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[Music] by night good to see you man what's happening to see you Joe with a nice stack of books here what do we got here government cheese and Memoir is this your Memoir this is my Memoir yeah exciting of my 27 years in the wilderness and uh put your ass where your heart wants to be this is sort of like a war of art type of book as you can tell from the size of it and everything after writing the war of art did you because you you also wrote turning pro right yeah and a few others yeah but the same on the same along the same vein yeah yeah you just felt like you have more to squeeze out of that it's like it's such an important subject for for artists and for Creative people I mean that book The War of art changed so many people let me ask you Joe what uh why did that resonate with you well there was some stuff that he talked about that it was almost like unspoken and one of them is the concept of resistance and and that the fact that you treated The Muse as if it was a like a real living entity like you which I think it is yeah she is she is whatever it is that thing where if you show up and you put in the work creativity's just sort of sort of gives birth it sort of erupts it comes out it manifests it there's something to it and and just I kind of always had this like inkling that that was a thing or this thought that that was a thing but until I read your book it was it's like you had you you made it real you like you you just like you laid it out and like here's the problem this is what's going on and this is what you got to do you just gotta show up every day and put in the work and be a damn professional and so many people that I gave that book to I used to have a stack of them in my old studio and I would just hand them to people dude just read this trust me and it wasn't a hard read you know it wasn't a giant book but it was so valuable because it it just like I guarantee you there's so many people there were so many days where people sat in front of their their computer or notepad where they wouldn't have because of that book like it got people to where they needed to go whether they stayed there
you know whether they kept up the no that's not yours did you yourself let me ask you like as a comic did you experience resistance to getting say up in front of people or in the writing of the material or yeah you kind of is that an area where you could relate to it yes it all the all the above you could you know you experience resistance and like oh I want to take a day off you know like I don't feel like going up today like I know a lot of comics are really good Comics they're always canceling like well there's work and then there's spots okay so the spots are important because the spots are what get you better tighten your material and how you create new material shots when you actually perform is that what a spot is okay so this is what I mean um a spot is say if you're going to go to The Comedy Store and uh on regular nine in The Comedy Store there might be 15 Comedians and each one of them is doing 15 minutes so there's just it's a long running show it starts from 8 P.M it goes on all night when you're doing that that's a spot it doesn't pay very well I think it pays like 50 so you just go down there and it's really there's a lot of camaraderie we're all hanging around with each other and joking around in the parking lot and in the hallway and uh you're really just trying to stay sharp and work on new material and you might in the comedy store has three rooms there's the belly room that seats about 70 to 90 people there's the main room that seats about 400 plus people and then there's the original room the seats I think it seats about 170. and you do shows in each room like people do spots like sometimes people do three spots a night so those are those don't pay well but that's those the ones people cancel so like a lot of comedians they're like oh I don't feel like going up and they'll call in the store I'm canceling I'm Gonna Cancel I'm not feeling well I'll cancel and it's really just resistance it's this thing that keeps you from showing up but the resistance for writing is way stronger that's really that's the work that you're talking about it's a spot and then well no no the work spots are short sets that you do in town work is when you're on the road so the work is to say if you do a weekend at a comedy club now
that pays well that's where the majority of comedians make their living is doing weekends on the road or maybe even weekdays on the road so then you're doing a show and can the idea is that you've crafted all this material on your own in writing and then in front of the crowd doing spots and you know and doing it around town and then when you go on the road then you have a show to put on and that's that's work what's interesting to me is my question when do you actually sit down and write the thing for me it's two times it's either late at night when everyone's asleep in my house or it's lately it's been in the morning lately I've been doing it first thing in the morning and uh there's I don't know sometimes I have my best ideas first thing in the morning for some reason and like I I can't quite imagine what is it like do you have like a theme that you think is funny that you're gonna work on no I just sit in front of the computer and write about subjects I just have like essays see I used to try to just write jokes but it seemed too limiting creatively like uh like the format is so limited that I was missing out on some ideas and so then I started writing blog posts and one of the things that I realized in blog when I write blog was essentially essays is that I could extract good ideas from those essays and those would become my bits and so now that's how I write when I write I just sit down and I just like uh like uh or write like I'm doing this idea about riots lately riots and protests and so I just started writing about riots and protests and I'm just writing and then I'm writing about what kind of people go and what you know what motivates someone to put a Buffalo hat on and try to break into the capital and and as I'm writing then I'll go that's a that's a chunk and I'll take that and I'll pull it out and I'll copy and paste it in another folder or another another um file and then I'll go on stage and try to like give those life and so then I take those and I try to figure out the best way to present them and oftentimes like you think you have it right but then you go in front of the crowd and they don't think it's funny or they think the setup is funny but the punchline sucks it's weird or they think
uh you know they maybe they the way they laugh makes you think there's another layer to this and you come up with more stuff on the fly so you really create in front of them as well as by yourself you need them like you know you can't create comedy in a vacuum and you really need an audience what what's the feeling like when you're on stage are you scared or is it fun is it no it's a it's fun maybe it'd be scary if I hadn't done it a lot it was definitely scary when I first started doing it but now it's fun it's just fun like they're all paying to see you they're it's fine it's a good time as long as you've done the work that's you know as long as you're prepared it shouldn't be scary it should be really a good time time you're there to make them laugh ah you know but it's uh but I've also been doing it 33 years you know 34 years it's a long ass time I mean I know that my accountant always tells me that his comedians are he they all write off their Psychotherapy bills in other words he's saying to me that these are the ones that's that it's not easy being a comic yeah I mean is that I don't know no it's not you seem like you've enjoyed it it's fun yeah it's different I mean what does that mean it's not it's not easy being a soldier Okay it's not easy being an EMT it's not easy being a police officer it's not easy being a school teacher in an inner city school it's it's not easy being a heart surgeon it's there's comedy's not that [ __ ] hard people there's this old expression the heart I don't know who the [ __ ] said this but I've repeated it Ad nauseam the hardest thing that's ever happened to you is the hardest thing that's ever happened to you or the worst thing that's ever happened to use the worst thing that's ever happened to you and that worst thing could be you're a little kid in your toy breaks uh-huh or it could be your family got killed in a war you know it really depends and so what level of resilience you have is entirely dependent upon what your life experiences are and what you've come to expect and there's a lot of people that are comedians that really seem to think that what they're doing is so goddamn difficult and uh yeah it's not the easiest thing in the world but Jesus Christ what a
great life huh you know you're you're telling jokes you're making people laugh it should be wonderful and celebrated but a lot of them are they do a really poor job of mental management and of like assessing their own like psychological issues and and coming up with like real methods of mitigation so why do people bail out on the nights that they're that they're not resistance it's they're what are they they're afraid of bombing they're afraid of getting up there and no they're just not being Pros that's really what it is it's like it's that's one of the reasons why your book resonated so much it's because like it's just there's a thing that you describe that you just nailed it and you called it resistance but there's this feeling that you just don't want to sit and write you don't want to work you know like when I get in front of my computer there's like an urgent like hey let's go see what's in YouTube hey what's going on we can roam around on let's go to dick.com see what the wackiest stories are let's go to CNN you know that that is part of the resistance like it keeps you from just sitting down and working and I don't know what that is because you know in the back your head that if you do the work you'll have more ideas if you have more ideas you'll have more material if you have more material you'll be able to pick the best material and your show would be better and then the audience will have a better time your career will go better and all these things and yet that doesn't matter you know I mean you still feel it right yeah and it's totally Universal I can tell you from the emails that I get from the letters that I get and it's not only is it Universal and everybody experiences it but they all seem to experience it with the same script you know you're not worthy you're too old Too Young Too Fat too thin whatever or let's do something else let's distract ourselves with something else so everybody gets the same thing I mean I always say that it's it's um it's a force of nature you know it's not personal it's not specific to you even though it that voice in your head sounds like it is specific to you it's saying Joe and then it's hitting you right in the points that are your sore points you know yeah but it's really not personal
everybody seems to experience the same thing and uh what do you think it is when did you write the war of art 2002 and in that time after writing that I'm sure it's it's obviously been been a very successful book so you've had time to think about this like what do you think is going on like why are people why why is that a force of nature what is it um I'll get this is of my lengthy explanation but I'll give you my theory if we think of the human so everybody's got to bear with me this takes a minute or two if you think of the human psyche we got the ego which is like a little black dot in the middle of a greater thing that we would call the self like the jungian self with a capital S and the self contains the collective unconscious all the aspects of the unconscious right um the hero's journey the archetypes of the unconscious all of the sort of intuitive stuff right when you I would imagine come up with great comedy material or any kind of material it's coming from that self coming from that deeper place right and even when young or Joseph Campbell describe the self they have a I have a little diagram in the war of art where adjacent to this larger self they'd have like three arrows and the arrows are coming from what they call the Divine ground which I take to mean whatever greater force is out there you know that that will come to you so this is a long way of saying that the ego which is right your eye part the part that identify eyes with this body and with the ego wants to be in control right the ego is where you drive down to the store you get it Whatever It Is Right but when you're trying to tap into that greater intelligence like if you're writing if you're trying to come up to if you're a musician if you're any kind of creative person you're trying to to surrender to that self to that greater self and I feel like the ego hates that the ego knows if you make that shift to identify with that greater self then the ego is out of business so I think this is my theory that the ego produces resistance to try to stop you from from connecting and trusting and believing because it is a
leap of faith right to get to that other level wherever it is so the ego says to you who do you think you are to try to tap into that thing who do you think you are to come up with this idea it's been done a million times better than you'll ever do it you don't have the chops to do this you're going to fall on your ass Etc et cetera Etc or let me distract you why don't we chase some women why don't we get drunk why don't we hang out with our buddies whatever it is but so I think that what the ego wants is to maintain its control right and if you make that shift into the into that greater self that's when you really are starting to tap into great stuff that's where the great stuff comes from yeah right and that puts the ego out of a job at least that this is my theory go so the I think that the ego produces it I mean it's be interesting it's interesting sort of animals don't experience resistance I'm sure they don't right right but they also because they experience creativity true but but they're in that greater world I think naturally you know right um they're they're free they're in that God energy you know an eagle or somebody that's flying you know you watch like the tiniest little wings or feathers even you know control it they're not thinking about anything right when they're hunting or whatever it is so anyway that's that's my theory on what on What resistance is now Seth Godin you know he is he's a believer that it's the the Seth Godin I do not know Seth Godin is a kind of a marketing Guru one of the earliest guys on on the on the internet from way back when when it first began and uh it's a great um teacher of marketing and stuff like that and also a wonderful guy in his areas in the sense that he is highly ethical dude like when he talks about um businesses startups and all the things that he's kind of uh helping people with ethics is a huge part of it so I really respect the guy and he's a great deep thinker too now he thinks it's what he calls the lizard brand the amygdala which I'm not even sure what that is I guess it's the reptile brain at the back of your head that that's what's producing something that wants producing resistance but
anyway I respect his thinking on that but I think it's what I just explained to you what you're saying makes a lot of sense and the the ego whatever that thing is that it's it's so interesting how it's not able to see that it would actually benefit the ego if you didn't have resistance yes which is really weird it's weird isn't it yeah because if if the ego was wise and and had like foresight it could see the future oh if we just like just give in and relax and relinquish control then we're going to come up with better stuff and our life's going to be better be able to buy a nicer house yeah you know maybe be able to go on trips you'll your your work will do well everything will be good it's a d it's a deep subject because also if you think about the ego's view of what life is you know I'm going to go into some deep stuff right the ego has a whole View the ego believes that this material world is all there is right yeah the ego believes in death the ego believes that when his body dies we die right the ego believes that this flesh can be hurt you know can be maimed can be broken etc etc so the ego is naturally lives in fear I think that the the predominant emotion of the ego if we're living in the ego which is 99 of people do our predominant emotion is fear right and fear uh even though we might not know it fear of death which is kind of why people want to achieve I think right let me make a name for myself blah blah blah why people want to have children children will live on why they have insurance why they try to succeed and have a big house and this and that and the other thing right that's all sort of coming out of out of an out of a uh a mindset of fear whereas this giant self in my opinion the bigger self that is connected to the thing its predominant emotion is love if you ask me now the ego another thing the ego believes is that I am separate from you right we are all separate individuals right I could hurt you and it won't hurt me that's what the ego thinks right that's why so much of the evil that happens in the world comes out of that right we can torture these sons of [ __ ] and it won't happen to us right nothing bad will happen to us but the self believes exactly the opposite once you get into that deep level right that
we are not separate from one another that you and I are bound together in some kind of way along with all of humanity and all of the animal life and all of the planet all of the oceans and all of that and so the predominant emotion in that self is the emotion of love so the ego this is my belief anyway the ego being centered in fear is going to try to hang on to what it's got right if the ego thinks that it's living our life it's calling the shots it's going to hang on to that you know out of out of fear and won't that's why I think it's so strong resistance is so strong when when you the closer you get to moving into that self into that greater space like if you're sitting down and trying to write a novel and you get into a kind of a flow of it that's what the ego is really afraid of because it's such a kind of empowering and intoxicating experience the ego says to itself [ __ ] if this guy stays over here very long he's never going to go back to you know to where I pullish call the shots so I think that's why it it makes itself it puts such a an intense shot at you to stop you from getting there so this greater self what is if like what do you think that is if the greater self is all about love and the greater self is what recognizes the connection between all of us what is the greater self okay it's a great question I know that you're a guy that's into psychedelics to some extent right I mean when you now my only experience with psychedelics is back in the 60s you know so I haven't done any of the stuff that people are doing now you want some no thank you I'm too old for that you're not too bad but one of the things that you know existence that's resistance psychedelics maybe so but one of the things that you know from LSD or from mescaline or anything like that right is you suddenly see a whole other world that was not there before right even though you're looking at that wall all of a sudden that wall becomes so beautiful right that you you can't even say anything except wow right so that's I believe I I would I was thinking in those moments this must be the way Jesus sees the world or the Dalai Lama sees the world or or God sees the world and when I come back to my regular self and I see this kind of normal shrunk
