The Rich Roll Podcast - The Awakening Of Russell Brand

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

Every podcaster has their dream list — guests they fantasize interviewing. From day one, today's guest has occupied my top slot. Officially, Russell Brand is one of the most recognizable and best-loved comedy performers in the world. He is also is also a phenomenally successful author, broadcaster, actor, columnist, political commentator and mental health & drug rehabilitation activist. His global bestselling books include Revolution*,Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions*, and his latest release, Mentors: How to Help and Be Helped*. Now a devoted dad and husband, when he isn't touring or performing he can be found hosting Under The Skin on Luminary, one of my very favorite podcasts. Unofficially, Russell is iconic for his very public awakening. A recovering heroin addict, his struggles with drugs, sex, fame, money and power were custom tailored for tabloid fodder. And his satirical but always probing takes on politics, celebrity culture and religion often find him in the crosshairs of controversy. I think of Russell as a hyper-intelligent master of modern discourse and disputation. Perpetually armed with a most delicious turn-of-phrase, he is a philosopher of the extreme. A man who has voyaged to the brink of overindulgence, he has returned to share the unique personal wisdom gleaned from such surfeit with razor-sharp musings on the broader humanity we collectively share — and have a laugh along the path. With a sui generis brew of eccentric wit, subversive candor and extreme charm, Russell grapples fearlessly and out loud with that which lays beneath the surface. With the ideas that define our time. Of the history we are told. And the ulterior truth behind our constructed reality. What is truly real? How can we craft a more fair and just society for all? How can we live a more intentional life of meaning? What does it mean be a spiritual being in a human existence? Today we voyage beyond the walls of our constructed material world. We dive into The Matrix. And to coin Russell's phrase, lick the walls of the hologram. I’m absolutely delighted by this magical, modern-day mystic. Once a dream, this conversation is now a tangible reality. Or is it? Either way, I sincerely hope you relish the conversation as much as I adored having it. The visually inclined can watch our entire conversation on YouTube here: bit.ly/russellbrand448 (please subscribe!)  Peace + Plants, Rich

Fame is an abstraction. Fame is like someone else's conception of me, so I try not to be involved with it because I'm too greedy. If I start looking at it, then it always leads me somewhere bad. Looking at the comments always leads me somewhere bad. Caring and comparing myself to other people always leads me somewhere bad. I believe that the way to liberate myself from the belief that I can only be happy if I get what I want

is to daily, moment to moment, remind myself that it's through service. My relationship with other people is an opportunity to be of service. It's not an opportunity to be served. That's what I have to maintain. Instinctively, I don't agree with people that are condemning of other people on the basis of some sort of ethnic or external data. My deepest belief is people are all the same. It's like if you have a spiritual life, it is for you. It's not something that you would inflict on other people. That's Russell Brand, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How

you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. It's Sunday right now. As of the moment, I'm recording this Father's Day and I'm in a hotel room in Denver alone, contemplating whether I have enough time to squeeze a run in after I record this and still make my flight, but I'm not complaining. My life is an overflowing cornucopia of bounty. I'll be home with Julie and the kids later today. And I have to remind myself, I chose to be here. I chose it. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful because I had this amazing opportunity last night to moderate a live conversation, a live event between Alex Honnold, the climber,

and this guy called RJ Scaringe, who is the founder and CEO of this really interesting new electric car company called Rivian. And it was great. And the more I get to know Alex, the more I like him. I got to spend time with the executive director of his foundation, Dory Trimble, who's super impressive. I got to learn more about the great work that those guys are doing. I had a long lunch with RJ, who's just this really smart, grounded, impressive person who's executing on this giant vision at the moment that extends well beyond groovy electric pickup trucks. I got to meet Ben Moon, one of my favorite outdoor filmmakers and photographers. I saw Scott and Jenny Jurek. It was cool. It's just one of those incredible

experiences, opportunities that I never could have foreseen or imagined happening when I started this thing six plus years ago. Anyway, the event was live streamed on YouTube. It's pretty interesting. So if you're keen, you can go watch it on the Rivian YouTube page. And I'll put a link up in the show notes to that. Speaking of things I could have never foreseen, every podcaster has their dream list,

guests they fantasize about having on their show. And people ask me often, like, who is the number one person that you'd love to get? And I got to say from day one, for me personally, it's always been Russell Brand. This is a guy who we've seen evolve in very real ways in real time under the glare of tabloids, the white hot spotlight of media attention that seems to track his every move, his relationships, his travails with heroin and alcohol addiction, his satirical at times controversial takes

on everything from politics, celebrity culture, materialism to addiction, sobriety, religion, and basically everything in between. And I've always seen Russell as someone who is hyper intelligent, hyper verbal, a man who has traversed really all manner of extremes, a guy who's lived unapologetically and come out the other side to

openly share his multitudinous experiences, his reflections on not just his personal trajectory, but on the greater human condition. This is a guy who has been grappling for some time out loud in real time with his very specific and unique combination of wit and eccentricity and candor, honesty, vulnerability, and really extreme charm and sweetness with the great questions of our time, like what ails us and how can we deconstruct our social contracts to create a more fair and just society for all? And what is truly real? And what does it mean to live an intentional life, to be a spiritual being having a human experience and to find meaning and purpose in our existence? And I'm just delighted by this man. It's all coming up in a couple of few, but first.

We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. Thank you. to support and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders,

including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. really do, and they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one,

again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many

suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders,

including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey.

When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay. Russell Brand. I don't know that I need to provide any more prefatory remarks, but I would like to mention that among his many, many talents,

Russell is an incredible writer who has authored several books I really love that you should check out, including Recovery, Freedom from Our Addictions, which is his sort of manual for self-realization based on his experiences with many addictions and the wisdom gained from his many years in recovery. And his most recent book is called Mentors, How to Help and Be Helped, which shares Russell's experiences and his experiments in helping others and being open to accepting help. We talk about it today on the podcast.

Beyond that, he hosts one of my very favorite podcasts, Under the Skin, which explores, to use his words, what's beneath the surface of the people we admire, of the ideas that define our time, of the history we are told with all manner of fascinating guests, which can be found on Luminary, a new subscription podcast platform, which you can get at luminary.com or by downloading

the mobile app in the app store. This is a big one for me. I really dug it. I'm ecstatic to share it with you guys. I think you're going to really enjoy it. As I said earlier, this man delights me. So this is me and the singular, beautiful, and awakened Russell Brand. Well, one of the things that I've always appreciated about your message and kind of what you put out to the world is that you're very much a traditionalist about the steps and sobriety in a world in which it seems like every year without fail, somebody comes up with some new idea that's followed by a lot of think pieces about how antiquated Alcoholics Anonymous is. And I'm all for new ideas and kind of spearheading interesting perspectives know, interesting perspectives on sobriety and recovery, but the 12 steps are what got me sober and keep me sober. They work, they've worked for countless people that I know.

And it almost, it almost feels like you have, you're being, you're cutting across culture now. And it's, it's sort of a risk to come out and say, this actually works, you know, and it was so straightforward in your recovery book. And I really appreciated that. Thank you. I thought the only way I'd be able to do it was by speaking from a personal perspective. And I spoke to a lot of people from a personal perspective and acknowledging that anything that I know that's worth knowing

has been taught to me. And I spoke to a lot of people that have got a lot more time than me and said and one person in particular that I know a guy who's orthodox you know and I sort of said to him right I'm doing this thing what are you how do you know how should I do this and I thought if I if this guy can like if I can get him to say it's all right then it's all right because he is you know know. You mean in terms of like dancing around the tradition of anonymity? Yeah, how I've done it is I never say which fellowships, if any, I go to. That's how I like, you know. But it's almost like a technique.

It's like a technicality, you know. We're calling it the secret society. We all know what we're talking about here. Yeah, yeah. And we're in a different, like I struggle with this because I don't know where that line is. I'm sure I've crossed it many times, only in my own personal experience,

not with anybody else's. But still, I never know quite where that demarcation, that DMZ exists. Well, for me, like what I've done is I've never sort of spoke, I've never said, because I've never said a particular fellowship name, I can't be claiming to speak on part of a fellowship like 12 steps is applicable to clutters alcoholics drug addicts smokers you know and I've had probably the same as you on the

way into addiction food and sex issues on the way out of addiction food and sex issues and now like the codependency my relationships and the 12-step method is applicable universally so um i don't debate it because i say like for me like you i'm grateful to the to the groups i belong to in that they provided me you know saved my life and without it i wouldn't be able to do it i wouldn't be able to do it on my own. But what I feel like is, well, I feel like it's an amazing technique. And I feel like there's as many ways of working it as there are people working it. I think it's robust enough. Someone said this thing about Shakespeare to me. I'm developing a show where I use Shakespearean monologues to tell a biographical story.

I take some, and duologues, I take an argument between Caliban and Prospero and say this is what it's like my stepdad a speech from richard the third this is what it's like to feel ugly a speech from hamlet about feeling lost and connection to comedy um and the guy this scholar from warwick university professor uh this guy tony he said to me shakespeare is robust shakespeare can handle it like it's like it's not so fragile and delicate that we have to stage it in this way you have to say in that way it can handle it it's powerful stuff you know this is truth it's got truth in it i feel the same way with the 12 steps that you know it's like if you

want to work it excuse me as an atheist or as a buddhist or a muslim or if you like how you know it can handle it because it's obviously universal it predates the 12-step fellowships in some form in evident form in the through the oxford group and those first century christian groups that were using it and i'm um gonna do a dissertation with so as university in london to look at the origins of these ideas and where they're found where are they found is their there precedent in Buddhism, Hinduism, you know, obviously it's mostly derived from Christianity and sort of Jungian psychology. Those things we sort of acknowledge.

William James, you know, we know about those ideas and Emmett Fox, like sort of first century Christian sort of writers. But I'm interested in where are these ideas coming from? Like a proper scholarly dissertation? Yeah. Like legitimate legitimate straight up academic paper yes wow i've done uh i was in the middle of it i'm in the middle of a degree religion in global

politics yeah because well i like part-time you know and it and even his class going on in the uk right now i'm trying to use use this for one of my modules, a chat with Rich Roll. Within that, I can do a dissertation on the 12 steps and the origins of the 12 steps. It's a superb, progressive, modern college, sort of very, what do I say, like influenced by Foucault, Edward Said, or that kind of modern university is what it is.

And I want to learn about the origins. I want to become wise. Well, certainly, yeah, all of the ideas, the core principles, are rooted in ancient principles that date back to, finding the antecedent of that would be super interesting. And it begs the question of just how divinely inspired it was for Bill and Bob to kind of channel this information and put it on paper, like where did it come from for them?

