Welcome to Season four, episode one of the Jordan B. Peterson podcast, I'm McKayla Peterson. Dad is doing interviews. Ideally, his podcasts going forward will all be new interviews, but we may revert back to some old pre-recorded stuff from time to time. Here's to New Year. He's kicking off the New Year with none other than Matthew McConaughey, amazing actor and now best selling author. He sold over a million copies of Greenlights, a memoir I quite enjoyed, very humble, funny and has incredible stories in there, if you want to check it out.

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So today, I have the good fortune of speaking with Mr. Matthew McConaughey, who's one of America's most recognizable actors, and I guess according to his peers, also one of America's best actors as he's won an Academy Award and multiple other awards and. We started to communicate about a year ago and. He's also been on my daughter's podcast, and Matthew recently wrote a book Greenlights, which we're going to talk about today. I've read that. And and. I'm looking forward to discussing it.

There's all sorts of things I want to talk to Matthew about. And so. Hopefully we'll have a stimulating conversation. That's my guess. So let's start with what we can start with, whatever you want to start with. But let's start with the book. I think that's.

Tell me why you wrote it and and when you wrote it and what you want people to know about it. Yes, so I mean, keeping journals since I was 14 years old. And so I guess starting 15 years ago, I always carry this treasure chest full of the journals I've been keeping, and they were filling up that treasure chest and I would take it with me to any place that we went for an extended amount of time, put it over there to the right of my proverbial desk and go have it there.

Because if you can get the it and you get some time, I dare you to go on that treasure chest and see what's in there. Well, I've threatened to open up that treasure chest and see what those journals held for the past 15 years didn't have the courage really to open it up, didn't didn't want to make the time to go in there because I was intimidated of looking back 50 years or however many years of my life. I'm not one for really.

I can look back over my shoulder. I'm somebody who likes to I'm a bum still someone who rather enjoys making the sandwich more than eating it. I like making my movies more than I even like watching them. I like doing things, moving on and heading forward. So.

Well, you must have had some idea, too, when you were making those journals, at least in principle, that you owed an obligation to yourself at some point to look back over them. And I can see that that would be intimidating because you're creating a task for yourself, a task of reconsideration and contemplation, I suppose.

Well, my my excuse was, oh, when I die, Carmello, open them up and if there's something worth sharing and she'll do it, which was used in martyrdom, if there's something worth it.

So I maybe it will come across fifty consciously. I didn't think about 50 as a number of the time to be retrospective, but I had some time on my hands and I had read an article in The New York Times that a young man had written and I liked the article. All this guy gets me in a way that it was first article I read where he had weaved all different times of my career life into a thread instead of sort of like saying he was this then and now he's this and this then, and now he's this.

So he strung them all together. And I like the style of writing. And I asked him to come on and be a ghostwriter for a book. We met one time. It was a good meeting. We thought it was going to be a book, a little hardback book that you could put on the back of the toilet that every college kid could take to school and could open it up any page, maybe read a truth ism truism or a bumper sticker or something and have a little aspiration had about their day.

Well, The New York Times pulled him off because they were allowing the writers to work with celebrities. And just as he got pulled off and I was in the way in the room, my office with my wife, I said, I think I need to find a new ghostwrote. And I stopped at the same time. She stopped and she said, you know what this means? I yeah, I do know what it means, which is I need to go off and write it myself.

So she said I packed up the all the journals. She said, don't come back until you got something. And I headed off with 15 gallons of water. I don't know how many pounds of red meat. And my favorite my favorite libation. And I went away to the desert. The first twelve days were sort of no electricity. Me with my journals, no no cell reception, nothing like that. I wanted to be forced with nothing but my past and find some entertainment in that at least.

And I feared being embarrassed. I fear of being feeling ashamed. And I feared seeing a arrogant little SLB that I was in the past. And I crossed all those things and looking back at my last fifty years. But what I noticed was that the things that a lot of the things that they'll be embarrassed about, I giggled at a lot of thought to be ashamed about. I had already forgiven myself. For now, I forgave myself for and a lot of the times where I was an arrogant little SLB.

What I realized is that if I wasn't the arrogant little SLB at that time, I may not have had the confidence to put myself in a situation to get absolutely humiliated and humbled. So I sat down with the the journalists. I remember thinking, going into thinking it was going to be more academic thinking that that's what it was. That's what it was. After day five, I realized, no, there's actually more poetry in here and stories to tell than any academia.

So I backed off and said, let's just see what the journals give, reveal themselves to me. And I ended up with eight stacks of all the journals. I said, what are some themes? That big stack of stories, big stack of people, big stack of places, big stack of prescribes, big stack of poems, prayers, bumper stickers. So I have these eight stacks. I said, OK, now let's sift through those and see if we find a central theme.

And that's where greenlights came from. I found that I had engineered green light to my life through responsibility's taken yesterday, which for me, freedom. Today I found that I've gotten just plumb have no reason why good fortune landed in my lap. There was no reason why, but I said, well, let's make a rhyme out of this and do something with it. I found that also a lot of my yellow and red lights, those things that we don't really like, that slow us down or make us stop all had lessons that they revealed to me which didn't enhance made them green lights or at least.

Gave them green light assets, and then I also found that that the art is sort of an approaching real life. All right.

So we've reestablished ourselves in a wind free zone. So, look, one of the things you struck me is an intensely likable character as a consequence of what you revealed in your book. I mean, I kept thinking it would be a pleasure to spend time around this man. And I certainly saw no sign of arrogance in it. I thought I saw a lot of thankfulness and a conscious thankfulness and I think implicit thankfulness as well and a lot of a lot of love.

For your family, your parents and your current family, and gratitude for that as well, and also one of the things that struck me, too, was your. Integrity in decision making with regards to your career, you talked about taking a break after being somewhat typecast in romantic comedies, I mean, very successfully typecast. And so there's nothing negative about that. But feeling that you had taken that as far as it could be taken productively and creatively and and then took a risk of really being bounced out of the system.

I mean, one of the things I think that people perhaps don't understand about a society or a situation as intensely competitive as Hollywood is that it's virtually impossible to be successful there. And the probability that you'll fail, even if you are successful, is extremely high because the competition is. Beyond belief, no help wanted signs. No, definitely not. And so if you decide to do something like think, well, I've been successful in romantic comedies, but I don't want that anymore, you're throwing away something that's virtually impossible to attain and then to imagine that you might recreate yourself in a different guys and be successful.