down world that's not the real world right there's another world that's greater and so that's sort of my feeling about it Joe that that that when the self when you enter that there is a greater World we're living in that greater world right now we just can't see it you know we're just we just see what's in front of us and I think another aspect of it to me you would know a lot more about this than I do being more in the present of this is that if you're living in that kind of psychedelic world you really can't drive a car you really can't operate heavy equipment you really can't handle the stuff you have to handle you can't do your taxes right so in order to kind of live you do have to sort of shrink shrink that world down right to to you know push the all the beauty aside and all the amazing [ __ ] aside but that doesn't stop the fact that that stuff is there right I always wonder what was it like before we were born and what's it going to be like after we die are we going to live in that world are we going to enter that world again and what is that what what will that be like do you think that this narrowed down world that you're talking about when you when the psychedelics wear off do you think that's an artifact of the cold hard reality of being an animal living amongst predators and other other violent human beings on Earth where in order to survive in order to raise your children and protect your village and provide food to each other you kind of have to have this very simplistic just just as you said narrowed down this this different where you can't just wax euphorically about the the concept of the universe and life and and and love yes and I think that's why again like what I was saying about the ego being being dominated by the emotion of fear right and also our parents right and our society our school everything for our own good as we're kids growing up tells us all that right it kind of indoctrinates us into that world for our own good right it wants to protect us you know on your way walking to school nobody's going to beat you up blah blah blah right um so yeah I do think that's the case it's kind of a strange world isn't it that God created for us I mean on the
one end there's this beautiful other dimensional reality out there but then there's this hardcore world of predators you know in order to you know like what did you just have on Instagram today a alligator taking off the leg off a deer I mean that's that uh did I you don't even know if what was there but it's there we just saw it a few minutes ago but I added on Instagram yeah I think so yeah there was a crocodile that took a pig and snapped it in half oh is that what it was like like that yeah I didn't see a terrifying video but yeah that's the world right the guy gave us sure yeah yeah um so here you are Joe I mean you're a fighter you're right you're a UFC MMA that's that in that world of Predator versus prey but you're also a comic and you're also a podcaster where you're reaching out into this other world you know the greater world of who knows what it is yeah you're trying you're that you know it's one of the things I admire about you about what you do on the show that you really go into every direction possible and you're talking to every kind of people every kind of person that's got any kind of a theory about anything which I think is great because we all need everything that we can possibly bring in here well I think I certainly do I certainly need as many different points of reference and different perspectives as possible but uh I'm just very lucky that I'm genuinely curious and then I have a platform to bring in people like yourself yeah or other people and have conversations with them and it's been very enlightening for me to to encounter all these different perspectives and to interact with all these different people that think about the world in a different way and it makes me you know reconsider my own ideas or reformulate or you know just sort of reevaluate yeah and I think um people can be very rigid in how they view the world and very rigid in how they you know the rules that they set for themselves and for other people and and because it allows you to when you have less options you have less things to think about and sometimes you can be more successful that way you know there's a lot of people that do things
very rigidly yeah and they've found great financial and you know physical success doing yeah it that way I mean think about various religions that have such you know you can only eat this yes you must wear that yes and on Wednesday you do this and it really helps you because you don't have to make any decisions I'm sure it's a I'm sure it's a happier life in a way but what is it you know yeah there's something to it you know me and my friends uh Tom and Ari and Bert we do this thing every year uh called sober October and generally we come up with when we do so over October we come up with some sort of a challenge and one year was we had to do uh 15 yoga sessions in the 31 days of October and you know 90 minute yoga sessions and then the other the next time we had to do a fitness contest where we we counted up the amount of energy each one of us we were using an app and we were trying to compete in the winter you know you know whatever so we we did that and then other years we've done different things and then this year we decided what we're going to do is we're going to work out seven days a week every day you have to burn 500 calories so we've kind of decided that a competition is too [ __ ] up because I'm kind of crazy and I get over competitive it's not fun not fun for my family not fun for me because I go crazy so so it was it's way better to not be competitive and just we all are held accountable to this one thing so this one thing was you had to do a hundred push-ups every day and you had to burn 500 calories in a workout and so everyone did it we sent each other screenshots of our apps and we all talked about it and one of the things we all came out of at the end of it was like knowing that you had to do this thing was so different than just going I probably should work out today maybe I won't maybe I'll [ __ ] off like today for instance I was up late last night I got home from the um from the comedy show uh I did a little mushrooms and then uh I did a little writing and I didn't go to bed until like 2 33 o'clock and so I woke up at 10 I was like God I should work out but I don't [ __ ] feel like working out let me just get in the sauna and do the cold plunge which is my minimum amount of things that I do every day but
then after I did that I was like you should have worked out man but I didn't right so I didn't but if I it was the sober October month I would have had to ah because I had because I had those nights during sober October where I was up late and I only got like six hours sleep but I still got that work on in because I had to do it when you have a thing that you must do every day that's how you get productive and what we found all of us found is there's this alleviation of anxiety that comes from doing these workouts every day that was like I was we were all talking I was like if this was a pill that I could take I'd take that pill all day if it had no side effects in fact this pill makes you healthier but instead of a pill it's an hour to an hour and a half of arduous physical work like very difficult physical work you're pouring sweat and and when it's over you're exhausted but healthier and then the anxiety level is like nil like nothing bothers you you feel so good you've you've took in your attention like like your body's a wet rag and just rang out all the tension just dripped it out and the fact that you have to do it every day it kind of eliminates this whole resistance thing because you can't entertain it and because we're all accountable we're all texting each other and you know we're in a group text it was great it's great so why not do it 12 months of the year um I don't know if it's sustainable but what I am doing is five days a week so five days a week I do it now so instead of seven days a week I do it five days which is uh because I travel doing stuff it's more sustainable but it seems very effective so today uh I bitched out so now I know that uh I only have six more days well you know I worked out yesterday but there's only a certain amount of days in a week right so now I've got three more days that I must get in no if ands or buts those have to be done because I did Monday and Tuesday and then I [ __ ] off today so I've got other days but I gotta but it's not the same if if you if you're doing it every day like if it's a religion which is why I understand why people would get up in the morning and you have to pray get up in the morning you know face the East get on your hands and knees and bow like it there's something to that that
hijacks all of that resistant [ __ ] all of the things that hold you back from Finding Your greater self all the things that hold you back from accomplishing your troop attention essential in this life yeah and I think what that is to me is an exercise like a ritualistic exercise in overcoming resistance yeah and in getting into that other that greater place right yes when you say rung out that's you're rung out of every ego thought right you run out of all your negatives thoughts right you're not being jealous of anybody else you're not being competitive of anybody else yeah so I think I mean I'm sure that I'm not a meditator but I'm I imagine that that's what that's all about right you get up every morning and you Center yourself and you do all that sort of thing yeah and you get to that to that place so I'm all I'm a total believer in what you're talking about Joe yeah I think that's probably with people who have the the whoever the original writers of various religions the way they crafted it I think all of those rules and regulations and you know not just keeping Society order but keeping you ordered like keeping your mind ordered like they they knew there was something yeah yeah there's like a disconnect yeah to what you can do and what you're going to do yeah what your what Your Potential is and you know where you're going to actually find yourself fall yeah they know there's a devil out there the devil I would call it resistance but it's those negative thoughts that you can spiral into right yeah never nothing good ever came out of that you know no it's always just hate the other guy create the other and hate them or take our own selves down I mean I fight it myself I'm lying in bed in the morning you know and those thoughts come to my mind I mean I don't know if you're are you familiar with paramahansa yogananda's stuff at all no from self-real realization fellowship I mean he's one of the great gurus he actually died in like 1952 or something like that so he's not a contemporary dude but one of the things that he says is when you wake up in the morning get out of bed right away do not lie there thinking any kind of thoughts because those thoughts only are negative and only taking you bad you know he says get up start your day and I'm definitely a believer in
that too why why are they negative when you wake up and you just lay there why do you think that is I don't know where it is but somebody asked me when in your day do you first experience resistance and my answer is the minute I open my eyes it's right there you know which is also really interesting I don't know the answer to this if you think about the Sleep State whatever that is there's no resistance in that state you know I don't know why right maybe we're in that greater world you know that unconscious it's only when we come come into Consciousness all of a sudden that resistance thing is there the devil is there those shitty thoughts are there those negative thoughts are there which is why like your sober October is really let's do something to counteract that [ __ ] yeah right away before it grabs us you know or even if it has grabbed us from six o'clock till nine o'clock now we're gonna work out and we're going to do our thing and we're gonna we're gonna overcome it which you can overcome it yeah thank goodness it also has that aspect of religion where you're all in it together yeah that's true because it's it's ritualistic you can also do it alone you know yeah oh you definitely could do it alone but there's real we had real camaraderie in the fact I bet you're all doing it together yeah and it's like the military in a way right yeah and we're we're accountable to each other too so we knew that we were accountable to each other yeah yeah um wouldn't you think that just for the sake of survival like from an evolutionary perspective when you wake up in the morning that would be the last thing you'd want to do is like lay there just stay put like you think that Evolution would favor thoughts that like immediately launch you into action yeah you would think so that you would be wary and ready to yeah on the other hand if you're in the cave and you're under a nice you know bare skin thing you know and your old lady is there beside you maybe you don't want to get up and get into that cold world well I get that you wouldn't want to but I would think that you know fortune favors the brave or fortune favors the the one who's most active I would imagine in the tribal World they had somebody standing
watch 24 hours a day you know and even if you or I might be asleep there would be some young kid that was at the mouth of the cave you know keeping his eyes open yeah before they get Outdoors they probably had to do that yeah yeah but it just still seems like it doesn't I mean maybe it's just the puzzle that you have to solve in order to tap into the full potential of the mind because the mind has so many different functions and there's so many different things that it's doing and then we're also living in this world that's entirely unnatural it's like entirely of our creation the world of society and civilization and cities and cars and buses and we're we're not living in a world that we're engineered for we're engineered for the world of the wild and so for us to exist in this other world there's this battle between these sort of deep-seated human instincts that are designed to help us survive versus what we know we can do creatively as a modern human in terms of accomplishing great works of literature and and creating comedy and creating music and all the different things that humans can do in this modern era especially when you record things when you write things down and then you can spread it to millions of people like your books like it's really an extraordinary ability that didn't exist until fairly recently in human history yeah so we don't really we're not really designed for these thoughts like where you have two separate cells yeah we have the animal self that's the evolutionary stuff we're still cavemen right yeah we still have the same things but yet we have this other potential let me ask you something Joe like where do you see yourself in five years or ten years or let me put it a different way it's clear to me that you are exploring something and you're you're trying to you're trying to project your mind into another greater Realm what what exactly how do you see this Odyssey that you're on right now what what do you what are you aiming for what are you hoping to achieve five years ten years now who do you who do you hope to be I don't ah you know I think like that you don't no I just do
things that I like to do ah I'm very simple no legitimately I don't have goals like that ah I try to do better at everything that I do like I would like to be better at archery I would like to be better at playing pool I'd like to be better at stand-up comedy I like to be better at being a podcast host I'd like to be better at doing UFC commentary so every time I do a thing I assess my performance I think about it I write things down I work hard at it and I do the same with being a father I do the same with being a husband I do the same being a friend I do the same with being an employer I think you may be overly modest here now because I know that you're just from the people that you bring on the show you want you're exposing yourself to all kinds of different points of view right but I'm also exposing the world to them that's part of my goal too when someone's interesting like you say you have a great curiosity you're not doing that because you're not interested in it right you're interested in it I'm definitely interested and you're also exploring kind of inner worlds your own inner world yeah you know with the help of chemicals or whatever it is so it's more than just getting better at something yes but but I'm genuinely not trying I don't have a goal I genuinely don't have a goal is what I mean my goal is to just get better at all the things I'm doing and to understand life to just do okay which is probably impossible but I'm trying to understand it better than I do and I definitely understand it better now than I did five years ago 10 years ago 15 years ago 20 years ago like I feel like every year I get better at it and I think as long as you don't Define yourself like some people say well I'm you know 46 years old this is about as smart as I'm ever going to get this is about as this is me if I'm you know still smoking cigarettes and drinking every night this is me like I don't buy into that I feel like you're a living human being if you're alive you can get better at everything you do you get better at being a person I think there's an art to being a person and I think that the more things you encounter the more uh disciplines you take on the more you focus on whatever craft it is that you're obsessed with that you you
