you even point this out. It's just a metaphor for the process. Yeah.

Same with golf and this. Which I didn't even realize when I was doing it, you know, it kind of became clear afterwards. Are you a big golf man? Is that why you keep writing things about golf? When I was a kid, I was, I grew up as a caddy. Oh. You know, so from the time I was like 11 until all the way through college, you know, back in the days where there were such things as caddies.

So I kind of grew up in the caddy shack, just like, you know, Rodney Dangerfield. And but since then, I haven't really been able to play. So really, why is that? I'm working for a living. That's hilarious. So you don't give yourself a chance to, like, take a little day off and go play golf. I mean, I do that every once in a while, but I'm so lousy. It's pretty depressing.

I remember when I graduated from college, moved to New York, got married. First day we moved into the city, my car was vandalized and they stole my golf clubs. I didn't play for another 20 years. And then by the time I did then, it was all in my memory. Because the love for the sport seems to bleed out in this.

Yeah, I love the game. It's a great game. So you like watching it? You might be one of the weird people that like watching golf more than you like playing golf? Well, I would love playing golf more if I played a little better than I play. So do you get very self-critical on yourself when you play golf? Does that bring up a lot of that?

I mean, I've been so bad for so long, but I kind of forgive myself now. Isn't that part of golf? Now my main goal is just not to hurt myself. Get through it. Try to enjoy it. I'm not kidding either. Do you walk it or do you take the cart? Well, I try to walk when I can, but pretty much carts are the way it is these days.

I think people are being pussies. and I can, you know, but I'm pretty much carter the way it is these days, you know? I think people are being pussies. I think if you're going to knock that ball that far away, you should go walk after that. I agree with you. It's too bad that the game has devolved to that point. We're cowards. We're cowards and pussies. We have other people carry our clubs.

We get in a thing. Yeah, but it's fun to drive those when you're drunk. It is fun to drive those. But if you're going to play some serious golf, you need to whack that fucker and then walk after it. The problem when you really suck, though, is if you walk, there will be people just so mad at you right behind you because you're taking forever. You've got to walk to the left, and then you've got to walk to the right, at least if it's me. Then you walk to the left. I'm all over the course. It's so cool.

I was in, I guess it's like Beverly Hills the other day, at a meeting and i'm uh at this uh network and i'm looking out the window and they have this uh giant view of this golf course and just the mass of the golf course i had to take it in in my head i'm like how much is that worth like i guess it was beverly hills country club or one of those big country clubs down there. And I'm like, this is a giant piece of land in the middle of the most expensive real estate in the country. This is crazy. That's a $300 million plot of land. It is amazing. That's LA Country Club.

There's two courses there. Yeah. So that's a lot of land. But imagine what that's worth. It's nuts. But what a wacky sport. You've got to walk around the land. and if it rains, you're fucked. It's a crazy sport where you need a giant piece of land,

and so influential as far as business meetings and people that love to get together and play golf together. It's a big part of the camaraderie. And it's also, I think for business, it reveals something about the person you're playing with that's pretty unique because it will bring to the surface those parts of themselves that are a little ugly

or a little weird or noble and good. When you play with somebody, you get to know more than just your conversation because you see if they're going to fudge it, they're going to cheat a little bit, if they're going to get really self- oh you know get all mad at them brian callen had an instance when his father was playing golf with this man and his mother was there and his mother watched the guy playing golf with his dad cheat and then told him do not go into business with this guy and she told him why and he was like whoa like

and brian as a young man remembers that like that's just it's just a game and she was like no it's not no it's not it's just a game it is just a game so why did he cheat at just a game because that's what he does right that's who he is that sleazy motherfucker yeah so in that yeah you can learn but i've heard women complain um it's an interesting argument that there's like a patriarchy thing about these uh men's club meetings on golf courses that they could never get in on this and that you know they would never be in even if they were in that circle they would almost like be it would be the white elephant in the room you know and that they would have to learn how to play golf and go in order to have a like an equal stake in the companies

and an equal stake in the future you have to kind of be a part of this little goofy club of these fuckers chasing after a ball it's really very weird they can learn it's not mma yeah but why should they have to i mean shouldn't it be the men don't have to either, though. Right. Well, some of them do, though. That's the thing. In order to be in that sort of... There are people that in order to be in the group with them, you have to do the things they do. You have to like the kind of music they like. And it's a part of the tribe thing.