It's a it's a big risk. You see this often when actors fail to make the transition from television to to the big screen. And that happens far more often than it doesn't happen, even if they have a very successful TV career. So all of that was extremely interesting. Now, OK, so you were out in the desert writing your book. How long did it take you to sort through the material?

I went off in the solitude five different times for 10 to 12 days. The first.

Trip out was to the desert for the first 12 days, and that was basically to see what I had. I came back from that feeling like I had something that was that was personal, that might be worthy of being between two two outback covers.

I remember writing early on going, OK, now you're going to have a lot of people that are going to buy this book, even if it's the words or crap on the page because of who you are. And I said you're going to have a lot of people who are not going to purchase this book, even if what you put on the page was awesome because you're makin comics. I remember saying to myself, one of the first things I wrote down, I was like, the words on the page need to be worthy of being put on the page if they were signed by Anonymous, but at the same time need to be worried that only Masamichi could written.

And that was sort of my little bubble, because this is not about you've read. It's not about a celebrity book. No.

In fact, there's very little in that celebrity. Like I was actually struck by how infrequently you made reference to your to you to the middle you that that you inhabited while you were well, while you've been pursuing your career as an actor, there's there's no celebrity gossip in it. And it's very much it's family centered and very intimate. I actually I actually wanted it left me wanting to know more about your career and so we can also talk about that today.

Flesh that out.

But so that was quite remarkable for you. A celebrity memoir, let's say. It's a terrible way of phrasing it.

A memoir by someone who happens to be a celebrity. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, it wasn't a celebrity memoir. It was a it was an autobiographical meditation, I would say. OK, I heard. I like that. So I went away. I went away. I came back the first 12 days. I was like, OK, I think I've got something. And then I'd come back and on my honey news at home, get everything back, make sure I didn't fall too much in the deficit of being a father and a husband back home.

And then as soon as I could get off again, I was fortunate to have a wife who was like, get out of here each time, you know? And I came could tell how, you know, the first the first 12 days were like a purge.

I mean, I came back and and and now no family, like, saw me. I mean, I came back shedding tears. I just sort of.

Gone back and looked 50 years of my life and had him down, and all of a sudden he was crying. There are tears of joy in this love story that I was seeing. And to face certain things I looked at in the past, we've forgotten the bat or thought I forgot, but noticed that actually I'd remembered was all it was a very earth shaking. My floor was moved in a good way. Yeah, well, that's great that it was moved in a good way, you know.

I mean, that's a lovely thing to have happen to you when you're 50 and looking back.

Yes. And then for other trips. So fifty two total days that was in solitude and then the next year and a half was basically editing it. And, you know, I didn't have as many stories in there early, which I would say serve as sort of the narrative backbone throughout that string, the whole piece together intermittently in there. I'll put a poem, prescribe a prayer, something that we either call back. I looked at it like in movies like their flashback or flash forward and can they coming out of a story, tell the reader, this is how I saw the situation that you just read, or can it propel you into the next story?

Because the story, the stories are really more chronological, but take you from four years old to 50. And I didn't have as many of the stories in there. And so the next year and a half is going, OK, I've got these stories, my my editors, I would tell them she was like, oh, she's got to put that in there. And that's when it became again, I was I was hesitant about the word memoir.

I don't know the great relationship, the word memoir, you know, memoir always seems like good night, everybody. I'm heading off into the twilight of my career, the sun setting. Have a look. And I was right because I need these stories to be active because they are still active and so right telling them as long as they had a vitality that they felt that to which they felt like they were. And then I had that that that thing that is so obvious when you say it.

But it didn't seem obvious to me at the time, which was the more personal I got, the more I started to notice that it was probably more relatable. The more into the eye that I went subjected, the more I noticed that, oh, it's actually relatable to more of the human condition. And that was my hope. And yeah.

Well, you have there's a there's a it's a it's a great it's a collection of great stories. And part of the good fortune of your life is to have had those. Experiences that. Transform themselves into compelling stories. What would you say without undue editing the African story, for example, the dream story, that's quite that was quite remarkable for me. That was a highlight of the book, I would say, where you related the dream. You had a recurring dream or at least one that recurred twice.

And and on the basis of that dream voyage to South America and to Africa is that I hope I've got that right.

The second time I had the dream, which was the exact same dream, 11 frames, 11 seconds, the second time I had it is when I chased down the first half of the remnants of South America. I thought I'd finish it. Then five years after that, I had the dream for the third time which made me say, Oh, I got to chase down the second half, which was there African tribesmen on the banks of the river to the left.

And that's what I went to Africa.

Any idea why? I mean, you staked a lot on the pursuit of a dream. And I mean, maybe we could say that's the motif of your book, that you staked a lot on the pursuit of a dream, but it's much more concrete. In that episode. You had an actual dream, a literal nighttime dream that recurred. And as a consequence of that, you you took a large risk or a series of risks. Merely going to Africa was a risk, I would say, and not something that would be expected as quite out of the ordinary to do that, obviously.

Well, I've never had I've had dreams that are similar to each other, but I've never it's the only dream I've ever had. That one was so specifically. I mean, it was exact when I say 11 frames, I mean, like film prints, picture one to. Three or 11 seconds, the exact same freight, exact same editing sequence in my mind, 11 seconds that ended in such a I don't know if ironic is the right way, word ended.

It was the elements of a nightmare, but it was the opposite of a nightmare, was a wet dream. And the fact that it was the exact same dream that I've had once in nine to again in 96, we had that twice. That's the first shake up. Well, that was exact same dream I had four years ago. Exactly first time that's ever happened. Oh, that's maybe that's a celestial suggestion here. Somebody something's telling me. What do you think you specifically learned in pursuit of that?

And have you had the dream again? My guess would be no, that you probably exhausted it. But I might be wrong now.

I have not to this to this point, it is it seems that I fulfilled the dream in the trip to Africa, which was two elements of the dream. One was the Amazon River, one where African tribes, those are the two geographic elements that I knew were crystal clear in the drink. So that's why I went to South America. That's why I have not had it again. I mean.

One to one, I'll say this. I'm always looking for a good reason to go for a walk about a really good reason, a concrete reason there, and why were they wet dreams? There was nothing overtly sexual about them. There was. So they were, you know, spiritual in that way is how I took them. Now, in Mali, I can say and I've been back to Mali, I went back to Mali, as I write about in the book five years later after fulfilling the dream, not because I had the dream again, just because Mali, I've never felt more at home and a place to Mali.