find creatively satisfying the more you do that the better you get at all the things you do that's what I think okay so I feel like what's happened if I had like this goal like my if I had a goal ever it was uh the beginning of my comedy career was like I want to be a professional I want to be able to make a living telling jokes because you know me and my friend Greg Fitzsimmons we started out at the same same time like a week apart from each other in in Boston and we would sit around and talk man imagine if you could just pay your bills doing stand-up because we bought he was working and catering and I was driving limos and we would get together like after shows and just hang out maybe you know have some dinner or something and we'd be just like someday man imagine that just being just nothing but a comedian like that's how you make your living that would be so amazing so that was the the only goal we ever had ah and then once that like the idea of a career seems so Preposterous like what career like what does that mean like it didn't didn't it didn't so but but then once we started making a living and then we started doing better and then things started happening and Greg went on to win Emmys for writing and you know like he's got comedy specials he tours all over the world it did eventually become a thing where you are a professional and then you have these sort of goals inside that profession like I'd like to do a new comedy special within the next 12 months I think my material is ready so we talk like that but I don't I don't ever say like in 10 years I want to be this and that in 15 years I want this I I don't think like that I just keep going I keep on trucking Ah that's what I do huh I'll tell you what what I feel about that how I feel myself um I you know uh I go from Project to project at least from the time that I finally actually was able to make money as a writer and be a writer I go from one to another and each one is like an actor that's cast in a movie or something like that where you're in that world completely in that lane completely while you're doing it and I never know what the next one is going to be but that's sort of I'm a Believer in a higher dimension of
reality I'm a Believer in the Muse as we were talking about earlier and I sort of so I don't have a goal in the future either I don't say to myself five years from now I want to be this ten years I want to be that because you never know what trolley is coming down the track what the next kind of assignment for me from the Muse is going to be what's the next book that's going to be all I know is I'm on the lookout for it I'm waiting for the you know the cosmic radio station to send me a message and then I'll I'll do that so if at any point in my writing career if you had asked me what I would be doing five years in the future I would have been completely wrong if I had ever project completely wrong so I'm I never know what's what's coming up ahead but I do know just like you that you can't stand Pat at any point you know then you start getting old and then you start going you know down the degrees thing you know but I think as long as you're still following that impetus that creative impetus whatever it is which is scary right it's always a risk you never know what's going to happen um then you're okay so that's all I want to do is be able to to keep doing that that's my if I make any money I say okay that's that's enough so that I can keep doing it you know and I never would have thought that when I was 20 years old or 40 years old but that's that's how I feel now what would you thought then you think of course then I was struggling I was just trying like you were just trying to you know stop you know driving a cab for a living you know yeah I think projects are really important for people because the things to concentrate on that you could that's like a a solid tangible thing yeah it's like your silver October yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah or a book right or a you know a comedy special or so so like think I think if people just have sort of open-ended things and just like you know I'm trying to eat healthy oh yeah yeah yeah like how are you trying to lose weight like what are you doing yeah specifically what's what's the what's the program you're on yeah show me the program well you know I try to get to the gym more I try no no no no every [ __ ] day show me what you're doing
let's go show me what you're doing like let's let's let's form a real program and if you do that then you see the real changes that's when you see people lose like 100 pounds and start getting really healthy or write a book like you finish the book and then you read the book like holy [ __ ] this is great yeah they had a goal yeah got together with that that mindset and they went to work and if you just kind of dilly dally and you don't have a very specific goal and directions very hard to make real Headway you know it's very hard to really accomplish a thing the other thing to me I'm just speaking for myself is it's not enough to have just a generic goal a goal that anybody else could do like I'm going to lose X number of pounds or I'm going to do that I think it needs to be something creative that's coming from with you that only you could do even if it's a if it's a business you know if it's you're going to design motorcycles you're going to build a motorcycle whatever it is because then when you have a project like that like a book right you start you're going to write a book right that book has a life of its own or you make a movie or you start a business or whatever it is that thing has a life of its own and particularly if it's coming out of your heart and your inner self like for me or for anybody that writes a book nobody else could write that book whatever it is you're in your own lane tapped into something that's coming from you from your deepest self you know and as the weeks and months go by [ __ ] comes into you from all kinds of places that that you never knew you had in you and that's an amazing experience you know and by the end of that book you look at it you go I wrote that that's or you even say to yourself that's not me you know where did that come from but it is you because you did it you know or if you start a business and suddenly it becomes you know whatever it becomes I think I think it's more important than just something generic like uh you know lose weight or something like that or run a marathon not that there's anything wrong with that but if you can pull something out of your own heart out of you know that that really lives within you that's tremendous so the other thing I'll say
is at least in my experience when a book comes along and I sort of get the orders from the goddess it's always a surprise to me the subject matter of the book you know like my my first book was about golf right The Legend of Bagger fans then what came after that was Gates of Fire book about the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae never have thought of either of those books coming out of me those subjects were it wasn't like I dreamed of that my whole life so I say to myself when that happens where's this coming from you know what what is this all about you know why did that come out of me followed by that followed by that and I still don't know what it means but it's it's kind of it's fascinating you know um you look back at a thing like Bruce Springsteen's albums if you could you know write them all down on a page you go why did that come after you know Tom chode and you know the River or the Darkness at the edge of town and how did they uh I don't it's a mystery to me I don't know but but projects are great things you know yes they because they really show you who you are yeah and they give you something to concentrate your Creative Energy on absolutely they do they do around you completely and you know and even just physical fitness projects you wouldn't think that would be a creative and creative Endeavor but there's something about there's something about forcing yourself to acknowledge that your life that there's a thing in your life that you have to address that it sort of frees up the mind in some sort of a strange way you know and the concept of the Muse I think also frees up the mind in a strange way and I love the way you think about it because you I mean I don't want to disrespect it by saying you treat it like it's a God but because you do think it's a god you think it's like a goddess like I'm not I do right so I'm not saying you're silly no it seems like I'm saying you're silly like no I don't feel that at all but it does you know to like a rational person or especially to someone who's an atheist or who doesn't
believe in spirits or they would say why do you think about it that way just take accountability just show up and go to work but there is a real benefit in thinking of it as a muse and whether or not it's real or not if you think about it like it's amused if you show up at the same time every day and put in the work it will reward you as if it's a god it will it really will it will which you know who Dr Joe dispenza is ring the bell now he talks about this in a whole other vocabulary he talks about the quantum World whatever that is which is what I would call them use it's that greater self right so he looks at it from a whole other perspective he said he wants to get out of the ego leave that behind and it's psychedelic in a way too he he talks about getting into that world where you are no one and no place and no thing and the senses are gone and all that's left is vibration and awareness you know so that's his way of talking about that for me I kind of I'm sort of anthropomorphic I like to imagine a you know something with a human face you know a goddess with a little greek hairstyle that's what you think of yeah definitely so I mean but as long as you have a thing that you're concentrating on that you sort of give up your the your control of the moment too and that you respect enough that you're going to show up every day and put in the work and and address this thing like you actually have a like a prayer to the God I do yeah yeah what is the prayer can you tell us what it is yeah sure uh it's actually uh a mentor of mine a guy named Paul rink gave me this printed this out typed this out it's the prayer from Homer's Odyssey the opening invocation of the Muse as Homer himself was sitting if you look at the first 12 lines of the Odyssey that's his kind of prayer to the Muse and uh if you want me to to say it sure out loud sure okay and I say this every morning out loud Paul told me this it goes like this oh divine poisy goddess daughter of Zeus sustain for me this song I'll be getting Goosebumps as I'm saying this of the various-minded man who after he had plundered the innermost Citadel of hallowed Troy ah was made to stray grievously about the coasts of men the
sport of their Customs good and bad while his heart through all the seafaring ached with an Agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home and it kind of continues through that you know um for his fellows he strove in vain I'll just skip to the end make this tale live for us in all its many bearings of muse so um and what's interesting about that Joe there's a lot of things interesting about that but that sort of Paradigm of a story of of Odysseus the various-minded man if you look at almost any novel any movie any Legend anyone that fits you know and I've found that any novel that I've been working on I don't know I might have done 10 or 11 or something like that I say that prayer and I'm amazed that the story I'm working on fits exactly there's always somebody that's kind of been cast out into Exile and is lost and is trying to get home whatever home means and is struggling struggling struggling and so homer I'm sure he did believe in the museum I mean that was whatever it was 3 200 years ago something like that those gods and goddesses were real you know for whatever this is worth the Spartans the ancient Spartans we know they were as hardcores they could possibly be when their army would March out on a campaign and they got to the frontier of of La ketamon the name of their their their region of Greece they would take the Omens and if the Omens were unfavorable the whole Army would turn around and go home so they took it pretty seriously they and and you know I do too that seems a little ridiculous this is superstitious I mean it's like but that's the dance it's like how much control are you gonna give to this idea are you going to give it when it benefits you or are you going to give it to the point where you you you run the risk of becoming paranoid true true and then you probably they should have marched out on perhaps but all I'm saying is they took it really seriously yeah well perhaps they were aware of something that we weren't like that maybe maybe there is something to these signs and the at the very least maybe there's something to the signs
whereas if they erode your confidence in the mission and you ignore those signs then when things go sideways you won't have conviction yes in your task but if you do have signs that indicate you're on the correct path that the gods are with you then you will have confidence in your conviction yeah but wouldn't it be interesting though if it really was true I mean if there really were forces that we couldn't see that shamans or people like that can see yeah and I mean I'm not saying that's true but it would be who says that this technological scientific way that we have of looking at the world is the right way I mean overall the course of history the Egyptians but the pyramids we still can't figure out how they did it right right all that like that you had the guests on your show that said that right that Civilization there was a civilization that was destroyed yeah what if what if that what if that was true you know civilizations were tapped in this who knows well it seems very likely that it was true um I don't know if you've seen his Netflix series it's out now it's really amazing I haven't what what's it called it's called ancient apocalypse ah right right right it is all about all of the evidence that points to A Lost Civilization that was most likely destroyed by a thing called the younger dries impact Theory the younger jars impact theory was somewhere around 12 800 years ago we encountered uh comets and they slammed into Earth and probably wiped out most of civilization and reset human history ah I mean well there's real physical evidence it's an interesting idea and for the longest time he you know when he wrote the first book which was Fingerprints of the Gods he was uh widely criticized for it and dismissed as being you know a charlatan and a crazy person but now there's a lot of real physical evidence in the form of ancient structures and then also in the form of uh when the comets made impact when they do core samples and they look through the Earth at that same time period they find high levels of iridium high levels of Nano diamonds that that are formed when things impact the Earth
with great force so there's a lot of uh the Iridium thing is like it's very common in space and very rare on Earth and there's a a nice layer of it around 12 000 years ago which is also the end of the Ice Age and they think that the Ice Age ended because Comet slammed into the ice caps and melted everything almost instantaneously causing massive floods and those are the floods that were talked about in stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh Noah's Ark and I mean many many many ancient cultures have these these catastrophe myths and he thinks that that's what those all came from they all come from a very true thing huh yeah so we're talking about things that we can't prove like it's like the Flying Saucer up there yeah that maybe they are there's something to that yeah well young had theories about like what flying saucers were too that these there were manifestations I think of of the human mind and that that might be real too like whatever this this idea of like a solid world that you can only measure and put on a scale well then why is it that when you do call to the Muse and you do put in the work why are you rewarded is it simply just a a matter of because you you're disciplined yourself to work or is there something in giving up control to whatever it is that causes people to have wonderful ideas like wonderful ideas are like these little gifts like when I ever whenever I have a new idea for a bit or a new punch line it's like the universe gave me a gift yeah isn't it yeah like I have a punch line and I say it and the audience laughs so loud you're like wow the universe is giving me a gift yeah like how what is that like where's that coming from yeah I could say oh it's just me just me and my mind but there's a benefit in some strange way to saying no no no no no you're you're you you're just showing up you're showing up and you're getting out of the way you're getting out of the way and then the stuff comes through you and then you write it all out I mean we're sort of again we're kind of talking about to me the greater self or the unconscious or that thing I mean what is it like I know sometimes I uh if let's say I've been working all day on something and I go and I take a
walk at the end of the day and my mind is emptying and I'm going along and suddenly uh it'll come into my mind there's a typo on page 178 and I'll go what and of course it's right right as soon as I go back I look at it's there so some mind some level of Consciousness is operating right so below our below our level of Consciousness yeah so maybe it's just as simple as tapping into that but going more to that though is back to I would say going back to what you were just saying a couple of minutes ago Joe that there's sort of two halves of it that one half is sort of the Airy fairy half that talks about something coming from somewhere we don't know but the other half is a discipline half yeah the other half is you know it's the right brain left brain right right where we've kind of made that instrument our body our mind ready to accept that yeah you know to tune into the cosmic radio station and whatever it's coming in to remember it to take it seriously you know to put it down and then to work with it you know so it's it's to me it's like a symphony exists on another dimension of reality but it takes Beethoven here who knows how to do it knows how to bring it in knows how to open himself to it but also has the chops has the musical chops and you know the and the uh intellectual chops to put it together into a form that you and I can listen to yeah so to me it's kind of right brain and that's two things well there's a thought too right and this thought is why have people throughout time why have they gravitated towards these these ideas of deities is it just because we don't know we see lightning in the sky we assume it's Gods but there's more to it than that right there's there's a moral structure that these things give us there's a there's a thing that we get out of them that isn't ex doesn't exist in the animal world the world that crocodile snapping that pig in half yeah the world doesn't that that that they don't have any of them yeah they just kill or be killed it's tooth Fang and Claw the whole way but we Elevate we are somehow or another even though we are nature and we are animals and we are creatures of life and of the universe we somehow or another have a sense that there's more I think it's an
