I have some new tour dates to tell you about. We've added a third show in London on June 16th at the Eventim Apollo. We also have shows in New York City on May 31. Belfast in the UK on June sixth. That's an added show. June seventh is sold out. Idaho Falls, we've added a show on June 27th. Salt Lake City, Utah on June 30th. And Las Vegas, Nevada on July fifth and sixth at Resorts World Las Vegas. Get all your tickets at theovan. Com/taur. If tickets are too expensive, just wait. We'll come back around. Make sure you buy them through our link and not off of a secondary site. Thank you guys so much for your support. Today's guest is one of the best-selling authors of the last 20 years. You may know him from his books, The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery, as well as The Art of Seduction, and more books. We're going to talk about relationships, human interaction. We cover a lot of ground, and I'm grateful to talk with Mr. Robert Green. Shine that light on me.

I'll sit and tell you so much, man. You're very welcome. Really.

Please. That's really nice of you. My pleasure. That's a wonderful gift to have 48 Laws of Power right there. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Nice to meet you.

Very nice to meet you.

Yeah. Oh, thanks. Same. Yeah. Thank you for all the inspiration. Yeah. Thank you for taking the time to think and write down your thoughts and things that make you feel something or things that you feel are worth sharing with the world.

Yeah. Well, it's been what I've been doing for 26, 28 years now. Hopefully, I can keep going for another 10, 20 years.

Yeah. Unless the government puts a word limit on people.

Or it's I get canceled for some reason. Yeah.

I don't think so. I don't think so. Sometimes I wish the government would put a word limit.

Oh, sure. On a lot of people. God, yeah. That would be wonderful.

You'd have to really articulate.

You mean for books or just in talking?

Maybe only in talking because it's more of a choice people can go to choose to look in it and read it. But talking, it's like, yeah, you got a- You got a thousand words a day.

Of course, some people would have more, some of less if they're really obnoxious or irritating. We cut it down to 200 words a day.

Yeah, maybe your neighbor's vote on how many you have. But yeah, I think it would be great. Then if you're at... Yeah. Especially if a guy is A lot of guys would be like, Hey, guys, come over to the house today. Marjorie only has four words left this month.

That'd be wonderful.

So the good times over here. We're going to be able to do whatever we want.

Well, the ancient Greeks had this thing called Ostrache, where they would put on little clay tablets fragments of a clay pot. You could write down the name of somebody that you wanted to banish from the city. And then every year they would collect it and they would banish the person who got the most votes because it was inevitably the most obnoxious person in the whole city. Can you imagine how wonderful that would be if we had something like that?

I would love that. Well, you would think if we get to vote people forward, we should be able to also vote people off the island.

Yeah, right? Yeah.

Oh, that would be so wonderful. And it could even start in your own home.

With your kids. I think it's up to the point.

It would be quite a topic That's a topic for family discussion. Oh, here it is right here. Ostresism.

It's what the word Ostresism comes from. That's pretty cool. They got that. Yeah.

Was an Athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be expelled from the city state of Athens for 10 years. So you We had a chance to get it together. While some instances clearly express popular anger at the citizen, ostracism was often used preemptively. It was used as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or a potential tyrant. Though in many cases, popular opinion often informed the expulsion.

Wow. Wow. That's pretty cool. They put that up there.

Broken Pottery shards were used, served as a scrap paper.

Yeah.

Wow. That'd be exciting.

Yeah, it would.

It would, yeah.

Let's bring it back.

Yeah, let's bring it back. Be a movement. You've written so much, man. 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, are the books that I've absorbed the most of, which is so nice to have this. This is so cool, man. I really lit up when you gave me that. Thank you. And a lot of what we talk about on this show for a lot of young men and women is purpose, and what it means to have purpose and how to find purpose. You and what it means to have purpose and how to find purpose. And you talk a lot about that in mastery about purpose. Do you think that everyone has purpose?

Well, it's a difficult question to answer. I believe that everyone... The way I look at it is, you, Theo, were born with a DNA that will never be replicated in the past or in the future. It's unique marker of you, right? So genetically, there is something different about you. Weird, odd, gray, however you want to put it. It's like something that's planted at your birth. It's what makes you different from everybody else. It's even what makes you different from your parents. You do inherit their genetics, but it's always different. That's like a seed at your birth. If you cultivate that seed, if you cultivate your uniqueness, It gives you a purpose in life. It's why you are unique. You can look at it as if somebody or it's just nature intended it to be this way, but it's what makes you you. It's your energy, it's your character, it's your awareness, it's your sense of humor, it's what draws you to certain things, what you hate about certain things. It's you. If you listen to that, it's like a voice inside of your head. Instead of listening to all the other bullshit that's around you, what you're your parents are saying, what your teachers are saying, what your friends are saying.

If you listen to that voice clearly, it directs you, it gives you a purpose. Now, I'm saying everybody has that potential. I see. But quite clearly, not But in fact, few people actually go that far. So if you see somebody out there in the public eye, yourself or others, who's reached a level of Fame and success, you can say that there's nobody Just like them out there. They're unique. They're one of a kind, right? You can say that about a Steve Jobs. You can say that about Elon Musk. You can say that about political figures, et cetera.

Richard Simmons, Mr. T.

Yeah. Okay. 50 Cent, somebody I've worked with. There's only one person like them. That's because they found their uniqueness and they brought it out and they cultivated it. They're not afraid of it. And that's what gives them their purpose. A lot of people are afraid of being different. That's That's one of the worst things that can happen to you because it's what makes you different that is what makes you powerful. So to answer your question in my long winded way, everybody has a purpose, but not everybody follows it. Not everybody connects to it.

I guess there's a lot of fear in it, because you're going to be different. You're going to have to choose to... People are going to look at you. The eyes of the tribe are going to turn towards you. If you try to step into a different march than the group. Sometimes I would see like... You ever be on a floor somewhere and you just see one ant by itself?

Yeah.

You're like, This guy is a gangster.

Well, they're called scout ants. I mean, I wish they were gangsters, but what they're doing is they're looking for food or something, and they're signaling to the army, Hey, guys, here's where it's happening. Let's follow me.

Yeah, I thought they were dudes that were like, You know what? I'm going to do something different.

Well, that That would be the more interesting interpretation.

It's not that some people don't have a purpose. It's just that some people are able to hear a voice inside of them that directs them more towards their purpose.

Yeah. I mean, so what is it? I call it in mastery, I call it a primal inclination. So we see that in certain people. So at a very, very young age, and I maintain it happens to everybody, but you forget about it. So you look at Albert Einstein. He was like four three years old, and his father gave him a compass, and he was mesmerized by it because it meant that there was some force out there that was moving the needle of the compass, invisible force. For a child, that was an overwhelming thought that there's something out there in the universe that is moving something, but you can't see it. It had a lasting influence on his whole way of science and wanting to discover these unseen forces. Tiger Woods, when he was two years old, His father would be hitting golf balls in the garage, and the little baby Tiger would be going crazy. He's like, I got to do this. He was so enamored with just the physicality of it. He had to do it. I could go on and on and on with athletes, with dancers, with writers. I'm not putting myself on their level, but I had a relationship when I was six years old or so to words.

Words just mesmerized me. I couldn't believe that there was a word that meant something. I was in trance by the sound of it, by the look of it, et cetera. Yeah.

Well, even just to think that a bunch of letters would get together and party like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because I remember first they taught us letters, and I was like, okay, but then the word showed up, and I was like, Oh, okay. They're in gangs. There's some real turf wars out here. That's right. Yeah. So I guess the best way for a parent then to probably help a associate their child or give them the best opportunity to bring their purpose to a boil would be to present them with more options, do you feel like? Is that what you're saying? Well, yes and no.

Parents try to do too much sometimes. Children are more interesting, they're more powerful, they're smarter than we think they are. We don't give them enough credit. So they Find their ways to the things that excite them and interest them. What you're looking for in your child is that spark, that look in their eye of excitement. They can't control it. I'm so excited by this. I have to do it. It could be physical activity. It could be music. It could be math. It could be technology. It could be objects and their colors. When they have that excitement, lean into it. Don't try and tell them, Oh, I don't know. You can't make a living doing that. You want to be a rock and roll star, you'll never make a living. You got to go become a lawyer. Cut that crap out. Let them go into their lane of excitement. Encourage it because that is a sign of what I'm talking about, that purpose that you were born with.

Is there certain ways or times or moments that you would create for yourself or that you would suggest people create for themselves to try and hear that voice of purpose?

Well, it's a very interesting question, and it's a very difficult one because I get a lot of people writing to me saying, Robert, I hear what you said. I've read your book, but I have no idea. I can't hear it anymore. I'm lost.

Because there's still a lot of guys who are young adolescents and middle-aged and who are like, I still don't know what my purpose is.

Yeah. Well, so when you're younger, there's hope. When you're 16, you'll find it, man. And I've helped people who are younger find that path. It's easier. By the time you're 30 or 40, it gets more and more difficult. When you're 50, I don't know. It's possible, but it's harder and harder and harder. I didn't really find my niche, if you will, until I was about 38 years old. But until then, I knew it was writing. I just couldn't figure out what writing. But you have to go through a process. The problem that most people have is they're not connected to themselves themselves. They're too outer-directed. They're not inner-directed. So what you need to be doing is you need to be looking at yourself, not listening to others, not listening to what's on social media, not listening to what your peers are saying, but listening to yourself, who you are, what really truly excites you. You have to cut out all that other stuff that your parents told you that other people are telling you. And so you're looking for signs of things that bring back... You're looking for your childhood again. For that child inside of you that got so excited about those things, but that you forgot.

There is not a child on the planet that doesn't have that. In mastery, I have a story in there about a woman named Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin was born with severe autism. It looked like she would have to be committed for her entire life to hospitalization. She was very deep on the spectrum, but she had a teacher that slowly drew her out. She discovered a at a very early age that that excitement was animals. A lot of autistic people and people on the spectrum have a very intense relationship to animals. It's humans that they can't quite relate to, but animals excite the hell out of them.

Yeah, humans can be so trashy, too. Yeah.

They can be so deceptive and tricky, but animals are genuine, right? She found this animals I love, and she became a scientist dealing with animals, animal behavior. And so somebody born with deep, deep autism found her way to that voice. So I bring that up as if someone like that can do it, anybody can do it. But it's that she really, really wanted to break out of the shell that she had been in. So it's the level of desire. If you're 20 years old and you're lost and you're worried about it, but you're hungry and you don't want to be like your whole life, wandering, you have a good chance. But a lot of people don't have that energy. They don't have that desire. It's not strong enough in them. It's going to be a very much more difficult process.

Bring up Temple Grandon. I know she created... Didn't she create a more... I don't know if that's the right word, heartwarming way to decease the animals?