It's a part of our tribal instincts. You have to be... Two people don't like working together if one's a Republican and one's a Democrat. They fucking hate each other you know and and i've seen it in offices like this fucking liberal breeding heart over here you know this guy everything about obama care you know and then there's another one this fucking redneck asshole over here you know if he could have his way we know we don't have slavery again and this that kind of shit is just so prevalent. It's interesting that the game of golf sort of like it encompasses an aspect of that tribal behavior. You know, I think you can probably do that with most sports too.

I mean, how much do you learn about somebody when you roll with them, Joe? Oh, you learn everything. You learn everything, right? You learn everything. You learn who they are, especially when they're tired. Yeah. You learn a lot about a person when they're tired. Some dudes can keep going.

Some dudes just fucking fall down. They flatten out yeah it's interesting it's um it's you learn about pool too same thing yeah same thing pursuit any any sort of a pursuit it's if it becomes hard you know you learn who can keep it together who's going to fall apart just you know it's and and doing, it's the practice for life. I think that's why I always innately, people who've been in athletics, male or female, have such a much greater affinity towards and trust. When they've been to a high level and they've felt that pressure of fans and obligations and expectations and pushed through.

I know the feeling when some days in these biggest games in high school we'd get a couple thousand people, it was Texas sports, and it would be so intense. I would just want to go to sleep before the game. I just want to curl up. I was just really tired right now. But then you get out there and you feel the rush and you put your forearm into somebody on that first play and get your first hard drive to the basket. And then this feeling just kind of explodes in you, and you're in it. But making it through that process without folding, there was also other games where I never got

that kind of restrictive energy out, and I played like shit, just terrible. And you learn about that. You learn how to deal with the pressure, not internalize it, push through. And man, so many times in business, in these challenges, it applies. It applies everywhere you go.

The only way you learn pressure is to deal with pressure. Exactly. You've got to get used to that bitch. You've got to feel her, know what she does, how she tricks you, how she messes with your head. That's it. Messes with your head. You've got to learn that, too. That's the big one.

Just like, you know, essentially it's resistance. It's the same thing. That doubt, that creeping doubt makes its way. You got to figure out a way. The mind boy. Yeah. And we're all contributing to this collective guidebook of how to be a human. Yeah.

You know? You know, one thing I've just recently started playing with, it occurred to me that there's little fears that we think of as trivial. And a trivial fear like a fear of spiders or, and there's also things like, for example, for me, I have this block about doing a backflip on a trampoline, even like a super safe, super big one. And I can backflip into pools. I can do, you know, I'm a fairly athletic guy, but as soon as I go to do it on a trampoline, which is fairly soft, my body just freezes up and I lock. And I was talking to my friend about it. And for me, you know, when you allow these fears that are

disproportionate away from the actual danger to take hold, it's almost giving credence, you know, giving resistance, like this little bit of victory that can apply to other things. Or if you're, you know, so afraid of spiders, you can't even look at it. Just by doing that, it's acknowledging that you have some certain limitations and it's giving that other force that's going to limit you in life and deny you from achieving your goal just a little bit more power. So even for me, and this is something I'm just recently playing with, these little trivial fears that we just kind of avoid like, ah, this doesn't matter.

Who cares? When am I going to see a spider? I don't know. I'll fucking deal with it when it comes. Or who cares if I do a backflip on a trampoline, you know? In effect, practically it doesn't matter. But as far as doing the little things to battle against these forces that are constantly looking to confine us, I think maybe it matters. You know, like maybe pushing through these seemingly trivial things, it counts. You know? It's an exercise of the mind. Set yourself the task, Aubrey, to do that?

Oh, yeah, for sure. I decided that like a few days ago. I haven't been home yet. I'm walking out to the trampoline, and I'm pushing through that moment where my legs just say, uh-uh, nobody, you're not doing this. And I'm going to do it. I hope. I hope I can. I don't know, but I'll see.