emerging sense and I think this emerging sense is evolving just like our ability to see things and hear things and in our ability to speak all these things are helping us understand that there's maybe more to life and that we are somehow or another connected and one of the beautiful things about your work that I think you'll probably agree with is that there's a great satisfaction in the fact that your work has helped people your work has helped me like me reading the war of art has absolutely motivated me and helped me and helped me understand things and because of that you by your work and by thinking and by getting out of your own way and summoning The Muse you've created this thing that is then everybody else's experience too and it helps us all rise up there's something to that I I think there is I mean not forgetting about myself I do think that uh there is some Force if you think of all the music that's been written right or all the books or all the podcasts or all the information that's been brought out there's got to be there's got to be a payoff for that somewhere right because it's all a gift yeah people are all trying to give something to somebody um and a lot of that gift is the alleviation of pain I think you know of broken hearts of fear of of uh self-destructive things that you read a book or you listen to a piece of music and you go you know I'm not alone I'm not the only person that's dealing with this [ __ ] you know so and so actually there's meaning to it it isn't just meaningless and I hope you're right that we are evolving the human race on the other hand I would wonder if when we go back to primitive people if they had somehow a deeper understanding or a more direct understanding problem of God or whatever who knows what you know Jesus in the wilderness and the desert what you know there's probably something to this deeper understanding because there were less burdened down by dogma and you know you mean you if you really only had the culture of the people that you were surrounded by you know that's all you had maybe maybe you had less things to consider about like I think we're very much burdened by media in the outside world I mean think about
all the the fear-mongering that goes on in the news because if it bleeds it leads whatever scary is the thing that gets the the head headline so you're constantly taking in all this data that's scaring the [ __ ] out of you like Bill Hicks used to have a great you know Bill Hicks no no great stand-up comedian who died young and was one of the most influential stand-up comedians maybe ever um so much so that there was a there was a green room at the punch line in Georgia in Atlanta and when you'd worked there in the Green Room Before You Go on stage someone had written on the walls quit trying to be Hicks there's so many comedians were so they were so blown away by him that they kind of imitated him it was really common but he had this bit about um CNN that you'd watch CNN and it was war death famine disease and he'd go outside and birds are chirping where is this [ __ ] he's like Ted Turner's making all this [ __ ] up like this yeah like in your life this didn't exist and that you you you really need to be concerned with the things you actually encounter but now we're we're not now we're encountering these enormous problems like global war or the the temperature the climates changing and it's human beings and we have to change how we extract energy and information and what are we doing like totally and why is there so much crime and why is there so much poverty and why is education so [ __ ] and why do these terrible people want to run the planet and why are they extracting money and why are they like they're almost dead they're 80 years old and they're still concentrating on the same goddamn thing that people were concentrated on when they were cave people just acquiring resources and dominating the other cultures and like we're overrun by so much extraneous data and I think that if we were not and we were living in these sort of tribal environments I think it's more in a line with a natural way of life and maybe being more in line with a natural way that the the human animal evolved to exist in that maybe you have more freedom to think about the very Source of Life The Very source of these thoughts the source of love the source of creativity and of progress and what all
that means yeah I think of sometimes like ten thousand years ago the first yogis in the Indus Valley or wherever the hell they were right where they had infinite time you would think right they were okay and they could just work postures and poses and and study you know what happens when this little when you release this little muscle here and when your spine is aligned in exactly the right way and they had like generation after generation after generation right father to son the mother to daughter or whatever what what did they get to you know the energy coming up the spine the shock was all where does all that I have no idea what that is I just have a you know a kind of a Layman's knowledge of that but think about hundreds of years of doing that of just focusing inward or the great you know meditating people that would get God only knows where they got to yeah you know and and it's you know no CNN nothing to distract them yeah it's uh and the other thing the news CNN and all that sort of stuff is really the voice of resistance you couldn't Define it more you know than what's coming out it's all fear fear fear fear fear it's all US versus them you're alone I'm alone these [ __ ] are trying to take what you've got yeah that sort of thing and because we're all weak and we give and resistance is like our native tongue we and I'm guilty of this [ __ ] too you know it comes in and I you know I'm hooked on it's washing over me and I always feel dirty whenever when it's done you know like I need to you know take a shower or get something out of that um the 24-hour news cycle is another horrible thing you know it used to be just Walter Cronkite for a half hour in the evening you know but were we less we're uninformed then that's the argument against that is that we do live in a complex and ever-connected world world and you should be informed of all of the things that are dangerous I don't know about that I mean what do we be what are we being informed of it's a very limited stuff you know it's like oh the a missile landed in Poland or it was an explosion in Poland yesterday and you could tell I'm sure in the newsrooms and the executives oh they were ecstatic when they heard that right oh this will scare the [ __ ] out of everybody right
it's you know absolutely because like you say if it bleeds it leads right right but do you think they think like that or do they think it's imperative that we get this information out because this is they may have brainwashed themselves to believe that you know to as a self-justification but they know you know it's it's gold to them or you know right you know another mass shooting that's another thing that gets me or why does that dominate the news for days right right and it's always the same stuff or even in like I I live in L.A freeway chases right A guy stole a car the helicopter's following him as he goes through you know all the communities the cops are after him yeah and like everything else that's on the air it's like blown off the air completely while we watch that I don't know it's just resistance if you ask me well it it certainly is a thing that could get away from you and you could just get completely absorbed with all the negative aspects of the world and not concentrate on your own life not not concentrate on the things you actually can control but the thing is like should you be a Civic minded person who's like concerned about yes yes stewards of the land and all that how much right how much balance right to the dominance of of whatever it is isn't that maybe what's emerging this understanding of the world as a whole maybe it's a part of a thing where we're not quite good at it yet but maybe we're getting an understanding they're overwhelmed by it now yeah yeah but that we are all connected in this way and you know there's there's also an awareness like if you buy like someone sent me a video yesterday my friend David Lucas sent me a video yesterday of uh these kids working in a factory and uh you you we kind of all know that in some countries kids work in factories but when you see a video of these Chinese kids working in a factory and you look at them like how old's that kid is that kid 12. yeah are they 11 yeah what's going on there and you see them doing this hard labor often 16 18 hours a day in this Factory is very disturbing because then it makes you think like oh my goodness like what products am I buying that are that are being made in this Factory and what am I contributing
to yeah and you can be overwhelmed with with grief and with guilt yeah but should you are you sure and buy your iPhone take it beyond that and think forget about just the children what about the grown-ups that are in factories or I was just uh earlier today I was hanging out with Ryan holiday and he was given a talk I love Ryan too he's a great guy he was he was here just a lot yeah he was given a talk to a bank group at uh at the Marriott so it's one of those ballrooms you know where there are tables table tables and there's probably 250 300 people in their Executives you know men and women and I'm thinking to myself thank God I'm not one of these guys yeah and I feel and but that is in modern industrial society what the [ __ ] is that you know what is that I mean what is that you know thank God that you have you know your podcast and all your other stuff right you would never sit still for that in your own life you would never do that right well I mean maybe I would if I was raised that way and I fell into that path which I think but it's a [ __ ] situation you know we take it for granted right because we're brainwashed from day one in kindergarten you know but uh if Plato were to walk onto this scene or an ancient Spartan or somebody would appear they'd look around and go what the [ __ ] is this you know let me get back to where I was you know yeah um yeah well then you know one of the things that I uh when I was I was reading a bunch of I got into a kick for about a year and a half where I read many books about Native American culture and the what happened when the settlers made their way across the United States and one of the things that's fascinating is there was a bunch of people whether they were Trappers or soldiers or just regular civilians that gave up on Modern Life and were incorporated into Native American cultures they wound up living with the Native Americans some of them were even kidnapped by the Native Americans when they're young yeah yeah and then re recaptured by the Americans and brought back to you know quote-unquote civilization they all wanted to go back yeah they all wanted to go yeah to to a man yeah no one from
that tribe wanted to join modern civilization but everyone from Modern civilization wanted to be a part of that tribe once that once they you know were Incorporated in it and they lived that life for a while there's something about it that was far more satisfying and far more it resonated with them in a way that you know and even then I mean this is a very primitive Society we're talking about 1860s America but that that was not exciting that was not satisfying that was not what they wanted to do they wanted to live off the land yeah they wanted to be traveling yeah you know can we go back to that I don't know I don't think we could go back to that I don't think there's any going back but it does seem to be the way that the human being is the happiest I think it's the way we evolved and these human reward systems are just sort of ingrained in the fiber of our being yeah and the the reward systems are there's a feeling that you get when you catch a fish you ever go fishing uh I have but I'm not good at it you don't have to be good at it but there's a feeling that you get when you get a big fish on the line it's so exciting well what is that feeling that feeling is you're going to be able to feed your family yeah so you're rewarded for being successful at that with not just food but also with this Rush of endorphins and these great feelings and that's what people pursue when they go fishing and it's it's so much so that there's like a perversion of it where people do catch and release fishing just to get it through so there's tournaments and these guys go out there and they cast a line and they they even have a live well on their boat where they take the fish and they put it in this aerated pool on their boat where the fish stay alive so they can weigh them and win the tournament and then they will release them back into the lake which is kind of crazy right but it's a they're they've hijacked this feeling that you get that is a part of being a person because that feeling was to reward you with being able to feed your family yeah and within the tribe yes where it's your uncle and your cousin and your daughter and your mom and everybody's together everybody's together yeah like the movie Dances with Wolves exactly you really got it really
they really hit that one with the nail on the head or that one yes yeah that's a great example of that with that movie but but you know that react the reality of that that life is so much more satisfying than the the life of being a banker like the when you're a banker I would I mean I'm not a banker but I would imagine your reward is you're always looking for new things to buy right so you're making enough money that one day you're going to get a yacht one day you're gonna get that Ferrari one day you're gonna get that jet one day you're gonna get that bigger house you're going to get to a point where you know hey you make enough money maybe you could buy an island crazy like that's like if you've got an eye like Tyler Perry has an island oh he's bawling no that guy's got an island you hear about people with an eye like that's ultimate balling yeah it's got a jet got an island got a boat gotta this gotta that and you just you know Tyler Perry is obviously creative I'm not talking about him but when talking about someone who's a a person who's just acquiring fine they're just acquiring numbers just acquiring currency and then what's your reward what do you get out of that maybe you get to play golf on the weekend and what do you do when you play golf you're talking about your objects and things and the things you're acquiring and you know have you seen the newest that oh I'm trying to get one on the waiting list you know that that's where there's their good feelings come from that is the subversion that's the hijacking of those those positive feelings of accomplishment like you get when you're fishing like for them it's accomplishing something even more difficult to get like a yacht and then it's just this trick this biological trick that's forcing them to keep slaving away under fluorescent lights for 16 hours a day I mean I don't know if we're ever going to evolve to some way where we can kind of get back to something like that in some sort of form not literally but you know I mean Sports in some way when they're not perverted into those giant things like the NFL and everything like that or at least a way of um of artificially
acting out the chase you know or the tribals you know the team you know we're all I mean that's that's a modern way that sort of TAPS into those ancient needs you know there's evolutionary needs I wonder if we can ever get to that on some culture-wide scale we certainly don't seem to be it doesn't seem like it there's billions and billions of people and it you know well it seems like there's so many people that are living that way more people are living that way than not living that way if you like did a survey of all the people and their occupation and the the enjoyment level of their job and what they look forward to I would imagine the majority of people do not enjoy what they're doing and they're sort of stuck and they're just doing a thing for money and they don't find it rewarding I would agree and they probably have a hobby or a Pastime or a love yes that they that they they're working to be able to do whatever that is you know yeah yeah that's the thing that excites them yeah you know they they get off work and they go [ __ ] ax throwing or something like whatever the thing that they're into but what is sort of interesting to me and it is kind of hopeful to be on some level Joe is that there are a lot of people that are taking those individual passions and making them businesses you know like I'll go back to the idea of Designing motorcycles you know I'm sure that you know there are guys that that are that love making up some crazy you know kind of motorcycle they're artists right and they somehow find a way to have that garage and to do it and just sell it and to make it you know and usually the whole family is part of it right the mom the daughters everybody gets into it and I think there's a lot of that going on now it's kind of a on an underground level that doesn't get into the papers or anything but I think that that gives me some hope there's a lot of kind of mom and pop people following their dreams even if they're kind of they're not you know Global dreams but they're certainly dreams that that satisfy the soul yeah I mean they certainly don't have to be Global if you're making motorcycles and you know you you start doing it in your garage
and then you post a few on social media and someone says hey I'd love to buy one of your motorcycles then all of a sudden you've got a project to sell a feeling that must be the first one you sell you know yeah and then because of the internet I mean this is like probably one of the more positive things about the internet because of the internet you people can find you and you actually can move from having this very unsatisfactory job to doing something that you truly enjoy maybe you start off as a you know you're you're making woodwork you're doing making tables and you know yeah various uh projects and you post them on Instagram and all sudden people want to buy them now you got orders you're like oh my God I'm thinking of quitting the job and then you and the wife have to have a conversation like is this sustainable yeah can we really do this and well I'll tell you what we're gonna let's give ourselves six months and I'm gonna work on it part time on nights and weekends and it'll be worth the sacrifice and you know if you I think I could really get to a point where we can have a real way of life that is very satisfying like if you go from being a person who works in a bank this boring unsatisfying version of reality that so many people are trapped in to all of a sudden you're painting and your paintings are selling and you you have a gallery opening and your stuff is selling and you're like oh my goodness I think I can make a living painting like what a much more satisfying and exciting way of life that is yeah I mean I'm I'm a Believer as you know from what I've talked about the Muse and stuff like that that through each of us is Flowing an underground river and that river is unique to us and it's our creativity let's say it's the guy with the motorcycles or it's a guy that wants to paint low rider cars that just has our design low rider cars or something like that and that is flowing through us and if we don't do it if we stay working in the bank or doing whatever it is if we if we yield to our resistance and our fear and we don't do that that River doesn't go away that underground river doesn't go away it flows into another Channel flows into a negative channel right and it starts to [ __ ] us