Now you're in certain places like I've been here before. This is not the gravity here is right. I've been here before. Whether it's another life, I don't know. But Mali was where I felt. Stone, this was the original home. I've been here and so that's what we got back. So that's my favorite place to go. And I've been back and did the exact same trip I did when I chased down the second half of the dream.

Can you shed you shed your identity to a great degree when you went to Africa? Yeah. And so that me enabled you to exist in a way that would be much unlike the manner in which you have to exist, where people know where you are or who you are. What do you think that did for you? Like the dream you took this dream quest, let's say, and and you paid a price for it. The risk would be the price.

What was the consequence of allowing yourself to do that? That it was one that it was on me, that it was my doing, I could own it at a time of becoming famous, you go through at least I did and still do at times. Go through. Wait a minute, what's mine? What am I getting based off of my worth as the man I am, as the person I am. Forget my fate and it becomes challenging. Know what?

Is it real? What is it not? How many of those I love you or me or how many of them were just following because I just had a big box office hit. And wait a minute. The person that I've had dinner with their kids and spent Christmases with who have shared I love using hugs then now I have two movies that didn't do well and that person won't return my call. Wait a minute. What aisle matters, what I want to do, what do we what do we do in here?

So but what if you have a rep? If you have a reputation that has a life of its own, it becomes very difficult to distinguish between yourself and that reputation.

And that's one of the pitfalls of fame. And lots of times you see people sacrifice themselves to their reputation. You see celebrities becoming impersonators of themselves. Yes. And that's a it's a tragic fate, I would say. And that's when you go that's who's lagging who I've never been to whack me. I mean, like, no, no, no. I understand. I got famous because of who for whatever extent, because of who I am. And what what did I do?

Yeah.

Well, I could see in the book that you were snapping yourself out of your fame even while you were doing things like the motorhome adventures because you were living a life that certainly wouldn't it was certainly wasn't what I expected to read that you would voluntarily abandon what so many people value as the pinnacle of. Of cultural achievement, say, at the popular level, and shed all that and set out like any. Any person who who doesn't have that right? Well, what I was like, for instance, in the South American trip and it happened in the markets and all the walk, the walk about it was I needed to go to a place where nobody had just become famous.

To me, my world was like all of a sudden all the options were mine. Two days before, there were none of those options were there. And now is a world of yes. And I'm going I don't think that twenty four hours a day and I would do any of this work. And you're now telling me I can do it all I need. And you're asking me to be discerning right now. And again, I went away to go.

I need to go where someone doesn't know my name. I need to go away. Where. No one's seen my movies, I want to go where there's no electricity, I want to go someplace where those hugs and tears when I say goodbye to you two days later are based only off of the man they met twenty two days ago. Well, you have to abandon them to one of the problems with being famous, and I suspect this is particularly the case with the kind of fame that you have, is that it must be very difficult to distinguish between people wanting something from you and people enjoying your company and liking you.

And it might even be difficult for them to distinguish between those things because. Fame is a very difficult thing to deal with, even as an onlooker, even as a family member, you wrote about your mom's reaction, for example, she became a fangirl to some degree, and that would be definitely disconcerting.

Yes, it was at eight years, there were my mom and I. I couldn't. I needed a mother and what on the other end of the phone was a fan of my fame, somebody one of my fame, more than I did. Great.

But it shows you the power of that, too, because your mother obviously cared for the person you were before you became famous. But she was overwhelmed. And it's not surprising. I mean, to some degree, the entire Hollywood apparatus exists to manufacture fame. That's overwhelming. That's a whole I can't say that's its whole purpose, but that's what it uses to drive. Let's say to to drive people to the theater. So to be victimized by that, no, no, to to fall under the sway of that is unsurprising.

It's surprising that it could be resisted and that was certainly you can certainly see that with your mother's response.

Oh, for sure. And that has that.

I'm sorry. I don't remember your mom. Is your mom still alive? Is she. She's 88, 88 years young and with us right now. So and has that has that situation rectified itself? Did she adapt to.

We both adapt. Yeah. I got through enough time where I felt stable enough in my career that I was like, her loose lips are going to sink my ship. And actually I trained. And as soon as I said, you go, Mom, here's the mic. I hit that red carpet line. You can talk to anybody you tell no filter, sell whatever stories you want, not in absolutes. It's awesome. And I'm like, you know what?

Let her enjoy it. And I was able to enjoy it and then come to that realization that, you know, I wasn't going to change her. So because I couldn't change or it's kind of like the sabbatical I took from the rom coms, I wasn't going to change or so I just kind of block her out for a certain amount of time. That ended up being eight years until I was stable enough to go go for it. And our relationship, you know, all through that time.

She didn't love me less, she left me in a new different way, as well as being her son, what I was needing was just I needed her to double down on being a mom to me. Where to double down? She didn't cut it in half.

She kind of. Was really want to know about the fame, I remember telling her things like, well, you keep wanting to come out here and see me, but what if I was an accountant in Chicago? Would you want to come see me? As much as my two brothers were like, you don't want to come see us as much. You want to see little brother? We were like, yeah, we get it, you know, so we call her out.

And that was strange. Eight years. I never questioned her love for me, though. I knew we were going to be fine. I knew we weren't going to, like, head to our bed. Going on a bad note, I knew we were going to come out. The other side is just a matter of when and we did. Yeah, well, it's it's nonetheless a good example of one of the unintended consequences of fame. Right.

Is that this this very profound alteration in the nature of your personal relationships.

So. Yes, so. I want to switch topics a bit. I've been watching you in. True detective. Which my son recommended, and I'm really enjoying you, I believe you said in the book that the script leapt off the page for you. It did, especially the words of the character Rustin Cole. Right, right. You play your heart role that Woody played. Yes. You were offered that role. Yes. Yeah. And I read the thing.

And I remember Tom, I said, guys, I understand where you're coming from. My heart. I go with the guy who I cannot wait to turn the page to see what comes out of his mouth is this guy to call? And they were a bit surprised.

