Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (sometimes) - Edward Norton

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Edward Norton talks to Ted Danson about his creative experience working on Olivia Wilde’s new A24 film “The Invite,” a movie that Ted is fully obsessed with. They also get into their shared love of conservation, their hopes for the next generation, and the surprising connection they have through Edward’s dad.    Like watching your podcasts?  Visit http://youtube.com/teamcoco to see full episodes.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Like, I think if you think about when you got activated into these ideas compared to now, there's an entire generation of kids who have come up with that value system. Right. Welcome back to where everybody knows your name. Edward Norton isn't only one of the great actors of our time. He is truly a Renaissance man. He writes, directs, and produces. He also has this amazing parallel career as a serial entrepreneur, investor. and activist and one of my environmental heroes.

Edward recently starred in the A-24 feature film, The Invite, alongside Penelope Cruz, Olivia Wilde, and Seth Rogen. I absolutely love it. I cannot encourage you enough to go out and see it. Mary and I, after we watched it, sat there going, this is truly one of the best films we've ever seen. So, couldn't be happier and more excited to talk to my friend, Edward Noron. You know, I'm really old friends with Woody.

You're a surfer, too, right? Yeah. Were you in our home with Woody and Charleston Dow? Yeah. When he came through, you guys were, I think we had a house. We had a house in the colony for a while. And Woody tells the story of going, just this guy he met, Charlie, he doesn't know anything about him or whatever.

Let's go surfing. Yeah, Woody did come surfing with me and Charlie one time. I remember that really, really. Yeah. And you walk through the house to get to the beach, and he's looking at Florida's going, wait, who the fuck lives here? What is this? That's really cool. I have no idea. Yeah. So you met Charlie. How'd you meet Charlie McDowell? Mary's. Surfing. Surfin. We met surfing. In the water, surfing? Yeah, I think so. Wow. And we've had really great surfing adventures and hanging out. Like flying to somewhere in Tahradi. We surfed in Tihadi once. Cloud Break? No, that's Fiji.

We surfed Charlie and I surfed at Chopu, the famous murderously big, hard wave, which I'm already going to, I can hear people screaming and catching flag for it. but we had this remarkable experience where we were surfing elsewhere. We were surfing elsewhere along kind of the passes in Tahiti. And the people we were with said, you know, let's go over to Chopu, and we thought just to watch it because it's an amazing thing to watch. And they said, no, no, you guys can go on. And we were like, there's no way. Number one, we would never surf that wave.

It's a death wave. I mean, it's so, I'm not even remotely, you know, capable of serving that, Charlie, maybe, but also it's crowded, you know, it's a pro wave. It's like you don't, you don't even go in the water. And this Teishan guy we knew said, said, no, it's empty. And we said, what are you talking about? And he said, there's a French, you know, there's a French football match. And everybody just went in to watch it. And we were thinking, like, everybody didn't go in off Chopu.

And we go over there on these jets, and there was nobody there, not a single person was in the water at this most famous waves. But still, in our minds, we thought, we're still not going on. It doesn't matter, we're not going on it. And lo and behold, the direction of the swell

was out of the east, which on that particular wave and reef means that it doesn't bowl, it doesn't wrap around in this savage way onto the reef, It didn't even look like itself. It looked long and open and almost like safely going into the channel. And I always remember I was sitting there looking at it like it actually does look like a way of Charlie and I could surf. It doesn't look like the terrifying thing that I've seen. And we watched it very trepidaciously for a while and then nervously kind of went out and started sort of carefully experimenting on the shoulder.

And after a while, we surfed it. And for about 40 minutes, Charlie and I were basically by ourselves on this thing. And it's in front of the far peninsula of the island of Tahiti. It's this gorgeous, Jurassic-looking, undeveloped end of the island. And the reef is beautiful and the wave is beautiful. And a whale came into the channel. And I remember Charlie and I sat there. We were looking at each other like, is this happening?

You know, is this? Is this? Is this? Are we in a simulation? Like what is going on? It was one of those things where you kind of look left and look right and say, how did that happen? Like that, there's, and when I say to people like, yeah, I surfed on Chopu once, you know, you sound like an idiot.

You're like, people like you didn't surf on Chopu. But we had this kind of magical day where it became the gentle version of itself. How did you get out into it? Is it a towout situation? We went out on jet skis. Jet skis. Yeah. No on jet skis. Amazing.

But you know how people are like, you know, say we'll always have Paris. Charlie and I, Charlie and I have this thing. Like, I mean, I love Charlie and he's a really good filmmaker and a great guy. But I sometimes look at him like, we do. You know, it was like two guys who went to the moon. It's like we have that forever. He didn't tell me this story. And he hurt himself.

That was the other thing on the. Coral? No, on one of the ones he just, I have a picture of it weirdly, but he fell in a funny way and hurt his hurt like his rib muscles. Recently. No, no. On that time, yeah.