Yes. I mean, you put it more or less correctly. I mean, her idea was cattle. She had a very deep connection to cows and cattle. They're going to be slaughtered anyway. She's not going to end. She herself eats steak, et cetera. She's not going to end it. But if you're going to have to kill them so that for people who eat meat, then let's do it as humanely as possible. So she created a way. One of the worst things is the whole process of how we slaughter animals. It's so horrifying for them. So she had found a way to make them comfortable so that they don't really know where they're going when they're being led to the slaughterhouse, whether she knew exactly how to comfort them, how to make them feel soothed in those moments.

A little more bait and sweat. Like, yeah, just something to, yeah, just not make it such so horrific. Yeah. Not make it such a haunted house.

Yeah. Well, because also when they're so distressed, they release all these hormones and things that are actually very bad for us as well.

And then it's in the food. I believe that a ton. So So does everyone have the chance to find their purpose? Say if somebody, they accidentally got a girlfriend pregnant in high school, something like that, and they got really put off track, developed a lot more responsibility, because sometimes responsibility takes away the freedom that you have, even just the space in your life to feel anything. But those people, they don't not have a purpose. Maybe they just haven't been able to reach it.

Well, yeah. I mean, these things happen to everyone. We're all human beings. We're flawed. We can't see the future, especially when we're young. We make mistakes, we do things that we will later regret, et cetera. And I've dealt with people who say, I'm stuck in a horrible, horrible job. I have, just like your scenario, I have a child I have to support, a family to support, and I'm flipping burger, I'm working at Derry Queen, I don't care whatever it is, right?

What do I do? What do I do? Selling things, selling you a braid hair at the beach, something like that.

Or telemarketing back in the day. So what do I do? Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to realize that you have to want to get out of it and you have to want it badly enough. So you got to figure out a path out of this trap that you're in. And it is a trap because if you're living paycheck to paycheck, it becomes a habit and it's going to stay with you your whole life. So every time there isn't a paycheck, you're going to freak out and you're going to go get the The quickest, easiest job that you can get. You have to break out of that. So I tell people, even in the most despondent circumstances, first of all, think of what is that childhood thing that you loved? It doesn't have to be a very specific job. It's just something that excited you. All right? Okay, we want to start moving in that direction. So let's say you're flipping burgers, but what really excites you is video games and program, which is fine. That could be a path in life, right? But you want to be a programmer.

You want to be the person creating video games, all right? So let's do some research. What is the first step that usually... What's the entry-level job that people take? What is the education that will lead That thing. All right, here's a step. It's like three possibilities. You go to school, you study this, you get a job doing that, whatever. Okay, you can choose one of them, right? And you're going to start doing it right away. So you still have your job. You're still paying for your family, but you're going to go to school at night. You're going to take a side job. When you go home at night, you're going to study things on the Internet, which is an amazing resource that nobody had 30 years ago. You're going to learn new skills in your spare time, even in the only two or three hours a day that you have. You're going to create a little space in your brain for moving in that direction, a little wedge that's going to open up. I've had this feedback, just Just knowing that that's happening, that's just knowing that's a possibility that I don't have to be flipping burgers, that I don't have to be this horrifying, soul-sucking salesman my whole life, and that I can go this other route.

It's enough to excite the hell out of it. It's enough to get you out of it. It's You have to give your life some meaning and some purpose.

Yeah, and then you will build, you will follow that thing. That energy, it's like it really becomes a magnet in your life.

Yeah. How did you find your way? What was it? Can you go back?

Yeah, I remember. Well, I wanted to... I think I wanted to make my mother laugh. My mother was always stressed out. I don't mean to laugh at this. No, it's funny. That's terrible. It is what it is. But sometimes she'd go lay in her bikini outside and have a beer or whatever. So we'd left her alone on that during those hours. But But otherwise, I think I wanted to make her laugh. I don't know, the second I saw... This may sound crazy to some people. I remember being in a... It might have just been my bed or I don't think it was a crib because I hate... When people say that I remember at four months old like that, I think that's insane.

No, you can't.

That's not possible. You don't remember shit. You've been using. But I remember one time, I just remember being in my bed and my brother poked his head up. And I just remember it just made me laugh. And it was the first thing I remember that made me feel so good. And I just... I loved it.

That's interesting.

And then when I saw if somebody laughed that they Even if they were sad, and you could get them to laugh, that someone could be crying, and then a laugh could get through that. And man, I just found that... It was like watching lightning.

It's like power.

Yeah, it And it was just like watching lightning, I think. And so, yeah, I think I loved that. And then the other thing that ever the happiest day I ever had in my life, I was a student, actually, on an exchange thing, and I was in India, the country. And we worked at this children's home, clearing the land or something, so they could make a playground there. And I just I still remembered it was the greatest feeling that I ever had, just this one day. So, yeah, those are things in my life.

How old were you?

The India part, I was probably 20. But the laughter was just most of my youth. I just became obsessed with laughter because it was a Trump card. It was like, it could be a sad moment. It could already be a happy moment. You could take it to another level.

Well, let's just imagine a scenario where you're 26 and you're you, and you somehow got off on the wrong track somewhere. Would you be able to remember that and remember the power and the feeling that you had with that laughter? And then when you were a kid in your breath and then go back to it in some way?

Yeah, I think I would notice. I feel like it's easy to know what really makes you feel good. I just think that sometimes circumstances have sailed our ship far in other directions. And so we may be able to appease ourselves, but we may not get to a level of mastery of it in this lifetime. That's right. Just because of circumstances. And then another thing I notice is a lot of times, some people aren't always going to be trying to achieve and do more. I notice a lot of times I enjoy also just feeling If I can feel content, that is a victory, right?

What do you mean?

Just if I can feel at peace, right? Not only Maybe I might be a little bummed if I'm not striving for something, but I'm not upset that I'm not at a level or in a place with a certain thing, right? So being just content. There's nothing wrong with being content.

No. The only thing is if you're completely lost in life, if you hadn't become a comedian, you've gone on the wrong track, it's harder to have those moments of contentment. Because it gnaws at you and you become a little bit bitter. As you get older and those childhood dreams start getting fading, you feel resentful, and some dark energy can start taking over. That contentment can be harder and harder to come by. But to have moments of peace, to have moments where you're just happy and your kids are on the... You're raising them well, et cetera, et cetera, that's fine. That's beautiful. That's another form of mastery. I just think, and I could be wrong because I'm not inside the skin of other people, and I've only known myself, I have to say. But if... I could say that pretty confidently. But I have the feeling that if you don't know what you're doing and you're just flailing around in life, it's hard to have those peaceful moments in your day-to-day existence. You may find them, but what will happen is you will try and grab, because this is the nature of the human animal, you will try to grab that contentment through quick things, through drugs, through online porn, through whatever it will give you that quick, instant little buzz of gratification.

Oh, yeah. Watch a porno. And that'll become your habit. And you'll feel, I don't know if it's contentment, you'll feel something, some form of pleasure. But those pleasures become harder and become smaller and smaller and smaller and quicker and quicker and quicker. And so it's a trap that you fall into. So I still believe that if you figure out what you were meant to do in life, it opens up doors to having other moments where you don't have to constantly be pursuing. You don't have to constantly be striving. I can sit down and I can watch a basketball game tonight and enjoy it and not feel like I'm wasting my time because I work so much hard during the day. I think that's what I'm getting at is it doesn't have to be occupational, finding your purpose.

No. Because sometimes I think the best thing that a person could be could be a parent.

For sure. Believe me, we need more of them. God damn, that It's going to be a job that people should get a degree for. It really should.

If government subsidized parenting, good parenting, wow, I would be- Or put people to school to go learn how to do it.

Yeah.

Oh, well, there should be a There should be at least a fanflet when you leave the hospital that says, Hey, these are seven things you have to do, right?

But I think I don't have kids, so it's easy for me to say.

Oh, yeah, me either. So we're just obviously a couple of grifters yelling at people.

Yeah, right.

But no, I do think, though, that there should be something that tells a parent basic things because you can't just assume everyone has the knowledge just because they can conceive a child.

That's right.

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Thank you. You talk a lot about how unique humans are, and just how rare. How unique is it that a person exists? How unique is an individual?

Well, it's something I'm going into in my new book, and I'm trying to tell you how you must realize how strange it is for you to be alive at this moment. I don't know if that's quite what your question is.

No, I think it How rare is it? Sometimes I want to be able to remember how rare I am, and not just me. I mean that as a voice of a human. I want to remind myself more often that I am one of one, and not me, but every person.

Yeah. Well, the way I try to describe it in my new book, I'm not going to go into the full thing because it'll take hours. But first of all, the idea that our planet has life on it is incredibly strange and weird. It was like an accident, totally fortuitous. We know billions of other planets that have no life, right? So something snapped three billion years ago, four billion years ago that we don't understand. All right, from that point on, life evolved in this weird fashion. And there was this moment about 600 million years ago called the... The word escapes me. It's a period in history.

Mesaloic?

No, it's before that. It'll come to me a later. It's 600 million years ago? 600 million years ago. Suddenly, life became complex. It'll come to me at some point. Maybe it's the Cretaceous period.

Spring or something. Cretaceous.

Cretaceous. Cretaceous. So suddenly, complex life evolved. Cambrian explosion. Cambrian explosion. Thank you, sir.

Sorry not to cut you off. But 600 million years ago, the Earth experienced an evolutionary event which has never been repeated, the Cambrian explosion. So a huge increase in new life forms, many of which lay the foundations for the body plans of all subsequent animal life.

Wow, I've never even heard of that. So this is this guy, Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote a book about the Cambrian explosion and how there were these forms of life, and he has pictures in his book, of these really grotesque-looking creatures that lived in the ocean because all Life was in water then. And if only one plant survived, which is the plant that all bodies basically have, with a head, et cetera, et cetera. But if that hadn't happened, it almost didn't. The strangest, most weird Looking forms of life would be walking around this planet. You have to see these pictures to believe it, right? Anyway, that happened. Okay, I can go on and on and on. Then there were the dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs disappeared because of we now know because of a meteor. What do you call it?

A heat or something?

No, a meteor hit the planet.

Oh, a big bang? Yeah. Or like a meteor wiped everything out. It shook the whole thing, huh?

About 60 million years ago, right? It ended up to the extinction of dinosaurs. But that meteor could have easily missed planet Earth. It had shifted just a slight degree. It could have hit somewhere or else, but it led in exactly the spot in the Yucatan Peninsula that caused the greatest amount of damage. If that hadn't happened, dinosaurs would still be roaming the planet.

And then we wouldn't.