They were not religious scholars, and yet they were able to grasp these ideas and translate them for a modern population from the right ends that are available to us within uh within fellowships it like bill wilton describes an epiphany like a very sort of plain flash of light kind of immediate download, which if you heard it in a yogic tradition, you would go, oh my God, that's like the touch of, you know, got some thunderbolt flash of God consciousness and it all sort of came through. But when I break down the 12 steps, it's essentially a tool for awakening,

even in its own terms having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps so it's uh i feel uh the way i've come to regard it is that problem substance misuse is a carapace a holding pattern for like you know even within the confine of the steps the defects of character that you'd come across in step six, my lust, my pride, myself pity, myself centeredness, selfishness, intolerance, et cetera. And the only way, I read something today, I think from Yogananda, the only way to overcome, we don't forgive anybody, you overcome the person that held grudges.

Like the self can never really forgive. The self is made up, locked into identification. But if I can transcend the person that feels resentment, if I can become another man, then those resentments are another country. There's no one to forgive. That process of iteration, are you becoming another man or are you becoming more of who you were always meant to be

or more of who you truly are? I would prefer your version just there. Yeah, the recovery of the person that you were meant to be, someone said once. And I like that, before we become impeded and impaired and sort of tangled up and lost in sort of the coordinates of a culture that overly stimulates primal desires and traps us in odd patterns. Yeah. So you've been sober for a long time now at this point, right? 16 and a half years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And how is that, how has your perspective on your recovery kind of changed over time? Like where are you at with it now versus where you were at with it at five years or 10 years? I take it more seriously than ever. I recognize how fallible I am and I see that there is no area of my life where I can't apply those principles.

I try to spot as early as I can where I am attaching to some external idea. And so I apply it universally now whereas before it was enough just not to drink and take drugs i think if i can not drink and take drugs that would be fantastic but i'm not interested in addressing my behavior in other areas who wants to yeah yeah you know what's the deal with that stuff there's no consequences to it for yourself anyway. And so it's come very slowly for me. I feel like I have a certain mental facility in some ways,

but spiritually it was not a flash of light. It's just sort of slow. Hello, I'm learning. But you've always been a seeker. Yes. And perhaps that search for wholeness or for answers has been pursued in unhealthy manners from drugs and alcohol to sex and relationships and all the like.

But at your core, you're somebody who's committed to finding answers and filling that hole and, you know and achieving connection and wholeness. I feel it is our natural state to look for that kind of connection. I think that we're all looking for it in one way or another. And I suppose I must have strong drives. That's where I see it now. And I'm trying to see what those drives do if I don't continually demand things of them. If I don't say, get me in a movie, get me laid.

Like, and if I just say, what do you want to do? What happens? What happens? To be up somewhere like this. The non-attachment. Yeah, but you'll love this book. I don't think it's out yet because I was reading an advanced copy, but it's by one of them people whose surname is Rinpoche. He's an Abba, Tibetan monastery, Nepalese fellow.

He decided to go on a wandering retreat. His father gave him one piece. He's believed to be a Talmud or a reincarnated Lama or whatever. His father gave him one piece of advice. If you ever do this wandering tradition, tell no one. So eventually he leaves his monastery, sneaks out in the dead of night. And the way he described his anxiety in getting into a taxi, then his irritation being on a train with other people,

and then his sense of attachment to his robes. He says, my whole life I've been trained in non-attachment. I learned language at the same time as I learned nothing is real, death is real, death is coming, study these flowers, everything's going to go. But the practice of it is entirely different. Because he was attached to non-attachment. He was attached to his identity as a prominent abbot within a bloody monastery.

So that makes me feel like we can be forgiven ourselves of ourselves those of us that have been cultivated and grown to be egoic and individualistic and materialistic and to regard things as commodities what how would we not how would we not if well that's the malaise that sits at the very center of everything that ails us as a culture, you know, socially and politically. This attachment to identity, our egoic center and individualism at its core. Yes. Yes. How are we going to overcome these and achieve this utopian society of which you speak so fondly? Well, my only, I reckon, Rich, it's got to be this.

It's got to, like, it's, I believe it's through service. I believe it's through service. I believe that the way to liberate myself from the belief that I can only be happy if I get what I want is to daily, moment to moment, remind myself that... I wrote about it in loads of books. I always mention it because it nags away at me. When I met Amma, one of the times I had the privilege of spending some time with Amma, I went to her ashram and after you get the mantra off her and the hug,

one of the sort of Brahmin, these more heavy dudes in sort of like robed up and pretty serious, not the maverick shamanic Amma, sort of a straight out of nowhere person, but the sort of inculcated and educated Brahmin. One of them took me, I was in the, you go get the mantra properly, you get reminded of it in case you didn't notice it in the giddy bliss of the hug. We're in some sort of garden on the ashram and I looked up and watched him and he was literally letting a butterfly out of his hand,

like it was flying off, oh God, this guy's so holy. And when he gave me the mantra, he said to me, the material world has got nothing else to give you now russell the material world can only take from you and it made my stomach sort of pull in like i sort of i felt a lower chakra tug of i don't like resisting that yeah were you able to hear it i did hear it i heard it in my body and and it's only recently maybe five years later that i thought oh no this is a blessing because it means I don't need to go through life thinking, people are going to approve of me.

Someone's going to give me fellatio. Someone's going to give me a pat on the back or an automobile. There's nothing. There's nothing to get. And I have to continually be reminded of it, almost relationship to relationship, exchange to exchange, that you're not in this car to get something from this driver. You're not going on Rich Rolls podcast to get something from Rich.

I have to continually remind myself. But that muscle of continuous practice is something you learn in recovery through constant surrender repeatedly throughout the day, minute by minute, hour by hour at times. Yes, we're fortunate, aren't we, to have learned it in the sort of obnoxiously obvious form of substance misuse and alcohol misuse. It's so bloody obvious. And because we had to, basically.

No choice. If we wanted to re-enter society. What happened to you? It was, I was pretty much a purist with alcohol. I was too afraid of drugs because I knew it would be just way too enticing. But booze took me down. And my story is not the craziest story of all time.

It's not super rock and roll, but it was dark and pathetic and sad. There was nothing sexy or romantic about it. At the end I was drinking, I would drink in the morning, vodka tonics in the shower. I was working as a lawyer. I was sneaking drinks throughout the day and just biding time till I could leave

and go into a blackout and wake up in strange compromising situations, wondering where my car is and what happened. And the police got involved and there was judges and jails and things like that to contend with and family fleeing for the hills until, I basically came to that realization that if I wanted to live, I was gonna have to get sober.

And I went to a rehab in Oregon for a hundred days. So you were in treatment for like three months, right? So, you know, like that's a longer, more extended stay than the usual kind of 28 or 21 day spin cycle. In the UK, I think it's standard. Oh, is it? It should be. Yeah, although it's not easy to get treatment for free now, you know, they're getting harder and harder.

Yeah. I went to a place called focus 12 which is sadly now closed down due to a lack of funding which was a 12-step treatment center it wasn't residential when i went there so i had to stay in a bed and breakfast run by this phenomenal Atheist man, Chip Summers, who was my first mentor in the program. And I went there as a sort of ancillary. I didn't see this as a watershed transitional moment. I just thought, I'll do this and then I'll get on with my plan to become successful. Get people off your back. Yeah, that's right.

That's what I was doing. I heard someone say recently we should remember that when people are not enthusiastic early in their recovery, try to remember how we were. Right. Because now that I've become a zealous kind of a man, I kind of expect people to be very devoted and dedicated. And I'm so irritated when people just, why don't you listen?

What's wrong with you? I'm speaking to someone today. And it's a person I care about a lot. That's actually, as far as I know, not using at the moment. But she is a person that if she does not walk the line, she's fucked. You know, like in the situation she gets in.

So I was like, I sometimes feel it sort of karmically. You know, there are certain sort of celebrities or famous people that the problems that come in their life seem sort of kind of low-rent, trashy problems. You think it's almost like, it's almost as if your karmic, essential self has not acknowledged, how could it, that you have now ascended to some sort of privileged position. Like, you know, you notice it in my country with like footballers or whatever, people from regular sort of privileged position. Like, you know, you notice in my country with like footballers or whatever people from regular sort of blue collar, I guess, backgrounds,

that the kind of issues they get in, it's as if it's somehow ordained. Like, you know, the sort of the mess of it all. Well, you know, yeah, when people won't listen, I think, what is it? What are you resisting? What are you fighting? But I only have to look at myself and the things that I resist and fight regular. Holding on to your best friend until it's pride from your dying clutch.

Of course, you know, it's not easy. Well, you talk about Chip and you talk about Alma in the new book, Mentors, which I enjoyed very much. You're a brilliant writer. It's fantastic. And it was, that book is different than what I was expecting.

I thought it was, given the title, I was sort of thinking this is going to be a more straightforward kind of self-helpy kind of thing. But it's really a narrative that unfolds in an autobiographical sense in which you weave in these people that have had profound impacts on your life at various stages.

Yes, any way that I know how to write prose as it turns out is i which i think it comes from comedy is that if are you if i stray too far from authentic personal experience i feel that i'm not in territory that i know well so even when writing about Amma or like Bruce Lloyd a therapist that I write about in there or Jimmy Mulville a mentor of mine or like Amma as you have said or the man that teaches me BJJ Chris Clear I still have to use it on how how do these influences work on my neurosis now do you know that filmmaker that is called Adam Curtis? He's a British filmmaker. You'll love his stuff if you've not seen it.

He like makes it, he'd start with Century of the Self in which he talks about how the insights of Freud were used to establish the profession of marketing and PR, Century of the Self. You'll love that bit on the war in Afghanistan. It's kind of sort of a postmodern Baudrillard sort of take on those kind of, the way that narratives appear and a kind of, I don't know, disingenuous and used to manipulate power.

He's brilliant, but very sort of pop in a way. He takes on hard subjects, but he's very pop. He said that we live in our heads. And like I said, he said that my, he says that my writing, he was kind enough to say that my writing style is beneficial rather than relentlessly solipsistic. We live now continually in the narrative of our mind. The sort of endlessly spiralling dialogue.

What now? What do I do? What happens now? I'm going to get that. And he says to hear that, he said like Balzac or Dickens, like a century or so ago, they're describing geography and phenomena. Now he goes, everyone lives here in their head, in their thoughts. So for me, the journey I'm continually trying to make is that there's a macro journey of how can the unenlightened man become enlightened, and then how do I moment to moment, when I re-engage with, oh, I want this,

I want these people to approve of me, I want that to happen, how do I get back? If I'm startled or suddenly fearful or suddenly full of desire, how do I transition back to it? So I'm continually dealing with that voice. Yeah, well, it's the hero's journey. And there's something about your innate humanity and your willingness to be vulnerable in the storytelling matched with

like this facility for language that you have that makes it very compelling. And then you'll surprisingly kind of zing people every once in a while with a paragraph about like, here's how you can do this too. But it's done in such a way where you don't really feel like you're being preached to in any way, because you're caught up in the storytelling itself and the humanity of it. Because I don't like being told what to do. I've never liked it. Who does? And yet there is a whole massive industry built around these books that are telling people what to do and people love reading them and buying them. So we must want it.