Yeah, well, they're both complex characters, so you can see that either of them might have been attractive. But I was I was quite struck by your your characterization of of Cole. It reminded me of Heath Ledger. And that's why I wanted to talk to you about it. You play a dark character very well, if you don't mind me saying so, I mean, I think it's believable. I've known some dark people. And. Your portrayal is believable, very believable, and so that makes me wonder what price you pay for that kind of a cliche.

You know, you play a dark role and it invades you, but it isn't obvious to me how you can play a dark role without it invading you. And then or at least you have to allow something dark in yourself to come out and respond to that. And you're very different on the screen playing rust and coal than you are in. A romantic comedy role, clearly. And it's it's somewhat surprising to see that transition, which I guess is why other people might be surprised by that, too, which is why you actually had a bit of a hiatus when you stop taking rom com roles.

But I'm curious, like, what did it what were the consequences for you of playing that character in particular, but dark characters in general? The dark, the dark characters, the Labadee. You said so much more identity. Then the white knight, then the hero in stories that I read in Scripps, things, the dark characters in it are also there. There are always usually outsiders and I the consequences that I'm really going to portray one of those.

Well, in that part of myself, I'm putting myself on an island and I and I'm in that excites me. I want it to be I want to feel like the underdog. I want to feel like I don't have to pander to manners or graces. I'm living by different rules and not even to prove a point. But just say in a Russian class version, someone who just you know, I didn't make big acting choices before us and I just did what I could to understand text so well that I could just say it and not have to solicit it.

Or again, rusted and coal was a guy who preferred his own company to anyone else's. And that's all that was a vacation for me also to have as a person who was a believer to have to to to be in it and inhabit a character who is not a believer at all. And here's why.

I'll tell you, I've always thought this was odd at the time that I chose and wanted to go and have a and call was the time that my faith was strongest. And my would have been a strong. I might have been a little more fearful of going so deep into this man's mind, spirit and ethos, and she had some protection, but at a very nihilistic Karakol, he's he reminds me there's a philosopher in South Africa who's an antenatal list.

Unfortunately, his name escapes me for a moment. I I had a debate with him a couple of years ago. But his basic premise is that. Conscious suffering is so morally untenable as a phenomenon that all life should cease and if we were making the proper moral choices, we'd stop reproducing. But not only that, that we'd we'd also do what we could. Well, we can leave it at that, that we'd stop reproducing, because if you sum up a life, it's its bitter end and the bitterness overwhelms the sweet and so much cruelty to perpetuate.

Yes, I think that is beautiful and in many ways true. And I think it's also hilarious.

What strikes you is as comical about that, you laughed about it and because that's where, of course, of course, we're all the way to die. You talk about it all the time. It's tough. It's cruel, it's hard.

We're out here, this thing. OK, I'm in. So that's inevitable. That's the strange thing, you know.

And I felt too I mean, I can certainly understand the argument if I hear it and and it adds up, but if that's not inevitable. Which I think we all say that's inevitable. So we're on the way to dying and it's over, what we don't we'll never know if this is the end or not. So or if there's anything after it and it is it's hardships and overcome that's inevitable. And we've got to do this thing anyway if we're choosing to stay and live another day.

So what's a better way to go about it? See, it's all for nothing or realizing right there when you go, it's all for nothing. No, that's what thing and it's all for everything.

Yeah, well. There also seems to me that if you're objection to life, is it suffering, adopting an attitude that will make that suffering worse is probably not a reasonable solution. And that's that's where that grounds out for me. There's no construction in there.

I mean, there's nothing there's nothing affirmative or Life-Giving about that's not making the best of the situation. Get the situation to do that. So, you know, I'm not for Hallmark cards and delusional optimism, but I mean, and in this way, I would say optimism is survival. It's like, OK, if it's all for think, optimism is courage, if it's not naive. And one of the things I liked about your book, too, was that your optimism wasn't naive.

And, you know, because you had enough harsh experiences. So that any naive optimism would have vanished, right? Even your even your the way you grew up, I mean, it wasn't traumatic, but it wasn't. It wasn't. It had its harshness about it. Sure, yeah, it was it was immediate, it was physical, the same hands that had the same hands that could harm. Yes.

And you all there was also very little sign of and maybe none. No sign of bitterness about that and no sign. I didn't think of any excuses for it either. When you portrayed your father, like you said, he was a man who could hug and hit and both of them were meant and they weren't casual. I never got the impression from from your book that your father's actions were casual, his physical altercations with you and your brothers. It was a different it's a different ethos.

That's not an ethos that's well understood today, I would say, or one that's that's ever appreciated. And I suppose that's because of its harshness. But. I didn't detect any sign of bitterness from you emanating towards that no, and I have I have none while I choose to maybe give consequences to my children in different ways than my father and mother did.

There was absolutely no casualties to why and when he did Pontius. None. I talk about in there, you know, the values that were instilled even by the antonyms of the words that we got in trouble for saying to not to get at first, but looking for saying I can't. OK, I can't bring the thought of can't bring pain. Oh, don't think can't.

OK, you have trouble. There's a difference.

And to say the second open for saying I hate you to my brother, I didn't know the hell I hate you. I heard it from older kids at school. I thought it might be cool to throw it out there. I hate you, but it was my own birthday party. My mom stopped the whole party and said, What do you say you don't ever tell your brother anyone you hate bent me over right there, embarrass the heck out again.

The next one for lying.

So what do I learn now? Those don't say I can't. Don't hey, don't lie. Oh, when I did those, I felt pain. So what are the names of those love instead of hey, I understand you're having trouble but don't believe you can't and tell truth the lot. Those are three great values he was preparing me for. You're going to need this in in life. You know, it was also the time when I called when I called him to go to tell I want to go to film school and to law school.

And he tells me that was a striking story. And you know what happened? I realize now many years later, I think what happened in that moment is. He heard in the conversation that took twenty five seconds, but he got little buddy don't want to go to law school, want to go to film school. Sure. That's what you want to do? Yes, sir. The the the ba don't half ass it. I'm sitting in the flat.

But what he heard in that conversation was his son, who we were brought up in a very structured family, disciplined. You work your way up a ladder, you follow the rules. He heard his son calling him to tell him he could tell. I was asking permission, ma'am. You could tell I wasn't calling.

Have well, you know, I was thinking maybe now he heard my voice.

I want to go to film school and so law school.

And he said you also weren't calling because of failure, because you'd worked at law school. Right.

But he heard that I was not bluffing. I was not really calling to ask his permission. And in that moment, I think he heard what all parents want to hear.