We wouldn't. Humans, about 80,000 years ago, nearly went extinct. There were only about 8,000 of us. We had been decimated by various illnesses, et cetera. We very nearly went extinct as a species. Okay? So humans surviving all of that, surviving that life evolves, surviving that life evolved in the way that it did, that dinosaurs disappeared, that mammals came on, is extremely unlikely. And then add on to this, Theo, the fact that your parents met and there was a chance that the chance that they met was probably a bit unlikely. It could have easily been somebody else who was your father, right? And then you would still be you, but you wouldn't be you exactly. It'd be different. Multiply that by 70,000 generations going back to the earliest humans. If they hadn't met in a certain way, if they hadn't met each other, you would be completely... You wouldn't be you at all, right? So the fact that you are here, the odds against it are so astronomical that I say in the book, you must have to sit down on your knees. It's almost like a religion. You must think it's so strange, it is so miraculous that I'm so grateful that I am who I am.

It is incredible. There's a reason for that.

Yeah, I think that's something that we all should... It's like that you were here, like you were... There was purpose in you. The universe chose this. Whoever you are, the universe chose you. Whatever pain, whatever prosperity, whatever this walk is right now, that you were chosen for it. I feel like it just gives... I don't know if it helps me have some ownership what I'm thinking of myself, I don't know what it does for me, but I think it's important to hear that because I think more than ever now, it feels like that individuality is getting lost for how rare we are to exist. Only some of us have the same fingerprint. None of us have the same fingerprints, right? That's crazy, bro. And I think also, I think I read that the Nobody has the same sphincter either, which is the 11th fingerprint.

Never thought of it that way.

Yeah, so that's crazy. Just to think that at both ends, they really got you sealed off very uniquely. But it's definitely just... But I feel like for as unique as we are, we're losing individuality sometimes. And that's a problem that I feel like is going on today.

A lot of it is social media. I mean, you don't want to beat that drum too much, but I think there's some truth to it. We're too much attuned to what other people are doing, and it's hard for us to think about what we want, what makes us different. A lot of young people going to high school. I remember when I was in high school, being weird and different, you could be laughed at, but I think it's much, much worse right now. Really? Yes, I do. I mean, I was a loner in high school. It was a hippie, had very long hair, did a lot of drugs.

Yeah, buddy. Oh, there you are right there, Bobby Green. Robert Green right there.

That's me. That's 19-year-old Robert Bro, you look like you were looping right there, booming on some boopers. Yeah, we were doing a lot of LSD at that time. You could see the tie-died sofa behind me.

They had a tie-died sofa?

Yeah, look at that. Look at that thing. Yeah, we were Getting into the Grateful Dead, if you can believe it.

Oh, yeah. American Beauty. That album was out, yeah.

Working Class Dead was the one. Working Man's Dead was the one that came out just at that time.

Who would you take it with? By yourself or would you take it with friends?

Oh, we took it with friends. You really want me to go into this? The drug that we really, really, really liked at this point, we're talking about the '70s. I'm an old dude, man, was peyody.

Wow, I never got to do it.

It was really big because this was in Berkeley, and it was the trendy thing. There were these buttons from cactus from Mexico or Arizona. If you ate them, you would be incredibly sick. So you had to pull out all these little hairs so that you could digest them without throwing up. Then you had to, and they tasted absolutely horrible. You had to put them into these tiny little pieces and eat it in peanut butter or a milkshake so you didn't have to just swallow it. Man, you'd be tripping like you can't believe it. It was just unbelievable. Totally transcendent. The most spiritual drug of all. Really? Yeah.

How would it get more... Because spiritual is a unique word to use because LSD would get freaky and weird sometimes. Mushrooms, we get more spiritual, I felt like. Definitely. So Paoja, you felt like went even more spiritual than that?

I think so. I did it probably maybe about a dozen times when I was younger. I've done LSD, and I've done... Mushrooms are pretty spiritual. God, I'm revealing all this crap of my youth.

No, I think it's important. A lot of people do these things, especially psychedelics, they're coming back more than ever now.

Well, I must say I don't do them anymore. I mean, I've tried little tiny microdosing of mushrooms. I don't do it anymore, but it had a very positive impact on me. It opened my mind to things that I will never forget. Experiences that still resonate in my brain that I may not create through drugs, but I create through other means. I like to try to return to spiritual sensations that are very powerful. Those drugs could be used, could be, I say, for very positive purposes. They shouldn't be used just for partying and just for forgetting yourself, but they can be used to open what Aldous Huxley called the doors of perception.

Yeah, that's a great way. Yeah, that's the biggest thing is just the perception, because perception is how you change everything about your life. Yeah, mushrooms have helped me many times to have perception adjustment, to realize where I was being not giving myself enough grace or just trying to be control things, just to have a little more... Because the mushrooms is like a sponge, just to add a little bit more space into how you view things or see things. And it could be anything, a relationship. There's business situations. They can help so much, I feel like. And they're being used more than ever, it seems like. Definitely. Because I've microdosed before. That just... Microdosing, I'll just... During the day, at one point, I'll see a mosquito, and I'll follow him around the house for a minute. Then I'll go back to work, but that's about as weird as it gets.

That's pretty damn weird.

Yeah, I'm just curious. Just doing a little air traffic control.

Are you seeing the little ants on the ground?

Yeah, to see where he's going. Tell me if you're a scout. Hey, look, dude, if you're trying to get away from something, blink once. How long did peyote last? Did it last for a long time?

You mean when you took it? Yeah. Well, like all those drugs, you would take effect after about 40 minutes or so. Then it would be very intense for about four or five hours, and then it would wear off. It's had the same span as mushrooms. In a way, it just depends on how many buttons you consumed. If you consumed a dozen button, man, you'd be tripping for several days. I don't think we went that far.

Yeah, your damn elevator car at that point, dude, you're going up.

Yeah, bro. But it has an incredible history among Native Americans and Mexicans.

Yeah, what did they use it for? Can you bring that up, nick? I want to learn if there was a distinctive... Were they trying to talk to a God? Because I can't imagine the first time they took it, it must have blown their minds.

Well, it was the first time people experimented with all kinds of drugs. That fascinates me how they didn't kill themselves, how they knew that it had that effect.

In the late 1800s, the modern day Native American Church was formed, a key part of which is the ingestion of peyote as a religious sacrum during all night prayer ceremonies. In this context, peyote is not viewed as a drug, but rather as a medicine for healing. Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's It reminds you of how ayahuasca is these days.

It is very much so. I've never done it. I think ayahuasca sounds even more intense. Yeah, so I don't know, but I think it's similar to that.

I've had some good experiences with it. For me, it's been very therapeutic. Oh, really? Yeah. I don't think of it as a drug, and I understand if other people do, that's fine. I think of it as a medicinal drug, but I don't think of it as a party. It's very painful to go sit there and you go through the filing cabinet of who you are and pull out some and burn them in a way.

I don't know. I'm a little bit frightened about that myself at my age.

You could rock in there, I think. You think so? Yeah, it doesn't... I find it to be actually not super invasive. I could get up and go pee or go get a snack in the kitchen and then go sit back down and drop back into the meditation. Really? Yeah, and I felt very okay with that.

Well, I'll consider it. Yeah.

How do you feel like we're... Well, one thing that I worry about The thing with society today is since we watch so much of each other, we're never spending that time getting to know ourselves. I remember, we used to just lie around all the time. And sure, it seemed like you were bored, but your brain was maybe coming up slowly building ideas or forming thoughts or hopes, dude. I remember you used to be able to hope so much because you would hope you would see this girl across town, or you would hope that she was going to be at summer camp, or there was just no way to know everything. So you had so much hope all the time. And now there's so much information that I feel like it's taken away a lot of hope. But I feel like even more so that, and I don't want to be like Debbie Downer. There's still hope, but I feel like it's subdued hope. But I feel like if we're always watching stuff, then do we start to just mimic it instead of being individual? That's what I worry about. Do you think that's possible? If we're always...

Do Do we become more mimics than creators? And has it always been that way, do you think?

No, I think things are getting worse. Of course, I don't know. I can't see everything, but my feeling is it is getting worse. I do believe that there is something as vague as that word is that is like a soul that a person has, and that soul is connected to who you are as an individual. You're born with it, right? And when you know who you are, when you go deep into it, when you connect to things that you really love, when you connect to your memories from childhood, to things that make you different, that soul is a It feels alive. It feels vibrant. It feels right. The feeling of rightness, which is I think people don't understand. Some things feel right, some things don't. Okay? And I know for myself, and I'm guilty of it, if I spend an hour on Instagram chasing this thing or that thing or wasting my time on this website or whatever, I have this feeling like a bit of my soul was sucked out of me. Yes. That I lost something, that I'm just this machine that's just processing data, and I'm not a human being anymore. I feel that soil, it's like a vapor that's escaping me.

Yeah, I feel like they got me. They tricked me. The second I set it down, I feel like it almost It takes a couple of seconds for you to get out of this trance in a way.

It is a trance.

You're like, dang, they tricked me.

They did. They did trick me.

Because a lot of the algorithms and just the entertainment value of it is so strong. Sure, it's entertaining, but with all the time you spend doing that or that I or anybody spends, it's time that I feel like you could be doing things that would get me to know myself better. But That's what I'm wondering, are the scales of that other stuff getting so heavy? Have they narrowed the algorithm so cleanly with everything, the pornography? It's taken away so many... It's frightening. It's frightening. That's what I wonder. Do you feel like there is a way for that? Is it just a cycle and there's a way out of that?

Well, the possible optimistic scenario, which I don't know will happen, is that human beings have a spirit and that will get so disgusted with it, that will rebel, that a young generation will evolve, probably not Gen Z, probably three or four generations from now, that will find it so lifeless and so sick. Sick, but so unfruitful, not giving them anything that they will rebel and they will be angry and they'll say, screw all this crap. I want to go back to something else. I want to go back to something in the past or whatever, however far back, or I want to create something new, a real revolution of sorts, a consciousness revolution. That can happen because human beings have that capacity. And it's happened before in history where we've gone through these cycles of our soul disappearing. Really? Yes, definitely. People going crazy in moments of chaos. Yeah.

Does one come to mind?

Well, I mean, think of the people that have succumbed to things like Nazism or those things where they're mass hallucinations and being drugged. The Germans now, however, you might not like Germans. I don't know. I mean, they're nice people.

I'm fine with them. I don't know all of them.

But they're not like that anymore. So they emerged from that. That's a good point. So mass hallucination thing. But there were periods, I'm going to get wonky here, but I believe it was the third century or fourth century BC we see in Greece, where they went through this incredible crisis, where their belief, their gods, all that was disappearing, people who didn't believe in it anymore. There was a crisis. Human beings need to believe in something, need to believe in something larger than themselves. And when they don't, things can get really nasty and chaotic and souless. I think that's what we're going through right now. That's what I'm writing about in my new book. But I think people will find their back to it. It'll take young people who get disgusted with this mechanical culture that we have. Will that happen? I don't know. These algorithms, as you say, are insanely powerful.