But I question whether they're effective. I think people read these books, a very small percentage of them take that wisdom and put it into action. But I think a lot of people just feel good about buying them and maybe feel a little bit better about reading them. And then it becomes this sort of placebo that- You might be right, except placebos can be-

Sometimes they work, correct. Yeah, I mean, but like, you see, you've made a transition in your life and it's fucking hard, isn't it? To sort of go, right, I'm not gonna be, I'm going to be fit. I am going to put myself through physical trauma or stress. Yeah, and so when somebody comes to you and says,

Russell, tell me how you did this or how do I go from here to there? And what they want is a distilled six-point plan that they can execute on. And life doesn't work that way. And it's through the storytelling, the humanity that we can connect with something that can live within us that has staying power that resonates that we will remember a year or

five or 10 years later. I think. I don't know. Yes. I agree with that. I believe that, but how to frame it again within the 12 steps, which is how I, you know, again, like it is robust. I feel like it works. Like that if I'm, if I surrender, okay, that's the first thing. If I go, all right, I do want to change. I do not want to have this body. I do not want to have this job. I do not want to have these feelings about my partner. I don't want to feel like I'm an inadequate father.

You know, once I recognize, once I come to that point of I've got a problem and my life's unmanageable, then am I ready to come to believe that I can be restored to sanity that is possible i like the optimism of the program that the program assumes that it is possible to be happy not like it's not some sort of protestant we are born to suffer suffering is good work hard flagellate you know because i feel that you know that i can see how that idea enters because the death of self the death of the individual the flagellation the mortification of the flesh the loss of the individual does sound a lot like you know tear yourself apart

but i like the bliss of hinduism i like the bliss of the vedas i like the love the voluptuousness the senses i don't want to become passionless i don't think i don't you know when i meet like you know you meet enlightened people sometimes i like the the mischievous dudes that are on your wall back in your house. Because when you meet people, well, I've transcended to it. Come on, let's get it. Or the self-proclaimed enlightened person that just hugs you a little bit too long. A bit too much staring and a bit too much hugging. There's more to this than staring and hugging.

I know, right? Although staring and hugging are part of it. Like the repinage, you have to take it out into the world and actually fucking live it. That's what's good about that particular book is the way that he's saying, oh my God, I've been preparing for this my whole life. Now I'm on this train. I'm like, these people fucking stink. And then he goes, I have to remind myself.

Amateur. Yeah. Spiritual amateur. Come on, this is it. If you can't work it on a train, how are you going to work it on the next plane? But like he's saying, you know, I have to remind myself these people have got a bought a birth and a death and that they're the same as me. Like it just shows you how these principles are challenged in the material world.

That's why I think we need that fundamental spiritual belief that this, we need to somehow have the faith to have the commitment. This is not real. This is not real this is not real and you can see how people you know how that became the kind of in a sort of secularized christian cultures oh right yeah heaven the afterlife so that the billionaires can get on with being rich and we just scuttle about in the rubble no no no it's to that someone said to me in like uh one of them like I met with a group in New Orleans and this man went to me, like he was off to, he was such a romantic fellow,

so bearded and stained shirt and some sort of navel-looking hat and heavy and leathery. And he went to me that he was off to help the homeless and we were in New Orleans so there were no shortage. And he goes, yeah, the material of this he says this is this is uh just crumbs don't settle for crumbs i want to be at the banquet to recognize that anything that occurs within this limited bandwidth whether it's uh sort of lamborghinis or limitless orgies it's nothing it's taking place on a pinhead you know but then we have access to some kaleidoscopic experience, but does take discipline.

The Maya. Yeah, bloody thing. It's gorgeous, isn't it? It is. It's a gorgeous illusion. Intoxicating, you know? Delicious tasting lie. I agree with you with the optimism of the steps, but I also appreciate the matter of fact nature of them.

It's like, you know, you will have a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. Not like you might, or, you know, you will have a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. Not like you might, or, you know, it's possible, but like, just do these things and you will have this transformation. And it doesn't matter how you feel about it or how much you're questioning it.

And the expansion occurs because like recovery is littered with people that come and you came in as an atheist. And now you're this, like, you know, you're ready to start your own religion, basically. Working on that, yeah. Yeah. Where are we with that?

Starting the old cult. The acolytes are, you know, everywhere at this point. I don't know. I just need to get the right kind of blanket, work on that stare and long cuddle. This is very good for your ego, I would imagine. Oh, that's exactly what I go for. The irony. Yeah. The irony.

Yeah. The irony. How do you sort of think about who you are and what you do now? Like you're doing all these things, you're stand up, these live performances, these like one man shows, you're here in town because you're doing ballers, right? Like you're acting in this TV show, you've got books, and you're kind of this sort of person of wisdom at large, right, on social media. How do you balance all of those things and think about like the choices that you have to make to kind of move forward in this,

bearing in mind this commitment to being not attached to results and the feeding of the ego. I discipline. I try not to live in abstraction. I try not to look at, I try not to, fame is an abstraction. Fame is like someone else's conception of me.

So I try not to be involved with it. Not again because I'm too greedy. If I start looking at it, then it always leads me somewhere bad. Looking, then it always leads me somewhere bad. Looking at the comments always leads me somewhere bad. Caring and comparing myself to other people always leads me somewhere bad. I'm living in Los Angeles.

I don't have to look very far to see people that are more successful, more famous, better looking, nicer abdominal muscles than me. Generally more unhappy. Well, I wonder. I wonder. is with a degree of immediacy whether that's trying to live in the moment by listening or whether it's like you know like i can't believe how fundamentally bloody transformative having a family was i mean i suppose i should have preempted it because it's kind of obvious in a way. But having my wife and daughters in my life has necessarily made me present.

And does it matter what's going on? Don't spend so much time looking at abstract things or trying to nurture yourself from the outside in some sort of definitely, plainly, illusory thing like what someone says on your phone. Stay here with them. Look at them. Listen to them.

And when I'm able to do it, and I have to remind myself, look, Rich, I always feel slightly fraudulent because this is stuff I'm doing right now. I'm doing it right now. I'm not like, I don't feel any different from when I was a little kid. That's why I believe in that recovery ideal. I think we're all born with that attack with that connection to a degree of purity or at least oneness perhaps oneness is a better term but like you know i am sometimes holding a beautiful little baby and thinking i'd rather fucking watch

football and then i think no no stop it you maniac i want to touch my phone phone phone wants me and i want phone so how i well how i do it is by like letting go like by not i don't trust anymore the things that i used to want like in various forms i'm not going to allow myself to repackage egoic adulation in some other format i really like you know i always keep pursuing these these these avenues that are just rife ripe for that right i decided to tackle them yeah how about starting a religion or becoming this group i mean there is you know of anything that you could enter into like this is feeding that monster the one that caution i will definitely tackle this tendency i've had towards egotism by setting myself up as a sort of online digital Jesus

once and for all. Let's nip it in the bud. Exactly. You should see the way I drift around after my live shows or semi in tears, like looking at people lovingly outreaching my hand. As they follow you down Melrose. I'm a comedian. Thank God I I'm a comedian so like I know how it's all ridiculous it's all ridiculous it's funny to me it's funny to me and that is I suppose if I can bring anything to this world into this conversation by this world I mean this idea that none of us are ever going to be fulfilled by trying to augment our identities and acquire material and status attainment through one another like the thing i think i can contribute is by being sincere but funny by continuing to acknowledge this is ridiculous this is stupid this is happening in limitless space don't take it too seriously

like you know that's the thing that i'm trying to stay focused on because you know like in a world where we've got eckhart's hole we've got Tony Robbins, we've got all these people that are sort of profound, powerful communicators that know how to do this stuff. And I think, well, there's no, like, you know, all, like any of us, I suppose, if we are authentic and true to ourselves, then it's going to get taken care of. Well, I would consider you one of those powerful communicators. I mean, as I said earlier, you have this facility for language and this ability to create a narrative and argue your point of view in a pretty remarkable way. remarkable way. But when I hear you, I often wonder, I think, this is so easily, this can be easily used, not just as a weapon, but also as a shield, like as a mask, you know, I can hide behind this facility that I have and keep myself safe. You might be right. I mean, I have always done

that. Here are some other methods, though, that I've got. Like, I don't look at porn I don't objectify people I'm only I'm in a monogamous relationship I know I can't get anything by cheating people I mean in the sense of like trying to get something for people so like this again it's the program I'm running everything through a program I'm running everything like you know anytime that I feel a spike in my energy fear or desire that destabilizes me you know know, in a step 10, anytime we are disturbed. Anytime I'm disturbed, I'm checking it with other people. So even if I did start a cult, it would be a good one because I wouldn't be sleeping with anybody.

I mean, them cults will go wrong when they go, I've come up with a system where I have sex with everyone. Oh, that wasn't in the original brochure. Are you sure? Yeah, no, it's good. It's spiritual. There's some corollary to the rule that you'll have to come up with to make it possible. I think that's why people like in positions of spiritual authority are celibate because these are powerful, powerful energies.

I've got friends that are like swamis and like they hug men and shake hands with females because these are powerful forces. These are the forces that carried our material form here, the desire to procreate, the desire to have status. These energies are bigger than individuals. What's that beautiful analogy? Thinking that the egoic self is in charge of the whole self is like a stowaway on a cruise liner thinking he's the captain. We're just, hello there, I'm Russell.

There's all these biological energies, all these forces, this stardust stuff thrusting and fucking and me just floating around in there like a little gorgeous pippin. So it's not going to take that guy too seriously. As long as I shut down the avenues that I know that he would explore,

like can I have a golden throne and all of those sort of things. In the Bikram sort of way. Is that what happened with Bikram? He had a big, like, golden throne that he would sit on at the end of his yoga studio. There's not enough irony in the world for there to be,

I'm going to legitimately have a golden throne. And his fleet of Rolls Royces. But it all started good, just like everything right? yeah Osho or Bhagwan as he was then you watched that series

loved it yeah it was incredible how do you I mean isn't it wonderful incrementally the place you can get to right peace and love

we're all one all democratic people are free to be who they are sexually we're not going to inhibit anyone's identity and within a couple of months

we're poisoning a salad bar I know because we because we're fucking human. But if you take that lens, if you shift that aperture over to politics, you can make the same argument. If you look at whether it's, you know, Paul Ryan or Barr, whoever these people are, like, what were they like as children? What initially motivated them to go into politics? I would imagine all of them had some service-minded, you-minded aspect that got corrupted by the egoic beast that takes over. And suddenly they find themselves saying things that they know in their heart of hearts they don't actually believe. And millions of people are impacted. Yes, Rich. And also, bureaucratic and administrative systems shouldn't be adhered with power. It's just for organization. I feel like

these systems necessarily have to be curtailed. You know, the principle that, you know, our leaders are trusted servants, they do not govern. Like, you know, like the very simple principles, like these systems can never be used to bring about more equality. They will always sustain themselves. I don't pay too much attention, and perhaps I should, to the particular individuals that are occupying positions of power. One, because of a conversation I had with that Yanis Varoufakis who ran Syriza, he said that once they won that election in Greece, they said, we're not repaying that debt, it's all been a swindle,

screw you, in the words to that effect, I'm paraphrasing. But when they had the meetings with the EU, he said that he recognized that even i think it was called something like wolfgang schauble i can't remember the name but that the german finance minister he said that man only has the power that that role affords him he has like so that individual's power is irrelevant the system is a self-sustaining thing the people that is in the person that's in the role of president or chancellor or prime minister regardless of the particular inflection of their political affiliations there are systemic restrictions mean that no meaningful change can occur no meaningful change can occur their primary relationships with economic interests that exist above the level of democracy we all know that

that's why there's a rise in populism at the moment which is being ludicrously and ironically ridden primarily by the right which will further what do i say fortify those interests so but populism in itself i don't think is a bad thing people becoming popularly interested in politics people thinking i can get involved in this people really uh the more people have direct control over the things that impact their lives, the better. It's just a kind of anarchism. Communities governed and controlled by the people that live within them. Schools governed and controlled by the people that use them. Hospitals governed and controlled.