up physically emotionally psychologically but if we do let it flow and pretty soon the whole family gets involved in it right and we've now created now this energy which you could call God energy it's coming from some other place right is is helping everybody everybody's feeding off of it and I'm encouraged that there are more people doing that than I think there ever were because of the internet like you say because of the fact that you can find a market you can let people be aware of what you're doing and people will come to you and will buy your [ __ ] so God bless everybody that's doing it you know everybody that does it don't stop yeah I don't know if it's for everybody because there's some people out there that truly don't have interests they don't have a thing that excites them which is very unfortunate and what is that is that nature or nurture I'm not so sure about that I kind of believe that you know maybe not everybody has like a specific art that they want to do but they have some gift you know I'm thinking about a friend of mine a woman who's been a really good friend of mine forever and has never really worked she's always been married she's never had a job but I realized watching her life that her calling if she's like one of those people that of her extended family and friends she's the one that holds everything together she's the one that when somebody gets pregnant over here an unwanted pregnancy they go to my friend and she kind of pulls them together somehow if there's a death in the family if there's something like that right so that's her that's her calling maybe she's not making movies or something like that but that's her gift and it's a real gift you know and uh so I do believe that everybody's got something like that well that was just probably a traditional role in communities yeah it probably was yeah they probably had a name for it you know yeah maybe she'd be the shaman s or something like that yeah and it's very valuable I mean if you're a person that's in a troubled spot and there's a person who's really good at navigating troubled spots in the community like that's a very valuable position and for that person who is that person it's
probably very satisfying to be able to help all those people yeah and the weird what's sort of a little sad about that from my friend is that she really doesn't get the credit that she deserves she should get a lot of credit they should have a dinner for her once a year you know they should come to her house and I know even she has saved me at least three times from bad [ __ ] you know by just intervening you know and just coming in and saying no don't worry I'll take care of this I'll take care of it and she has and I know she's done it for many many others you know nice yeah that's that's a thing yeah and it doesn't have to be a thing that you get a paycheck for yeah it doesn't have to be a thing where you get a little plaque on your desk yeah and it's probably a tribal thing right in Dances with Wolves there probably was you know one of the women that was doing that thing or a man whatever yeah well uh this the title of uh my last tour was a sacred clown because there's a there's a role in the there's other people called the the hayoka and the heoko was to make fun of all the things that were there all the whether it was the biggest Warrior or the chief or everything they made fun of everything because they the the idea was that anything that could not be mocked was [ __ ] ah and you had to figure out what was [ __ ] that's great it's important to know what was real and what was important and what what was truly significant and if you couldn't make fun of it it was like hey don't make fun of that don't make fun of me like you knew that person was inflated yeah there you go and and there was a way of like letting out the hot air and you know of all the wind bags and sort of letting them know that you know they're kind of full of [ __ ] that was a valuable role in the culture yeah so now you have you know comedians yeah Stephen Colbert somebody like that right that takes a piss out of somebody that's great yeah that's a role it's definitely that's a role that's not uh not often acknowledged and rewarded and should be yeah the role of a counselor or someone who can counsel you through things the role of someone who can sort of coach you through life because they've gone
through the same [ __ ] that you've gone through and they have some valuable information they can share to make your journey quicker and easier and maybe you can now impart that to young people that you see coming up that are struggling in a very similar way yeah there's what do you see for yourself too like on your podcast do you feel like you're performing a kind of a service like that I think I think you are well that's very nice of you I don't think I think you absolutely are I'm sure uh people benefit from it I benefit from don't be too modest no no I'm not but I don't think of it that way I genuinely I think if I did I it would just get it might be inflated yeah I would just get in the way there's no value for me like pondering like what great things I've done ah the zero value in that in fact there's just nothing but pitfalls that's there's value and and I'd have the same issue myself you know but there's value in in valuing what you are giving and what you are doing and really just not not inflating it but seeing it for what it is you know God bless you you are doing a lot of good [ __ ] well thank you but I don't I don't think that's something to concentrate on my from for with my mind and the way my ego and my who I am as a human how that works there's no value in that the value I'm the same way I mean I know that I'm helping people you know with my sort of War of Art and stuff like that but I also don't want to think about that and I certainly don't want to be in that role yeah but I but I must acknowledge you know if I you know say okay I'm doing a little something good here so you know okay I think the reason well I know I'm not doing bad which is nice but I I think the the value is in where where I would I do my best is when I just think about the thing I'm doing and try to do my best that's it to think about like look how good you've done that [ __ ] is no good that's no good that's like really I tell comedians in particular say stop stop reading comments don't read comments and don't even read positive comments because positive comments you think are good but they're not good because now now you're like captured by other people's praise and opinions of you and all that like that's just wasted time you're just
getting in your own way like you should know if you're doing good work and you should know if you know there's a little bit of feedback is good A little bit of positive or negative and you get to oh people didn't like that why didn't they like that you know what they were right this is why they didn't like it yeah it was kind of sloppy oh maybe I should have taken more time with that or maybe I should have thought that out better or maybe I should have looked at it from other perspectives and you can genuinely learn and grow from that no doubt but at a certain point in time it's too much and it you get it gets into away the positive or the negative and I've seen people crippled by negative critiques and negative comments and all these people with their emotional poison just spraying it on everybody they come into contact with and those are not necessarily the type of people the type of people that do that are not the type of people that you would be happy to interact with those people that say hateful things to people online they're genuinely like damaged and unhealthy people that's the only way you're capable of saying horrible things to people you don't even know online you have to be damaged like you were saying that we wanted to pretend that we're separate and that when you do something evil to a person that has no effect on you but that's not true it most certainly has an effect where we are all connected and when people are you know leaving horrible comments on someone's YouTube video or horrible comments on Twitter like they are damaged people they're deeply damaged people and they're trying to like get you to feel the way they feel they feel like [ __ ] so they want you to feel like [ __ ] and you can just simply not take that in don't don't get involved in that but also don't get involved in the praise either don't start believing the [ __ ] and believe in your own hype I just concentrate on doing things I concentrate on just trying to get better and it's nice when people show up for my shows and it's nice the podcast is successful that's great but I don't think about it at all I know I just work huh now I would say just as a sidebar here about the people that write hateful things
that that's their own resistance that's where that's coming from like if they see a comic that's succeeding or anybody else what's really happening is they have a dream whether they could articulate it or not and they're not enacting it in any way they're not doing a sober October in any way so they see you or they see somebody else succeeding and it's like a terrible reproach to them it's like how can Joe do that [ __ ] they don't it's on the unconscious level they're not aware of it right yeah he's doing something and I'm not and so they really hate themselves and they project that outward and I know this is true because I've got no shitty letters you know from people and shitty emails from people and when I've engaged with them at all which I rarely do it's only one or two exchanges before they'll admit you know I really felt I really hated you because I thought you were doing something I've got a book in me and I wish I had written and I hadn't written and that's why and then and and then they'll actually will become friendly you know and I'm so sorry I wrote that to you I really didn't mean writing it to you so I think that's uh if you think about the phenomenon of resistance on a sort of national or Global level like um it's a big thing yes you know a lot of polarization what we call that [ __ ] really comes on an individual level from that sort of thing from people that know they have a gift or a dream or something and no even unconsciously that they're not doing it and they hate themselves for that they feel bad you know as anybody would right I'm drinking too much I'm getting fat I'm not doing you know and so but it's impossible for most people to accept that about themselves and say oh I'm really you know I'm really [ __ ] up you know so they project it onto some other group immigrants you name it right yeah this is none of the tools yet yeah everyone's provided them with the tools yeah it's a great quote I forget who said it but I've said it Ad nauseam that um all criticism is the tragic result of unmet needs hmm there's like something more to that who wrote that quote someone wrote that let's see if we can find that because there's some there's more to it but that
resonates that that's the reason why people get shitty it's like I always say like the people that are killing it in life they're not you think LeBron James is leaving YouTube quotes you think LeBron James is going on comments and and [ __ ] with people every criticism judgment diagnose and diagnosis and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need and this is Marshall Rosenberg ah what a great quote that is such a great quote now I would take it a Step Beyond that and it seems like when you say an unmet need that the person is waiting for someone else or some other Force to supply their quote-unquote need I would say they aren't they aren't addressing that need themselves they aren't aware of it and they aren't doing anything about it yeah and that's where that anger and that hatred comes from click there where it says the top 25 because it goes even further um there's there's another at the root of every tantrum and power struggle are unmet needs and that's another Marshall Rosenberg quote I don't like the whole phrase unmet needs because it feels to me like we're we're projecting out to somebody else expecting them to come and satisfy us in some way you know and that that's not the answer I don't think no I don't the answer is sober October and you yourself addressing that need whatever it is oh most certainly that's the answer but I think by saying unmet needs is like they feel like they're supposed to get something that's true I agree with that yeah but it says what what is going to address that well that's one of the things that makes me feel like when I'm on the right path that all I'm thinking about is what I'm doing and I'm not even remotely concerned with getting praise or getting any any anything else for it because all I'm thinking about is doing the thing because I don't have unmet needs so I've I've my cup is full so all I'm thinking about is the work you know like I don't want to be recognized I'd rather not be recognized I'd rather be able to sneak through a restaurant and have no one knew who I am that's one of the things I like about traveling overseas it's nice I could just slip around like so that is because I've been doing the
thing that I want to do for so long all my needs are met in that regard the the accomplishments have been cemented and all the praise and all the success it's all great but now I don't think about it at all instead of like living in that world of constantly trying to get more and more and more praise and becoming megalomaniac I'd go the other way all I think about is just what I'm doing uh-huh yeah I'm I'm the same way well that's definitely a Believer from that uh the work is its own reward and when you're when you're doing it right whatever it is making motorcycles whatever it is because it's tapped into that other level you're getting a salary in some coin that the gods have minted you know and you don't need a salary from from the regular World well it's also from a resource management perspective it's much more efficient to to think that way because you you never thought about it that way you'll get more things done and you'll get out of your own way and that's a big issue the getting out of your own way is a big issue you know how would you define that Jill when you say you know I know exactly what you mean but can you articulate that what does it mean when you're in your own way well you your ego and your perception of yourself and how you're viewed by the world is this like fluctuating thing and you think about it too often and it gets in the way and maybe it flavors your art in a way where you're actively trying to get more respect or trying to change other people's perceptions of you and alter it you're getting in your own way and it's transparent to other people it makes your art poor it makes it it your ego leaks over into whether it's your music or your writing whatever it is you're making and you get in your own way like there's nothing sadder than someone who's brilliant at something they're really good like say they're great at making automobiles you know they make the best cars but when you talk to them about it they brag about it so much it grosses you out you don't want to buy their car like [ __ ] that guy in his car you know he's a genius but you know I don't want to talk to him he's annoying like that you're getting in your own way and they ask you Joe were you at any stage of your life in your own oh yes
and yes how did you was there a moment when you got out of your own way I am uh my worst critic that's the best aspect about I don't hate myself but I am 100 my worst critic so I don't allow myself to [ __ ] myself and so if I have like uh mediocre results or unfavorable results I take long hard looks at like what's causing that and if you do that long enough you'll get to the thing like ah I'm gross like I did this and that's gross I said that that's gross like why'd I say it like that like what's wrong with me I can't do that like I have to really understand what that is and why why it's coming up and then figure out and luckily for me because I'm of physical fitness Enthusiast and I'm so obsessed with that I have like these uh anxiety alleviation methods that are tried and true and in doing that and taxing the body in the way that I do it allows me this great Insight because those moments of physical like exercise and martial arts training they're so uncomfortable so difficult that it makes the other things seem much more trivial and it makes them seem more there this the stakes are lower they seem more clear for what the actual issue is and then I S you know I assess I figure out what I'm doing wrong and I try to do it better and over time I've realized there's certain patterns and one of those patterns is you get in your own way you you you rely on your own ego you you you boost up your ego you're looking to brag you're looking to do this you're looking to like there's you get in your own way you know everybody knows when they're in their own way so if I'm hearing you right your it's introspection in a way right yes you're looking at yourself say when you say gross and saying I'm in my own way my ego's taken over here and so you're that sort of witness mentality is saying I gotta stop that right yes how can I stop that how can I so that's how you did it huh yeah or do it so there wasn't any like specific breakthrough moment or anything where you psychedelics helped tremendously for sure how because they dissolve the ego when when you do um a very strong psychedelic trip one of the most profound aspects of is the ego is completely dissolved you're faced with such beauty and and wisdom of undeniable