Yeah. It's like we're really up against this darkness that we've created, which is fascinating, too. It has very much a story. It's like all the stories. It's like the perfect story. It's like you create the Frankenstein. It really is. When it comes to individuality, right? What is a good way for people to start to get to know themselves? Does it make sense to you what I'm asking? Yeah, it does.

Well, I keep coming back to something that I tell a lot of people I think is very important is the desire to know yourself. So people are very good at faking it. And you could be out there listening and go, yeah, I want to know myself better. Okay, let me get online. They just forget about it because the other forces are stronger than them. You have to have a level. You know that if you're in recovery, a level of disgust, you have to hit bottom. You have to go, I don't want to be like this anymore. I want to find out who I am. I want to touch the That core of individuality that I know is still within me. That soul that I believe is still there. You have to have that desire. If there's no desire there, if you're just mimicking, if you're just saying it just for the sake of it because it sounds good, I can't help you. But if it's still there, yeah, you want to start by... I mean, there are many paths you can take. A very good path is to take a journal and start journaling, and writing down your thoughts and writing down your dreams.

When I say that, I say, Don't do it on a computer. I mean, I know a lot of young people don't know how to handwrite anymore, but pick up a pen. I still handwrite a lot of things. Pick up a pen and a journal and write it down. Dream dreams, I know this sounds woo- woo, but it's not. Dreams are really powerful, very interesting. They're going to tell you a lot about yourself. It's going to tell you about those journeys your brain takes it, and I think that are pretty fantastical. You write that down, you go back into your childhood and you go, what was it that made me so different? That was so weird about me. What was it that I was attracted to? As you go through that process, things will start coming up. It's like you're digging, you're excavating, you're an archeologist into your own past.

Yeah, it's like using a brush and brushing off. You see a little bit of bone, and then you're like, what other questions can I ask around here that might help me remove a little more dirt?

Yeah. And memories will come up, like your memory when you're two years old and your brother popping up his head. Things will start coming back to you. You'll start connecting to who you were when you were young, and you're connecting to who you were as an adolescent. Adolescence is an extremely important part of our life. It really is almost the most formative part. It's where we really made that turn into this or into that. I find returning to your adolescence, returning to those strong, powerful emotions that you felt, those sexual things that were just so overwhelming. Yeah. Those other things that were happening. Returning to that because people have psychologists have studied that is the period when you feel what makes you different the most. It's when you feel the most rebellious, when you understand this is who I am. I'm not like my parents. You're 13, you're 14, all of a sudden you go, I don't have to be like mom or dad. In fact, I want to be totally different. Adolescence is like a really key thing to go deep into that will show you a lot about your individuality, about who you are and about who you've become.

So it's a process, and it should be a very exciting process. Right.

You shouldn't look at, Yeah, that's the If you look at it as like, Oh, shit, I got to do this. But to carve out a little time where you're like, Yeah, let me think. What were some things? Look at old photos and stuff like that. Really look at yourself a little bit like you're studying something.

Even listen to the music that you liked, however embarrassing that might be. Yeah.

Would you listen to, man? Remember the first song that you heard?

I can't go. I think I was four years old or so, and my sister, who's four years older than me, had a Beatles album. It was... I mean, I'm older than you. Abby Road? No, God, no. I'm so much older than that. It was like, Meet the Beatles. It was the song, I saw her standing there, I think the single And I was like, wow, this is so weird. This is so different. It's hard for people to imagine because the Beatles seem cliched now. But when that sound first came, I was like, there is nothing else like this out there. It's amazing. It's fantastic. I remember my grandmother was there, and she couldn't understand it. She thought it was awful. I thought it was the most amazing thing. I think that was the first song I can remember, I can recall.

Yeah. I remember my mom used to play Brian Adams all the time and make us clean the house to it. And then she would sometimes abuse us if we didn't clean up good. But Brian Adams, wow. Yeah, it was a bit... It was crazy. But then what else would we... I've told this story before, but the A camp counselor, a woman, picked me up and took me to camp one day because my mom couldn't take me in summer camp. And she reached over and put my seatbelt on me. And it was the first time that a woman, other, I guess, than my mother had been near me. Oh, wow. And then she put on Bon Jovi. And I was like, What is going on, dude? Are we married?

How old were you?

I was probably eight, seven or eight. I'm sure I'd heard something before that, but nothing that this moment. That was the first song I remember hearing and being like, Yeah, I want to hear that song again. But I think it was because there was a... Maybe because it was a woman there or something, but that was something But that was something that I remembered. What was it... In a lot of your books, you have the Art of seduction. You have 48 Laws of Power. You have mastery. You're always looking at yourself and finding ways, it seems like, to encourage the most out of oneself. How did that begin for you? Was there a period in your time where you're like, I wasn't my best self, or I'm not going to let this happen to me again? What was that trigger for you?

Well, there were many triggers. So I was out of college, I decided to go into journalism because I needed to make a living. I wanted to write, but I had to support myself. I was living in New York, and I was very poor at the time. I had a very low-level job, and it wasn't connecting to me. I felt like something was wrong. I didn't like the fact that you would write something, and then the next day, it would be on to something else. It was totally forgotten. It didn't last. I was into something because I love history. If it doesn't last more than 24 hours, what's the point? It should last 12 years, 20, 100 years. What you write should have some weight to it. I felt wrong, so I left it. I wandered around Europe for about four or five years. Sometimes, I was with the backpack. I worked in a hotel in Paris. I did construction work in Greece because I ran out of money. I taught English in Barcelona. I worked in a crappy television show in London. I led a tour guide thing in Dublin, Ireland, trying to write novels, and I was starving.

It's like a John Irving story. It almost seems like.

It was. It was like it's such a cliché. I was a cliché of the young American trying to write a novel. I had amazing experiences, experiences that seeded all of my books, but nothing happened, and I was lonely, and I was depressed, and I felt like something was wrong.

Were you basing your achievement on something? What do you think you were looking for in that? Because it sounds like a searching time.

Well, I was trying to write a novel, but I couldn't write it. It wasn't happening. My mind wasn't... I don't think I would have been a good novelist because I'm too much into ideas, and my novels were just these big sticks with a big idea on it that you were supposed to read about. It didn't have life. I think I could do it now, but something was wrong about it, and I couldn't earn a living off of it. I was on my own. I had to earn a living. I didn't want to be doing all these crap jobs my whole life. So I came back to LA, where I'm from. My father wasn't well, and I got a job in Hollywood, thinking this is the golden path, money, writing, glamor, whatever, the dream.

Fancy, yeah. Cocaine, women. All of that. Yeah.

And none of it happened. I I had the cocaine and all that stuff. I didn't have the success. I had all the other stuff, but none of the really stuff I was after. To answer your question, nothing was going right. Nothing was quite fitting. I had a moment I was getting desperate, and my girlfriend was saying, maybe you got to stop trying to have it both ways, where you have your writing, your creativity, and then you have a living. Maybe you can't have both. So she said, I always wanted to write plays and theater and stuff. So she said, go ahead and do that. And that was a a turning point where I'm going to stop trying to just be this person that other people wanted me to be, and I'm going to follow what excites me, even though I can't make a living in it. And that was a very important part. It meant like, yeah, I can do something that's fun, and maybe it will turn into something.

Well, it's the same thing you talk about in mastery, too, that we're talking about earlier. Yeah.

And then, so sometimes fate has its weird ways of operating. Just as after I had done that, writing the plays, we put them on here in Los Angeles. We performed them. I acted in them. She directed them. We did all the work ourselves. Very strange plays. Right after that, I met this man in Italy who offered me the chance to write a book. And something clicked in me going, Robert, all the bad choices in your life, all the mistakes, everything can turn on this moment, right? You can go from being this loser in your one bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. You could somehow turn this around. A book? Wow, I never thought of that before. Not a novel, but a non-fiction book.

I see. So you never really take, you never consider that. Of course not. If you're thinking of fiction, you're thinking of the F. Scott Fitzjoe, you're a magnificent piece on the road with Kare. You're thinking of something that's going to change the tide. Exactly. But then you're like, Oh, damn. Like a nerd book.

Exactly. But I'm a strange individual, I have to say, for better or worse, because until I was 38, it was for the worst, right? And my parents were getting really worried about me. But when I had the chance to write the 48 Laws of Power, my first book, I made it a that's not like anything else out there, right? Because I'm sure it's something you've done in your comedy. There's nobody else out there like Theo Vaughn. You're just unique. I made the book look weird, feel weird. Nothing about it was like anything else. It was dark. It was language was a little bit strong. It was controversial.

It even looks biblical, almost, this one. That one, yeah. This copy. The coolest thing is the face that's in this.

There's two faces.

Is Benjamin Franklin, one of them is you? No, wait, one of them is Henry.

No, it's Machiaveli.

Oh, Machiaveli.

And me.

I was thinking it was the guy from Black Flag. You know who that is, Henry?

Henry Rollins? Yeah. It looks like Henry Rollins. A little bit. You mean me or Machiaveli?

Well, unfortunately, Machiaveli. Okay. He still look like you, but you look handsome.

Henry Rollins is a lot more, yeah, I know. He's a lot beefier than I am. He's different than us, man. He's more intimidating.

Yeah, maybe he's more intimidating.

Is he still alive?

What happened to him? I think he I believe, actually, that he lives in Tennessee.

Oh.

I've heard that. I heard he moved to Nashville. Yeah, I heard that he moved to Nashville. I would love to meet him sometime. Some of my friends have worked with him. I think he's a very interesting guy. And there's Machiaveli now.

I don't see a resemblance really there. Yeah. Maybe the eyes. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe the eyes. They each have two eyes. Thank you. That's a good one. Thank you for trying to support me there, Robert.

Took me a little while to hear the catch on.

It took me a while. I didn't realize it was a joke until after I said it. But so then at that point, that's you realizing something's different here. There's this voice that says, this could be something for you. You need to follow this. And was it hard for you to start to make that happen for yourself?

Well, as I said, I was 38 years old. I hadn't really amounted to anything. And this guy, Yose Delphers, who's the producer of the book, he offered me this chance. I pitched to him what turned out to be the 48 Laws of Power. He got so excited. So what happened was I went home to LA and I go, Robert, it was before 50 Cent, I coined the expression, but it's either get rich or die, try in here, right? You either make this book work or you're just going to be floundering the rest of your life, right? So I was so motivated. I was so hungry and desperate that this had to be it, that I put everything I had into it. And it's hard for me to understand now because it took two years to write. Now, it takes me five years to write a damn book. Damn. All that research, all that creating something that hadn't been out there before, I don't know how I did it. But all I can say is there was something else inside of me that was so hungry that it made it happen. So there wasn't any, I can't do this thing.