This is, of course, there needs to be some, I suppose, there needs to be some kind of centrist systems. People tell me armies, roads, police forces, etc. But I feel that the principle should be minimized. Decentralized, community-oriented, populist. I think so. Utopian. Do you think, here's what I'm curious about, because I've listened to you talk about this stuff

quite a bit, and there's so much truth and wisdom in so many of these things that you say, and yet I find myself saying, yeah, but that's not gonna happen. Is that my pessimism? Is this reality? And how much of this do you actually believe in terms of its possibility and evolution?

Or are you holding this line way out on the edge so that we can have these conversations and open up the possibility to just even begin to entertain them joseph campbell said nothing's ever changed he said you know like a great master of comparing myths and look you know that power preserves itself leaders behave how leaders behave um i do believe in it because I feel that feudalism transitioned to capitalism and that we have not exhausted the possible models for organising systems. And this is another very simple basic tool, and perhaps these are the only ones I can understand, is when those of us that think that

the state of affairs is lamentable and wrong and we would like to change it, look for a moment. Are there any institutions or individuals that would regard the system as it currently stands as beneficial and fortuitous? Yes. Well, then that's why it's like that. For some institutions and individuals, it's not a problem that it is this way. And I don't believe in conspiracy in the sense of malevolent cabals, but I just feel that there are sort of sustaining systems

and interests that won't be broken unless there is reasonable opposition. And that reasonable opposition can only come from, I suppose, organization, rejection, rebellion. Do you have a sense that we can change these these systems though at least in the u.s yes i do feel that i do feel that because i feel like don't you feel like with the current political situation that there that there is it's a bit of a um an anomaly you know that's an odd thing that happened trump Trump becoming president.

Like, you know, it's a sort of a... I tend to think that, but I also think that's dangerous thinking. And I think that because thinking that or professing that is to kind of deny the perspective of so many people that empowered him to take office. I would never belittle or dismiss people that have reverted to ethno-nationalistic and sort of patriotic and patriarchal, even if not explicitly so, ideologies.

Because what the ground, like, I feel like that it's naive even to look at how can you divorce Trump from Obama? There was like one minute Obama was president, one minute later Trump was president. So there's an obvious relationship and corollary. And prior to that, you know, these things things that happen on the material plane are a reflection of subtler energies that are taking place in the consciousness and being of individuals. And these energies become systemized. If enough people feel angry and antagonized, then they will respond to beacons or corroborate or attract to say, corroborate or attract that energy. And I understand why people are angry. I recognize why people are angry.

I think they're not mad. They're right. The neoliberalism abandoned the very people that it was supposed to be protecting, the working class people of the, you know, because this is happening. Everything's not just happening in America. Yeah, they've been looked over. They have been unheard and their lives have not improved. The quality of their lives have declined, and there's a sense of desperation there,

you know, and that's going to manifest in, you know, all kinds of unpredictable things that we're now seeing happening. I have great compassion for that, but I think it is, you know, yes, the material world is a reflection of our consciousness. And I feel like right now we're in a very interesting moment in which where I look within my, you know, admitted bubble, I see a profound expansion in awareness and consciousness. It seems like that, doesn't it? Because I surround myself with those kinds of people, I suppose, but also I think even peering outside of that, because of, look, the internet and social media, there's a lot of problems with that,

but it allows these kinds of messages to profligate in a way that they couldn't before. Yes, yes, yes. And I think we are seeing a lot of people waking up to these kinds of ideas, the kind of ideas that you're talking about. At the same time, there is an equal, if not stronger, opposition force.

It's like dark and light. It is Joseph Campbell. It's like Star Wars that's happening right now. And it's a race to the finish with the ticking clock being like the environmental crisis that we're facing at the moment. Yes, the fact that we are individuals, it's an attractive argument

because we really do seem like we are individuals wrapped in bags of skin. It's hard to imagine that it is perhaps more important and inverted commas, more true that we are one, that the consciousness that you experience and the consciousness that I experience and the consciousness that I experience and the consciousness of all of us in this room are experiencing is the same phenomena merely disrupted

by more superficial, what do I say, apparel. That we're the same. We are one. It's easy to tell people that your interests are most important. Look after yourself. Look after your most immediate family well this is the gestalt of modern western society what does that mean the gestalt like this this is the the momentum and like everything is organized around that very principle and there's a tremendous amount of momentum behind it that's all pushing us forward in a in a manner in which we're not even consciously aware of it and we certainly don't question it. There's some Native American activist, I think he might have been called Russell Mead or something, and I think like ludicrously he actually was in Last of

the Mohicans as an actor and consultant, but he was a pretty out there radical activist. And he said, like, you know, there seems to be an assumption from people on the left that we, the native people of this land, should form a natural affiliation with the Marxists. He goes, but for us, he says, Marxism and capitalism, these are different sides of the same coin. Both assume that the land is something to be plundered. Both assume an industrialized and therefore post-industrial society. Both of those systems are resource-based so we look at things from a very very narrow perspective even when we consider ourselves to be considering a

broad gamut of political ideas it's a very very narrow spectrum in the same way i would argue that our sensory uh spectrum is narrow and limited but like we know we're not going to start questioning whether or not there are different entities floating about or different vibrational frequencies and forces communicating with us continually. We can't operate on that assumption. We've got to get some dinner. We've got to get to bed.

We've got to get laid. These are the things that seem of most importance, except it isn't working. And it won't work for people to elect right-wing populist leaders. C.S. Lewis brilliantly argues in his book Mere Christianity that the case for God is not made externally through theology, but is made in our own belly, that we know when we've behaved badly.

We know when we're doing something wrong. And he denies that these are acculturated ideas, that we've been taught, oh, don't do that, do as you will be done by. Because he says there is no culture in the world where, he goes, there's cultures where a man may take one wife and cultures where a man may take five wives, but there is no culture where a man is applauded for running away in battle.

But there is a sense of good within us. But we're so disconnected from who we are. When your priority is the pursuit of individual grandeur and material accumulation and status at the, you know, at the forsaking of community and intimacy and connection and, you know, service and all of these ideas, you become almost disassociated with that belly that's telling you you have gone astray. And so that signal isn't even connecting. Yes, that's right.

I mean, that is what's happening. So that's the beauty and the blessing of being a drug addict or an alcoholic because you have this intervening force that precipitated the crisis, that accelerated it and forced us to confront it. But I think most people are experiencing a low grade version of that, that they can ride out their entire life without ever having to confront it but i think most people are are experiencing a low-grade version of that that

they can ride out their entire life without ever having to confront it because they're scrolling and they're on netflix and they're doing whatever they're fucking thinking about the promotion or the next car that they're gonna yes yes i've done all of these things today and i have too i've looked at netflix i've thought a little bit about cars. But what David Lynch, I was talking to, you have his book here. I was talking to him yesterday. His perspective seems to me, I wouldn't claim to speak on behalf of David bloody Lynch. I mean, can he even? Who can?

Even himself. What the hell's going on in Mulholland Drive? Who the fuck's that guy by the bins? What the hell's going on in Mulholland Drive? Who the fuck's that guy by the bins? Deconstruct that man's mind for me, please. I just sort of think, I can't deconstruct it with language.

I just look at what his face is doing and see if I can understand that on some level. But he thinks, just meditate, just meditate. Teach more people to meditate. Get people meditating. Connect people spiritually. Don't worry about the admin. There's a Teach more people to meditate. Get people meditating. Connect people spiritually. Don't worry about the admin. There's a trust with that. Yeah, faith.

A trust that you will go, that that will then empower somebody to go on their own journey. And then ultimately, they'll be able to hear that CS Lewis signal in their belly. Yeah, I think we've got to do that. I mean, I don't know. I like that though.

I like the idea of give people the resource of meditation. Give people the resource of the 12 steps. What is positive, it seems to me, because now that I'm, let's face it, middle-aged, that the younger people appear to be acknowledging and rejecting the idea that their primary means for fulfillment is going to be economic and material. It seems like people are like, oh oh yeah, that's what it was. No, that is a huge seismic shift in our culture. And I find great comfort in that.

How that will play out remains to be seen, but it's super interesting and it's something that I haven't seen in my whole life. No, like your kids, you've got some kids that are in their 20s. Two boys, yeah, they're 23 and 24. What are they like? What are they saying?

They're amazing, yeah. And they're pursuing their dreams. They're artists. They're, you know, look, they have to meet their obligations, but they're certainly not, you know, pursuing the dollar. Yes. That's not what's igniting their spirit. Yes. I think it's possible.

I think it is possible. You know, we forget that in this young country of yours, just 50 years ago, there was so much social unrest and disruption. And of course, the systems that govern were able to relocate that disruptive energy within its accepted framework, the we can do what we want of the 60s becoming the I can do what i want of the 80s but it's such a short time ago it's such a short time ago it's the same with this 12-step system only 70 80 years ago

different ideas are bleeding into culture and even what we're doing with these these intellectual pirouations of our fucking endless podcasts we aren't giving people access to ideas and concepts there's so many aren't there why don't we just like we're going to withhold podcasts for just a couple of weeks give you some fucking time to get on and meditate do something valuable with your life yeah well um sorry go ahead well i'm saying that at least like if i was 16 now obviously the my primary use of the internet would be masturbating. But I'd like to think that amidst that, I would be coming across podcasts where people are talking about ideas that just, you know,

when I was at school, people weren't talking about this kind of stuff. Can you imagine for free in your hand, you would have access to all of these kinds of conversations and how would that have shaped your thinking and the decisions that you made as a young person? I mean, I don't know. I was drunk and loaded the whole time, so probably not. But for a lot of people, especially people who don't have access to higher education, it's an incredible resource.