I'll video it or something. I'll try to do it. I hope. I hope I can. I don't know, but I'll see. I'll video it or something. I'll try to figure it out. I would guess that the backflip is a metaphor for something else for you. It stands for something. Right. Right? I mean, we all have that stuff. For me, it's like claustrophobia.

Yeah. You know, elevators, certain elevators I can't get on, you know, airplanes, you know. Yeah, and I know that it relates to other stuff. It's not isolated. Have you ever done a sensory deprivation tank experience? No, never have. Will you do it if I hook it up for you? I don't know.

I'll get claustrophobic in there. That's what I'm saying. You can figure out a way through that. Come on, man. Well, tell me what it is. Walk the walk, baby. Come on. It's a tank that's filled with water.

And have you ever seen the movie Altered States? Yes. That's it. It's a tank filled with water. The water is the same temperature as your skin, and it's filled with salt. So there's like 1,000 pounds of salt in the water. I'm getting scared just hearing that. You lie down in it, and you float.

You float. You breathe because your body is half underwater. But it's so dense with salt that you float. You close. You're above, you breathe because your body is half underwater. But it's so dense with salt that you float. You close the lid on the door and you're in complete silence,

complete darkness. Your ears are actually underwater. You shouldn't panic. It's amazing. Can we leave the door open? Nope, nope, nope. How dare you?

How dare you not walk the walk? What is going on here? We're learning so much about Steven Pressfield. Yeah, it's, but if you're, if you really do have an issue with claustrophobia, that would be the place to cure it. Great way to get through it.

Yeah, you'll get through it 100% because it's the most claustrophobic place in the universe. Oh, it sounds great. It separates you from your body. But it's amazing. How about a coffin under your arm? Let me explain to you what the benefit is. The benefit is when you're in that water, the water is the same temperature as your skin,

so you don't feel the water. You're floating, so it's a feeling of weightlessness. Total silence, total darkness, a complete absence of sensory input. So because there's nothing coming in, your brain is so much more powerful. It's a weird thing. The way I describe it is like

if we were having this conversation and there was a jackhammer next door, it'd be very hard to concentrate. We would want to move away from the sound of that jackhammer. But life is a jackhammer. It's a jackhammer on your ass when you're sitting in this chair.

Like, as we're sitting, your ass is constantly sending signals like, yep, that's a leather chair under my ass. You know, yep, these are things under my armpits. Yep, there's Aubrey. Yep, there's Steven Pressfield. Yep, this is a wood table.

This shit's all coming in. And we just completely take it for granted. When you're inside that tank, nothing comes in. You're floating in space, completely weightless. And in the absence of sensory input, the mind becomes supercharged. Because the mind has all these resources that all of a sudden are available. That it thought it was going to have to deal with the weight of the body and moving along the ground and avoiding objects and social cues

and all that stuff that it doesn't have to deal with right now. So the mind has all these resources free, and it becomes a very self-examining, self-objective analysis of your life, almost like a seminar on your life, and then it becomes a psychedelic experience. The more comfortable you get with it, the more you have visions. But I think for you creatively, man,

the things that you would come up with inside of that tank would be amazing. Once you got over it, you got a couple of bucks. Buy one, put it in your basement. Have a panic button put in. Muse is there, ready to visit you. Let's start seeing Steve and see golf.

We're going to force you to walk the walk, sir. This is ridiculous. You need to get in there. Aubrey's done it. He loves it. Yeah. It's a really interesting experience. I think the same for these fears are superstitions, I've realized, too, that you allow these superstitions to persist, and that's just another head on the resistance hydra.

You know what I mean? And I noticed it. Like obsessive compulsive shit that people do before they jump. I noticed it today. It's a podcast where I'm reaching a lot of people and so I'm kind of amped up. So I was picking my kombuchas and I was like,

which one should I pick? And then all of a sudden I was like, well maybe I should pick this one over this one. I was like, hey dummy, stop being superstitious. They're all the same. It doesn't matter. So you were thinking that if you got the wrong one, you'd have a bad time on the show? Yeah, maybe not all that far, but I was like, this one has better juju than the other one.