It was like, if I don't do it, that's it. I have in one book, in my book on strategy and warfare, the This thing that I call death ground strategy. It's a great expression. It comes from Sun Tzu. And if your back is to the ocean or your back is against a mountain and you're fighting the enemy, you're going to fight with 10 times the energy because it's either conquer them or you're going to die. So you put yourself on death ground. You either succeed or terrible things will happen. You find energy that you hadn't believed you had. You'll find creativity that you hadn't believed you had.

Did you lock yourself in a hole or something? Did you create that scenario for yourself? Did you change your habits? Because it seems like you have to really change your habits to produce something that...

Well, I had good work habits, and I had I learned how to research. But one thing my girlfriend did was I had this cat who just would never leave me alone. Oh, yeah. He was so attached to me. And quite honestly, he probably made it so I couldn't write a book. So she created this table, this very thin table that would fit right in here on the chair. I could put my laptop on. He couldn't get on it.

Oh, it wasn't enough space for him? No. Wow.

And that allowed me to write the book. Damn, dude.

They say a cat also, and I'll tell you because I know this, but a cat will... If you die, a cat will start eating. We'll probably start eating your face within like 4 to 8 hours.

That's very nice to hear. Thank you for sharing that. You're welcome. I'm not going to look at my cat the same way now.

But I just want to let you know, so don't be shocked that they want to stop you from writing a book.

Okay. He wanted to eat me, you're saying?

I'm just saying they're playing a long game.

Okay.

You know what I'm saying? They want to ruin it all. Yeah. They're just saving face by trying to get you to think that by writing a book is the issue. But that's almost such a metaphor. Like, I'm going to make a table that a cat can't get on. And that way I'll be able to write my book.

We still have the table. It's really cool looking. She made it, she painted it. She made these back end signs on it. It was really cool.

Oh, that's super cool. What a neat... That's a fascinating little piece of information. Did you feel more powerful after the book?

Well, I couldn't have felt less powerful because I had no power really up until then. But you don't know because a lot of things fail in life, right?

Oh, yeah.

And the book could have flopped easily because it was so different and weird. And so I had no idea. But then suddenly it starts selling well and I'm getting... The press was pretty good. I remember in early 1999, I was invited to Italy for a book tour, and this was the strangest moment of my life, probably. I don't know if you know at Disneyland, they have Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, where it's like he goes on this really weird adventure and it blows your mind if you're four years old. This was my Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, because suddenly I was invited to this conference where I was mingling with Italian politicians, where paparazzi were following me around and taking my photograph. I went, Who am I? But this was the land of Machiaveli, and the 48 Laws of Power seemed really great to them, right? So suddenly I'm starting to realize, Well, maybe this book has legs. Maybe something will happen. Then a couple of years later in Playboy magazine, magazine. There's an interview with Jay-Z, and Jay-Z quotes the 48 Laws of Power. I would go, wow, it's infiltrating that far. That's pretty interesting. And slowly, the hip hop world more more and more meeting 50 Cent.

People were coming to me for advice. Me that was always giving advice before I wrote the book, but nobody would ever listen to me. Now they were coming to me for advice about their businesses, et et cetera. I got put on the board of directors for the company, American Apparel. It was like being on acid. It was so weird because I had had so little success before that. If you have success when you're 23, it spoils you and you think that this is what life should be like. I had so much loneliness. I had so much not being able to pay bills. I had so much frustration and depression that when it happened, it was like, man, this I'm on a drug. It's fantastic.

Yeah, because the odds of that are slim.

They are very slim.

The odds of that are slim.

I'm very grateful.

And did you feel like you had found mastery, though, or did you just felt like you had found your calling? Did you feel like you just got fortunate? Did you write it? Sorry. Yeah, that's the question, and I think it's three questions.

Well, there's luck involved in anything. Meeting this man who produced the book, I was in Italy. It could have not happened very easily. We could have not taken the walk that we'd taken, and I would have never improvised the idea that came to me.

So you met a man and took a walk?

Yeah, in Venice. We were walking. It was a beautiful day. I was in a good mood, and I pitched this book idea. I pitched other ideas, which he didn't like, but he liked that idea. Anyway, that's a slender, slender thread that the whole thing hangs upon. Me going to Italy, me this man also being there, us taking this walk, me being in a good mood, me improvising it. Okay, But it's just as unique as going back to how people are created, an idea how something magnificent happens, how something unique happens that this had to happen.

Your grandparents had to meet each other on a ship, or somebody had to be a slave, or somebody had to work at a Chick-fil-A or whatever. It's like there's all these little things. Twists of fate. Yeah, just twists of fate. Sorry, go on.

If that hadn't happened, There wouldn't be any book. But on the other hand, there's some feeling that I don't know if people out there can relate to, but in some way I had a feeling like it was meant to happen. That something about me or him drew us together, and that all of those bad experiences in life, all of the really awful bosses that I had, and I had some really bad ones, Roger, too.

I had this guy, Roger.

Roger? What was he? He was a damn deviant, dude.

He would make us work, and he would sit in his car, also, and I'd smoke weed a lot of the time.

But whatever. Where's Roger now?

That's a good question. I know his wife left him. I'm not sure. But he did lead our company bowling team or whatever, so that was the one redeeming thing he did.

That's pretty impressive.

It was nice of him to do. So we bought us all jerseys and everything. But anyway, go on. Sorry. I'm sorry.

Well, that's a great story.

What other books did you pitch him that day?

You shouldn't ask that question because they'll see. I remember, so I really was into Louis XIV for whatever reason.

Yeah, I'm from Louisiana, so. Oh, okay. Yeah. There you go. Yeah, Louisiana Purchase.

Roulez le bon temps.

Les bons temps roulants.

That's what they say, right? Exactly. I pitched an idea about how weird, how different people were in the core of Louis XIV, like what their psychology was. But it was related to the 48 Laws of Power. But this other idea that I pitched was, I had read this book about nonsense. It was called The philosophy of Nonsense. It's a very theoretical book, but it was all about how nonsense It could be actually revolutionary. To take words and to make you think that there's a meaning, but there's no meaning, excited me, right?

Yeah, because it activates a part of your brain that's not a common path. Yeah.

Sort of like some of the things in Lewis Carroll, like in Alice in Wonderland.

Right. Like you're falling through a hole in the ground and come up into a new world. Yeah, like ridiculous. Walking in the mirrors. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Change of perception.

Exactly. I was pitching him an idea about nonsense Nonsense, but it would be a popular book that would show how nonsense can be a powerful force, can be very poetic and exciting. That idea didn't fly. Those are the ones I can remember.

Yeah. But hey, that's what it takes, man. That's what it takes to get something that does fly.

Yeah. But I think it was... So what I was saying is all the horrible bosses I had, all the bad experiences. I worked a detective agency briefly here in Los Angeles, actually in Pasadena.

For PI?

It was a firm.

What is PI?

That's private investigator. I wasn't a dick. I wasn't a gumshoe. I was what's called a skip tracer. It was one of the worst jobs I ever had, where basically, some guy in Wisconsin jumps bail or owes this company this amount of money. I'm sitting in an office on the telephone trying to find him. That's what it means, skip, trace. You're tracing where he skipped. They give you these dialogs you're supposed to follow. You call his mother up and you pretend to be a high school buddy of his. You do some research. You went to Kenosha High School, and you do a little research, things you can say to bullshit your way. I was very good at bullshitting, and I would do that. She'd say, Oh, he's... She'd give you a clue. Then you would find him, and then they would get the guy, and they'd get him to pay. I felt so awful. It was like helping the law find these poor suckers.

Yeah, you weren't a snitch, but you was like- Kind of. Yeah, you was like an undercover guy on the phone.

Yeah.

Not a cop. Yeah.

I had the worst boss there. I hated that son of a bitch. Anyway, all of those people went into the 48 Laws of Power. I got my little digs into them because they inspired some of these awful laws that I ended up creating.

Yeah. Was some of the 48 Laws of Power written with vengeance? Was it written like... Yeah. A little bit. I think you have to have something like that. You have to have a fire. You have to have a fire.

I was angry.

Yeah. Were you angry at the world? Were you angry at circumstance, do you think? Because I get angry a lot. I try to think about what I'm angry at. It's hard for me to sometimes know what it is.

It is hard to know what it is. What's really underneath it because you can be superficially angry, but there's something else underneath that's gnawing at you. I think I was angry at people's bullshit about people pretending to be something that they're not is what really angers me and what angered me about Hollywood. I don't know your relationship to Hollywood.

I hate Hollywood.

Oh, good. Thank you. Yeah. Well, people pretending to be these liberal, wonderful people in favor of all the best causes out there to create art. What bullshit. They wanted power. They loved having the power over people. Produces and directors love the power they had over actresses, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so I had a law in there about get other people to do the work, but always take the credit, which is one of the nastier laws. That's what happened to me a lot of times in Hollywood. I would do the work. I would write all the dialog, et cetera, in some screenplay. I wouldn't get any credit at all. So I was like turning it around and telling people this is how the world works. People will get you to do things, and they'll put their name on it thing.

So is some of it not as much with 48 Laws, is not as much telling people to do these things But making people aware of things. It's almost like making people aware of different clocks that tick in time, but that aren't necessarily time keeping clocks, but just clocks of how things work. Does that make any sense? Almost, Tom.

Almost. There's something there. Thanks.

I can think about it. I feel like it started off good.

I'm going to go to bed thinking about that. There is something there.

It's different. It's not all how to do things as much as it Some of it can be warnings or awareness.

Well, there's a law in there about play on people's need to believe to create a cult-like following. The idea is that there are a lot of cults out there.

Yeah, there's a lot of cults. Definitely 30 seconds to Mars, I think, is one.

What's that?

It's a band, I guess. It's also like a GPS estimate, I guess, if you drive a space shuttle or something.

Excuse my ignorance.

Yeah, no, I'm just joking. It's Jared Leto and his brother's band. I'm just joking. Oh, Jared Leto, okay. I am joking, but people always say that it's a cult. But there's a lot of different cults out there.

Yes, I'm not telling you to go out and create a cult. Right. Although you could if you wanted to. I'm saying that you might be in a cult right now. And here's how to recognize when you're in a cult. These are the things that people do to trap you into a cult. They create an us versus them dynamic. While there's an enemy out there that's trying to destroy you, better stay inside here where it's us. And then they create, they use numbers a lot. This is the fifth level of the sixth domain that you have reached. Then you know, brother, you're in a cult. You're hearing that. So it's not so much like, go out there and create this cult, but Maybe you're in one, and here's how to recognize it.