Yes. And I don't think we really fully understand just how dramatic this shift in how we process information and receive it is having on people i feel like what we talked about about faith a minute ago which is important because if there is some limitless force expressing itself as consciousness and that was preceded all matter then this thing couldn't look after itself have you ever heard like terence mckenna talk about he says like whatever it is that you know the truth the revolution it won't be tacky. It won't be phony. It won't be drab.

Like, you know, like it's sort of, it's like that, this thing is, we're talking about great power, great, great power that the, you know, that the sages and the rishis are talking about, that Christ is talking about. This is not some flimsy little thing, oh no, will it be able to go up against the Republican Party?

If it can't, if it can't if it doesn't have the priapism and the virility and the power to overcome that if it doesn't have the power to reach people where they need to be reached then then it wasn't the truth anyway so we don't need to concern ourselves with autonomy we didn't need to open ourselves to in my language god allow god to come through and uh we'll be laughing it goes back to what you were saying about shakespeare on the 12 steps the robustness of truth to withstand the countervailing forces of darkness yes to trust that uh we need not worry because truth will prevail due to its robust nature because adam cutts again like he said like um you know like we use metaphors at that i'm thinking the uncommon and fukawa call this epistomies we are unaware of what we're unaware of so we use metaphors like you know the metaphor

that we were a bit machine like came about in the time in the victorian age when in the industrialization he said the romantic during the romantic age there the idea was that nature is wild and crazy and powerful and now we're all all, oh, fucking hell, what are we going to do? You know, those mountains that surround us now, these are powerful things, powerful energies. And I feel that if we can attune to that, if we can just allow that, you know, this will make a difference. I'm not suggesting that we become somehow passive.

I imagine that it will be kind of active. I'm very interested in the body and becoming engaged with the body because it's something I left much too fucking late and need to learn about as a matter of fact. Yeah, well, I want to talk to you a little bit about that, but I can't let that last thing go. I think that we have plenty of room for,

no, not in a challenging way, just to elaborate on it, which is to say this. We need more awe and wonder. And I think rationalism has left us deposited into this space where we do look at those mountains and we think, well, that's just because these atoms have aggregated in a certain way to create this thing. And there's an arrogance and a hubris around

what we can know and what we do know to the extent that we believe that we're capable of knowing everything and that everything can be reduced to an algorithm or a physical law. Yes. And my experience defies that. But to speak to that publicly is to be maligned. It really is, isn't't it and i don't know

how it possibly could be i spoke to uh the physicist brian cox who i really really like actually but he's a you know he says he wouldn't describe himself as an atheist but he didn't think there's a god and he thinks that everything can be understood rationally so you know and i like him i like i'm not i'm just using this as an example. I try to say, look, when people said the Earth was flat, they actually fought it. When people fought that the sun went round the Earth, they actually fought it. We keep discovering more and more, deeper and deeper and deeper truths.

None of us, it's very hard to speculate or hold what these great epistemological shifts will be. We don't know what we don't know. And it's so obvious to me that as there are limitations to what we can see and hear because of the limits of the instruments through which we receive that information, the limits of the instrument to receive information are not the limits of the information.

If space is infinite, knowledge is infinite, wisdom is infinite, beingness itself is infinite so how i suppose that pertains to the way that man organizes the man organized their systems mankind organized their systems is well what seems to be prevailing what is universal what is perennial and what occur recurs throughout our philosophies love kindness unity togetherness oneness these things like these things must find their way into the way we organise society. And when it's the opposite of that, fuck you, survival of the fittest, a mangling of that idea because it came around, you know,

because Darwinism occurred at the same time as economic and technological ideas, that it was convenient to sort of focus on the idea that, look, things will take care of themselves. Don't worry if people are starving in the gutter. Some sort of, some force, some organising things will take care of themselves. Don't worry if people are starving in the gutter. It's some sort of, some force, some organizing force is taking care of that. Of course, the information is infinite. Our ability to perceive and comprehend it is not.

And the hubris comes in with this sense that we are equipped with all the facilities to understand everything. And yet we're just, you know, one millimeter more evolved from the ape, you know, and whatever preceded that, right? Which are incapable of understanding things that we can. So, you know, why whatever preceded that, right? Which are incapable of understanding things that we can. So, you know, why not consider the possibility that without some extra frontal lobe on our brain,

that there's all kinds of things happening right in this room that would fundamentally change how we see everything, and yet we're incapable of fathoming it. Yes, this seems correct to me. And that rationalism, it's bloody good to understand engineering, good to understand material, good to understand science, to organize things. But to allow it to become the preeminent philosophical perspective

is dangerous because it excludes the unknowable. And the unknowable is almost everything. So I feel that... And that's terrifying. And all right as well. Sometimes don't you think, oh, just to fall backwards into death, maybe there'll be some relief in it, to fall backwards, to drown in it, to drown in the kind sort of vibrant nothingness.

I don't know. I know, I'm scared as well. What about my kids? Who's going to look after them when I'm in the in the nothingness well let's talk about the body stuff so you finally uh you finally made this leap to veganism lots of people were waiting for you to do that it's been a long time it's been a long time coming because what happened fucking documentary that you're in actually i watched that kip anderson's bloody what the hell what the hell yeah and like it sort of chimed so uh neatly with my belief about how the world operates i thought fuck it because like i've always loved animals you know and i've always

cared to a degree about my health but when added to that was, oh my God, it's a ruse. There's corruption behind this. Then that was enough. That just hit your button. You were like primed for that, right? Yeah. I was ready for that. So that pushed me over. Rogan tried to talk you out of it.

He said that, didn't he, that there was a lot of it sort of, and of course there's counter arguments or whatever, but I don't see sort of powerful vegan lobbying forces like around Washington. Right, that was the fallacy in his argument. I mean, the powerful broccoli lobby. Yeah, that's not what's going on.

No. I mean, look, if you want to poke holes, you're going to always be able to find some study that's going to allow you to poke holes. But I think there's a lot of wisdom in that movie and I'm glad that it compelled you. Yes, it did. And I think it's consistent with your spiritual principles.

I would imagine that there's a lightness and a sense of alignment that comes with that. Yeah, it's made me feel, I think I feel healthier. It's also making me, I am a person that needs to bring consciousness to everything because otherwise I go unconscious. So it's very good to not be able to just go, I'll eat that, I'll eat that. It's very good to have to consider what is this that you're putting in your mouth?

Because there was a time where I wouldn't think twice, straight in there. Like my 11-month-old daughter, oral, everything straight in. The road gets narrower though. It's like this thing like, the vegan road gets narrower. Well, just life, dude.

As somebody who's on the recovery path, it's sort of an adage that gets thrown around. And it's so true. It's like, oh, I gotta give up drugs. Oh, I can't fuck around anymore. Oh, I can't gamble. I can't eat what I wanna eat. It's like it just consistently gets narrower

and narrower and narrower. But my experience is that expansion comes with the letting go. And I've learned to not be afraid of those things. And on paper, it looks like your life is becoming more restrictive and curtailed and restrained, but the emotional, mental, spiritual experience of that is quite the opposite.

Yes, we've been taught that freedom is freedom to pursue our desires, but true freedom is freedom from our desires. The desires is not like this is, oh, what do we do that? We're not babies. Because we're an additive society. It's all about adding, adding, accumulating.

Yes. But the peace comes with the removing. I wonder how we will cope when sacrifice becomes part of it. Did you see, like Malcolm Gladwell wrote about that, when the civil rights movement was formed around tight bonds, when then people in universities in the South were coming together to demand equality or whatever, these relationships were strong.

People were occupying buildings together, movements that take place you know invisibly across sort of telecommunications networks are unlikely to be as tight initially i suppose that we do that suggests that we need to communicate directly that we need to see each other's eyes that we need to come together if we're going to bring about meaningful change, that we're going to like a... There's a really influential thing I talk about all the time where prior to Indian independence, Gandhi said,

what's the point of us getting rid of the British if we just replicate the systems that they use? It's just us doing it. And that is what happened. He said India is a country of 70,000 villages. All of these villages should be fully autonomous, accepting matters affecting other villages. You you know we should be built on craft and trade because we have to get let go of our comforts we're obsessed with comfort and gadgetry

he said in the 40s you know like what would he have made of the phones you know like and it's very hard to convince about like i'm happier when I'm not continually checking the phone. I'm happier when I'm not obsessing, when I'm not placing. Like the ultimate destination point is clear. It's written in probably 90% of the books on your table is the whole self has to go. That's when it ends.

It's when you've let go of the belief that you're even an individual person. And that connection with other human beings provides the answers that you've been seeking your whole life through other avenues, that you've been taught are the answer and turn out to be these false prophets. And yes, and to rationally underwrite that

because it would seem, because in relationship with other people, there is the verification of oneness. If I put your happiness above my happiness, it's like I am on some practical level recognizing that we are one. Why is the concept of oneness so difficult? Why can't we be like bees and have this hive mentality

where we just fully understand the universality of our conscious experience? I think we've got too much into sensuality, haven't we? The senses are very seductive. I remember when I was a very sensual person. It was all I wanted to do all day long. And I still like it. I like pleasure.

That little bit of cheese your wife gave me. When I tasted it and it's like, oh, good, this isn't shit. I'm going to have to think of some lie to be nice. Yeah, it's like, I don't actually like this feeling. I'm going to eat all of this. Push this into my ears and my asshole will stuff my body

with this thing. It will never end. There are no limits to it. So why, oh, sorry, you were going to say something? Will you teach me some stuff about what should I do

to become more fit and have less body fat and be much more lean and strong? What do you do? You look pretty good. I just run all the time. Run, ride my bike swim I don't do

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu though that would just destroy me why maybe I should maybe I should try a class like that you'd be good at it wouldn't you look at your lovely thick wrists

no no no I would not be good at that I don't think why why wouldn't you anything that involves coordination that's so good I can like run

but you know it's tough but you feel good on the vegan diet i feel good on that i've been doing the bjj i really want to say this to you like yeah i do the bjj i love it but when i like um i love it and i'm not good at it you know i'm learning i'm learning don't tell myself negative things little russell needs encouragement and love i'm learning i'm learning um but like today when i like my wife was putting a new car seat in the car because the one that's in there i don't know it's not comfortable enough that two-year-old she's got she's got some specific taste i thought i'm going to say to rich rolls how sometimes how detached i feel from my body my wife is active she is of the earth she knows how to be she knows how

to do things thank fuck because i'm like some gaseous little poet just floating around commentating. You know, like when she picks up that car seat, she gets in there. If you leave me to put the car seat in, I'll get, oh, it's too hard. I can't do it. Oh, what's these fucking instructions? What do you mean? Top the top tether strap into the buckle loop. I looked at it.

I went away. Yeah, but that's not how you're wired. You know, she grounds you, but you can, you know. Show her the vision. Yeah, exactly. Like you need both of that. Right, yeah, we can become. You met Julie.