It's funny the way surfing, you do meet, if you meet someone surfing, like you've generally, I think you've met them at the, you've met them at their best and they've met you at your best

because you're in kind of this Zen state, you're out in a place, you know, you're happy, they're happy, there's this kind of equanimity to the whole thing there's nothing about you know

I find like it's the great equalizer no I don't think anybody gives a shit what anybody else does right when you're in a lineup like they really just don't care

they're the you've already bonded if you're there you're sort of bonded in a thing that it's like jazz if you have to ask you'll never know what I mean

it's like like you either you either are you're either an addict and it's like part of your you're the zen of your life or you don't get it and so if you're out there with people you're with people who you have a kind of a mental even spiritual alignment with and everybody you know for all that people talk about localism and people that can happen but I generally find I generally find that I've gotten to know all kinds of people surfing in the

best way it's like the it's a great it's a great way to me people. I got to know Charlie through obviously when I met Mary. This was like a 95 where he was like 12 or something. And later when he was a young teenager, it was kind of the height of me doing, when I'm still doing it, Oceania. But back then it was American Oceans campaign. And we would go support, you know, surf riders or this or whatever, heal the bay. And surf riders has the most brilliant fundraiser because it's all the old surfers. and they're unbelievable, good-looking surfer girls and the whole thing. And I met the Malloy. The Malloy brothers, yeah. So I got to introduce Charlie to these amazing surfers, who he ended up being friends with over a long time,

but I scored big stepfather. Oh, yeah. Big points. Yeah, that wins. That wins. Yeah, and now Charlie's dad. Yep, he is. Tovey.

Have you met? No. No. Okay. I want to jump into, well, surfing was not a bad way to jump in, but we got the link, Mary and I, to the invite, and we watched it, devoured it two nights ago, three nights ago. I know hyperbole and, you know, I want to say nice things about you

because you're on my podcast. It is one of the best movies we've ever seen, ever. Period. It is brilliant. It truly is. You all are magnificent. I loved it. Love it. You are spectacular. Just tell me the process of it. There's a lot to say. It was full stop, one of the most creatively satisfying and just delightful experiences that I've had. I mean, I'd put it up there with the pure creative enjoyment of doing things like Birdman or Fight Club or, things I've done where I felt that the collective group was in a zone together, but within the context of feeling like you're sort of operating without a net. You're not, you're in, you're in a terrain of uncertainty and joy at the same time, and the uncertainty, you know, moving through the uncertainty into discovery, actual discovery, you know,

On camera. Yeah, on camera, which we all talk about, we know when we all took acting classes, in some sense, that's what we were taught to seek. When they have you do exercises and be available and listen and all the things that are almost like the fundamentals. There's so much about the process of making, you know, narrative films. It's so technical. It's so intense monetarily. There's such a machinery of people and equipment. And all of it works against that feeling of presence. And some things avail themselves a little more, some things a little less. I've been lucky and have had more of these things than anybody, you know, working with Spike Lee, working with Miloche Foreman, working with David Fincher, with Wes Anderson. I have gotten the privilege of getting into almost troops

that are getting close to that sensation again. And I had it really profoundly with Alejandro and Euridu on Birdman, which was a wildly present and creative collective experience. Olivia Wilde created that environment and flow state for us. And it's so hard to do. And it's so hard to do to direct a thing and be in it

to be the cultivator of the environment and then to operate in it in the way she did was like, you know, at my level of admiration for her her I don't even know what the right word is, stewardship, leadership creatively. She married a lot of her own conscientious craft,

the way that film is shot on film and compositionally, is so beautiful. And that's her and Adam, that's a lot of conscientious craft and real thought ahead of time. and yet she allowed this group to essentially not only bring themselves, bring ourselves into our characters, write our characters in some sense, and create them, but to discover the story as it unfolded

by shooting it in sequence in this single set, this single apartment, by going from page one to page end, she allowed a thing to happen that never happens, which is that you could actually decide to change what was going to happen in the next beat on the basis of what actually occurred. And it unfolded underneath us. To be the captain of a thing

where there's hundreds of people all around and to kind of say to all of the nattering on the edges that they're changing it while we're making it, what's going on, you know, and to just go. I know what we're doing, and I know that the four of us know what we're doing, that what we're discovering is real.

Yeah. But it's risky to do that. Yeah. It's very, very risky. By the way, she's delivering a brilliant performance. Performance of her career. Yeah. To me, like, in the category of, like, Jenna Rollins, Diane Keaton,

Woody was at the premiere in Sundance, and he kind of turned around to me, and he said something like, it's like Mike Nichols came back from the grave and made one more really great film. I said the same thing to Mary. I don't want to just horn in on a great comment, but it felt that way.