power that whatever that thing is that you encounter in the Psychedelic Dimension is so humbling and it dissolves your ego and brings you into it and for whatever amount of time while you're tripping you relinquish your grip on the material world and you take into account all these ideas there's this overwhelming theme of love and connectivity that most people have from these experiences and then when you come out of them the the idea of bragging or the idea of like dwelling on on your accomplishments or looking for praise seems so Preposterous it seems so ridiculous because you've got such an expansive perspective on things now that you your own self looked really tiny and ridiculous right it's expansive but it's also there's a physical there's a physical act of dissolving the ego it's like it really does take the ego away those psychedelics one of the best things that they do is they dissolve whatever that that gross it is inside of you that makes you you know get in your own way they they help you see things in a far more introspective a far clear perspective and they they let you look at things from a top-down view now do you ever think Joe that when you're in that state that prior civilizations if we think of them as advanced civilizations like the ancient Egyptians or somebody like that that they somehow were able to live in that world in a or at least in a more more time per day oh there's clear evidence if that's the case yeah I mean we talked about it with Graham Hancock the other day on the podcast and he was talking about the Blue Lotus the Blue Lotus is uh is documented that the ancient Egyptians use this particular psychedelic um there's there's much evidence that the ancient Greeks in fact Brian murarescu who's been on the podcast before wrote a book called The immortality key it's a great book about how these ancient societies and the illusidian Mysteries they drank wine that was laced with psychedelics and this has all been proven now because they found the vessels of these wines
and they tested positive for ergon and so they didn't just when we think of wine we think of just alcohol but no there's this wine actually had psychedelics mixed in and if you think about it like from those the those that Enlightenment period this is the birth of democracy this is the birth of modern civilization as we know it it came from these wise people getting together and having these rituals and that this has now opened up a field of study at Harvard because of his book and because of the success of the book and his discussions of it it's it's really amazing stuff but it points to that people throughout human history in order to Grant to gain great insight and wisdom have turned to these what they call plant medicines ah you know I in my Greek books of course you read about and research the lucinian Mysteries yeah and it's so I mean maybe you know more about I I think they were such so secret that it's not like there's any book that you can read right that what they did who knows what they did well because it was all squashed by the Romans uh the the the the the they squashed all that and they wound up moving to other countries in Europe there's great evidence that they moved out of Greece they moved into Spain and that they they had these rituals in other countries as well and so they found these similar type of reliefs and similar pottery and inside the vessels they've also found this ergod and wine and various psychedelics that were you know there's Trace residue of them so have you studied the hermetics at all no ah are you interested yeah have you heard about them at all please uh have you heard of a book called A cabalian no well is to be right up your street the hermetics were Egyptians it's what the fruit where the Freemasons came from and the Alchemists and and the people in the Middle Ages who preserved you know the culture when the Dark Ages came and the hermetics comes from the from Hermes trismicistos Hermes Thrice great who was supposedly the wisest man or Avatar or God from the Egyptian period and they the kibalian was their book I don't know if the actual cabalian still exists there are sort of I have like one little short book of it but they had a whole deep philosophy that is a lot like this you
want me to talk about this for a second yeah please I mean there were like her Medics had like seven principles so see if I can remember what they are ah the first one is that you and I have no physical existence as as entities We Exist entirely as thoughts in the mind of the all or God sort of like the analogy they use is like in the mind of Dickens is Mr Macabre and pip and David Copperfield and all that and that you and I only exist as thoughts in the mind of God and oh they believe that the Universe was entirely mental that's what this was that there really is no physical existence and that it was all vibrational and that one of the things they believed was that there's no such thing as opposites heat and cold are not opposites fear and courage are not opposites they are just points on a Continuum and that the difference between fear and courage is entirely in the vibration and so this is where the Alchemy came in they believed that if they could change their vibration or change the vibration of lead they could change it into gold and they had their other things was you know everything vibrates the other thing was that everything swings on a pendulum everything goes back and forth from one thing to another and they also believe that everything is male and female that everything is created comes from the union of male and female in the highest levels anyway it's great [ __ ] and uh you know at one point apparently in ancient Egypt or before that this was you know every this is what they believed you know and it somehow got wiped out and or just held on in various little pockets of the occult knowledge and stuff like that so it's the ancient hermetics and the book is the cabalian k-y-b-a-l-i-o-n um I think they're fascinating [ __ ] I think there are many cultures that we're tapping into this yeah at some point in time even Joe dispenza that I was talking about before what he talks about is when you get to that state of no mind no thing no presence that the only thing that exists is vibration and consciousness and that would be straight out of hermetic philosophy
yeah those reoccurring themes they exist in so many cultures yeah and uh you know one of the things that Graham Hancock brings up that's really fascinating is that as we develop more of an understanding of human uh Evolution we realize that anatomically similar humans we go far back but back far further than we originally thought with the original assessment was that like we I think remember when I was in high school they thought it was like 50 000 years ago like that anatomical human sort of emerged 50 000 years ago and then human civilization emerged like six thousand years ago and now they're finding all this evidence of advanced civilization like Gobekli tape which is this uncovered uh site in Turkey this massive structure that existed 11 000 something years ago and that this was the first ever thing that they could date that they know for sure is older than the Pyramids by quite a bit at least older than the conventional dating of the parents and so there was Advanced civilization that was capable of building these immense huge structures giant pillars with these these these huge um Stone things that had cut into them reliefs of animals that were three-dimensional which is very complicated because instead of carving them into the stone they carved the stone around them so they had like these lizards and these creatures that were crawling up these stones that they had moved they'd cut the stone out and we're talking about like 20 foot tall massive hundreds of tons I mean I don't know how much these things weighed huge things like very Advanced people that were capable of construction methods and they they did these concentric circles with these things and they don't know why they did it they don't know what they were doing with them but that if human anatomically similar humans existed half a million years ago that gives them so much time to evolve and become that and this catastrophe Theory sort of makes sense because as there was probably some really Advanced thinking and really Advanced science that we don't totally understand because our science has gone in this sort of uh Industrial Age technological Direction where their science probably went in a
completely different direction concentrating on vibrations of things and sound and and probably some lost technology that we don't understand yeah but we may in the future and that it'll probably put the pieces together but it's taken us thousands and thousands of years to relearn things that perhaps these people that lived ten thousand twenty thousand years ago had already figured out yeah I mean if you think about somebody like like LeBron James somebody that is at a level right an amazing level what if there were guys like this that were thinkers and philosophers or meditators or whatever they were and they were at that level of being able to tap into whatever it is vibration we don't know anything about it right the elite of the elite of things yeah what could they do right particularly I mean it always seemed to me crazy that the human race only goes back 150 000 years or 300 yeah can't be right can't be right that there was you know just only the great apes and all of a sudden 300 000 years ago 150 000 years ago just it doesn't make sense well there's a recent discovery I'll send this to Jamie they found evidence that human beings were cooking fish seven hundred thousand plus years ago ah which is really that makes a lot of sense oh yeah it's it's uh here I'll send this to Jamie it's really wild because um and it was trout almondine amazing [ __ ] no it was Chilean sea bass uh no that's not really a sea bass um 780 000 years ago that's what uh that's the evidence um yeah it's fascinating stuff yeah the other thing is how much of those ancient civilizations were about you found it Jamie found it early humans may have cooked fish in ovens 780 000 years ago remains of fish teeth that cheers me up remains a fish teeth at an archaeological site in Israel appear to have been cooked with controlled heat rather than directly exposed to fire so that's very advanced in in our sense of like what people were capable of doing 780 000 years ago we've developed a methodology that allows us to identify cooking in relatively low temperatures as opposed to burning she says you
cannot immediately correlate the control of fire with cooking unless you show that the food has been cooked wow researchers have previously suggested that humans were cooking meat 1.5 million years ago based on the discovery of charred animal remains but that doesn't necessarily mean people were heating food before eating it says Zohar evidence of charred material doesn't mean cooking it just means the food was thrown into the fire zohard and her colleagues have studied a 780 000 year old settlement in geshar Benoit how do you say that I don't try that in Israel's Northern Jordan River Valley no human remains have been found there but based on its age and the stone tools at the site the inhabitants are most likely to have been Homo erectus wow amazing amazing stuff yeah so you know if you think of those early humans and like when did they become anatomically modern humans was it half a million years ago whatever it was it gives us a lot of room to learn things and figure things out before you know natural catastrophes white civilization back to the Stone Age again yeah the other thing I was just saying was that if you think about these what we know about these civilizations is there was Stone seems to have a lot to do with this [ __ ] right there whether it's South America you know mesoamerica whatever it's Stone pyramids and stone this and stone that and stone and supposedly is a vibrational material like a uh like something that could be the equivalent of a battery that could hold you know at least I've heard that you know we're talking about you know imaginative stuff here but who knows what they knew about you know it gets very well without it it does but it's you know every time something is disproved like a when uh they said oh uh Homer's description of Troy in the in the Iliad was a bunch of [ __ ] right it couldn't have been that big right and then schliemann digs up the remains of Troy and it's exactly like Homer said right the gate is right here the other gate is here so every time we think oh these previous generations couldn't have known that and then we finally dig it up we go they were Way Beyond what we thought yeah the discovery of Troy's was very eye-opening because now you have to take into
account well what about Atlantis uh we talked about Atlantis was that real too was there a really yeah we're getting out there Joe yes yeah why are we going in this place I don't know yeah well I mean we human beings are constantly innovating and constantly improving and if there was a time in history where we had achieved some immense level of through some method that we don't understand of advanced civilization and then you know it all got wiped out and this is the new manifestation of human creativity and Ingenuity and Innovation it's become this thing that we we see now but we think this is the only way oh this is as good as people have ever been yeah but we're just ignorant to the Past yeah very possible yeah yeah and interesting very very very interesting like that show that Graham Hancock has made I believe it's a number two Show on Netflix now which is giant I mean that's pretty crazy that a an educational show about an ancient catastrophe has become the number two Show on Netflix and what makes you wonder why do contemporary audiences respond to that so much you know I think it resonates with us I think it makes sense you know yeah we're here and we go there's something to this you know yeah well at least there could be he describes this as a species with amnesia ah yeah I think sometimes it feels like that doesn't yeah I mean I'm a Believer in previous lives well we're getting far out here so I sort of sometimes think that that Amnesia is from lives that we've lived you know maybe it's that too maybe it's history and from lives that we live maybe they're all combined in some sort of a strange and unknown way yeah now when you say you're a believer in unknown lives like what specifically do you mean um I mean I mean I mean past lives rather uh I just sort of feel like you know if you look at uh let's say you have three kids in your family each one comes out of the womb as a fully formed personality wouldn't you agree with that yeah it's not like you can mold them into whatever it is right right they already are something and you also feel and I feel it's about myself like they come into the world with their own issues right there's something you know one of them may be angry one of them may be very peaceful you know but
so where does that come from I mean it would just pop out of nowhere yeah I mean uh so I mean I love this [ __ ] just because it's stories you know I love to make up stories right but like in my book The Legend of bag of France it really was about previous lives you know it was about uh it went back to the continent of mu and all that sort of stuff and as I'm writing this and it's coming out of me I don't even know I believe it until I see it on the page so it does by the time I was through writing that I sort of felt like you know I believe in this I think there's something to it and I I also believe for whatever this is worth that we don't go through previous lives just as solitary individuals I believe that we might have like a group of four or five Souls that are kind of migrating with us through these lives you know and have this you know like a constellation of souls that have a same we might have a mentor that's with us you know through various lives again I can't prove this in any way but I sort of I sort of have that uh have that feeling you know where's that feeling come from when you say you have that feeling how does that feeling manifest itself in your mind I find myself writing it right and I don't know where it's coming from and as I'm writing it I feel like that makes sense to me this doesn't sound like [ __ ] to me this sounds like you know reality and uh so again I can't base this on anything right other than I'm sort of inspired with it from somewhere you just saying it resonates it resonates with me it rings true to me what do you think the soul is boy that's a great question I mean it's that it's that uh it certainly exists right there is such a thing as a soul even though we can't weigh it right we can't find it we can't put it under a microscope but there's certainly something there other than the ego right and everything I've been talking about today about that underground river and the greater Dimension that's to me is is soul and if we live by Soul we're going to be happy and we're going to be productive and if we dismiss Soul we're [ __ ] you know if we stay in that ego we're [ __ ] and
um you know I think what you were talking about earlier Joe about uh you don't want to get in that place of I'm I'm listening to uh praise or blame or anything like that that's that's our Instinct this the soul I think doesn't have anything to do with that doesn't give a [ __ ] about that right just as operating you know it's got its own North Star that it's going toward you know that's that's what it seems like to me and it seems like it's much wiser than we are I mean we I think when we tap into that we tap into like .0001 and it blows our mind it's so much to it you know I think there's you know it's it's some greater Cosmic Unity I don't know what but it just seems but it's real you when so when you write this is like a repeating theme that resonates in your mind yes that leads you to believe there's truth to this yes or at least it's a great story you know yeah it makes it makes a story it's certainly a great story but it also exists throughout human culture for some strange reason it's something that we've concentrated on it's part of Hinduism great great civilizations and religions that have been around for tens of thousands of years believe it absolutely yeah it's not Airy fairy to them and do you think that they came to that conclusion from the same sort of process of when you think about it or you contemplate it and write about it it seems to resonate and then when you say it to other people they're like yeah there's something there I mean if you bring in psychedelics or what you were talking about about who knows what the ancient Incas and got all these color cultures whatever they used right to get to that state where they were seeing you know the global thing Beyond everything maybe they really experienced that you know maybe they could travel back and relive those lives you know um you know there's a in the bhagavad-gita there's one great stanza where Krishna was God is saying to Arjuna the great warrior who's his who's his Protege says you and I have had many lives Arjuna I remember all of mine but thou Dost not so I don't know I mean it's it's a great religion it's been around a long time they believed it I