You can see there's a similar kind of like yin-yang dynamic. Yeah, what is it with you guys? I mean, I'm much more grounded and practical and rational. And she, you know, she's, you know, an ethereal being. Right. You know, and she allows me to expand my, not only my perspective, but my sense of what's possible.

She'll say, why don't you look at it from this perspective? And it's something I never would have thought of. And a sense of belief, like a support and a belief in a different reality that she held for us. We've been together for a very long time. Have you? We've gone through a lot. And when we met, we were living completely different lives,

but she held this vision that I could not have seen myself. So, and you, I think you, I would imagine I'm projecting completely, but that you fulfill that role in your own relationship. Yeah, it's the same actually. I mean, in the sense of a vision as in imagining and dreaming new spaces, yes.

But it was my wife, we met when like, you know, it was my wife we met when, like, you know, sort of 11, 12 years ago, and she knew that we were meant to be together, and I knew that I had to try and set world records for promiscuity. We've got to work for these records. So how did you overcome that?

Like, did you just acquiesce over time, or what was that process like for you? It actually wasn't the promiscuity,uity ultimately that was problematic, but it was more difficult codependent relationships with inappropriate partners. In my case, just people that I wasn't, like I was very attracted to. There's a wonderful Robert Johnson, he's a Jungian analyst who breaks down myths and uses them as relationship tools. He wrote one called he one called she one

called we and like he uses the arthurian legend of tristan and isolda to break down that uh this is a lovely bit of analysis actually that the chivalric tradition of knights and that was to that a knight would fight for the honor of a woman and that these these tales are written in mythic language and we translate them literally. That's why when people talk about Disney films and stuff. It seeps down into every aspect of our culture and how we think about.

Yes. The male and female is in us in a fairy tale, not suggesting in the Disney version. I don't know what objectives they have over there in that crazy castle, but like in the original fairy stories the female is an aspect of it like with it like as in dreams as in folk tales the individual the sovereign the king is the you know the seat within the self and like so in this tristan and azolda

myth he like he breaks down this chivalric tradition when men or knights would fight for the honor of the you know princess or, knowing that they would never be attained because they are some icon of the divine and the unattainable. We somehow used that motif for the foundation of romantic love. And if you look at romantic art, romantic poetry, romantic films, it's like, oh, this yearning, this terrible yearning that has no relationship to praxis. It has no relationship, how are we going to live this?

In the myth of Tristan and Isolde, Tristan, the knight, falls in love with Isolde, who he was meant to go and fetch from an island for the king. And Isolde is an ethereal, magical creature. She came from an island. You have to get across the water to bring her back. And none of these people are actual females or males. They're mythic archetypes.

So like, you know, and he's in love with's not met you can't be with that magical person but when he meets uh what's her name is older the white hands she's a sister of a kinsman of his that he's fighting you know like alongside and she you know he talks about in the myth that she's in the furnace she's doing stuff with firewood and that he can't't be with her, he can't be earthed because we are looking sometimes for the other person in our relationship to be an emblem of the divine and they are flawed, fallible people. But sometimes, you know, initially with that rush of early love, it's like, oh my God.

It's so intoxicating. Isn't it wonderful when you experience that? You know, when I'm watching a film, I think, oh God, to be 16, 18, 20 whatever again and to feel that delirium of oh this fucking person they are god to me even better if they're broken

oh yes and then we can really get into it then we can really destroy ourselves take that rollercoaster ride well I after a few relationships like that like after sort of exiting one I felt like to Jimmy a mentor said like lee goes you can't keep doing that next time you see the sign pointing in the direction of

glamorous amazing relationship maybe don't go that way it's so hard though oh yeah i mean it's so very alluring the flesh is alluring and like in it that, you know, it's good. We are physical people. Nothing wrong with the, you know, unto Caesar what is Caesar's and all that. There's nothing wrong with the bodies and the world and the stuff. But you'd knocked on that door enough time. I mean, you know, you know what that avails you. Yeah.

And when I reconnected with my wife, I felt like, oh my God, I've been using totally the wrong metric. What do you mean reconnected? You had known her previous? Yeah, we'd known each other for 11 years. We went out when I was about in my early 30s and she was like 20. Maybe she was even 19, but that sounds worse, doesn't it?

But anyway, so then I went off to pursue the records. And then when we got back, we went on sort of one date. And on the first date, it it was like so what are you and she's like yeah i'm ready to be a parent i'm like yeah me too and that was you know like from then on we sort of took it relatively slowly still but i think that's only four years ago and we're married and we've got two children and i'm like i'm at peace. I know the realness of it, the earthness of it. I'm no longer looking to externally acquire happiness. So to what do you attribute that shift?

The program, the program, the ability, because I'd known her. That could have happened at any point. I'd known her for 10 years, but I just wasn't ready to see that. I wasn't ready to let go of the belief that, no, no, I want to live this kind of life, I want to be this kind of person. And it's odd, actually, because there is a real superficiality

to that sort of romantic and expressive and abundant love in that when those relationships ended, I was quite able to sort of go, oh, okay. Because there was something about it that was a construct. It was taking place in my consciousness primarily. This relationship was very, very, very deep, very earthed and real. Like this is a person that I wouldn't want to be without. I wouldn't want to be without this person.

So I'd not surrendered to that before. Yeah, and four that before. Yeah. And four years now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's good. It's good. It's a relief.

It's nice to think, there is nothing, like I don't, it's nice to have practices, I suppose, you know, I suppose the institution of marriage and coupling and stuff,

I suppose it works in that it's beautiful to feel, you know, that idea of like, here, I am here. That's it. I, like my little daughter says, like that here, I am here. That's it. I, like my little daughter says, I sit in my seat.

I sit in my seat. I am here. I'm not over there. I'm not looking over there for something else. There isn't some other new magical thing. No other agenda being present and in it, but also with enough awareness and personal development to understand that, you know, you're not looking to this partner to complete you. That that's your own personal journey. That's your connection with your higher power and your, you know, spiritual interior self and your relationship to spirituality in general, right?

That that can't be solved through relationship with another human being. No, no. And I think that is the, you know, crux of suffering for a lot of people. It's good to have that. It's good to have some principles of like, you know, so next time I find myself going, Laura, will you do this? Why didn't you do that? I want this. Like, that's that thing that's never going to work you're doing it again and every time i sell it to myself as yeah but though this time i am actually right but really my relationship with other people is an opportunity to be of service it's not an opportunity to be served that's what i have to maintain do you have resistance to

physical labor and work to being in the body body. Because if you're doing all this fucking jumping around, swimming, cycling, swimming across things, running, for you it's easy, is it, to go into that? You don't think, oh, I can't be bothered. Well, there are days that I don't want to do it. But in general, it's my joy. It's what I prefer to do. But that doesn't mean that I want to go and dig ditches and do a bunch of errands and all the other kind of bullshit.

Because for me, those pursuits, like being in nature with just you and your breath and your heart beating in your chest and the quietude is, it's not meditation, but it is a spiritual practice for me. And yeah, it's exercise and all of that kind of thing. It's fitness, but really it's a means for me to more deeply connect with who I am

and to wrestle with those age old questions about identity and purpose and connection. And I find many answers through that practice. I remember- As long as it's not a replacement for recovery, proper, you know, which is that's where I get into trouble. It can be part of step 11. It can be part of conscious contact, but it can't. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. So what you have moments where you are sort of at one, you find yourself. Definitely. And I wouldn't say like some people say oh that's my meditation

like no it's not meditation is meditation if that's a very specific thing there are meditative aspects to it you know you can call it an active meditation but qualitatively it's not meditation but it is a um it is a it's it's an it's a practice that's more than just physical, I would say. Yes, yes, because these lines, I think when we are dharmically connected, those lines perhaps begin to disappear between physical action. All things can become worship. I agree with you that meditation should be practiced sat still with your eyes shut because when you say, say oh my meditation is

right riding a bike or something or listening watching the tv you know you're like you're not being confronted with what it is like to observe and let go of the thinking mind correct you know and if when we to return to the macro point of the way that we organize societies perhaps that happens but perhaps society is organized in the manner that it is because not enough people have a sense of the sacred and divine. We're not cultivating that relationship because as individuals, we're not having a meditative or transcendent experience. So nobody knows how to practice these principles in all their affairs.

No one knows how to live that because they're only thinking. Yeah, that is certainly correct. And I think that goes hand in hand with kind of the downfall of organized religion. And with all its problems, there, you know, was an aspect of that that was served through those institutions that doesn't exist to the extent that it once did. And so we have this vacuum. It's very interesting. I listened to a podcast just last night with Ezra Klein, who's a political pundit, and David Brooks, the political journalist, David Brooks is like a conservative journalist. And he was talking about, it was fascinating because he was talking about this very subject,

how he had become this workaholic, a very successful, well-regarded person in the space of political journalism at the very highest level and the vacuum in his life that it created because he didn't value connection and relationships because he couldn't be bothered because it was always inconvenient

and he couldn't rationalize the time investment that it required and the kind of existential, spiritual crisis that it provoked in a most unlikely character. And this journey that he goes on, he just wrote this book about it. And I just found it to be, like it's one thing for you and I

to talk about these sort of things, but to have that in the costuming of somebody that you would not expect, I think carries a certain powerful resonance with it because a guy like that is able to speak to a certain sector of the population that perhaps is disinterested in what Russell Brand has to say.

The poor sons. The poor fools out there in the wasteland, in the wilderness of no Russell Brand. No, I agree with you that it is appealing and attractive, because I suppose it verifies our sense of truth to hear that someone has devoted devoted themselves to conservative outlook a political outlook and and and the openness to i mean part of that evolution was his ability to change his mind you know which i think is um we're in an epidemic right now of being so calcified around our ideas because they threaten our identity and that's, you know, must remain unshakable to entertain the alternative

is terrifying for a lot of people. And I think it keeps us stuck in these conversations that are, you know, kind of driving culture off a cliff in a certain way because we can't have nuanced dialogue. Don't you want to get people on your podcasts that are like outrageous folk, you know? I mean, I sort of do and I sort of don't. I don't see...

Sometimes people go, no, you shouldn't let them on. Don't give them oxygen. Because I sometimes nearly do and I get scared. I mean, I think there's... It's like, would you have Alex Jones on your podcast? I sort of... You would, right? See, I probably wouldn't, but I understand.

Because sometimes I sort of adore something about Alex Jones. There's something about him, he's a bullion. He's kind of, I kind of like it. Like that one, him on Rogue at that time. I couldn't, I got like a half an hour into it and I couldn't finish it because it was so bananas. Yeah, because he's out there, isn't he? And I've seen pathetic, I've met Alex a couple of times.