It felt like it was the most beautifully written play. Perhaps this play had been done many times and then you shot it feeling. Yeah. It was just brilliant. And Mike was a friend and mentor of mine in New York in my 20s. And I do think, you know, his first film, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, is one of the all-time great,

you know, obviously great Edward Albee play. But Mike's treatment of that film, I don't want to say, changed my life, but it was one of those things you saw it and you were like, you remembered that a film, a great film can take place in one room. it was one of the most intimate and pleasurable experiences of discovery through language and stuff. It was just like all-time great. Talk about Seth for Mama because Seth was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

He got to be Seth, but then you always wonder what's underneath Seth. You got to see that side of Seth that, you know. Yeah, my wife, Shauna, produced 40-year-old Virgin and knocked. up and super bad and elf and elf yeah elf that's and that's how shana and mary know each other right from she produced elf and meet the parents and she's the anchorman she's her her uh yeah her run of movies is unparalleled but she um but set you know set came up in shana's films i mean literally and um and is a very dear friend of hers and and i've known him through her a lot of that time

and and I've done things with him I've done sausage part you know I've done films I've done TV series and stuff like that there are moments in the film that you see you see Seth drop into

an adult you know a place of vulnerability like a real vulnerability and and kind of exposure that's just fantastic you know it's like, I don't know who he reminds me of in that film like Richard Dreyfus at his very best, you know, a goodbye girl, or I don't know, he's wonderful in it.

Penelope. And Penelope's just, you know. Yeah, she's in force. So good. And together, I mean, theoretically it could be in an unbelievable situation. And you make it, the two of you make it so believable. She's so good. You guys who are also...

My favorite word for actors is nimble. I love actors who can be nimble and take wherever the writing or director wants you to go. You're quite capable of doing it. Can I say something about it from an audience point of view? Because like Virginia Woolf, if it's a play and you're going to be in one area, mostly, I can get, my fear is I'm going to get claustrophobic. Man, and that's hard to do, to keep you, keep the audience on the edge of your seat from what's going on within the room

is such a task and so well done. I don't want people to think listening to this, that this is anything other than the most, the funniest, scariest, scariest, dangerous, exciting ride you'll ever go on. I really mean it's one of the best films I've ever seen. Thanks. I also, you know, there's sometimes you have to be really careful.

Like, Can't Barry the Lead, which is like, this is based on a Spanish film. In English, they called it The People Upstairs. I think its title was sentimental. I loved it so much that when I saw it, I thought, I had the thought, I'd love to make this. to remake this and I even thought I'd love to play the guy upstairs, right? The guy from the couple upstairs,

Sean and I were laughing about it. I went and I checked and someone had picked up the rights to a producer named David who is the producer of the film and I thought, ah, that's too bad. And then I thought, well, I kind of called in and I said, hey, look,

I would be in this, direct it, you know, adapt it, direct it and everything. and I and he he had already he had started to work on on other ideas directors and cast of his own and I and and kind of with a sigh I went ah you know oh well you know I I was like you know he I said okay well you know it's great yeah go with God and I kind of turned around Sean I did one of those I went I went I went oh, I would have loved to have done that one.

Like that was, that's a good one. And I, and, you know, things like that happened. But then time went by and I didn't hear about it happening. You know, I heard, oh, they might do it with so-and-so. And I was like, well, they'd be good. I can't say that's not a good idea. That'd be good. But inside I was going, God, I can't stop thinking about that one.

And then lo and behold, someone says, hey, have you heard that, you know, the people upstairs is, it's kind of coming together, and I think Olivia's going to direct it. And Seth pinged me and said, Olivia dropped me a line about this thing. And she said, what about you and me? And I rang Olivia up and said, are you kidding me? I said, are you going to do this? She said, yeah. And she said, would you, would you, I said, I'm obsessed with this one. It's been years. I said, I thought it went away. And she goes, let's do it. And I had one of those moments where I went, I, I can't believe it. I can't believe it's come back around, you know, and with Seth and with her,

and then Penelope, who I was already friends with too, and I just thought it's too good to be true, you know, I, and it's kind of why you kind of sometimes just have to go. Let it go. Yeah, if it's meant to be, it'll happen, and if it's not, and in this case, I think it was, And we went through a funny thing where Olivia, I think Olivia, Seth and I knew Olivia should do the film. We both adore her and we both think sometimes she's underutilized as an actress. And we were like, she was saying, well, what about so-and-so and what about so-and-so?

And Seth and I kept saying, what are you talking about? Like, play the part. And she had some people whispering in her ear, some stuff that I, you know, it's like nobody would ever say. to Bradley Cooper on Maestro or me doing Marlis Brooklyn or Ben Affleck doing Argo or nobody ever says to a guy don't act and direct in the thing.

But Olivia had some people saying like, sweetie, I don't know if you should do both. You won't be called sweetie. Yeah, exactly. And I, and I, and I, and Seth and I were saying, that's the stupidest thing we've ever heard. Like, who are you talking to? You're talking to, you do it.

You do it. You're the one. And she said, Yes, you're right. You're right. What am I? You know, and there was this nice, there was this. And so even in the setting up of it, I felt like this alliance congealed, you know, around us.

And I think, I can't explain it. I think Olivia knew we had her back on it in some sense. But she, the trust and faith she put in us and herself, It was remarkable. I can't wait for people to see it. I'm going to go backwards for a second. But this film comes out this Friday. It'll be out by the time this is.

So go see it. It is brilliant. I've been saying I think it's a double date movie. Yes. Yes, I think it's a really good movie to go on a double date. I don't think it's not the date movie of the summer. It's the double date movie of the summer. That's great.