Yeah, dude, that's hilarious, man, especially now with the media. It's definitely become cult-like behavior, and with their force over society Society. What do you think has more effect on us these days, our government or our media? Who's a bigger power, Hollywood or the government?

Well, a Hollywood, and you're also saying tech, the tech world, like social media, I'd say they have more power. I don't know what the numbers would be. I'd have to say 70 % and 30 % would be the government. At this point, though, it's reaching a point where the government and the media are becoming one.

I'll tell you a story. So I'm at the mall the other day in Century City in Los Angeles, West Los Angeles. I'm in there, a construction guy walks through. He's like, Theo, what's up? So I start talking to him, and he's like, Dude, guess what we're building? I'm like, I don't know. I thought maybe it could have been a Hardees or something. He's like, We're building a 20-story building, and 10 floors of it are the CIA, and the other 10 floors are a management company, Hollywood Management Company.

That's pretty spot I was like, You got to be kidding me.

He goes, Bro, I wish I was joking with you. He's like, That is exactly who's going to be in the building. Because I was like, Who's going to be in the building? He's like, You're never going to believe it. I'm like, Wow.

I used to be. I might still be. I don't think I am. I was with CAA, and they were trying to make movies out of my books. And you go to that building, and they call it the Death Star. I forget. Maybe that's the name of it. And there are Like, politicians who are being represented by CAA, athletes, tech bros, influencers. So that's where all of that... There's the Death Star.

Yeah. Cool-looking building. Their building is awesome. I'm looking.

It's pretty frightening, though, when you go inside. It's like all these people, everyone's wearing a suit. It's almost like Dianetics. What's it called again? Scientology? It's almost like scientology, Hollywood's version of scientology. Anyway, thank you.

Yeah, that's a pretty building, though. It feels like there is emerging these days of the government and social media. To me, social media is definitely the power. Oh, for sure. That's all the influence. I mean, the government couldn't even keep the post office open.

You know?

I mean, damn, dude. The post office is crazy, dude. You can go in there and just ask for mail, and they'll give you some mail, bro. Oh, really? Yeah. You don't even have to have any. They're just like, Here's some mail for you. I'm going to try that. Yeah, it's gotten way... They really lowered the bar on rules or whatever.

Yeah, but the technology people, they've read all of the books on marketing, on psychology, Mark Zuckerberg. They figured the whole thing out. They know how to move us around like little puppets on a string.

I wonder if we'll get to a point in... I have to pee, do you or not? I have to pee. You do? You go pee, and then I'll pee after you. But I wanted to ask you all, do you think Hollywood has an agenda, that it's an organized agenda that they try and create through their art? Or do you think that's just a conspiracy theory where people... That art just imitates life and that's just the way things are?

Are you talking about the movie industry? You're talking about tech? You're talking about which aspect of it?

That's a good question.

Are you talking about video games?

I guess I would probably talk more about the movie industry.

Well, to me, for my being in the belly of the bee, so to speak, is it's really all about money. I mean, there's so much money involved and at stake. That's really the motor that drives everything in Hollywood. People may pretend it's about creating art or supporting this cause or that cause. But when you bring it all down, it's about making money. I'm sorry.

Capitalism.

Yeah. That's what generates what they choose to make movies about. So for a while, it was all the franchise movies, the Mission Impossible. Then it was all the Marvel movies because they need to sell their products abroad. If it sells in China, they make a killing.

Right. If they can make one thing that sells to everybody, then it's like that's a super home run. Whereas if they make one thing that sells just to people in a certain region of America, that's more of like a single or a bunt. Right.

So that's what generates their moja. That's why they make the things they make. So you don't want too much dialog because if it's like an India or China, you have to do all the subtitles. It doesn't work. Just a lot of action, a lot of people beating each other up, a lot of explosions. So it's money And then comes the art, and then comes, well, do we actually film? That's how they think. I'm pretty damn sure of it. So I don't think there's a conspiracy to move a certain agenda, although There is a certain woke quality, excuse me, that I won't deny that permeates it. But it's more about, they would drop the woke stuff tomorrow if they could make more money doing something else. It's just about what's going to bring the bucks and big bucks, because that's what Hollywood's all about.

And Hollywood needs proof. So Hollywood, I feel like, is always a little behind the times in a lot of ways, unless they do something indie, because they really need proof that something is going to bring in the money. So until still they start to see a swing in ticket sales or streams or views, then they are just riding whatever the previous few years were.

Well, it used to be 30, 40 years ago when there was independent film that you could have somebody like a Jim Jarmush.

Who was it? Jim Jarmuish. Who was it?

Bring him up.

Yeah, bring up Jim Jarmuish, please.

He was a really interesting film director. He might have been from the south in the '80s and '90s.

Let's bring him up. Yeah, Jimmy Jarmuish, baby. What were some of his movies?

He did that movie with Tom Waits that I really like.

I haven't seen that. Down by law.

Down by law. Down by law. Down by law. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks, Zack, for saying that, Down by law. Put that on the list of things to watch, too.

Yeah, it's a really interesting movie. Tom Waits is the only time I've ever seen him act. Are you Tom Waits fan?

No. Okay.

Well, that's all right.

I'll give you. Cripple Creek, was that him?

No, that's somebody else.

That's the band. That's the band, yeah. Oh, The Wait, I'm thinking of. That's also the band. That's the band. Tom Waits. Bring him a decent guy.

Oh, he's fantastic.

Do I know him? Oh, wait. Tom Waits, dude? Yeah. Dude, I know Tom Waits. Yeah. I'm a fan of him, dude. I freaking know him. Oh, yeah. Show me another picture of him.

Yeah.

Wow. He used to play, I think, with my buddy Josh Kelly. Tom Waits, dude.

What's up, Tom? He's one of my heroes I was from like... I loved his music.

Is he dead?

He didn't know he was Jewish. No. He lives in California now. No, he's still alive.

Oh, thank God. I'll text him then.

Yeah, please say hello.

That's cool, dude. Yeah, I went and I think he performed on a show with my buddy Josh, with a musician in front of my one time.

He's amazing. He's amazing. Yeah, with Josh Kelly.

That's cool, man.

Anyway, so back in the day, you'd have these weird independent filmmakers, like even Jonathan Demi or Jim Jarmush, and they would create something weird and different. Then it would start a trend. People would start doing independent films like that. Kind of even films in black and white, et cetera. But now, you can't make a movie for a million dollars or half a million dollars like you could back then. Now you need at least 10, $20 million to even begin to think about making a movie.

To make a big movie?

To make any movie.

You think so?

Yeah, because the costs have just gone way, way up. Just to even think, because my wife, she's an independent filmmaker, right? And she used to make her own films that she would raise the funds with. She could shoot a film for a million dollars. It's not possible now anymore.

I think you probably at least probably have to have maybe $5 million. At least. Okay.

At least. That I'll agree on. And they won't fund it.

Right. They're not going to fund. Yeah. It's definitely hard. We've been trying to get a movie made for a while, and I David Spade, and I wrote a movie, and it's not a super expensive film, and it's been a nightmare. And so that's why sometimes it's like, I wonder, well, it's like, do they just not like us? Is that why William Morris won't help us make this thing? Why wouldn't... I don't know. I don't want to get petty in it. I don't feel petty, but it's like, why wouldn't they invest in it?

What would happen is if you made your $5 million movie with David Spade, it could very well set trend, it could very well make $80 million and be huge, but they don't want to take the risk. They're so scared. Their balls are so scrunched up in a little... And they're just so afraid and timid that they only want to do what they know is a slam dunk where they can make a lot of money because their lives are on the line. It's such a precarious world now, Hollywood. It's not doing very well. They're in a crisis stage right now because of streaming, because it's so competitive. It's really hard to make money. So they're not willing to take risks. And this is a problem that's happening in America, in all fields. The amount of risk-takers now is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking because people are so afraid.

See, that's it. And that in a Our way is also taking away our individuality, because if we don't take risks, if there's not enough space to take a risk, or someone isn't brave enough or willing or is able to make it happen, it's not always bravery. A lot of people, they It's not feasible based on their life. And it's okay if they can't take a risk. But you need those people.

You do need those people.

You need those people for things to change, to start a new curve. Yeah, that's really interesting, man. Thinking about what you just said a second ago, I had a friend of mine is a publicist, and he was saying the other day, he's like, Man, Hollywood's just... Nobody's making a lot of things. Last year, I think Sony Pictures only made 12 movies last year. Really? That's crazy. I think this year, they're on slate to make 20 or 25.

A lot of that had to do with the strike. Right.

Oh, that's a good point, too. But to think that probably 10 years ago, they probably made 100 movies. If you can bring up any numbers on that, that'd be great. If you see anything, let me know. But yeah, he was... Well, one of the problems also, I think, with Hollywood is you have So nepotism is alive and well in America overall. So I think you get, I don't know if this is true, but I feel like you get people that have just, now it's the children of people. It's their sons. The creativity, the guy moving from Dubuque, Iowa, where the great idea isn't coming here anymore because they're giving that job to somebody's kid. And you start to lose the creativity because the creativity isn't going to come there after a while because it's not nurtured. Yeah.

I mean, there is a possibility. There is some hope that it's so cheap to make a movie with your iPhone, right? The means of making a movie could be you could go out there if you're some 20-year-old kid and you have a really interesting, weird idea and you just go ahead and make it. Oh, totally. You could create a trend. But the problem is a lot of people A lot of people are afraid to even make that step. They want to make the money first. Sometimes I tell people it's okay to do something for free. It's okay to take a job where you're getting paid very little. But if you learn a valuable skill, if you actually make something that gets a lot of attention, the money will come in. But a lot of people are so afraid of making that step, right? So if you're a young person, you have an idea for a film, don't sit there and wait and try and get William Morris and get all the other crap online. It will never happen. Just go out and make it on your own for $10,000 and something could happen, right?

But so you're saying right there, then you can make a movie for $10,000, but you can't make like a... It's a different-looking movie.

Yeah, but you could get a lot of attention for it and you could maybe start a trend and you could create something so weird and stylistic that reflects you.

A hundred %. A proof of concept.

Yeah. And that other people will now want to imitate. There just needs to be more of that. And the same thing is happening to the music industry as well right now. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. Well, I think in music, it's an easier barrier to entry, probably because it is cheaper maybe to create, you need an instrument because then you have to pay editing, but maybe not really. These days, you can learn everything online. I just wonder if we're less creative or more creative than ever, or maybe the same as we've always been.