And I suppose I only part company when this is the thing I'm trying to do. It's like if you have a spiritual life, it is for you. It's not something that you would inflict on other people. Like if your spiritual life is, here's my spiritual life. They shouldn't fuck each other. How's that going to help you? Like if your spiritual life is this is what i'm gonna do to be okay with the world you know it's only when people start to

get caught up in you know the impulse to patriotism is merely a reappropriated tribal impulse that's in here within human beings necessarily for us to socialize that's being uh reappropriated and attached to abstract ideas in order to control a population. And it gets to the point where people aren't willing to see there is no England, there is no America, there is no France. It's all completely fucking made up. But, you know, like a century ago, young Americans and young English people were being asked to give their lives away.

So no wonder now people are like, I don't want them fuckers coming over here, here stealing our jobs they've been generation deep told that this is real kill for it fight for it it's real it's definitely not an abstract concept made up resourced from the same principles of the religion that we believe that we've progressed beyond believing in it's just like as a template it's identical godhead uh an inside group and an outside group. So like how I like, and I feel like, I don't know if I would,

I think that there might be more value. Like EG, I had Candice Owens on the podcast and I found her to be absolutely adorable. I listened to that and I found it fascinating because I completely disagree with almost everything that she's about. And yet she was rather delightful in that conversation with you and you had kind of a really fun banter. She made me laugh.

And I think it is important to have conversations, you know, with people that you disagree with. Like this is the salve upon this wound that we have right now. If we stay polarized isn't the tension of it is not good after the podcast finished there's a bit where she went and she goes what do you think about immigration russell and i was like well you know i think we should be inclusive yeah i know what you think that let's just let everybody in and let's just march around and skip around together she did it and it's like she's being sort of self-parodic

but i spoke to henry drew and brad Brad Evans that are much more kind of brilliant, post-structuralist, left-leaning philosophers. And they were like, don't be seduced by the individual charm of people because that's often used as a kind of lubricant for these wacky ideas. And they're very aware of it. And this is what scares me because, you know,

fundamentally, like I'm a pathological people pleaser. My biggest goal is, is Russell gonna like it? When Russell leaves here, I want him to like me, you know? Or I want my guests to like me. That's what I feel. You know what I mean? Just a couple of people wanting to be liked. Yes, I navigate the world in that way. Couple of useless sweethearts.

But as a podcast host, that makes you rife for manipulation. You know what I mean? If you have a charismatic person sitting across from you who represents a point of view that is something you disagree with, it's very easy for me to become swayed by their personality. I've heard other people say that. And this innate character defect of wanting to feel connected to another human being. I do want to feel connected to other human beings i do i do but like i feel

like that if people like you can track it though rich in it like you like they've got hold on that's mad that's great though as soon as they start saying and these people shouldn't be allowed to do that oh well that's that thing that's that thing but what if it happens an hour later that realization right well you've got to concentrate I think if you are going to talk to racists I don't trust myself when chatting to a racist think right

are they saying something racist yet I mean you're right but they're so nice they brought cookies I know I loved them they are quite nice what about

have you ever I keep talking about this and I probably shouldn't I sort of watch Steve Bannon on the internet do an address of the Oxford Union because I thought

right this is that Steve Bannon that I've heard about how bad he is let's watch him on the Oxford Union an address of the Oxford Union because I thought right this is that Steve Bannon that I've heard about how bad he is let's watch him on the Oxford Union I mean it was it's almost as a piece of theatre

you should watch it he arrives in a rain spattered mack you can hear the protesters in Oxford like chanting get him out of there get him out of there

he sort of comes in like sort of a gumshoe detective and he just goes and like he for about an hour he doesn't say anything i disagree if he talks about the financial crash the implications of it the corruption the relationships

between the financial industry and washington he doesn't at any point go and that's why this group of people should be excluded or these people he doesn't talk about religions or races or economic or gender or sex or economic classes all he talks about is elites and he said you know and in it he said one thing that i really agreed with you know populism is the future all that's being decided is whether it's left-wing or right-wing populism that's the only thing that we're debating right now like so and i would challenge people to watch that because obviously i watch it from the perspective of i don't like instinctively i don't agree with people that are condemning of other people on the basis of some sort of ethnic or external data.

Because I think people, my deepest belief is people are all the same. But for me, that challenge is a bit of a progressive lefty type of person is to be tolerant and willing to engage in dialogue with people that are to look for what is it that I agree with? You know, Donald Trump or Tommy Robinson in my country, or, you know, what is it I agree with? What is it that I can share with them? You know, I've not been bold enough to put that into practice because I can't be arsed with the fucking hex of, you shouldn't give them a platform, you're giving them oxygen.

Well, yeah, because everything is so heightened right now. The sort of social price that you pay for taking that risk isn't worth it for most people, you know? And I think there's a chilling effect on that. But it is interesting that you as a, you know, progressive liberal, myself as well, you know, social justice warrior, you know, to entertain the ideas of Steve Bannon and go, oh, maybe there's an idea there or two that I should think about and entertain. When I hear that, I see somebody who has, you know, kind of transcended this former personality. Like the guy who was doing the trues back in the day probably wouldn't have had that kind of perspective.

But one of the things you said at the outset here was, like, I don't, you know, you're kind of past getting caught up in the vicissitudes of the daily political discourse because these are systemic and they're not based on, you know, we can't get caught up in the personalities that are driving them. That arch, that's Wilbur, thanks. That arch exponent of the neoliberal experiment who, along with Bill Clinton,

took it to the point where, inverted commas, ordinary working people no longer felt represented by left-of-centre politics. Tony Blair was one of his famous maxims, while still a shadow Home Secretary before elected to government, was tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. And I feel that you can apply that. Tough on racism, tough on the causes of racism. And I feel that you can apply that. Tough on racism, tough on the causes of racism. What's causing this racism?

Oh, well, all of these people feel disenfranchised and that they're not included in society. How are we going to stop them from being racist? Well, I suppose they're going to have to feel that their life is meaningful and that they're incorporated. How inconvenient. I feel like, you know, like, I feel like one of my mates sort of said, you can't cure hate with more hate.

It's always got to be love. It's always got to be, you've got to keep loving them. I think that's a beautiful place to stop. I would like to talk to you for like two more hours, but your publicist will assassinate me. I've got a publicist now. You've got to like. Can I promote these things I must promote?

Of course. Because otherwise what happens is they listen back and they go, you didn't promote those things. You promoted that book of mine. I did. And I read it and I loved it. Thank you. That's fantastic.

You've promoted the art out of that. It's a short, easy read too. Short and easy. What more do you want from it? What do you want to say about mentors? I think it's, I don't know. I like what you just said. That's been promoted very successfully.

Now, Luminary is the other thing because they're paying for the publicist, Luminary. So there is Luminary. I am on Luminary. Yeah, you've migrated completely over to Luminary now. On the 20th of, yeah, that's right. If you sign up through this link, you can have Under the Skin for free

for another three months, but I'm on the premium content strata of it. So three months for free, and then after that, it goes behind a little bit. Yes, five quid, six quid. And for those that don't know, Luminary is a new company that's sort of trying to be, I guess, for lack of a better phrase,

the Netflix of podcasting. That's right. I think that is a good way of describing it. Recruited a number of high profile folks like yourself to create for them. They've given us money. Now, what like happened was, on my podcast yesterday, it's not been out yet, but I spoke to Lena Dunham, who's just absolutely lovely lovely and Karamo out of Queer Eye because them two got people

that one's live now yeah that one's already out right because they're both on Luminary that's why I'm mentioning them Lena Dunham Karamo I think Trevor Noah

he ain't been on the show yet but what I'm saying is I've now promoted Luminary and no one's said it happened because that was it just being promoted. Oh, and I'm doing live shows. Are you going to,

I feel like me and my wife should come around your house, but that's not how invites work, is it? You don't say me and my wife should come around your house to a person, do you? You're welcome to come by. We'll cook for you.

Would you? Because I think my wife would like your wife. I think I would like it. And what's the other thing? Oh yeah, I'm doing these live shows like in Los Angeles and I think you would like them and I think your wife would like them.'m doing these live shows like in Los Angeles and I think you would like them and I think your wife

would like them yeah you're doing one at Wanderlust soon right that's right yeah when will this podcast be live I don't know probably not for a little bit though

what do you do store them up like a squirrel keep it in your cheek and go running across a fucking mountain for eight hours I do

find God staring at a crack in a rock and saying everything's won. Get back down from the mountain and put a podcast out. Put it up right away. A pint that's germane to my marketing requirements. The people pleaser in me will have this up by tonight.

Oh, you're so stupid there. Isn't it interesting that we've just spoke about nothing but God and getting rid of the material world, but the fact is, is that at the end of the podcast, we'll go, right, now the material world is real. Go. But the fact is, is that at the end of the podcast, I was like, right, now the material world is real. Go out and buy this fucking material right now. We should properly

say what's up to Stephen and David Flynn because they're the ones that introduced us. Yeah, the happy pair. So lovely. They're in that book. I know. I love that they got a shout out in the book. I was very taken with them.

What I liked about them, lads, was I like, I have to learn, I like versions of maleness that I feel like, oh, I can role model that. And they were very sort of very male, but so sort of generous and sweet and sort of loving. But I very nearly allowed myself to jump off of a peninsula because of that. I know. I know that.

I've jumped off of that peninsula. You've been there. I have, of course. Is that what. I've jumped off of that peninsula. You've been there. I have, of course. Is that what you did the podcast with them in Ireland? I've done a couple. Yeah, I mean, I've spent a lot of time with those guys. They're really lovely, aren't they? Of course you are.

You're sort of like vegan gangsters. But the cynic in me, did you find this? Like the cynic in me is like, they can't be like this all the time. Like, what's it like when- Right, where's the dark side? Come on. I want to see the dark side.

Let me watch you masturbate. But I don't think it's there. I think they have transcended the dark side. Let me watch you masturbate. I don't think it's there. I think they have transcended the dark side. I didn't see any darkness. I was studying them. I couldn't even work out. Like we went around, me and my wife and kids, we went around like this house of theirs.

It was like a farm and people were making trees on toast so slowly, vegan trees. Yeah, Perville. There was a little pig, a nice pig. It was so lovely. He, one of them, Stephen, I think, had his top off. They had their top he one of them steven i think had his top off they had their top off the whole time of course and his top off and as soon as my wife arrived we were getting stuff out the car and he was like oh do you want me to carry that baby and like

oh yeah he had that baby for so long too long in my opinion maybe an hour and a half of having a baby that's a long while isn't it to have a baby pressed against you it's my baby did he do handstands with the baby oh man another thing that was fucking amazing is i've done podcasts with him and this rather not i know i texted you after that i do you remember i texted you and i was like i can't believe you got them to sit still for five minutes well that was a challenge and they weren't still immediately before it ran that swami is it down like he's also mentioned it in the mentors but he's holy, that guy, right? He's Prabhupada's like disciple. He's Prabhupada's chosen, you run the Hare Krishna movement, which let me tell you, they're no slouches.