Yes, my child's going their own way. They broke out the mold. What you'd hope every parent would want to hear. Hope so, but you know what I mean. You can't come. I have plenty of times before that that I asked him for things where I was bluffing and he could tell where, Dad, can we please get me the skateboard elbow pads and knee pads? I really want to be a skateboard. Are you sure your son?

Yes, sir. I did skateboard for three weeks and then they gathered dust and cobwebs. Damn it, that was a fad. You know, I talked about that into doing something and I didn't follow through on it, but he heard this time. A resolver declared in May and I think on the other end of the line, he was going. Yeah, well, for him to make the to give you the green light that rapidly the situation must have been set up properly and for the green light that he gave you to be accepted by you, is exactly that as encouragement?

Yes, the situation must have been set up properly. OK, so you talked about playing Cole in True Detective and that you were protected from his dark excesses, let's say, by your faith. Why did that provide you with. In what way did that provide you with protection? It's a striking thing to say, especially given his his attitude is, is Mephistophelian. There's a character in Gert's as as Mephistopheles, who's Satan himself. And his essential credo is that.

Everything that lives should perish because of the sin of its existence, essentially. And so that's cool in a nutshell, right? Yeah. And and. And that's it is it is it's a logically tenable argument, but it's one that needs to be rejected holistically. I shouldn't use that word.

I hate that word. But you don't reject that argument rationally because it's a rationally tenable argument. You have to reject it with your whole being instead and say, well, despite this, I'm going to live and I'm going to try to live in an appropriate manner. Yes, but you said your faith protected you from coal.

Well, it was one of the things that that allowed me to fully go into coal and fully believe coal and get down and live it and look at the world through that lens. Right. I had already had a year, a few year run in my life where I was quite agnostic. It was my agnosticism was not about trying to prove the disbelief of God's existence, my agnosticism was about me going. You should have been letting yourself off the hook.

Hey, Mr. Fatalists, I'll forgive you again because you're being a repeat offender, and I'm kind of tired of it. Put your damn hands on the wheel, man. Talking to myself. You drive in here and go into this. I can pray and be forgiven, but you repeat it. Cut it out. I had gone through a few years earlier in my life of agnosticism where I was not so much trying to prove a of God as I was trying to have more understanding, more self-reliance and self determination on myself because I've been let myself off the hook.

And. And how was that related to the agnosticism, do you think? Because you put those together in the way that you're relating this story? Well, I needed to have I needed to. I needed to feel like I was wholly responsible for myself and what happened to me, that that I was not going to let myself slide.

There's an ideal, according to you, that night, like when you experience yourself as ashamed by your own behaviors, what that means is that there's an ideal inside you that's trying to manifest itself. Right, because you wouldn't be ashamed if you weren't comparing yourself to something better. And the question then becomes, well, what is that better thing that you're comparing yourself to? And it's an ideal. And then the question becomes, well, what is the ideal?

You know, and that's the sort of.

Fleshing out what that ideal is, is that that's the function of religious thinking, and so that's why I was interested in your comment about agnosticism. You know, in Revelation, in the Book of Revelation, Christ comes back as a judge.

Even though he's a figure of mercy, let's say he comes back as a judge and the reason for that, this is from Carl Jung, the reason for that is that any ideal is a judge. And so if you posit the highest ideal, then you put yourself in a position where you're judged and that's when your conscience tortures you. And so you can discover your ideal that way by having a dialogue with your conscience and say, well, I'm not living up to who I should be.

Well, who should that be like? Where where does that figure come from? That's a great mystery, that it's your hire. It's the higher form of being that you're capable of manifesting that's calling to you.

And let me say this. It was a version of when my father, mortal father died. I write about this, about being less impressed and more involved, but I sobered up. I think it was time to become a man. It's time to quit relying on the fact that I knew he had my back. He was above government, above law. I really got to pick on to go on. So this was I'm going to discard my spiritual bother.

You take race to the red light, but that's all it is. So what do you do and what's here? There's one play and you go until you die and that's it. So what are you going to do? Don't be giving yourself up thinking. Well, there may be life after that.

Stop it. So that's what I had been. I've gone through that a feeling come out of that and was.

And I didn't feel this till later because I allowed myself to stay in the midst of being really scared. Oh my gosh, what am I going to get struck by lightning here?

Was that. My God was going, thank you, yes, I wish more of us would put our hands on the wheel or we take we throw this fake card out there really lackadaisically like, oh, inch'allah, say it's Navia, I believe. Well, you know, OK, that's it. Then ride around and run all the red lights, get your damn hands on the wheel. Yes, you are supposed to be self determining. So that got me and woke me up and so would be up into that position.

Now they're going into the wrestling coach. I'll say this. I found that in my. It's got like almost like a boomerang reverb, wherever I am strongest in my own life, I find a I like to go to the I actually can inhabit the opposite.

Even better, the deeper I go into whatever would be, the greater the opposition, meaning when I played prosecuting attorneys, I actually usually believe in the defense's position more and studying their defense more, their position more, which then makes me, again, feel like an underdog over here to go. I really got to know what my argument is because I actually kind of agree with them when I play. Defense attorneys usually agree or push myself to the point of agreeing with the prosecution.

Well, at a time when my faith was the most fulfilled, rusting colors I got, here's another great here's another what I call a boomerang rebirth. Here's another time to go way over to the opposite side, because I'm so coming out here with so much steam and where I am and what I really believe and how I feel in life. You got new born children and all the things that are opposition that I have in my life. Opposition to what?

Rusting gold, rusting coal was.

That was I don't know why that is, but I'm all I look back and I have had a consistency of of that of wherever I am in my life. Sometimes I'll lay in and go play a character that I'm calling, but I'm also feeling like I'm drawing something. Well, now that you're so secure here, let's test it. Let's go all the way to the other side. Because over there, here, because I feel so strong positions that time with my face.

Now I have the strength to go and have it, somebody over there that is on the opposite side. And and not have to keep my eyes open to make sure the door is open, I can trust that the door can be shut and I'll still be there when I'm at when when I'm done with this, I'm still the it's still happening. You have to see it because I don't want to see it, if he can over there going, hey, are we OK, God, are we OK with what I'm saying and doing it?