was having a conversation with someone when we were talking about this concept of imagine if you lived the same life over and over and over again until you got it right and because some people do believe in that and this person I was talking to was like God it's terrifying and I go is it though like if you're living this life right now like and it's all throughout your life you've been living this life and just having fun and doing things and having fun with your friends and living your life and having a family does it doesn't it isn't don't you like it you like it right if you're doing it right you should enjoy it so why would it bother you if that goes on forever isn't that weird like you want it to go on while you're alive but the the concept of it going on forever and ever and ever and ever until you get it right terrifying to people but why why is it terrifying if the current existence if you're living in the moment your current existence like you don't want this to end like most people are scared of dying so you don't want this to stop but why we why are you scared of living the same life over and over and over again until you get it right if you're not scared of living this life right now I mean I guess you're scared of the idea of sort of stasis that it never changes right that you're not getting anywhere because you get better but the idea of if you have an issue that you're working on the idea that it takes a few lifetimes to do it I don't think there's anything scary about that it's kind of a a story that has a season one and a season two and a season three yeah but there's a there's a terrifying connection there's a terrifying feeling when you you contemplate infinite time an infinite time being Stephen pressfield you know that's scary yes see this is you forever like what is that why does that why does that freak people out but it does I got a question for you Joe do you believe that there's a moral Dimension to the universe the moral the moral Dimension is there Justice somewhat now this goes along with previous lives right if you think about
previous lives you think usually that there's maybe a crime you committed a crime 25 lives ago and you're sort of paying coming to an understanding you know hopefully you evolved to a point where you've reached forgiveness or whatever it is right but that would imply that there was a moral Dimension to the universe that it couldn't you actions have consequences right there's Karma do you believe that or do you believe that everything is just you know you do what you do and it doesn't matter I I don't know you know I mean when you go over human history and think of the horrible people that have succeeded and lived long lives you know you think of Genghis Khan and what what he did and like there didn't seem to be a lot of negative karma coming his way he seemed to have maybe not in that life maybe right maybe in the next life he suffers maybe he I mean his life over and over again the ancient Greeks they certainly believed that they were the Fates you know and that there were these gods and goddesses that were enacting Justice you know one way or another so I'd like to think that's true but that gives us a feeling of order yeah there's rules to things but are we just making it up or is it real that's I mean what do you think I don't know huh I don't know um I definitely feel like from an individual's perspective if you do something like say if you steal money from someone you know if you're not a sociopath you're going to feel guilt from that it's going to haunt you if you lie in in your constantly repeating that line trying to get people to be convinced of that lie that is going to haunt you and I think it's going to rob you of the present it's going to rob you being in the moment you're always going to be burdened down by this feeling that you have that you are a fraud or you are a thief or you're you're a bad person you've done bad things but you stealing that person's money you've ruined the fact that they've worked really hard and
saved it and you just came along and snatched it so you've done this horrible selfish thing and maybe you feel Justified because the world has [ __ ] you over you know and so you feel like it's okay to break the window of that store and jump in there and loot and take everything that you feel like I want that why don't I get that and everyone else is going to do it let's go let's go do it but I think in doing that you can't appreciate yourself as like uh an accomplished product you're not you're not a you're not a finished thing you're not you're not what you wish you were you're not admirable you're not anything that people would look at and go wow I wish I was that guy nobody's nobody's like wow I wish I was that Thief wish I was that liar you know nobody thinks like that they they want to be someone who other people admire now I wonder is that because we were taught that by our parents or by our schools or is that natural you know do we naturally feel if we hurt some other kid that oh I did something wrong you know I I I wonder I don't know I think it goes back to this thing that we are all connected and that in doing something hurtful or evil to someone you are causing pain and and again unless you're a sociopath that pain you feel you feel that pain and you you get this lesson out of that and you're supposed to get that as your child you say something mean to someone and then they they feel bad then you feel bad like why'd I say that and then you learn like don't do that because you're you're spreading negativity you're pushing out this emotional poison on people and it does affect the quality of your own life and because we are connected and that's the evidence that we're connected but I don't know you know it's just it's I I can't say I believe anything I say there's clear evidence to be in my life that when I'm Kinder and nicer and more friendly and doing things in a better way and things work out better and it seems like my interactions with people are better I feel better I feel better about myself and I feel genuinely like I'm on the right path when I'm more disciplined when I get work done when I
show up and respect the Muse I feel better so I feel like my my life resonates correctly with me I feel like I'm like like the universe is saying exactly that's how you're supposed to do it that's what you do you know you do the right thing eat the right Foods get your sleep live healthy be nice put in the work overcome resistance get your creativity going there's there's you feel better in living like that ah I think there's probably something to that that people throughout history have gravitated towards these sort of inherent life lessons that exist in in moving through this world the right way the correct way and that's probably why all of these religions have a moral structure they have an ethical structure and they're teaching you how to live your life with the least amount of harm to others and the most amount of service to God and service to the people around you now what what I wonder sort of is are those religions to teach that which is every religion inculcating that into kids and into everybody as they grow because the human being by nature is Savage and evil and selfish and so this it there needs to be uh indoctrinated or conditioned or raised or socialized just a question I don't know the answer because I certainly as a teller of stories or movies books whatever they books and movies all have a moral Dimension right there's always something there's payback or if there isn't payback when you walk if the if the good guy if the bad guy prevails in the end you walk out and you go oh boy that's you know right you know they're just trying satisfying you know so but then the question sort of is are the artists who are writing these things is it to because they know that human beings are basically rotten and don't have that moral Dimension it's I don't know the answer it's a really good question I think human beings are most certainly capable of being rotten and human beings are most certainly capable of being great and being kind and being generous and we're aware of both of those things and one we admire we admire the Martin Luther King Juniors of the world that we admire the philosophers and the The Poets and the musicians that Inspire us and the people that live their lives in
a moral and ethical way those are the people that we admire those are the people that we aspire to be like no one's aspiring to be like Hitler you know like the the people that live their life in a horrible guys well yeah they're probably [ __ ] up too yeah but you know what I'm saying like it's not like uh it's it's not attractive to a healthy person the healthy person is attracted to the person who is succeeding and who is uh they're improving and they're representing an admirable life that could you you can aspire to try to live in a similar manner that's that's what resonates with most healthy people uh-huh but then also there's people that grow up in entirely unhealthy ways if you're living in some sort of a war-torn terrifying country that's run by dictators and all you've ever seen is violence it's probably very very very difficult to develop this sort of moral structure yeah and ethical structure I guess the story of Job in the Bible is that right where the bed is you know if we break this guy's job's balls badly enough you know he will turn against you God and he will curse you let's put him to the test yeah right so I don't know it's an issue that uh yeah we don't know what the but it does connect to the idea of previous lives are we working something out over the over various lifetimes yeah to try to come to some understanding or is there only this this one life I I don't know but just the fact that we have this one life just the fact that this one life itself is so bizarre so bizarre and so if I always say that if life wasn't real if life was a psychedelic trip it would be the wildest psychologist ever it'd be so bizarrely strange if we didn't exist in a physical material world and there was a drug that you could take that allowed you to exist in a physical material world and interact with modern society it would be such a trip yeah oh my God this is so difficult to navigate what a bad trip I'm having but we we we do exist at least as far as we're aware we do so the idea that we that this is the only life you get like says who like this is weird enough as it
is like why why is it so extra weird if you've lived a thousand lives and that every time you're born you are picking up where you left off yeah or you are born into a a new situation where you are now going to be the victim of all the injustices that you caused in the world and then you'll have a chance in the life after that to live a more righteous life but you're going to have to now go through this and try to find peace in the lessons that like say if you're a banker and you stole everybody's money you're going to come back as a person who gets [ __ ] over by the government it's [ __ ] over by Banks and you're going to experience this immense frustration I mean there's there's a lot of people that believe that the people that live in terrible lives right now they just get awful rolls of the dice and their life sucks is because of what you've done in past lives and the people that are extremely fortunate is because of the positive seeds that you sowed in your past life which is a very I don't know I believe that it's interesting too yeah I don't know what I believe you know I mean it's fun to talk about yeah but it's just so much of it is just like who the [ __ ] you know maybe it'll all come clear at some at some point hopefully I don't know I don't know either um but I I do know like what makes you feel good right what makes you feel good is community love friendship and then the the satisfaction of work the satisfaction of overcoming what you call resistance of uh having discipline in your life my friend Jocko he uh has this quote discipline equals Freedom ah yes it's a great question what's his book yeah well it's true yeah it is true yeah and that's a whole other sort of mystery is why did God or whoever designed the universe make it such that in order for you to feel good about yourself and whatever you have to do something that's hard yeah you know and if you do something that's easy if you eat sugar if you do whatever it is you're not going to feel that why does it work that way but it's true it does that's an absolute rule it certainly does with physically with humans you know the the people that I know that are the most miserable are obese sedentary indulgent and they are emotional messes
they're just a wreck of angst and anxiety and they're filled with medications and they're constantly going to the doctor for a new thing and they they haven't made that connection they just live this awful anxiety-ridden life and they think that this is life because that's their Baseline they don't know what it's like to live a life that's free of that and even those who have overcome that that temptation is always there always that that Cliff is always there yes an alcoholic one drink and it's over you know and not even for people that have oh just people that have overcome that but for people like myself that have never fallen prey to it like I've never had a sedentary life but still to me like every time I go to the gym I'm like oh boy here we go yeah like I know now that I just have to do it and I just it doesn't matter how I feel I'm going to do the work and because I've just established that when I get there as soon as I get there it's go time let's go and then once I get moving and once I'm three sets in and four sets in and I'm covered in sweat now we're fine now we know what to do and now I embrace the exertion and all is good but I have to do it all over again the next day and the next day is the same thing my friend David Goggins who's probably one of the most disciplined humans that's ever lived he talks about he goes he goes he goes It Ain't Easy he goes when I see my shoes in the morning sometimes I stare at those [ __ ] for a half hour but even he even even he he's scared his sneakers for a half hour but then he'll go run 50 miles you know and that's the difference between a person who can overcome and a person who gives in to those feelings and some people have never overcome so they don't even know the beautiful feeling of accomplishing something that's difficult because they've never done it they've sort of embraced the idea that it's fun to be lazy it's great to be a slob it's great to live in this world and the last the last thing I'd ever want to do is exercise get the [ __ ] out of here and they'll pretend that they're wise in their choice that there's some sort of uh frivolous nature to physical activity but physical activity is mental activity you just don't think of it that way
because your mind is forcing your body to do the work you just don't think of it that way you think of it as being physical brute grunt work for you know for cavemen but the reality is it's the mind that forces the body to do that and you must have a strong mind in order to get that done so a strong mind is not just one that can do calculus a strong mind is not just one that can write books a strong mind is one that controls the body and all of its inherent weaknesses and all of its urges to be lazy and sedentary and self-destructive that's a strong momentum so if we put it back into terms of resistance let me try and phrase it in that sense again the the body doesn't want to the body wants to stare at those gym shoes for half an an hour right yeah the body doesn't want to do it that's the force of resistance that in my opinion is spawned by the ego right so as we overcome that and go to the gym and get that's what going or whatever it is that we're going to do we defeat the ego and we're allowed to move into that greater into the soul into the self and so that's the battle I in in my terms of resistance that we fight every day we wake up in the ego right our our eyes open oh [ __ ] I'm in this body you know I don't want to do I don't want to go to the gym I don't want to work hard I don't want to do anything but we know that we have to do that right that that's the path to getting out of this thing that will spiral down into the toilet bowl right so we do it we go to the gym we work out whatever it is and we get into the self we get into the greater mind we've defeated that demon for that day yeah but it will come back back again and that seems to be at least to me that's what life sort of is you know at least in terms of our own you know our own physical body forget about the family or or the community or be that's a whole other thing yeah but at least within our own little physical envelope of the body that's the nature of the game every day and it never ends yeah you're in a constant state of struggle mentally and physically every day and you can take steps to mitigate that struggle and make it manageable and make your experience better as a human being on Earth but it requires work and the same work that you discuss in the war of art with resistance I think that applies
to many many things that people do during the day this how many people are out there that want to start a business they have a desire to do this thing but there's something that keeps them from doing it there's this little thing they get lazy they want to watch TV they eat ho-hos and and drink Coca-Cola and just don't ever do it and then maybe tomorrow maybe one day whenever in 2023 as soon as January comes around that's my New Year's resolution I mean why do New Year's resolutions exist they exist because you're not living right right now if you if you're living correctly right now you wouldn't need a New Year's resolution you would just live yeah you just keep keep on trucking yeah that's what you would do yeah and but we all have it inside of us we just have varying levels of it no one is a fully optionalized 100 percent realized potential no one you you do the the best you think you can do given what you're available what you have available in terms of resources right now but maybe you could have been better you know and if you don't think that way you're not going to get better now the positive side of that is if the positive side of of our resistance that makes us want to [ __ ] off and eat ho-hos or whatever it is the positive side of that as I'm saying is that there is this underground river flowing inside of us which is our own creativity and our own Souls expression whatever that is which could be you know painting low riders or doing your own motorcycles or writing a book or making a movie or having a podcast or whatever it is and I'm I think that all that resistance that negative thing doesn't come out of nowhere it comes to me out of a response to a dream that is not being fulfilled or not being addressed not being taken care of whatever that is so that the the doing the work is not generic or not random it it should be something towards something really specific that we a dream that we have a creative dream that only we could do you know only you can do what you're doing Joe and only I can do what I'm doing nobody else can do it but that's there that creative seed you know head it's that River that's flowing towards the ocean and so if we can just believe in that