And you should, you should pick a couple you find a few. attractive and go with them. That's a great marketing tool, right? Yeah, 100%. I think if you go as a for some and have dinner after, the conversations will get very interesting. What a great marketing tool. Take two people you find a couple you find sexually attractive and go take them to dinner and go see the movie.

All right, I want to go backwards. I'm usually shy. I'm always shy around people who I admire and I admire you, and I'm always shy around you. I ask you the same questions over and over again, like where do you live, like I just did when you walked in. I know where you live. But your father is one of the connections I have with you.

That's true. That is my kind of comfort zone because your father started, created the Grand Canyon Trust, Northern Arizona, and lived, or no, it's housed in. And the house that I grew up. I was thinking about that when I drew over. And was it called the homestead? The homestead, right. It was in 19, I mean, 18, late 60s,

two-story log cabin that this guy from the east came out with his built it, stay home to his bride until I get it done. And then she comes out by the train. And she looks at this two-story log cabin. It says, no, I'm not living in a log cabin and gets back on the train. So he clabbards it like a New England, like it is now, with green shutters and white clabbard and everything. When we got there, we stripped off on the interior,

all the kind of plaster to reveal these hand-hewn logs that were like this. Anyway, I love that. Is your dad still there doing that as well? My dad is a legend in the American Conservation Movement, organization. He was a U.S. attorney when I was growing up in the 70s, and he litigated and was head of public policy at the Wilderness Society, then founded the Grand Canyon Trust with people like Bruce Babett and the Udall brothers and a number of others

to be this great regional advocacy organization for the Colorado Plateau, the whole Colorado Plateau. He started the Nature Conservancy's China Country Program, and ran their Asia-Pacific programs out of Indonesia. And, yeah, he founded the Conservation Lands Foundation, was one of the original Rails to Trails gang. And he, yeah, we've all grown up in his shadow and in his wake as conservationists by default and demand.

But actually, I say a lot of times, like, the reason I'm involved in all of that is not because it was the family business but because my dad got us out on the trails and you know running rivers and climbing peaks and you know I don't know if you've ever heard you know Edward Abbey who wrote the Desert Solitaire and the Monkey Wrench Gang there's Ed Abby gave this speech once that I think about a lot and it fits my dad really well where he says I'm gonna butcher it

but he says like be as I am you know a half-hearted advocate, a part-time militant. You know, he says, fight for it all, but save the other half of yourself for the pleasure of it. Bag the peaks, run the rivers, muck around in the dirt with your friends, get out under the stars, and if nothing else, like, outlive the bastards. You know, that's his thing. And that's how my dad, that's how my dad was.

My dad, too. Was. He fought, you know, he was a litigator. He was an org builder. he has fought for the American conservation movement for the conservation of landscapes, places, biodiversity, all of it. But, you know, he scuba dives, he hikes,

he, you know, it's hard to keep up with him. And that's how you really engage people in the joy. The joy of the places, the joy of living and not being down in your friggin screen is what makes people want to fight for the thing. And that's at Abby's other great line. You know, I, he said, I stand for what I stand on. You know, and I think, so connecting it back, I remember really well when my dad kind of boldly broke out into a new chapter to start the Grand Canyon Trust and start. starting anything, you know, feels half-based. What do you are that?

I'm going to say it was around 1987 or 1988. And they needed a, you know, he was based in D.C., but they needed a regional headquarters in the Colorado Plateau. And I literally remember him coming home and saying, man, we found, we found the coolest thing. It's this old house called the Homestead. And he goes, he goes, guess whose house it was? And we were a Cheers family.

My mom's level of obsession with cheers and taxi. You know, like if there were three people in my entire career, my mom would have been the most delighted about it would have been you, Woody and Danny, DeVito. That was like her holy trinity of comedy, my entire young life. And our television watching schedule was based on, on those nights.

And when my dad came home and goes, this is Ted Danson's family's old house. And he goes, and guess what? He's like a legit, you know,

environmental guy. He's the thing. So we had kind of like Robert Redford, obviously. My hair. Robert Redford, you,

you know, like, you know, there were people, as I pursued this trade, there was these people in our family's life who were like,

yeah, you can be in that and you can still really stand for and fight for this stuff. And so it came full circle, you know, to them being there. And then getting to meet you and getting to know Woody and getting to know Danny. Like it was, it's wonderful. It's really wonderful. It's wonderful connections. And I think, you know, it's such a weird, it's such a weird time because we have so much,

There's so much good going on in terms of global consciousness of the oceans and biodiversity and the climate and carbon. And like we know more people are attuned to what's going on and what we need to do. And more answers available. There are more answers available. There's technological, you know, innovation and breakthrough and genius. And we're, we're. making an energy transition. We're under, we, if we, if we were leaning into it, we'd remediate these problems.