Well, being an old guy, I'd have to say less creative, but that's maybe just a misperception that comes with age where you think everything was so much better back in the day.

Sometimes I think that's possible, but I also think the imagination isn't used as much because there's so much... I can be like, okay, right now, could I think of something to entertain myself or to keep me busy or to see where my thoughts take me? Or can I open up TikTok and just see something that's definitely going to be entertaining?

Yeah.

So I think our imagination has started to, and I don't even know how you would measure that, but I think our imagination has started to become like the appendix or something in the body. We don't even know what it's for.

Back in the day, George Carlin had a routine. You know George Carlin? Oh, yeah. About when he was a kid, he would just pick up a stick and he would play with it and he would create all these amazing He's in games with just a stick that he found on the road. He'd sit there and poke it and look at the animals, and then he would invent this, that, and the other. He was bemoaning how nobody can take a stick anymore and imagine something with it. He had a much funnier way than I'm saying it right now.

Believe me, trust me.

But the idea was that when you were a kid, I remember we created something when I was a kid. I was about eight years old, nine years old. It's called Dirt Village. And what it is, is we created a whole town in dirt on this hill where my friend lived, and we created houses, et cetera. And then we had wars. We took all our army men, and then we would blast their city and destroy it. But they had created bridges and lakes, and all this stuff. It was wonderful. That thing. So much fun. Making your own world. Yeah.

I think doing things like that was so interesting, being creative. But one thing that always creates imagination in people is love, I feel like. That's something that always the risk of the siren in the distance always was the... That was a big factor for me, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That always sparked my imagination from whether I was writing a girl a poetry or making a collage, doing something, trying to romance or something.

Or figuring out how to seduce her and how to strategize and where to take her and what would impress her and all that other stuff.

Yeah. I guess I didn't think of it. It's weird because you think of it, I guess seduction isn't just sexual, is it? Oh. Okay. Yeah, because I would think about like, what could I go do that's nice with my girl? What would make her care about me? What would make me show her that I care about her? I loved that stuff when I was young.

Yeah, me too. I think online porn has definitely degraded those skills.

It's ruined so much. I'm amazed that we allow it.

I mean, you used to be like, if you wanted to meet, you were feeling lonely, you'd go to a party or a bar or something. It took some guts. You had to get out of your house. You had to take the risk of somebody saying no. And you were afraid and timid. You're troubling. And then maybe you had a few beers and things went a little bit better. But it took like a skill. You had to develop a people's skill. But if everything is so quick and instant, you're afraid. So many young men are afraid of women. They get in their early 20s, they don't know how to approach them because they've never had to approach them. They've never had to You deal with the fact that somebody could reject them because it's just right there. You don't have to deal with it.

Never rejected. So then no interaction. So then this, yeah, this weird feeling of weird fear. I had a ton. I was definitely too much pornography. Oh, really? Yeah. My 20s, dude. Bad news, dude. Jerking my... Yeah, just jerking my body off or just looking at porno.

This is in the earlier days of porno.

This was Yeah, 15 years ago, 13 years ago, whatever. How much long ago was it? Yeah, it just was bad, man. I would... Yeah, well, sometimes I would even set a date up, and then instead of going on the date, I would end up looking at some pornography and then just cancel the date.

All right.

Why am I going to go on this? Because I think probably some of it was nerves. I didn't want to have to go. But then also it was like, you just found a loophole to make yourself feel sexually gratified. But the long long term effects of that, miserable, man. Because then I started thinking, anytime I was engaging in sexual activity, I would think of it almost like camera shots or something. You know what I'm saying? It was all like And I didn't even realize it, but it wasn't in a moment. It was just like I'd almost be just watching. I wasn't in the moment. Even the way I saw it was I'd seen it so many times this way that I couldn't break the pattern.

Wow, that's really scary. I had no idea.

Yeah, it was tough, man. Ruined some relationships that I was in. And I'm not trying to be self-pity. I'm just saying, yeah, I was certainly not even a victim of it. I did it, and I wish that it hadn't been there because I do miss the days when I would just lay at home and just scream like, Where are all the checks? And just jerk off that way instead of at least looking at the screen or whatever.

And then their bodies could never measure up to what you saw.

Yeah, the lighting is never...

It's never the same.

It's never the same. So then next time a girl comes over to your place, you have 700-watt bulbs in the ceiling. She's like, What the hell is going on? But, dude, there was nothing. That's what drew you out into the world as a man, the fantasy, even going to Europe or whatever. What if I meet someone on the corner smoking a cigarette?

I remember when I worked in this hotel in Paris, I was 21. It was the hotel where all of the models would stay.Wow, dude.Oh, my God. I would hide under a bed. It was like paradise. I die in God heaven. There was this guy who kept showing up at the hotel. His name was Eduardo. He was this tall, Brazilian man. This is where the art of seduction came from. I would watch this guy. He was so smooth. He had every skill in the book. He was so relaxed that when women were around him, they just melted. And so I was thinking, what is this power that this guy has? Yeah, he was pretty good-looking. He wasn't the most handsome person in the world. But he had some skill that he had developed. And he had crafted it coming to this hotel partially because he had seduced so many of the models staying there. But I was saying, what is it about him? And I was fascinated by him. And I became friends with him briefly, and I realized it was his confidence, his calmness. There was nothing defensive about him. The fact of him being so undefensive made him incredibly charming to women.

What does undefensive mean?

He's not insecure. He's not thinking about himself. He's not in the moment with a woman going, What do I need to say to impress her? He's not there at all. He's so on them inside their mind, so relaxed and not thinking about himself. That's what I mean. Eduardo. Eduardo. Where is he now?

Probably with some check, probably.

Well, now he's going to be in his 60s or 70s.

That ain't stopping him, dude. I'll tell you that.

Maybe not.

Gosh, yeah. I think seeing somebody be like, oh, I was always shocked when a guy was good with the girls. I was like, who is Who is this?

Wizard.

Who is this damn lizard?

There were people like that. They had something about them. It wasn't just looks.

No, dude. Yeah. I mean, It was not. It's just comfortability. Sometimes there are moments I would get into that state where I would be fearless with women, very rarely. But it's got Something better as I've gotten older. But yeah, when I was young, it was so hard just to even look at a girl and talk at the same time. I don't even know. I feel like my legs were just going to climb right into my butt. I just was so scared.

Well, we've all been there.

Is that what propelled you out into Europe? Were you a ladies' man growing up?

I had a period. My 20s were a bit like that. And then I grew out of it for whatever reason.

What do you mean grew out of it?

It got tiring.

Oh, just chasing women?

Yeah. It felt like it felt like something... It's okay when you're in your 20s, you're young, you look good, you've got energy, you got spirit. You start getting into your 30s, you start getting into your 40s, and it seems pathetic. Maybe if you're Mick Jagger, it's not pathetic. But for me, it felt like it doesn't feel right anymore. But when I was in my 20s, I'm not saying I wasn't on the level of Eduardo. No way, man. But the interest was there. I was aspiring to be in his league, let's put it that way.

And were you brave with women? Were you brave enough to go talk to them and stuff? Because part of that is learning just the art, even being in the dance. I never even put myself in the dance so many times. I'm like, Dude, you got to at least get in the interaction moment.

Well, the key to me that I learned, and maybe it's just me, is that if you're really interested in her, if you're really excited by her, if it's not just about sex, but there's something about her that excites you, it'll bring something out of you that you didn't think was in you. It'll bring energy out of you. It will make you... They will feel that your excitement and your interest, they'll see that it's not mechanical, that's not just about sex, that you're genuinely interested in them. That will relax them, which in turn will relax you back and forth, back and forth. So if you choose somebody that you genuinely feel a connection to, and it's also sexual, it'll have this reverberating effect where you will bring out your... I remember sometimes I'd be funnier than I've ever been in my whole life. I'd be wittier, I'd be an actor, I'd be all kinds of weird things, and they brought it out of me. But then other women, no, nothing at all like that. I'd be nervous. It didn't happen. But that magic happens when it's a real connection.

When there's purpose there. Yeah. Like even what we're We talked a bit earlier about purpose showing up, that it shows up, that there's something there. If you can navigate it, that at a moment, there's something, there's some energy there that shows up that connects you to your purpose. It's very similar to the energy that shows up to connect you to a woman in a way, I would say, or someone of the opposite sex. Did they outlaw, sorry, The Art of Seduction in Prison?

I hope so. That's hilarious, dude. I wouldn't want that book in prison. I wouldn't feel very good about myself.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I meant to say, I heard they outlawed the 48 laws of power in prison.

Is that true? They might have outlawed Art of Seduction. I don't know. Yes, they did outlaw the 48 laws of power in in a lot of prisons.

Well, they picked the wrong book. I'll say that now. They just take you back on your joke earlier. Why? Why they don't want people having power in there? Well, Robert Green's 48 Laws of Power is second What's the most banned book in Prisons.

You know what the most banned book is?

Is it an obvious one or not? Oh, I know what it is. Hold on. I know exactly what it is, dude. I don't think you do. Yes, I do, brother. I know exactly what it is. It is Shaw Sank Redemption.

No. No way. It's a recipe book about how to cook ramen. I kid you not.

Prison ramen, the most commonly banned title on the list. There you What?

There you go. Thank you. Why?

The 48 Laws of Power is also one of the girl with the lower back tattoo, The Art of War, and Cuba Libre.

Yeah, Prison Rahman. Don't ask me why.

Why is Prison Ramen? Let's get the answer. Why is your book banned in there?

Well, because ostensibly it's because it's about manipulation, and they're worried that people are going to use it in prison to manipulate other prisoners. But really, it's not really about that. Really, it's about prison is, and I have a lot of feedback from prisoners. I don't have a record. I've never been in prison, so I can say that. But I have a lot of sympathy for people in prison. I understand that if not for the grace of God, I could be in that situation. For sure. There's a side of me. There's a slight criminal side to my psyche, I have to admit. So I understand it. And prison is about power. It's about making you feel. It's about dividing the prisoners amongst themselves so they don't get together and see what's really going on. It's about controlling what they read, controlling what they see, controlling every aspect of their life, what they eat, etc. It's a book about gaining some of that control back, and they're very much afraid of it. I've had prisoners tell me about that. The games that wardens play on prisoners and guards play are really powerful and really manipulative, very psychological.

They said that the book helped them see through that. I have a woman who's in prison in Texas. She had gotten the book from her I think husband or boyfriend, and I think she ended up committing a crime against him, something like that. But she realized how he was using the book against her, and the book opened up her mind. And she's in prison in Texas They will not let her see it. So she has it memorized. She remembered the chapters, but they're afraid of somebody getting a hold of that and learning about how the system operates, how other people operate, what the guards are up to, et cetera. Et cetera. I think it's about that more than anything else.