No, not without him half assed it. Now, I'm not really inhabiting the part. I'm playing rust and cold going. I believe everything he says. I ought to thought rust and gold was hilarious, which you probably would now understand. I've laughed at two comments that from from things that you said about the other people that spoke that question. Yeah, well, things can be things can be dark enough so that the immediate response to them can be laughter.

Yeah, so I, I that that that may that may help explain what what you're asking, but I don't know why that is. I don't know why that is.

For me, it's not a straightforward thing to to sort out. Let me ask you about a little bit more about fame. So, you know, now and then you see stories. True or not about Hollywood celebrities who are irritated with the consequences of their fame, and it's very easy to. Be judgmental about that because. They're obviously. The benefits to that fame appear obvious monetary gain, access, safe access to opportunity and the benefits, I suppose, of the ego benefits perhaps of being known rather than unknown.

And then especially in the Hollywood community, I would say it's more difficult to generate sympathy for celebrities who. Are hurt by their fame because. The price, it's so obvious that that's the price that has to be paid to be successful in something that's mass marketed, like a movie where your face is associated with the product. Right. You can't extract out the success. You can't distinguish between the success and the fame. But. I don't think it's possible to understand what fame does to your life until it's happened to you.

So I'm curious, and you protect yourself, you hide, I don't mean in a withdrawing sort of way, but I mean you live in Texas, you don't live in L.A. and you go on these sojourns where no one knows you. So you set up an escape. Mechanisms. Let's say, or yes. So what tell me about fame and about the impact that it's had on you, so initially fame and fame happened to me extremely quickly. It happened over one weekend when it came time to kill came out.

The Friday. Afternoon before Tankel open that Friday night. I'm walking down a prominent hashmark go get my tuna fish sandwich that I always like to get more people on the promenade. Three hundred ninety six mind their own business. Four of them look at stare at me. A couple of girls thought I was cute. Somebody like Protus. One hundred scripts out there that I want to do, any of those 99 no's, one, yes. Now, within 48 hours time to open up that we can very, very good reviews, et cetera, et cetera, that Monday following Monday, 48 hours later, I got on the same promenade, everything inverted.

Now, three hundred and six out of the 400 people are standing me and for one. Nose check can fly. What have you now, those 90 those 100 scripts that were ninety nine noes one. Yes, inverted 99. Yes, please do this one.

Whoa.

The roof has been taken off. Oh, my God, you're so good, I love you. Oh, my God, I'm so sorry about Miss Hyde. No one. Who are you? How did you know I had a dog? Had to know her name is Mesud and had to know she had cancer. Well, you just skipped four things. Nobody is a stranger anymore. Everyone seems to have an inherent biography of me. I'm feeling trust toponyms.

OK, does that I love you mean something. They say that a lot out here. I've only said that for people in my life. Shouldn't throw that word around here a lot. Maybe that's supposed to be that easy to. Oh so trying to take that in. I learn a great lesson after year seven of fame. And it's probably six or seven for a reason. How old were you when that when that happened? Ninety six, 1888.

Eight years later. Twenty six years old. Twenty six. So you're still pretty young, but you weren't 17. So you have some maturity. You had some maturity at that point. Thank you.

I know more of what. I know more of what I'm not than maybe more than what I do or what I am. But I'm aware enough of who I don't want to be and I'm aware enough that I don't want to that I need some decent nation in this now option list. Yes. Things that are coming at me, my world, I'm I'm I'm aware that I'm not that I need to, again, be less impressed and more involved and go right now that I have the chance that I've got the wheel and I can go wherever I want.

Where am I going to go? Which was the first unbalancing, sort of very scary proposition, which is why I took off the first couple of times to the Monastir and then to crash in the desert. You, mademoiselle, think trying to decipher and disseminate what matters from who am I? And this what I actually want to do, what I not want to do, what I want to make stands on. Look, I remember for a while there I had such a.

My life was so many things on top, the frequency of events on top of me from just walking, walking down the street to interviews to talking to somebody. My life has been recorded, the world was now a mirror, and I remember telling my feeling almost numb, I couldn't put a demarcation between. The life, the fame I just got and myself, so I remember to myself, well, since you're kind of numb. Just like the old Abraham Lincoln, things like just be a gentleman and don't lie.

All right. Just stick to these two. And I gave some boring ass interviews, but I was a gentleman and I didn't lie. But I just said, like, don't even try to get colorful. Don't even try and have an opinion on anything just just right now. Ride through this and be a gentleman and don't lie. And I gave the same interview 50 times in a row over two months. Yeah, well, there is something to be said when you're exposed to that degree to adopting a strategy of don't do anything stupid for a while.

Yes. So I was it was surviving on the way to what could possibly become thriving, but it was holding my head above water and going just keep knocking them down. You'll take some time off. You'll get some time off to let your memory catch up with you later. So to begin with, it was a shock and you've developed some strategies for dealing with it. What about over the longer run now? It's been you've been you've been well known for it's going to be twenty, twenty five years, say the thirty two or three years old.

I wake up and it clicks for me one time. That, oh, you've got to get the joke in Hollywood. And the joke is it ain't personal, it's business, right? That's not a particular joke to Hollywood, maybe a particular joke and and laugh a lot, but that made me go, OK, don't take it so personally. When that person I talked about earlier won't even call you won't even call your call you back because your last couple of movies have failed.

And you spent a year on the list to be their children's godfather five years ago. Don't take that personally or don't take it personally when that person now, because you did get hit, is calling you and wants to go out and hang out again. Don't even bring up that. Hey, you won't even answer about don't even don't even tell them you understand the score about how they wouldn't call you then. But now they do not know.

That's a good that's a good technique to avoid resentment. Yes. And resentment is so toxic. It's so toxic.

That's what that's what getting the joke of understanding that wasn't personal. Yeah. I've done that with are looking for work you know, because it's difficult to find a new job and you're going to get turned down a lot. In all likelihood, you're going to send your resumes out to 50 places and get one positive reply. If you're you know, you can expect that it might not be that bad, but it could be it's not personal. Most of those jobs don't even exist.

It hasn't. It doesn't. It has something to do with you, but not that much. There's a huge situational factor there. And you have to take that into account.

Yes, well, it's similar to we lose a lot for me. I lose my father. Well, after he dies, after moves on from this life, I find out some facts where the message and the messenger, we're not simpatico. You know what he was teaching me and what he was actually doing? There was a gap between those things.

And I was like, what? Inevitably, right.