And then I just stopped myself, and I was like, just because there's a pressured event, all these little things will come out. Normally, I just rip that thing off the shelf, never think about it. But because, as you said, you're moving from lower to higher and I'm trying to bring, you know, my best self to this, to this show, you know, I was like stressed about these little things. And then I had to stop myself and say, Hey, this is bullshit. Like you can't allow these trivial things to bother you. It's just another form of resistance in this point because the pressure's on. So your mind's like, Oh, there's luck and omens,

and if the birds fly this way or that way, you've got to get rid of that shit too. These trivial fears and these trivial superstitions, I really think that you've got to cut those out, just ruthlessly. But I'll take the other side of that. Getting that type, bitch. I think there is luck.

I think there is feng shui or whatever it is. I mean, if you think about people are getting married, right? A couple's getting married. That's not luck. They put in tremendous thought. Trust me. But doesn't everybody put tremendous thought into what day are we getting married? Where are we getting married?

Are we going to get on a cliff in Malibu or whatever it is? And why do they do that? Because it's going to be either lucky, it'll be lucky for them, or like when you're naming a child and you're trying to say, well, what name am I going to give this child, right? Don't you, whether you think so or not, you feel like, shit, if I give this my daughter the wrong name, it's going to fuck up her entire life. Or she'll just change it to Aubrey. Or vice versa. The right name.

Yeah. So, I mean, you're saying that we were saying before, right, that there are dragons possibly flying through the air that we just can't see right now because we're not in a psychedelic state. Why isn't it true that there's luck? And, you know, I mean, certainly the Chinese, Japanese believe in that, right? You get with the flow. I think it's a slippery slope and it can be a virtual form. It can get a little crazy. Yeah, it can be a virtual. You look like someone like Rafael Nadal.

It's somehow he makes it work, but he's got to tie and retie his shoe, you know, 12 times to get it right. You know, if he doesn't get it right, he's not going to play that point right. You know, and he's going to have, you get, you can bring it. It's logical conclusion. You can take it too far. Yeah, it's logical conclusion. You can take it too far. Yeah, it's logical conclusion is always in the realm of wackiness. But I don't think that there's nothing there. Sure.

You know, I can't prove it, but I think there's something there. But I think it has to do a lot more. I mean, I think it has a lot more to do with your own kind of intent. You know, when I go to Vegas, the only game I like to play is craps. So anybody who's played enough craps and rolled the dice, you got to to be a little bit, you've got to believe in luck a little bit. I mean, you'll feel these moments where you just feel invincible. Pool, too. And then it goes out.

Pool, too. Pool as well. There's some guys who, when you play nine ball, I play in a lot of tournaments, and nine ball, there's a lot of luck involved in nine ball. There's a lot of skill because you play from one to nine. But any ball that goes in, even if you don't make it on purpose, it counts, including the nine ball,

which is the game-winning ball. So there's some guys that just ride the nine ball. Like, they get ball in hand when they scratch, so they'll set up a ball behind another ball and just whack that ball on the nine ball, hoping it bounces around the table and falls in somewhere, because if it does, they win. And there's this one motherfucker

that I play in this tournament with that drives everybody crazy, because every time he gets cue ball in hand, it doesn't matter if there's three balls on the table, one of them is the nine. He sends a ball into the nine and whacks it and lets it fly around. But when he's on a hot streak, they fall. They fall like rain. And I've seen it happen, and I've seen this where people go,

motherfucker, this guy just won again. And he won by just total luck, just crashing the balls together, and that nine ball finds a way into a hole somewhere. And when he's on, it's tangible. And to me, the distinction is you're putting out your own intent. And I think there is a key in the universe there. intent you know and I think there is there is a key in the universe there there's kind of a an access point where if you put your intent and put your belief in into that whether you're rolling die I do and it gets a little fuzzy here but I believe that there are some forces at work this kind of

momentum force that causes seemingly chance events to more line up in your way and I know this is a very controversial topic but it just feels that's the way I can't I couldn't but it just feels, that's the way I can't, I couldn't prove it, of course, but that's the way it feels to me when I'm in those moments, you know, where it feels like you can control things that you would think are out of your control by the will of your own intent and belief. And that's, you know, not just my belief, that's the belief of many of the shamanistic cultures. Right. Primitive cultures believe that. You know what's really interesting? That can't be statistically proven. what's really interesting that can't be statistically proven

what's really interesting i had uh sam harris on the podcast he's coming back again at the end of this month and he was talking about the hot hand uh phenomena of basketball where guys just just all net they just can't miss statistically it's not real well no that study i have a big problem with that study because the way they did that with that study because the way they did that study is they measured the hot hand by when three baskets in a row went in. Well, anybody who's played basketball knows I can have my head in my ass and make three baskets in a row. It doesn't mean I have the hot hand. Only you know when you have the hot hand. Like you feel it.