Did that make you feel pretty cool?

Yeah, I feel bad about it.

It's cool.

Yeah, I guess so.

I don't know why, but it's cool because it's like, you're banned here, Robert. Don't you come around here, bud. There's something about that.

But what if I ended up in prison? They'd have to ban me because it's all in here. I could tell everybody all the laws. That'd be a good movie.

I love that, huh?

Let's go to William Morrisons pitch that.

Sure. In 10 years, we'll get it made. What were some books you read that helped shape your worldview or things you like to read in growing up. I was a big John Irving guy, World According to God, Prayer for Owen Meany, Hotel New Hampshire, some of my favorite books, Confederacy of Dunses. That's a great book. Dude, that's a great book, isn't it? Yeah.

That's a great book. It's a wicked book. Book.

Robert O'Tull, I think.

Something O'Tull, yeah.

What did you like?

Well, I was into some heavy stuff, but I also really like- Like Vonnegut stuff? Well, like philosophy, like Nietzsche, like Machiaveli. But I was also very much into Carlos Castaneda. You don't know Carlos Castaneda?

But write him down so we can get one of his books.

Well, Carlos Castaneda was really big in the '60s and '70s. He the hippie generation. And he writes a lot about peyote, et cetera. His book, Journey to Ixitlan, that one on the second from the top, that had a big influence on me. Carlos Castelna was a professor of Anthropology at UCLA, and some people think he made it up, but he went to Mexico and he met a curandero, a witch doctor type person named Don Juan, who had magical powers, but who ate a lot of peyote and took all of these journeys. He taught him about the world. I swear to God, that book had so much impact on me that a lot of the things in the 48 Laws of Power actually come from that book. There are ideas in there that are so amazing and practical and wonderful. For a 16-year-old, it was one of the most wonderful books I have ever read. I really, really love that. That's where a separate reality. They're all great.

Wow, that's cool. No, I want to order that. Will you make sure to order that, too, Zack?

Who else? I also a writer named Hermann Hess, German writer who had books like Siddhartha and Damian, which were really quite radical. I like things that were a little subversive and radical and weird.

Like clockwork orange, that stuff?

Yeah. Anthony Burgess. He was a great writer. Sure. Yeah.

That was always one of the crazier things when you were a kid. Only the weird kids knew about clockwork orange when I was growing up. Yeah. Like the jocks and stuff, they didn't know about it. No. But the weirdo kids who would sometimes take a little sip of gasoline knew about it.

You did sips of gasoline?

Not a lot.

Wow. Think of the damage that did to you.

Yeah, I can't even think about it. I think it killed off the cells. I would have used to think about it.

Well, when I was in college, there's this Englishman. This is when we were doing a lot of drugs. He started telling us about something he did when he was a kid called Lady Esquire Shoe polish. Basically, you would take this shoe polish and you would put it in a rack, then you would sniff it and your brain would go crazy for a minute. Then you felt deathly sick. But for that minute, you were like, whoa. All you had to do was like a dollar 25 shoe polish. He said, he got us so excited. We We went searching for it, and we found a bottle of it in San Francisco. We did and we did, and we snifted. And it was the most awful thing I've ever experienced in my life. It was way too intense. It was like, Everything was just awful. It's this equivalent of gasoline. Yeah, there you go.

That's your gasoline. We used to do everything. We heard about cooking banana peels. There were always rumors that would go through town of things you could do to get high.

Nutmeg.

In We smoked everything in my buddy Jeff's kitchen. I remember one time I took a bag of mushrooms to a party, and people had never taken them there, and so gave them to everybody. And then I was like, we're going to play hide and go seek, right? You guys go hide, and I'm in an account, right? I'm in my account to like 700. And they all went and hid, and I never went and found them. And then I went home. Dude, Can you imagine that?

Did they know you were giving them psychedelic mushrooms? Dude, fuck them.

That's how I felt about it.

That's a pretty good trick.

Basically, like Chris Angel.

They're probably still waiting for you. There's some guy in a closet still wondering where you are.

There was things like that I loved. I remember we went camping one time with a Boy Scout or something, and I told everybody the day we left that Jay Leno had died, right? So all weekend, everybody, this is for the Internet. Everybody's like, God, you hear people talking about it? So I would just lay in my tent and I would hear dads telling each other, you hear that Jay Leno passed away, and I would be howling in there, laughing at a... It was coming out of the core of the Earth through me. There was always... I love that element of creating a scenario that nobody knows if it was real or not.

You can't do that anymore, though.

Because the Internet killed everything. It did. You can't lie. You used to be able to tell a woman you were a lawyer, and she's like, You're 11. And I'll be like, I object. Don't be such a bitch, man. I'm trying to meet a cool chap.

You're right. It did ruin everything. Can't lie anymore.

Your new book, Siren, is that what it's called? I've heard you talk about it a couple of times. Sirens? No. What's that about? I don't know. I thought it was a new book that you were working on.

There was one- About police sirens?

No, about the woman in the distance.

No, that's in the The Art of Seduction.

Okay, that's in The Art of Seduction. You're talking about sirens. What's that? Was it some new book I heard you talking about?

Are you writing a book on the sublime?

The Sublime. Sorry, that was it. It's an S word.

It's close enough.

That's what happened to me. Yeah.

In the 50th law, the book I did with 50 Cent, the last chapter is about confronting your mortality because 50, he nearly died. He got shot nine times, close range. Gosh. And he had a near-death experience. So the last chapter is about, I call it the sublime. And then in my last book, The Laws of Human Nature, the last book, the last chapter is about confronting your mortality. And when you do that, all the amazing little things that will happen to your brain and your mind and how it will make life seem that much more intense. That was also what I called The Sublime. And then about three months after I wrote that chapter, I came this close to dying myself with a stroke, which you can see the results of.

Oh, wow. So that's why you have some physical illness?

Yeah, I had a stroke. Damn, dude. I was driving here in LA, and my wife was in the car, and she basically saved my life.

Could you feel it as it came on?

Yeah. I didn't recognize it. I was like, something weird is going on. And she noticed it right away. The whole side of my face was elongated and weird and wrong. She knew right away. She forced me to pull over and go, What? What? And then I started to get out of the car, and she came around, and I don't remember anything else. So there were some sounds that were a little bit weird, and I was acting like nothing was going on. It was all just a joke. But deep down, I knew something was very, very wrong. Anyway, so-That was almost a near-death experience thing.

Very, very close.

Because if I'd been alone, which I often have, and it happened, It's just luck that she was with me, even if I was driving, because most of the time I'd be alone, I'd be dead right now, or I'd have such bad brain damage. It wouldn't be worth living. So I'm very lucky. But it was like I had written about it, and now I lived it. And so the sublime is about experiences, a lot of them related to some of those drug experiences, that make you realize that there is another level, another almost dimension to life itself that you're not aware of. So your mind can either shrink, and it'll shrink with your phone to the confines of your stupid little phone, And what people are eating for breakfast, where they're taking their vacations, et cetera. It gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Your circle of thinking gets narrower, narrow, and narrow, or it can expand, and it can expand further and further. Books can do it. Drugs Can Do It. I'm trying to make this book something that will do that, will make you think about what it means to be in a universe where we're alive, a chapter about your childhood and how sublime your childhood was, about the human brain and how weird it is, about animals and our connection to animals, about love and how love can be a sublime experience, about a relationship to the past and history.

I'm doing a chapter now about what I call the daimon, which is a sense of like there's a second self inside of you that's guiding you. It has to do with what we're talking about purpose. It's to get you out of the small thinking and get you into thinking that there's something very weird about being alive in the world and being a human being who's conscious. So that's the book that I'm writing.

Wow, that's fascinating. Do you think God put consciousness in us? Do you think we're just an anomaly?

Well, we now know that animals have consciousness, that animals think. So we're knocked off our high horse. How long have we known?

How long have we known that?

Well, you can't know for sure because we can't get inside of them. But people who study this very seriously, who study what is consciousness who study neuroscience, who study animals very deeply, they're convinced that animals have consciousness. They have incredible proof for it. And even like bees and spiders. I have a chapter about animals in the a book. Spiders actually think spiders are amazing, the powers that they have. And then-I knew it. Octopus.

Octopus is-water spiders.

Are the most amazing animal on the planet. So this guy wrote a book called Alien. No, it's an anthology called Aliens. It's all about alien life. And one of the chapters in there is by a neuroscientist, really good, amazing neuroscientist named Anil Seth, an Englishman. He wrote a chapter on octupuses, and he said, If there's an alien consciousness that's different from ours in the universe, it could be like the octupuses. Because octupuses have thinking, have brain neurons in their arms, They have 12 different centers of consciousness. So they're thinking with their whole body. So animals are conscious.

It's interesting. We only have five senses. That's not that many.

Yeah, there are other senses out there that we don't have. Like snakes can pick up the heat. They have a sense of heat. There's a name for it, where they could pick up the heat from a mammal in the area to attack and eat it. Birds have a sense of electromagnetic waves in the environment to navigate by. There are other senses like that. Spiders have a sense where they can pick up rhythms or elephants have the senses in their feet that pick up the vibrations from the ground. I'm blowing your mind. There's just a lot out there. Yeah.

So there's a lot that's-We're not so special as we might think.

Right.

And it is amazing to marvel at ourselves ourselves in positive ways. In fact, we should do it more. I'm sometimes amazed how few times I look up at the sky or up at the gods, the universe that created me, and even just let it see my face. The universe created me, and here I am all the time, just down here. Just to go out there and be like, Thank you, or Here I am. Or even ask the universe for information It's like, here's the freaking universe, and I'm down here trying to read a book, dude. But you got... I don't know if that works or anything, but it's like, if I look up like this, I feel like something... I feel a little different.

Well, you can do that tonight.

Yeah, I'll get out there tonight, Robert. So many thought-provoking, I'm going to say, that's who you are. Oh, thank you. And I think that's one of the most unique things that somebody can be. And thank you for charting so much of it for us. Oh, thank you. You're very welcome. So we can go back through your thoughts and explore our own.

Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

That's great. Robert Green, love to get to chat with you again sometime, dude, or sit, or if I come across any peyody, I'm not going to say it out loud.

Oh, yeah, please.

But I will come watch you do it.

All right. Well, I'll do the peyody myself. You can watch me.

Cool, dude. I'll be right there with you, man.

Okay. When my next book comes out, definitely Definitely.

Yeah, I would love to. The Sublime. I want to know about it. If I get any neat ideas or things that I think are sublime, I'll send them your way.

That would be great. I'd love it.

Not the jazz. It was an insane thing to say to you. Robert Green, thank you so much, man.

Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, me too, bud. Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones. But it's going to take.