River and then take the steps like you say whatever you know and it's always difficult because it's always in the teeth of resistance whatever positive force there is resistance is like an equal and opposite Force trying to push us back so if we can just keep that you know believe in that positive force believe in that dream that creativity and push resistance out of the way it's like we were talking before about project by project whatever that project is to surrender to it believe in it and do it yeah there's a real value in that and there's also a real value in the way you've sort of defined it and laid it out so people could see it it's like that old expression it's okay to have a snake in the room as long as you have the lights on I've never heard that before yeah well there is going to be a snake that's for sure yeah but you turn the lights on like look there it is like it's always going to be there but let's get over this [ __ ] thing like and you can do that and you can do it by showing up every day and put in the work and and then in your your other book about it turning pro be a professional like this is what I do here's the guidelines for how to become a professional but you can apply that to so many different things everything yeah it's a weird thing about the human mind that yeah that resistance thing the other crazy part about resistance is that it really has no strength of its own it's not like we're going up against a dragon or a lion or whatever it is once we confront it just like you get that third Cent and you start to sweat it just goes away yeah it just dissolves yeah right so we become afraid of it and the fear stops us from doing it yeah but all it really needs to be is just dismissed you know and I'm sure that's what the Dalai Lama does or any great Avatar just I dismiss you I dismiss yeah you know yeah and it goes away so but yet if we don't do that it'll defeat us and run us right into the grave it's wild right yeah out of all your years of discussing this isn't it fascinating though that it still has a grip on you absolutely I mean it's not fascinating but it absolutely it's true yeah I mean I'm facing just as much I don't think it
ever goes away it's a law of nature it's a force of nature like gravity like when you get up if I lift this thing it's gonna fall you know when you get up to right and you have the like what is it the feeling like to you the resistance feeling um I'm I'm afraid to do it you know it's just like going to the gym it's like I have all the excuses I don't feel like doing it today I haven't got enough time blah blah blah I have all the distractions I've have fear I say to myself uh this thing you're working you're going to work three years on this thing you're only going to embarrass yourself it's a piece of [ __ ] you know it's a that kind of thing all that's right of stuff but I will say having done it for 30 years or so like you at the gym or whatever I know if I do the work I'm going to feel good at the end of the day I know it because I've done it so many times and so I just have to keep reminding myself of that and then I have my various little tricks to help me you know get over it but it doesn't go away ever you know I don't think it ever does for anybody it's a force of nature it's there yeah and momentum really helps momentum is tremendous she's doing it a lot it's everything yeah momentum and habit which are the same thing really habit is just momentum Tuesday Wednesday Thursday yeah that's why I hate vacations yeah me too me too I like them in that I I actually do enjoy some aspects of it but there's always this part because there I think we do need a mental reset especially if you're a person like me that's really kind of burned the candles of both ends all the time like sometimes I just need to sit on a beach with a margarita and just relax yes but that's the part there's this is a little [ __ ] demon in my head that's like what are you doing yeah yeah yeah [ __ ] yeah [ __ ] you're not getting nothing yeah and then I it's hard to get right back to work again yeah it's hard to like once I'm working all the time then it's almost like I wake up and I'm just ready to go to work I'm ready to go but if I just take a long time off and I'm not doing it it's like oh it's difficult did you ever know Eddie Giuliani no the bodybuilder who tragically died a couple years ago he's
from Arnold's generation and he was a he was a sort of a protege of Jack LaLanne and he said that Jacqueline used to say to him it's okay to take a day off from training but on that day you're not allowed to eat oh and he also said every day that you take off equals six days once you get back on it so that's probably why whether that's right or not that's ridiculous when we take vacations you know we feel it right yes you know what a psycho you can take a day off training but you're not allowed you're not allowed to eat wow well Jacqueline was such a an animal that's the guy right there yeah that's Eddie Giuliani shredded yeah yeah he's shredded but the thing about Jacqueline is like when he I think he was 90 he was pulling boats like tug boats with his teeth yeah how old was he when he was doing that something like that something crazy yeah like he basically did that until his body like yeah enough yeah check please here's my theory on vacations for whatever it's worth and I'm like the worst vacation taker in the world I feel like uh people ask me sometimes what do you do between books and my theory is there should never be between books you should on the day that you finish this one book you start the next One Call It Whatever project whatever whatever but what I feel is like say I've started a new one right I just want to keep working until I've got some momentum going like I've got a beachhead on that new book and I say okay I've got my toes on the ground I know I can then I'll take a vacation you know when I know I've sort of got enough momentum that if I stop for a week or I stop for a period of time that momentum will still be there you know but I feel guilty every day that I'm on that vacation that's crazy I know it's crazy I do too but I've gotten way better at it my wife's helped me with that she doesn't feel guilty women definitely help you yeah right yeah so so you know why women don't feel bad about that but they don't I don't know so your thing is finish the book start a new book get it going and then you get it yeah exactly that makes sense and in fact I'll go a little farther than that while you're finishing book number six let's say you should already be starting book number seven you know
outline it or whatever you need to do oh really so that there's not ever that day when you got look at the page and you go what the [ __ ] am I gonna do now you know get something started so you've got you know 20 pages 40 page whatever so you feel okay no problem I'll just I've already been working on it I've already got a beach head I'll just keep going that's the same thing that most comedians do I'll do that yeah when I'm writing a special like if I'm finishing a special I already have like five or ten minutes for the next best Ah that's great or five or ten minutes for the next act so I'm not starting from like what am I gonna talk yeah yeah yeah yeah or something and then from there I've I've got a scaffolding and then I'll build off of that yeah yeah oh I didn't know that that's interesting well I certainly agree with that yeah a lot of guys like like say if you have a like I was just talking to Chris Rock and he has um a new special that he's working on and he's sir he's currently doing sets where he's doing as much as like I think when he was in Austin he did an hour and 40 minutes but his special will only be one hour so what he's going to do is he's going to tighten that down and edit that down to the very best one hour that's possible out of that hour and 40 minutes of material but once that hour special comes out now Chris has 40 solid minutes of other material that he can tour with and then he could add on to and so for a guy like Chris Rock adding 20 minutes onto that not that hard you know and then he'll probably do the same thing he'll probably develop an hour and a half hour and 45 minutes of new stuff then then film a special and then still have another 45 minutes and then so you're always got be you know bread in the oven oh yeah you always got something cooking huh yeah boy it would be a fascinating documentary to like put the camera over Chris Rock's shoulder sure and ask you know why did you pick that one you know why how did you structure this what were you thinking yeah yeah it would be intrusive though I think like probably I don't know maybe you'd have to be fascinating it'll be fascinating for us but for someone that's like in the middle of the creative process like if you did that
with a Gary Clark Jr or something like that like why are you playing that like what's it like get the [ __ ] out of here I'm trying to play like I think for like a lot of artists they they're in the moment right yeah to to stick a camera in their face while they're doing it would kind of like [ __ ] with the thing probably you know it's like when they talk about quantum physics the observing of the thing changes the thing ah it's probably a quality of that with everything maybe there'd be a way to film it and have him not talk about it in the moment but afterwards yeah perhaps perhaps but even just the presence of cameras kind of filming him would probably be self-conscious there you go and get in there and you'd start to [ __ ] yourself up yeah you get in your own way yes yeah yeah you need a certain amount of like real freedom in that regard I know what I meant to ask you Joe oh I heard a thing uh with Sam Kinison when he was talking about writing his material and he said the hardest part was the transitions could you talk to that for a second do you agree with that yeah no those I don't think that's the hardest part no not for me the hardest part for me is the initial premise those are the hardest those are those are basically patches of fertile ground you need to come up with these patches of fertile ground then you can grow things in them so when I have a premise like whatever the premise is about now it's just once I know that things are growing in it like okay good we got something now let's formulate but to think about a thing to talk about and to have that thing worthy of an extraordinary amount of time because if I'm going to develop a bit like I used to have this bit about a guy who broke into the White House and that big took months of my time to figure out how to say it right and all the twists and turns and and saying it away that it's the most palatable to people that are listening to it and the funniest and you got to find a premise like but once you find a premise in that premise you like smile when you're thinking about it then you got fertile ground and the transitions I I mean it just requires some creativity I don't think it's that hard to transition from one thing to
another thing I don't think that's that but you know Sam's time was it you know he's from the the late 80s right and Sam Kinison really became famous in like 86 and there was no one like Sam Kinison before Sam Kinison so his style of Comedy was very new I have benefited from the fact that he existed and that Bill Hicks existed and that these guys who kind of had that similar sort of rambunctious energetic introspective brilliant set this this this this way of doing stand-up that was very different than say Bob Hope or Jerry Seinfeld observational comedians like these guys already carved the path so maybe for guys that came up like myself after Kennison it's it's not as difficult you can kind of see how to do it better they've trailed they've placed the trail you know how do you come up with a premise it depends like sometimes there's an interesting thing that uh is in the news or that I've encountered or I've seen in a museum or read an article about and then I'll just like again I'll write essays write essays and from that essay I'll extract something and that something is actually viable there's something there sometimes it's just an encounter in the real world it's like something that's happened to me sometimes it's uh from a discussion I've had with a friend and I'll say something they start laughing and I'm like I gotta write that [ __ ] down ah you know so do you feel like you're sort of always on the lookout of premises yeah particularly like now because I just recorded something so particularly now now I'm like in that period where I'm just constantly searching around and then once I develop like a real set then it transitions to concentrating on those bits all the time try to make them as good as possible I like to always think it's not the right way am I doing it the right way maybe I should change it maybe I should shorten it maybe I should have lengthen it maybe I should put it in the beginning so sometimes a bit changes when you move it around you're set like sometimes of a bit that's like you're doing 40 minutes into your act it does well but if you did it 10 minutes in your act does even better ah it's weird yeah yeah it's weird
it's like things have their place and you don't know where that place is until you move them around like you ever rearrange your office like I think maybe my desk over here and put my plant here and then and you do it like I like this better I don't know why you know what is that you know something can you teach comedy you can't teach someone it's not funny I don't think you can but you can show people there's certain principles of Comedy like uh the economy of words surprise the way you say things is like jokes are not just a joke it's the way the joke sounds just like a song is not just the words of the song it's the sound of the voice yeah that's true yeah there's something to the way things sound and the pacing and the timing and you can get better at that but unfortunately some people that just aren't funny uh-huh and I don't think you could teach them that and I don't know why I don't know why it's just a thing um the problem with comedy classes is the vast majority are taught by people who aren't funny hmm they're not true yeah it's true Chris Rock's not teaching economy classes so many times he's working on his own thought stuff Dave Chappelle's not teaching any comedy classes you can learn things from other comedians but generally they don't share those things with you unless you've achieved a certain level of of competence you know it's um one thing one thing the comedy classes do though even if they're taught by people aren't that funny is they give you an opportunity to get on stage most comedy classes what they'll do is they'll you go through a course for a few weeks and then you practice and then one day you'll go to a show and you'll have like a showcase well everybody invite family and friends and they'll be you know 50 100 people in the audience and then every student will go up and do five minutes and that's very valuable because then you get your feet wet and you start thinking about it like I think I can do this I think I could be a comedian and then and then it goes on to be something you do regularly and then you get better at it just like everything else like playing golf or writing books but if you don't have the
spark you can't make a fire and I don't know what that spark is I don't think anybody knows because everybody's is different were you always a funny kid not necessarily no I don't think I was um I I learned how to be funny mostly during my martial arts time because uh I was like it was like Gallows humor like I was the one who was making everybody laugh when we were uh riding a bus to a tournament we're all gonna compete in this Martial Arts Tournament or when we're all about The Spar I was the one who would be cracking jokes to cut the tension and then um one of my friends my friend Steve Graham is still a good friend of mine today he talked me into doing it when I was I was like 19 when he first said it to me he's like you should be a comedian ah I was like really I was like you think I'm funny like my my sense of humor is only good for psychos I'm like you you think you think I'm funny because you like me I go if you didn't like me just think I'm an [ __ ] like like but he was like I'm telling you man like the way you can do Impressions where you [ __ ] with people he's like you're really you should be a comedian and I never even considered it I always loved comedy but I never considered it until he brought it up well that's a big leap I mean that's not something that you know your mom and dad say to you unless you're like the class clown you know my mom was the opposite yeah my mom said it wasn't funny yeah she's like I never thought you were very funny I'm like Mom come on huh you know this one I was like 21 just starting out and she was worried for me ah she was worried that I was trying to become a comedian she was like wow yeah you already said I want you to be disappointed yeah yeah stick with what you're doing yeah yeah that's always parents are they always want to play it safe yeah they always want their child to have a safe life yeah yeah it's hard it's you know it's hard to give people advice because you don't know their mind you don't know their life you don't know even if you know it you really don't know a little you know what you've seen and what they show you you don't know what it feels like to be
them you don't know how their mind works and so to give someone advice on I think you should go start a business about X like says who like who knows like they have to figure it out on their own yeah but I think what you've done particularly with the war of art is giving people you've given people tools you've given people an understanding of the landscape and you've given people some tools that they can use to better themselves and to to create better art and to create a better life for themselves to to get over the [ __ ] that holds a lot of us back well I hope that's true it's true but certainly I think the medium of a book and actually a podcast like we're doing now is a good way to uh expose a new idea to somebody because they can absorb it in the privacy of their own of their own mind nobody's pointing at them and say do this right yes so they can read in a page and say you know that's me I'm [ __ ] you know and say to them so you know I gotta change that I gotta you know and nobody has to see that nobody they're not embarrassed by that uh they can you know maybe make a decision say okay I'm gonna I'm gonna do a sober October I'm gonna do something like that yeah so a book is a great way to do that because it's such a private medium you know yeah that's a good point well thank you very much sir it's always good to see you I really appreciate you I appreciate everything you've done and it's uh I'm glad we got to do this again hey thanks Joe thanks for having me my pleasure uh keep me in the Rolodex I will if we haven't exhausted everything that uh no we'll do it again we'll do it again we'll certainly do it seriously like I say if it wasn't for you the war of art would not have been you know reached the level that it could every time you say something nice about it you know it sells a few more copies so thank you very much and thanks for your faith in in that and in me thanks for everything you've done I appreciate it all right likewise what you're doing don't be so modest what you're doing is a great thing thank you all right bye everybody [Music] foreign [Music]