Inevitably, you actually want that from your father. You want your father to teach you better than he is gay, you know?

Yeah, but the first feeling can be and I've seen people go, yeah, a lot of resentment. Oh, yeah. Betrayal. Yeah. And it's true. It is a it is a betrayal but.

But what do you want your father to put forward the worst version of himself and use that is what he teaches, you say this goes back to that nihilistic view. If it's all for nothing, then come on, let's make it all for everybody. I'm with you on that. So my father moved on. I it happened pretty quickly for me, have gone like, oh, I get it. He's wanting me to be better than he is. He's want me to do better.

I get it. Fragoso So but I could tell maybe that that happened two years earlier. I would have been in an emotional space. I might have been because it was flabbergasting. It's like meeting a hero and they turn out to be an asshole and you're like, well and they're very likely to turn out badly in comparison to your idealization of them.

Which and but at the same time, you go talk to your favorite musician you followed who you perform to your version of paid patriotism and fairness in the world, and you go meet them. They tend to be an asshole and you go like they don't even believe in what they wrote, you know?

Like what.

But you and well, if flawed people were incapable of creativity, we wouldn't have any creativity, you know. And so I think what you have to do when you're dealing with creative people is realize that people who are creative and accomplished even is realize that. The fact that they've managed that, despite all their flaws, is the thing that's truly remarkable because they have as many flaws as the next person. So. So thank God there. This is why, you know, when I see someone like Louis C.K., for example, pilloried terribly, I think, well, yeah, he did some things that were unseemly, certainly even by his own standards, obviously.

So what do we make of that? Well, there's plenty of people who do unseemly things, but not but very few of them are as masterful a comedian as Louis C.K. So do we want to lose him because he's flawed? It seems it seems inappropriate because we lose everybody that way and then we just have loss. That's not helpful.

Yes. I mean, I think you're leading into a lot of what we call council culture today. Yeah. Is can that you know. In the name of rehabilitation, we have to have a world in which we are able to grow and evolve, if that's what we're trying to do. Now. Oh, I mean, I'm not for repeat offenders or tyrants, but if someone screws up and they have sincere. They sincerely want retribution. I think it's fair to give people well, it better be, because otherwise we're all doomed, right?

Well, absolutely.

Like there's not a person among us who hasn't made repeated errors. And and if contrition and repentance aren't sufficient, then we're all damned. No doubt about that. So. All right.

So so now we think we were continuing our discussion on fame. So you've you're 25 years into being famous and you seem to be doing it, handling your success. Right. In a manner that allows you to be pleased about the way your life has unfolded, and so thank God for that and here you are, you're still here after all these years and. So you've had your fame, well, how come how could you manage that, having to manage.

Well. Big, big thing for me, and it works for me in my life like this, just getting a click of a word and understanding completely changed my perspective when I go off. That's it. That's true. I'm going to quit banging my head against the proverbial wall. Now, I understand that one day clip from seven years, was it a personal business that helped a lot and that went OK?

I understand the impermanence of this. Just wrote dance dance with this, dance with the next one. That was just sort of a behavioral perspective, even though it sounds like a cool one liner was when people would ask or I would have myself run to an inconvenience of being a paparazzi or would have someone looking over the wall not be able to go outside. I was like. I'm not going to gripe about it because that chick is already cashed, right?

That's right. I can't go back if it's inevitable. I'm going to figure out a good way to get through this. I then started to say, OK, well, when you're watched in life, Matthew, and a camera's on, you notice how you speed up and you get a little nervous. Well, why don't you look at this like a master acting class? See if you can go out into the world with eyes on you.

Uninvited eyes, cameras, recording and actually behave and do just the behavior that you have to do. Yeah, well, OK, we're in New York City makeup artist doing my face. My son, three years old, he's talking to his favorite things, fire trucks. She was with my husband, fire captain. He's actually blocks away and bring him bring the VA truck over downtown New York. Well, that means a lot of paparazzi are going to come.

Right. But my three year old son doesn't know what paparazzi are and he gets to see his first fire truck lives. Do I go down there and show my son's first fire truck or do I tell him, no, son, I'm not going to see the fire truck because I'll understand it later. There are people with cameras. I'm like, yes, that man my son went to see his first fire truck is much more important than came before any right that anyone's got that inconvenient cause.

I think we're going to see the temperature when we go see the fire truck, he sees the fire truck cameras all around. He didn't understand what it was. I'm sitting here going like this was about let my son see the fire truck. I've tried to live my life and I check with myself, I don't I'm not foolish with my fame. I don't open the doors and invite the devil's in or open my self up and say, yeah, look, have a look.

Come on. And now I understand I could be fully taken advantage of. And there are plenty of people who would love to take advantage of that. But I often tell myself. Again, who's lagging who what are your rights as a human, a citizen, as the man you are? Don't let those be taken away from me because of something you got along the way, which was pain and inconvenience that come with that. So while I don't advertise, my wife and I said we do not advertise ourselves, but.

We want to go for a walk. Or go see that proverbial fire truck and show our child that we're going to go. Let's do that. We're doing. If you want to record us. I called the Discovery Channel. Record it. You know what good use of film could use recording.

So there is advantages to having eyes on you, too, because it has forced you to behave. You can leave your keys in your car and a lot of places, because if he was going to rob your car, they're going to document the one kind of. Robert, it's a bit of a security get on that, too. So you see, I've spun a few things here perspective, not denying inconvenience, but saying, hey, this this check is cash.

Here's how I'm going to try and get constructive and do it. And so fame now gets me in certain doors. I've had to watch this.

Things that I'll say a famous person can come out in bold print. Not just on the printed page, but to people, so I've had my doubts so strongly and actually hurt people with my words where maybe I didn't have the emoji to put on the end of what I wrote with a week. And they heard it like I was throwing it at random. But I was going, no, no.

What I was just telling you, I didn't mean to hurt you, you know? And what tickled me may bruise somebody else. And my words come out with that weight sometimes. So I have to watch that.

I remember when I was a teenager, I got put down by someone who was reasonably well known in public and it was a misunderstanding, but it burned itself into my memory. And I thought, if I'm ever in a situation where I'm well-known, I'm going to remember this so that I don't. And Mike, had it been a normal had he been an everyday person, let's say. What he said wouldn't have had nearly the impact on me that it did.