They've got some power, those dudes. So like Radhanatswami, like you see him, he's one of those people who make you a bit hot because of like, you know, he is staring. There's some serious staring happening. But he's brilliant with the Bhagavad Gita. He's switched on full on Swami. When you go see him in India at his temple, they're throwing themselves at his feet, you know, like literally prostrate on the floor like that.

Like, I'm fucking hell. Full-on lying down. Face down, not enough to kneel before Zod, as Zod suggested to Superman. Lay face down before Zod. Even Zod didn't ask for that. So they were in, like, I did the podcast back-to-back in a live venue

opposite their joint in wherever that was on the west coast of Ireland. Greystones. Greystones, an amazing place. And, like, so I'd done them lads, and then I was crossing over into doing Radhanatswami. So we were in, like, a green room, but it was just some sort of ante room in, like, this venue, right? And he was, like, Radhanatsw rather than he sat there like in okra robes

sat all upright beaming shaved heads you know maybe even some sort of chalk he did have like chalk bindi type

stuff down his forehead and like them lads were like what's that on your head and touching him and then like

and then so he goes would you like to see me night or lay this trick and like did a fucking handstand at a monk and he goes

oh yes I'd like to see that very much and they're walking around on their hands I was like did a fucking handstand at a monk and he goes oh yes I'd like to see that very much they're walking around on their hands I was like have you met a monk before

I don't think your men are doing all this touching them but isn't there something beautifully refreshing about that they're joyful

they're absolutely terrific beautiful lovely men yeah I really liked them a lot I'll tell you another thing about the

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu I'm doing it over here with Hiberio School being trained by Professor Ricardo Wilke you've got a calling professor um it's full of respect this culture so like uh but the other day though there was a teacher i don't know if he was he was a little camp i don't know how can i know what his sexuality was

but like you know there's a presumed machismo around the world of martial arts even though there's some of the loveliest people i've ever met most generous generous. This guy that was teaching, he was a little bit camp. I was like, it blew me away to see someone go, okay, right, so now we do this. I fell in love with him a little bit. I told my wife when I got in, I said, this man. He's your new favorite BJJ teacher. Camp and then tough.

I mean, it's blown my mind, Rich. What a world. What an odd world of collision and paradox. Welcome to Los Angeles. Uh-huh. That's where I am. Yeah, I really liked it. There's so much to learn, isn't there?

Hold on a minute. I want to have some bit of information that's going to make me better at exercising because I'm holding that car seat. I can't find it in myself to care. And jiu-jitsu's not doing it for you? Yeah, it is. What about yoga i like i'm doing a lot of hot yoga you do a lot of yoga i'm guessing do you look pretty not as much as i should

mrs does a lot does she julie quite a bit yeah i do like i do enough yoga yoga come to me yeah like they say hey this is a thing a person told me like that in hindi the phrase so you know you would say i speak french right like in h, they say, Hindi comes to me. Isn't that beautiful? Even the speaking of a language is regarded not as something that you've gone, oh, that's it, but it's regarded as something that flows through you, a limitless vibration. That is beautiful.

How can I help you with your fitness, though? Do you want to go running with me? All right, then. How fast is it? Is it quite fast? Do I need special shoes? I'm scared. Right, hold on.

Regular shoes. Your team say it is fast. No, it's not fast. Do I need special shoes? I'm scared. Right, hold on. Regular shoes. Your team said it is fast. No, no, no. Not that fast. I go, no, no, no. The speed of the slowest person. I have, like, I can go, I go slow. I just go far along.

What is a mile covered in? It depends. It depends on who I'm with. If we go, we go however you want to go. All right. I'll take you out. I'll take that experience. That sounds like a lovely experience.

How long will the run be going for? As long as you want it to. How long would it be? It will bend time for hours. I'd like to lose myself in there. Yeah. All right. We'll get you out there.

You do seem extremely fit. No. I got my work cut out for me. All right. Your publicist is going to kill me, so we've got to let you go. I've got to go home. To the children. I appreciate it.

That's your hard out? That's your hard out, I was told. You have a hard out. You have to leave at four. And I want to go before the traffic starts going that way, and I get home, and the babies, and I'll be able to play with my babies. Oh, I got you. I haven't got any jobs.

That's good. I'm unemployable. Yeah. The listening? There's no market for that. The rock isn't waiting for you right now? I haven't got any jobs that's good I'm unemployable yeah are you listening there's no market for that the rock isn't waiting for you right now the rock ain't waiting

for no one that's gotta be a trip that's gotta be a trip working with that guy he's like a pharaoh yeah he's got like sort of he's got chief energy

is what I'd say he's got sort of the energy of a king from a like a non-European culture he's like literally like a benevolent scorpion king exactly he was really like when i first met him but he's really beautiful and like sort of kind and easy but he's in that peninsula of fame where you're ushered off in cars the whole time

do you know i mean there's always people wrapped around you but like there's a like when i've done the first season of ballers, I made this mental choice. Don't be an arsehole. It's a subtle thing, but it helps in a working environment. I'll do whatever people ask me, I said on that job. I'm going to not make things difficult. Just be there, be amenable and easy. And the thing about this job on Ballers is- Is that a contrast from previous work experiences?

Yeah, sometimes I'm like, I'm going to use this job as a way to- To be as difficult as possible. This work really uses the work for my psychosis my feeling i'm not good enough the world's not good i can dump my shit on that guy over there i don't think they can do anything if i'm really unbearable so like um so i thought no i'm just gonna like you know when i'm at work my primary purpose is to do a good job at my work i work for these people i've got a contract with these people don't if i'm questioning what am I doing am I being kind to the people around me

am I being useful these are all things that take me so long to learn so obvious aren't they anyway so I'm being I won't say no to any of the things

they ask me to do and the joy of ballers if I may be so bold is that all my scenes are things like Russell or the character I play walks in a room

says some stuff leaves the room snuffer is on a horse jumps out of an helicopter, smashed in the face. It's nothing like that. And I thought, this is going to be a piece of cake. What a breeze of a job. And then the wonderful director of the last season, this fellow Julian Farino, English fellow, called me on day two and goes,

oh, we thought it was so wonderful, this scene on Malibu Beach where when you're talking to Dwayne and to Rob Corddry, the brilliant comic actor that does all these things with Dwayne, because if you, like at the end of the conversation, take all your clothes off and walk naked into the sea on Malibu Beach, not stated in front of hundreds of extras, I'm like, yeah, okay. And I go to my wife, like, you know, I said that thing,

I'm going to say yes to everything and I'm going to be compliant and easy to work with, what do you think? She goes, yeah, just say yes. And I go, yeah, I will do that. So that means the next day I'm going to have to do it. I'm nervous about being naked in that situation. I get my wife the night before to take a photograph of my ass so that I can see what my ass looks like.

Now, here's the key thing. If you ever have to get your ass out, you don't have to worry. Look at you, you've got no fat on you. But for normal people, don't tense it. You think tensing it is going to peach it up, but no, it does that dimples and wrinkles relax the ass relax the ass as frankie goes to hollywood used to say so like i learned what was the optimum state for my ass before doing it obviously when these situations

like there was loads of paparazzi there and loads of extras and the rock is a exec on that show so i'm a bit nervous about doing this mersey in front of all these people and he was oh yeah and he was like a benevolent king and he went let me organize this for you and he organized all the extras to line up in flanks facing away to form a human wall to stop paparazzi taking pictures of me and i had to walk into the sea with what is called a cock sock over my reproductive organs all trussed up in there like that it's a very weird moment when you take off your coat and you're naked and you know that your arse is sort of being looked at.

It's like, action! And then you walk naked towards the sea. It's a very strange feeling, you know. And it created a sort of, don't you sometimes think that in your life

there's some weird glitch in the Matrix moment where everything goes mad? Because in this moment when I was doing that and feeling all self-conscious and walking away from the rock, who's last on the list

of men I want to be naked in front of, by the fucking way. Like he, like, Gary Busey appeared, who's not in the show, appeared out of nowhere, in a car with the alarm going off, with a little pale kid, what was his kid, and the little kid was like the mayor of Toy Town, going, hey, hey!

And I was like, why are realities broken? There's Gary Busey, there's a car alarm going off, the rock's talking to Gary Busey. Gary Busey at a distance did not look like Gary Busey, but a person who had fallen through the cracks of society. No, I know. I mean, I see him around Malibu all the time. He had a bit of food on his face.

It was as prominent as a feature. Like it was like a nose. It was a second nose made out of cake. That's the TV show I want to see. It was good. Just the orchestration around all of that is more compelling. That is the thing about a lot of TV shows, is that the infrastructure and the thing that's not seen is,

you know, yeah, the unseen is so beautiful. But the point being that The Rock marshaled his copious superpowers to create this human wall to protect you. So if he ever does go into politics. Young Russell and his frail. And his frailty. Yeah, that's the real message. Yes.

So now I have a three-dimensional picture of this human being. Yeah, nothing less. All right. All right, Matt. I'm going to let you go home. Thanks, mate. Thank you, my friend. Mentors, check it out.

Check out Under the Skin on Luminary and Rusty Rockets on Twitter, all those kind of places. No one can say it's not been promo. All right. Come back and talk to me again. Thank you. Peace. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. That was nice.

What do you think? I thought it was pretty good. He's a very sweet guy, right? He's very gentle, and I just found him to be so present and generally delightful. I hope you guys enjoyed that as well. Please let Russell know. Share your thoughts, your ruminations

on today's conversation. You can hit him up on Twitter, at Rusty Rockets, and at True, T-R-E-W, Russell Brand on Instagram. Check out his latest book, Mentors, How to Help and Be Helped. Subscribe to his podcast,

Under the Skin on Luminary. And you won't regret it. As always, please visit the episode page at richroll.com to peruse the copious show notes that we endeavored to compile from this conversation to extend your edification of this man beyond the earbuds. If you are struggling with your diet, if you finally have decided, I need to master this,

but you feel like, I don't really know how to cook, I don't have a lot of extra time or disposable income, I don't have the culinary skills I see when I turn on the television and watch these cooking shows, if you find yourself relating to that, then I can't stress enough how much I think our Plant Power Meal Planner can really help you. It really is an amazing product

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Thank you very much for that. I wanna thank everybody who helped put on the show today. I do not do this alone. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, for production, for show notes, for interstitial music. Thank you, Jason. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin

who video this show and edit it beautifully and then create all the short clips that we share on social media. Jessica Miranda for her graphics, her talent, her wizardry. DK David Kahn for advertiser relationships. Thanks, DK. And theme music, as always, by Annalama. Appreciate the love, you guys. her talent her wizardry DK David Kahn for advertiser relationships thanks DK

and theme music as always by Annalama appreciate the love you guys I will see you back here in a couple days with the great Dr. Gemma Newman this is a podcast that I recorded with the plant power doctor when we were in Italy on our

retreat a live kind of event it's a good one. Until then, peace, plants, namaste. Thank you.