We would save these places. We would do these things. And it's, in 2026, to see the kind of regression that's going on, to see the resources we have thrown into the desert sands literally and figuratively instead of, it's, it's, it's, I think I find it, you know, I look at my dad, he's 83, and he wonderfully, I mean, he doesn't despair. It's his life's work, right? But I find that he sort of sometimes says, hey, you guys got the baton, you know, I'm going diving off Cuba, you know what I mean? I find it to be dire, disheartening, hard to know what to do. It's, you know, it's really painful to see. it's really painful to see regression

at the exact moment we can't afford it but also when in truth like I think if you think about when you got activated into these ideas compared to now there's an entire generation of kids who have come up with that value system

there are more young people bought in to sustainability and the idea of protecting the planet then by a factor of 10,000, then when you were growing up, then when I'm growing up,

and yet we've got this short-term attainment and financial maximization, you know, as dry, in our culture is making it, um, a run, it shouldn't be such a fight. You know, that,

that's what I feel like is it shouldn't, it shouldn't be such a fight. No, I, you know, greed is probably not going to go. away in human nature and everything, but there's greed and then there's stupid greed. You know, this is about a few people making a crap load of money, and in doing so, you know, are eradicating all of these businesses that could end up making huge sums of money for more people.

You know, the whole spending a billion dollars of tax, how many billions, I can't remember, of tax payers money to stay. stop a wind farm. Right. And that's 70% That's already underwritten. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. That's just spite. It's like I think of like Willie Loman and like you're selling, you're selling America's health and future down the river for spite. Slash your own greed money from oil. Yes. Yes. To go hand in hand, which is just a shame.

Yeah, to serve your masters. Yeah. And in many ways, I hate to say it, but to own the libs, you know, to like as... Sure, sure. No, and we're easy. We're easy. We're so easily offended. I know.

But as though in some sense it's not a self-injury, you know, I mean, and I think you look at China is, China is on its way to being the first petro zero economy. I mean, they are going to be the first electro. superpower. Which we could have been and now we're going to have to buy it from them when this goes away and we come to our senses. We won't have that industry like China does. No. And by the way,

it's both sides of the aisle. We have, in the state of California, we have now the most regressive policy toward residential solar, in a distributed solar collection and storage. You're good for a minute. Yeah, but, but, Even under Gavin Newsom, the CPUC that has allowed PG&E and SoCal Edison to push California into the most regressive policy toward distributed solar and energy.

They do not want people off the crack pipe of their product. They do not want people collecting energy behind the meter. and you know this is a state that should be energy independent I mean this you know this is a state that could should have should have gigawatts of residential distributed solar but we are shackled to these utility cartels and we allow them to write our state policy

and I mean you know I hate to say it but like you know when you see Texas and Florida under Abbott and DeSantis with more progressive policy towards solar than state of California, then you're in the upside down world, you know what I mean? And I think we just keep, we keep doing, you know,

and I don't want to use like a harsh word, but I think if you're lucky and you get to travel, you see what I don't think a lot of Americans in our, we have this enduring narrative of American exceptionalism, you know, like of America's alpha, of America's, you know, cultural superiority or, or, and the question is, and I don't think people fully grasp the degree

to which we're going to ghettoize ourselves as an energy state in terms of education, in terms of health. You know, we're not anywhere near the top of what other people are experiencing. And if we keep just sort of, you know, it's almost like if we embrace this idea of pride in regression, you know, where is that going to take us? It's not going to take us. It's not going to take us into a place that we're happy about for our kids, you know?

Just talking to you, I get sad again, which is right next. Sad's okay. Rage is right around the corner because it is so unnecessary. So unnecessary. How do you, what do you do? do you have kids do you just bear yourself in the work of making

things better because you can't be hopeless you can't let them take your joy and your hope and you know happiness I um I get a lot of I mean

the painful thing and the really psychologically difficult thing about the age that we live in is just total information and awareness, right? So, and I've mentioned this before, but I think on the one hand, it's good to know,

we need to know when 100,000 people are being killed in Gaza. We need to know what's happening in the Sudan. We need to know what the people of Ukraine are going through. You don't want to not know about the profound humanitarian catastrophes, the injustices, the genocides, the war crimes. You don't not want to know that we dropped a bomb on a school full of Iranian schoolgirls.

You have to live in truth, as Vassav Havel said. But how can any one person do anything about all of that? What are you supposed to do with all of it? And, you know, I was talking about this with Mark Ruffalo recently, who's a passionate advocate for things. Javier Bardem, people I really align with and admire for the ferocity of their, of not just their advocacy, but their determination to name what's happening and to protest it. Sometimes it's like that Ed Abbey thing.

It's not to indulge in, like, living in your bubble, but you have to live, right? And within living and balancing, you got to be present for your kids. You got to allow yourself to jump in the ocean and restore yourself. You know, you got to find daily balance, not like, well, I'm going to fight and fight and fight

and when we finally flip the Congress, then I'm going to relax. That's not balance. You can get cancer on the way to that, you know. So daily balance, even when other people are suffering, and even when you see American citizens and

immigrants who have done nothing abused and brutalized by these, you know, fascist, there's no other word for it, masked, you know, paramilitaries, somehow you still got to be able to move through the revulsion, the nausea,

the rage, and function, and allow yourself a measure of healthful balance of presence, you know, and pleasure and joy. And then go, for me, what I sort of go, this is what I talked about with Mark, is like, you can sign on to everything. You can put your name on everything.