It feels sensibly different. Same like in pool. If you were going to measure people who are on the roll in pool and measuring it by the person who after they run four or five balls. It could have been an easy run that you just hit five balls. When you're in the zone and you're really feeling it, it's a different thing. You're absolutely right.

You would have to basically go to basketball players and say, they'd have to push a little button. And you know what the problem with that is? Because that would fuck them up. Once they say that, it would fuck up their zone. It would fuck them up. There's moments that you have in pool.

There was a moment I was playing in pool. It was me and my friend Eric Crisp. Eric Crisp is a guy who, he's a cue maker, makes sugar tree cues. We were playing, and I was fucking running out every time I got to the table. If you left me a shot, I was running out, like a pro. got to the table if you left me a shot I was running out like a pro we're playing on a tight diamond but it was craziness I just I couldn't miss I just had have this feel of where the ball we had been playing for like seven hours and I was just completely lubed up high as all hell and I just had this zone I had this feel for where the

ball was going I knew exactly where it was going at all times. I can't do it forever. And then the next day I played again, and I was terrible. For like the first two hours, I only had two hours to play that time, and I couldn't get it back. It was gone. But I know it was there the night before. It was there, man.

It was there. Because even he was going, Jesus Christ. Like, I've never seen you play this good before. I'm like, I've never played this good before. It's never happened. But I'm in that thing. I know how to do it right now. it's locked in. It's a zone. What is that? You only feel it. What is that? What's that zone?

Who knows? It's just what you're talking about, Joe. You get into that place where the mind boy goes away. That's not luck, though, right? That's not luck. No, I don't think it is luck. I'm not sure what it is, but something lines up with something something because we've all been there one way or another. Stephen King saying that he didn't even remember certain books that he wrote because that's where he was. Is that luck or is that cocaine? I think like cocaine more than luck. That's the zone, whatever the zone is.

That's unluck. Cocaine is never connected to luck. Yeah, that zone. It's your authentic swing. It's when you're really doing what it is that you do and nothing else is blocking you. Well, sort of. It's also with pool.

It's processing information because there's information that's coming back from the cue. There's information that's coming back from your arm, your hands. And then when you process that information over a long period of time, then you get so much data that you really understand the dynamics of the table. You really understand the mechanics of your arm. You really understand how hard exactly you have to hit that ball to make it travel exactly as far as you want it to. There's this weird thing that goes on. But there's this tipping point moment

where you're accumulating, accumulating, maybe it's gradual, more data, and all of a sudden it hits a tipping point where you're there. Gone. Whoa. Yeah, and that's where the weirdness happens. That's where I think there's a little bit of magic.

But the thing about pool, much like everything else, is that there's this mindset that must be maintained. And if you think you're going to miss, you'll fucking miss. There's a weird thing about pool. You can line it up right. Everything's supposed to be like, fuck, I'm going to miss. Blank. And you miss.

It's weird. It seems like it's such a straightforward thing. The arm moves straight. It hits into the ball. The ball goes straight. Nope. If you think you're going to miss, if you decide right before you're doing it, fuck, I hope I don't miss. You're going to miss. So how do you diffuse that when that little nasty devil comes up, either in writing or in

pool? How do you diffuse that little voice that comes up? It seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well, you've done it. You've done it. I mean, there must have been voices at times that say, and it is a form of resistance, right? Well, the thing about writing, of course, is there's always rewriting. It's not like shooting pool and you have that one moment. You can screw it up and then come back tomorrow and do it a little better. That's the great thing about writing. So what about when you're taking that shot, Joe, and you get that little nasty voice? How do you reset yourself?