So and that is a strange thing to have to realize and to weigh your words that way, I'm cognizant of your time. I know that you have another obligation coming up. And so I thought it might be useful. To move towards closing this up, I want people are going to wonder how it was that we came to have a conversation. And so maybe you could shed some light on that. And that's because I'm curious. I'm well about it as well.

I got turned on to you from a friend of mine about four years ago, maybe three years ago. And I started listening to a lot of what you were saying and many of the things you you said I had been thinking about. But I heard you putting them into words, context. I was like, wow, that's that's that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm trying to get to. I found and it goes back to talk about self-determination, which we've talked about a lot about self authoring.

And then you hear you hear you see a lot of those threads through my book, maybe in a different way, in a more folksy way. But a lot of what you said gave me confidence to go. I'm I'm going to put my story on paper. So thank you for that, and that's why I think you are back in the back of the book. I reached out to you a year and a half ago or so, and you and I chatted and stayed in contact with your daughter.

You know, your definition. One of the great simple things I said earlier, sometimes just to reach understood. Understanding a word differently. I've always had trouble. A tough relationship, an awkward relationship with many words, but my relationship to that, I've had the longest trouble with our. Vulnerability and. You know, these are tough ones are tough ones. So humility, I, you know, OK, be humble for decades, be humble. I lost confidence when I was humble, I, I feigned false modesty, which I wish I knew at the time.

That's arrogant. What do you do it right? Absolutely. It's very difficult to to be to have humility without being arrogant about it. Weirdly enough, you said, correct me if I'm his quote, you, it's Emilia's known that you have more to learn.

You're either in love with what you know or you're in love with what you don't know. And there's a lot more of what you don't know. So pick your love carefully.

Oh, well, that I went oh, I purchased I'm in all that. But for the first time when I see that I'm not shrieking, I'm actually standing taller. My heart's higher.

My entire my shoulders right there. Right. Right. I have more knowledge going forward because oh, 100 percent.

I can rely on that until I'm gone. And maybe even further than that. Yes, I have more to learn. I purchase. But now I can go with full with confidence. Well, actually, what I do know what I have built. I can add more courage. I can forgive easier. I can I can I can take responsibility with more courage.

I can take care of the things I built to attend those gardens better with that understanding of humility. So for that, I thank you. I appreciate that it's a human. And so for on average, I want to throw a little bungee out there for you.

OK, so. While I was writing and I've become a fan, which I'd love to continue talking with you more about this subject to my objective. We in the third eye, sort of the Jumbotron of our life, when we hop out of ourselves and have a look or we project forward in our lives and say, who am I in 10 years or what would my eulogy be? You see, I write a lot about these things and in the book.

While I was riding, I hopped out, I gave myself the pleasure. One night after a few sips and it was late at night in my most trouble, I'm happy to say this. The hardest thing about going write this book for me was making myself good a bit. I was put in 17 hours a day, 17 hour days, and I was like, you've got to get some sleep. But anyway, one of these nights when I was in the fever pitch on fire writing, I wrote down some.

I hopped outside of myself and said, I'm going to write reviews from people that I think this is what they would say about this book after.

And this is one of them. That's a great way to become aware of your audience or of the audience you want to have. Well, then he had to speak to an audience when you're writing, obviously. Well, it's you know, it's. It's a very subjective experience, but I think there's there is another, as you said, the good thing about talking to oneself and the third person is it's a different view of awareness. It's an objective awareness back at like, oh, am I actually doing what I intended to do is what I intended actually being recorded is what is being recorded, actually what's being received.

That could be a lot of gaps in between those things and I'm sure those gaps.

So I hopped outside of myself and wrote a I wrote a witch what I thought you would say about green lights and Máxima kind of Hey, the author, it's entrance level understanding to master class psychology delivered in a folk song.

I mean, the guy's got the gift of gab, man, what can I say, Jordan Peterson? That's quite remarkable because that is very close to what I thought. You know, so I think you nailed it. You did a. It's very difficult to put forward a message. Without being propagandistic and the best way to do that is to tell stories, and your book is full of stories and and the stories seem to me to add up to a life well lived.

And that's a good model. And so it's a model, but it's also not put forth as a model. So it doesn't suffer from the flaws of. The flaws that might come along with that putting forth, you know it, and I guess that's because you state contemplative. I mean, one of the things I've tried to do in my lectures is to remember that I'm lecturing to me as well. You know, I'm part of the audience if I'm talking about how.

We might behave, I mean, we I don't think that I'm outside of the problems that I'm discussing, those two are not a contradiction.

One of us can understand that. We're talking to ourselves as well. Yes.

Well, it takes the sting out of things and it keeps you on the ground, so. Well, I think that's quite funny that you wrote that review. And it's also quite funny that it is in line with what I thought. I read the book. I should show the book again, since this is a good time to do that.

And that's the cover with my on. But underneath that is is the really cool thing that sort of is is the symbol. That's the metaphor that I'm playing with, which is all the red and yellow lights that we have in our life. The hardships. The crisis is in the rearview mirror of lives, at least via lessons learned, will reveal green assets that we needed. It's not denying the crisis, you know, of even the death of a loved one, but it is saying, oh, there were lessons even in that.

And I would offer I wonder, you know, Jordan, if some of these lessons we know we're going to learn them when we're in crisis. Some we don't know till next month, some we're probably not going to know to our deathbed. And I would argue that some will never be realized until maybe our great, great, great grandkids realized and three generations from now. And there's a green light in this year we're in right now, big green lights in this big red light year of covid and social unrest and and political distrust and and people having to redefine who they are and what politics is and what's fairness, what's equality and all this and the extremes that when there's a big, big green lights that will be revealed out of this year.

On a when? More than optimistic, I think, realistic that that's going to be true. That's an excellent place to end. I would say thank you very much. It's it's been a pleasure talking to you and I. Deeply appreciated the acknowledgement, and I'm very pleased that. My work has. Contributed to what you've produced. I also get a kick out of the fact that our books are chasing each other on the top 10 list on Amazon.

So I think that's quite well, that's a privilege and it's an impossible privilege. And so I'm very pleased to see that. And I wish you the best of luck. I hope that we get a chance to talk again. I enjoyed that very much. I did too. Good, good. And hopefully the audience will respond in the same way. I think so. So thanks for taking the time. My pleasure. Jordan, I very much appreciate.

I look forward to the next time. Good to see you, sir. Good to see you, too. Charles.