But at a certain point, like, my meditation has been, where can I actually be effective? Like, I'm just one person. Where can I actually be effective, right? And I have the things that I'm working on quietly, you know, ranging from building an emission capture company that I've been building. Does the company I've been building that's, you know, eliminating emissions off ships in our urban centers

contribute to awareness and protest about Gaza and the West Bank and all? No, does it do something for the people in Ukraine who I feel so much empathy and appreciation for, you know, who I grieve for mentally? No, it doesn't. But it's a place that I'm effective just because the currents in my life have put me in a place where certain actions I'm taking are things. and I have to allow myself to believe in collective action and diverse collective action. The world needs Mark doing what he's doing and Javier doing what he's doing

and it needs, you know, Gabor Mata speaking out and it needs, you know, the Holocaust survivors who are standing for Palestine. It needs it needs all sorts and conditions. of men and women to rise to the place that life has put them to be the best at what they're doing. But I do actually think the world kind of, in my small way, I'm kind of convinced that the place I've got leverage capacity and alpha is more along in the category of the things we started talking about with my dad. Like, that's my inheritance. That's my training, actually.

And so I'm leaning in as hard as I can on things to do with environmental defense and sustainability. And I sort, you know, by the way, I go back and forth. I feel much worse some days and I feel okay with my rationale some days. And other days I don't. Right. You know what I mean? But that's what everybody's going through. but I try

to allow for myself that if I'm doing something I'm that I'm doing enough you know what I mean but but man I do not think it's

it is not easy right now it is right this is a very very and I don't know you're I sometimes Yeah, you know, my dad was a Kennedy Democrat, right? He went to, he joined Marine Corps ROTC when he was in college in the early 60s, literally because Kennedy said,

ask not what your country can do for you. You know what I mean? And my dad, he was a Woodrow Wilson history scholar. He was getting his master's in Russian studies at Columbia when he went to Vietnam in 1967 for two years. You know what I mean? He went to Vietnam as a Marine on the DMZ at the absolute worst possible time. He was at Contien in 1967. And if you watch Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary,

there's an entire episode about 1967 in Contean. So no, what that means. And he came back and he went to Harvard Law School. And, you know, when I think about the 60s and the tumult of the time, when we made a complete unknown, one of the things I thought Jim Mangled captured really, really well in that. When he dealt with a Cuban missile crisis was just, the level of terror that that actually created.

And I think we move on and we look back, well, the civil rights, we say the civil rights was effective. Change got made, Vietnam War ended. People protested it. But in the middle of all that, I think people felt just about as intensely as we feel right now. I mean, and I could say I think Trump is worse, worse than Nixon and McNamara by far.

Trump and Hexeth are, they are, You can actually credit Nixon and McNamara with some dimension of competency. You know, you may not, terrible things were going on and they were corrupt in some ways and there was lies. We're in a level of incompetency and grift and corruption that is unprecedented in the history of this country. But as a psychological, as an examination of psychological sense. state, I have to say probably, you know, one has to remember how horrible people felt during the marches, you know, the Selma march and the riots and the war and, you know, I mean, it was a cataclysmism. I think people thought the whole country was coming unglued and in many ways it was, you know.

So it is kind of like Steve Colbert and I talked about this on his show the other day. We were talking about Walt Whitman and the idea of and the way the Whitman talks about how like I'm looking forward to you 100 years hence, 200 years hence,

and the dark days fell on me too. You know, the horrors of fracturcidal war those were known to me too. you know and I think I don't know why there's comfort in that like to me that you know he lived through the city

Walt Whitman was a nurse in the Civil War you know he literally cut people's you know he was he carried people from the battlefield and while they were being amputated

without things he literally lived the civil war and saw it rip apart the country and all of it and it is you know the only thing I the reason I think

this is what Stephen and I were talking about on his show. It's like you say, well, why is there comfort in acknowledging that Walt and Walt Mittman's time in the 60s and now there might have been an equivalence that it's not worse than it was then or was then? Maybe it's because you can acknowledge that it was survived, that people got through it, that there was still, people were still able to rise

back into the better angels of their nature or, you know, recover and some sort of progress was achieved, you know. But, um, but I don't think any generation, I mean, when I look at kids, when I look at my own kids who we relentlessly do not like,

put them on phones and certainly not on fucking Snapchat, which there's a special circle of it in hell for what those apps are doing to young people's minds. And I think, I think that, I think the, I think what technology is doing to turbocharge the psychology of anxiety, of legitimate anxiety that's taking place in the times, the main line, you know, it's almost like free-basing the negativity now because of the algorithms.

And that is a little bit unprecedented, you know, and I think it's, it's, it's, that's hard. Huh? Very dark. It's very dark. It's also, you know, I don't think it's just delete chat GPT. I think we need a real collective, somehow, a collective determination to at least get our kids liberated from that. I feel like we're sniffing around that, that parents are beginning to go, wait, wait, wait, wait. No? You're more wired into that than I am.

It's out there, but I wish I saw more, I wish I saw in. around me what I characterize as more determination to to hold the line obviously culture I mean in Spain and Australia

we're starting to see actual you know policy against like things and I do think that this is fascinating these first rulings these first rulings against meta and you know and YouTube and I don't have to Snapchat

but I'm I you know I don't want to have Shaden Freud like that's not an elevated way but I think it's going to be a very healthy thing

for American society if we start seeing the the tech oligarchs who have fomented these negative addiction platforms and who we know

as much as cigarette companies are fully aware of what they're doing and their business model does not allow them to protect children from their own product every bit as much as a narco cartel. They absolutely need young people on it. You could argue that Facebook could do age controls and filters and Instagram could still survive.

Snapchat cannot survive if it filters out children. And so that's a company that's brokering a damaging product to young people every bit as much as the cigarette companies were. And I look forward to seeing those guys in court. over and over and over again. And I hope the American tort lawyer industry puts a target on their back and sees them as the next big opportunity to pull their docs out of discovery

and say, you guys knew what you were doing, you were doing it conscientiously, you were creating harm, and you did it anyway, and we'll see you in court. And that, in that could be a glimmer of hope, maybe. I mean, for all that. I had the opportunity to interview former president Clinton and secretary Clinton in Philadelphia a month ago. And one of the things at the end that I was asking them, well, you know, with all this going on, you have grandchildren.

What are you said you, grantedrell? And it was very eloquent from both of them. But one of the last things that Hillary Clinton said was, no one's perfect. You know, you get knocked down. But get up and be courageous. Keep moving forward. But be courageous is the kind of the word that I took away for me.

It does take courage to this. You were talking about Mark Ruffalo. It does take courage to name names and speak out and to get up every day. It takes courage to get up every day and try to be a little bit better. Try to make those around you a little more

either comfortable or, you know, nurtured in some way. And I think that's kind of what I hold on to. Just try to be a little bit better every day. I've gone through a funny thing where I, like I've worked in Kenya on environmental things for many years. I've built whole company program there, all kinds of stuff.

And I love it. I love the adventure. I love getting out of American life and marinating in another place I've just grown to have a relationship with and friends, people, and allies and all of it. But I will confess that maybe it's getting to a certain age and maybe it's having kids at a certain age

and maybe it's also just a fearful sense sometimes of futility, you know, the futility of tilting windmills against these macro equations, everything. But I definitely, more than I ever have, I feel this gravitational pull toward localism to people close to me, that like having a positive impact on, you know,

not just in a sense of kindness or generosity, but just being really attuned to like, what can I do just in my own near orbit, you know, more in my own community. And I think it's funny, I was with Sean Penn the other day. Sean, I love

the way Sean lives his life and conducts himself in the world because he's a great artist. And like Sean and I both knew Marlon Brando. We were friends with Marlon in the later of his life. And Marlon, one of the things I found really sad about

Marlon, if you looked at the course of his life and career is that Marlon was, Marlon was a real activist. Marlon, he was very, he was one of the earliest white artists, like along with Pete Seeger, by the way, to really show up and stand up for not just in the civil rights movement, but for the Native American movement. And he spoke out. He did things that people thought were, you know, shameful at the time. He had Sassian Littlefeather except his Oscar for the thing. And he, you know, but when you, you look back at Marlon, he had an enormous amount of courage. He was very blunt about the injustices that he saw. And so I really admire that about him. But in a weird way, Marlon

really suffered from fame in a way that made him break faith with his art. He disparaged. Right. He was made very uncomfortable by the fame, and it's not just that he felt the fraudulence of too much attention relative to the people he admired, which were Miles Davis and, you know, Bob Dylan and artists. And as he said, ditch diggers, he was like, I admire a ditch digger more than I admire an actor. But that was, I feel like, his defensive response to feeling, you know, insecure about himself in some ways, but that what's a shame is, I think he lost faith in,

in, he lost faith in his own craft, talent, and in the value, the power of film to, to do anything positive in the world or communicate. He thought it was, he kind of thought it was foppery, you know, and embarrassing. And I'm saying all that, only say, Sean, like Sean, is someone, what I love about Sean that actually kind of renews me sometimes is like who's more out in the world as an artist, you know, like we talked about Mark or like people I really admire, Sean's, Sean's, you know, he builds whole,

he's built a whole relief organization core that is an incredible organization. The things they do for people in desperation, amazing this thing he's built, right? And he gets out after something. stuff, but Sean will, like, turn around, and then when he feels it, he does his work, you know, and he never takes it for granted. I was talking to him the other day about, you know, doing one battle after another, and he just said the whole thing, put him on Cloud 9. He felt so privileged.

He was last thing, you know, and to me, like, I look at him and I kind of go, that's where I want to be. I don't want to, I don't have to do it all the time, but I don't want to break faith with it. When the invite comes along, I want to relish it. And I know it's not the most important thing in the world. But I think people will see themselves in it. I think people will see themselves in that film. You know what I mean? And get something out of it.

It's pretty provocative. It's going to make some people laugh a lot and then have a little bit of a and a tear in their heart about where they might see themselves reflected in that and what are they going to do about it, you know. But Sean and I were kind of talking about the same.

He also, he's done very far-flung stuff and he was like, man, I just want to deal with, you know, I want to focus on eat people instead of like 80,000, you know. And I relate to that kind of. I think sometimes you can get tactile evidence that you can possibly affect someone else when it's like.

And there's a difference between charity, writing checks, which is necessary. And organizations that are doing amazing things depend on and all of that. But there's a difference between that and working with eight people, you know, living with eight people, you know, going fishing with eight people. Yeah, I also, I don't know what your experience was, I mean, I've been, like, based my life in New York for like over 30 years, but we were, we have a life now out here too. And we were here during the fires, you know, and it was funny. I remember at the Golden Globes that year, of all things, like we were sitting next to Selena Gomez and Benny Blonde. because Salino had that great, you know, Amelia Perez film or whatever. And we were all kind of, we just happened to be sitting next to us. We were talking and they had a place in Malibu, and we had come from Malibu and stuff like that. And, you know, and 48 hours later, they were living on a beach we used to live on.

And 48 hours later that whole beach was gone. Like, Los Valoreish Beach, most of it was burned. And I think the fires, the fires were, really interesting psychological experience out here too because man i mean you talk about just needing to just go what do you do for your community what do you do for your community when it when it literally gets immolated you know and when thing and um and you and you realize in that moment you're like the big stuff the far flung stuff it doesn't matter it's like it's like how are you going to get how are you going to get people what they need, you know, right on the street you drive your kid to school on, like every day.

I mean, and I think a lot of people went through that experience. And in a weird way, too, it also makes you realize, like, when it's happening, like, the people in Ukraine are going through what they're going through. And I can only imagine, I know, I know enough people. You know, in some sense, it's like, is the world aware of what the hell is going on here? Do they understand what we're going through? And imagine people in Gaza, you know, just literally saying, like, how can this be happening? Like, what, is anyone going to, is anyone going to do anything? When the fires went down, one of the things that made me realize is, we have friends all over the world.

And people were saying, oh, it looks really bad. Is it bad? And you kind of almost touch yourself as like, it's like, it's not really bad. it's atomic. It's all gone. It's like you don't understand the scale of what's gone on here. You didn't even have to go around the world to find that. There was different parts of town.

True. Rightfully so went on with their lives, but then you'd look over your shoulder and go, oh, my God. Yeah. And in a weird way, there's a real yin and yang in it, right? Because you sort of realize, whoa, people's, it's not that people aren't empathetic,

but their capacity in their own daily life to absorb your disruption is really limited. And like you said, it's not like we can, we empathize with what we see going on in these places, but we still get up and take a shower and brush our teeth and we move on. You know, we're doing our thing and we're just, we're kind of thanking God that the dark angel has not touched us, right? but then the fires hit here and it's your turn in the barrel, right? Or it's your turn in the cataclysm and you sort of, you realize, oh, I can't really rely. We have to rely on each other. It's only the people who are actually going through it who can ever really, can ever really

articulate how bad it is or how, again, is in you. And it's kind of funny, isn't it? because it does two separate things. On the one hand, you become aware that, like, wow, other people, the people who I sort of observe from a distance, and I sympathize and I, you know, you do what you can, you write a check-in to go-fund me for the people in the Texas floods, you know, or you do what you can, but you can't,

ultimately, you can't actually fully absorb the crisis. and in a way, communities end up having to take care of themselves, you know what I mean? You mentioned some of your heroes. You're right up there for me. You really are. I love a really good actor. And then you turn around and you have this other side of your brain that we won't go into, but all those things you just barely touched on, all the businesses you've started,

that all seem to be trying to make the world a better place, the environment, a better place and all of that. I've loved talking to you. We should probably wrap up, but I'm so happy to sit down and not just have a hit and run with you, which I usually do. And I cannot tell you how everybody has to run go see this movie. It is brilliant. Thank you. Thanks.

And I touched you on me, but I really, I do want to say to you, like, there are these funny touch points all my life with you. Not just because of we were fans and things like that, but the house. And then, you know, you as someone, a lot of us look to as like, hey, there's someone who's back in the environmental movement in our trade. So we can, you know, we can draft off that. And I think, you know, watching my kids get obsessed with the good place and kind of watching it and going, no, no, and watching it and kind of going, man, life is wild. Like I'm watching them. at an age, their relationship with you is down this other corridor. But there's something, there's something kind of wonderful to me in the, in, you know,

these threads they unspool over a long period of time. And I, like, my mom died when she was 54. And I, and I sit here and like talking to you. I'm like, God, I wish my mom. He's this conversation. Like, it's a total privilege and a joy. Like, and I, I appreciate all that you've. stood for also for for our in our trade and just for the world you're very kind to say that to me

yeah i appreciate it thanks man that was the great edward norton highly recommend watching his feature film the invite that's it for this week special thanks to team cocoa if you've enjoyed this episode please send it to a loved one rate and review on apple podcasts if you're in a good mood Once again, you can watch our full-length video episodes at YouTube.com slash team koku. See you next time, where everybody knows your name. You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes. The show is produced by me, Nick Leow, our executive producers are Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Federovich is our supervising producer, Engineering and Mixing by Joe. with support from Eduardo Perez. Research by Alyssa Graal. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista. Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gen, Mary Steenbergin, and John Osborne.