I stop. I stop. I stop the voice, first of all, and I usually sit up for a second, stroke my cue again, put it down. I go through the whole reset. That's a very important thing. Professionals will tell you that. People actually coach that, like Max Eberle coaches that, that when you're down on a shot, if you don't like it, stand up

and then begin your whole pre-shot ritual again. Get back into position. Make sure your arm's in line, your cue's in line. Go back again and approach it the same way. Don't ever take a shot where you think you're going to miss. But I've done it. I'll do it tonight. I do it every time I play.

It's like I said, it's a swim. It's not a mountain climb. You don't get to the top and plant a flag. You never win. You never win. You never win with anything. You just got to keep going. You'll get way better than you used to be, but there's still, if you're, as long as you're

pushing yourself, as long as you're still trying to create, as long as you're still trying to get movement going, you're going to, it's not going to work all the time. There's going to be flubs, but those flubs, I love them because those, those signal growth moments for me that the, at least that's how I have managed to navigate them. Every time I fuck something up, I can look back in my career as a comedian and my biggest growth periods came after I fucking ate a plate of shit on stage. And I'm like, ooh, I don't want to do that ever again. And then I figured out, and even weird sets today that was mediocre or I don't like, things didn't come together right or I was tired or I wasn't in comedy shape.

Ooh, those things fucking fire me up, man. Nothing makes me want to write more. Nothing makes me want to perform more. Yeah, now I hear you. I hear you 100%. Well, listen, man, I think this is a long enough podcast. It's an awesome one. It's been an honor.

How'd you find out about us? Who told you that we were talking about you? Well, I run into people all the time who are big fans of your podcast, you know. And they say, oh, Joe Rogan, he's fantastic, you know. But also I think we've been in touch via Callie Ottinger, right? Yeah. She's my publicity gal. Yes, yes.

And, you know, I think people have said to me, hey, Joe, is you always talking about your books? You've got to get on the show, you know. And then I think there have been a few times when we've sort of tried to, or I've tried to, reach out and something got in the way or something. So finally, resistance. Finally, we did it.

We beat it. Thank you very much. It's a real honor. Thanks for having me, Joe. It's a real pleasure to be here with the Werewolves. Aubrey, it's great. If you ever have a book that's coming out that you want to promote,

we would be happy to have you on again. I would love it, and we'll promote the shit out of it. and I guarantee you a lot of people are going to buy them just from listening to this. The War of Art is the one that I recommend if you're looking for a book that's a great book on motivation, a great book on overcoming resistance in the creative process. I haven't read The Authentic Swing, but I certainly will, and I'm going to get into Gates of Fire tonight. I'm going to get into that tonight. Anything else people need to find you on Twitter, it's SPressfield on Twitter. Do you do that

or do you have somebody else do that? I don't know about that. You don't fuck around with tweets. But I do have a website and a blog. Your blog is very good, by the way. I've just been getting into it. StephenPressfield.com. Yeah.

Okay. So that's S-T-E-V-E-N. With a V, yeah. Not like King. StephenPressfield with two S's. F-I-E-L-D. Thank you very much, man. That was awesome.

Thanks, Joe. I really, really enjoyed that. Thanks a lot, you guys. A real pleasure. And thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to LegalZoom. Go to LegalZoom. Go to LegalZoom.com.

Use the code name Rogan and save yourself some money. Thanks also to Stamps.com. Go to Stamps.com. Use the code word JRE and get yourself a $110 bonus offer, special offer, whatever the hell you want to call it. And GoToMeeting And GoToMeeting. GoToMeeting.com. Use the code word JRE and try it free for 30 days. All right. We will see you guys tomorrow.

And we will see you also tomorrow night. We're at the Ice House. It's Brian Redband, Ian Edwards, Matt Fultron, Tommy Segura, me, and Tony Hinchcliffe, too. It's a hell of a show. A hell of a show. $15, 10 p.m. Come on down, freaks. And this weekend, Houston, Friday night, I'm at the Bayou Music Center with the great Tom Segura.

And then, of course, Saturday is the UFC. Lots of good shit coming up, including lots of really cool podcast guests that we've got on the horizon. Anna Kasparian from the Young Turks is going to be here next week. Coming up soon, we have Sam Harris at the

end of the month and a lot of other good guests as well. All right. We'll see you guys soon. Much love to everybody. Big kiss. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah.