Arnold Schwarzenegger

24:15Yeah, because it's a very scary time right now. Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know, this airs pretty soon, but I know Mitt Romney just announced that he's not going to run for Senate again. He's a Republican. He's another person who I found a lot to admire about because he speaks his mind about trump and about what's going on in politics and he just said he he said in one quote that i think is coming out he doesn't he doesn't believe that a lot of his uh people that he works with in the senate really believe in the constitution and uh that was terrifying to me yeah yeah absolutely but you know i i think that uh we have gone through difficult moments in the past yes uh we should not forget that i remember that when they came to America in 1968.

24:59It was the year where they shot Martin Luther King and where they shot Bobby Kennedy and the riots in the convention and the Vietnam War. The hippies were running around. Everyone was stoned beyond their mind, including myself. I love hippie Arnold. I'm just imagining hippie Arnold. It's all groovy. No, the funny thing is I was totally the opposite, but I didn't even know what it was. bodybuilders would take me up to San Francisco. What is it called? Hade Ashbury. Hade Ashbury, exactly. And I would be sleeping out there overnight, and I would be getting stoned and all this stuff. So it was just a really weird time.

25:42I thought it was American. It was quite normal. I didn't even know I was in that weird zone in America where America was going through some really incredible challenges. and, you know, then after that it was followed up with, you know, Nixon got elected, which was terrific, but then he screwed up with the Watergate and there was all that going on. And, you know, and then finally, you know, we found a leader in Ronald Reagan. You know, I think that Biden is not going to be the guy. I don't think Trump is going to be the guy, but there's someone out there. It's getting late though. No, things change very quickly in politics.

26:23But there's someone out there in America, because America has a lot of talent. So there's someone out there that has the energy and the vision and the strength to bring people together and to create a new kind of leadership, you know, with a new energy and stuff like that. So right now I don't see it, but... What if that person is closer to you right now than you think? Oh. Sona? What? No, not Sona. Why not? I'm looking at him right here. Oh, no. Yeah. I bring the country together. Yeah, good. The real Conan. Now you're talking. Right? With the sword, the Conan. Conan O 'Brien, Conan the Biberian.

27:02Ooh, running mates. Exactly, exactly. I'll run with you. You run. We'll clear that whole immigration thing up. But that's right, because I think when you first became governor, people said, well, you're so excited, and they thought, could Arnold Schwarzenegger be president? It's like, well, no, you need to be born in the United States. Yeah, and that's when we thought time machine. Huh? We go back in time. You're born in Maine, coastal Maine. We change. Yes. The Constitution. You go back. I always talk about. That's a time travel movie, and you've done them. I know. You go back in time to change the Constitution so you can be president.

27:43That's right. Instead of the Terminator, it's just the editor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I talk about immigration reform, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Arnold Schwarzenegger goes back in time. Jefferson's scribbling away. Wouldn't really be Jefferson if it's the Constitution, but let's just play with that anyway. Sir, what are you doing here? Get out of the way. Give me that quill. I told you I'll be back.

28:10What is he talking about? There's no such thing as movies.

28:25I do want to talk about your book, Be Useful, Seven Tools for Life, because I read this book yesterday and there's so much in here that, as I said, if I had just seen only your action movies over the years, especially in the early ones, I would think, well, this man, he's a great action star but then as as you started to make other movies and uh and i got to interview you and be around you a couple of times i saw how hilarious you are how funny you are naturally and it's in you i thought okay there's more in this book that comes out that i never imagined for example you say that and i would have thought if you have to define the self-made man in hollywood it would be Arnold Schwarzenegger.

29:12You come from a very poor part of Austria. You grew up no running water and you didn't speak the language and you came here and you managed to not only be a bodybuilding champion, but a biggest movie star in the world and conquer politics. You do all these things, you overcome all these challenges. And in your book, you say, you can call me whatever you want. You can call me schnitzel. You can call me Arnie. Do not call me a self-made man. What do you mean by that? Well, it's, um, I know that people, when they call me a self-made man, it's a compliment, they mean it as a compliment, but I also at the same time want to make it clear that a self-made man means that there was no one that helped me that I made myself, which is not true.

29:55I mean, my parents helped me, um, my father, my mother, my teachers helped me, my coaches helped me. I had all this bodybuilding, uh, coaches and weightlifting coaches that helped me. I had Joe Weider, who was kind of like the king of bodybuilding and fitness in America, bring me to America and make my dream become a reality. Got me an apartment when I came to America, got me some money so I could get started here and become the greatest bodybuilder of all time. It was, you know, the agents and the producers that helped me to get then into movies. Um, so, and I remember 5.8 million people voted for me to become governor of California.

30:37How can I say I made myself governor? Right. And so it's not a dictatorship or anything like that. So, so I think that I got to help. I got the help from millions and millions of people. And I want to have people understand that, that I know that I'm a product of a lot of help because that's important to each one of us to know that, that we are product. offer a lot of help because that makes you then go and feel responsible also to go out and help other people because a lot of young people and people that are helpless people that are poor people that don't know how to make the next move to help them yeah because we were helped so let's help them so this is what made me an enthusiastic kind of public servant someone that got involved very enthusiastically with special olympics in the beginning in the 70s and create weightlifting for Special Olympians and become the international coach for them.

31:31That's what got me involved in the President's Council on Fitness and travels through all 50 states and give something back and promote health and fitness. I started after school programs, and then eventually I ran for governor. When everyone said, Arnold, you're insane because you're going to miss out on two movies a year, which you make$20 million a movie. You're missing out on all that money for becoming governor. Are you crazy? And I tell people, I said, look, every dollar that I made was because of America. I became rich and famous because of America, not because of Austria, not because of Germany or any other place, America.

32:10So it's natural for me to want to give something back. So it doesn't bother me at all not to go and make movies for a few years. The other surprise in this book is you talk a lot about failure. you make this point about bodybuilding which is built into the fabric of bodybuilding is failure because you need to grow the muscle you need to push it to the point of absolute failure recover then add more weights and you need to push it to failure again so it's repent in a weird way bodybuilding is repetitive failure over and over and over again which i had never really thought about yeah and that is why um i tell people that what makes you sometimes not be successful is your fear of failure and so as soon as you become kind of friends with failure and you say to yourself wait a minute michael jordan talks about he became the greatest basketball player because he missed his 5 000 shots and he screwed up 280 some uh games and all of this and that's what made him the greatest basketball player.

33:16So it's failure where we learn really the most. And in bodybuilding, it's built in that you do the exercise, like you say, until you fail. In weightlifting, you go and lift until you fail, because it's the only way you know how much you can lift is if you go all out and always lift beyond of what you can lift. And then you know exactly what you can do. I missed the 500 pound bench press at least 10 times in different competitions, but the 11th time I did it, you know, so I was, I didn't feel like I was a failure. I just felt like I have to do train more. And so, so I think the key thing is to tell people, don't be afraid of failure because it makes you kind of like freeze and not make a move forward.

33:57Be friends with that and understand that from failure, we can learn more. And therefore let's go all out and just feel free of that and not be worried and afraid all the time. I also didn't realize just how much, I mean, there are all these, you know, cliches, no pain, no gain. And you talk about that. You're very just, you say, look, there's a lot of cliches out there, but here's the reality of it. But when you talk about lifting and the pain that's involved, there's real pain involved. That's why I never got into professional bodybuilding. Okay. Excuse me. What do you mean? I'm sorry. No, no, no.

34:30I have the frame for it. I have the natural genetic disposition for it. Oh, absolutely. Thank you. See, there's someone here who knows who I think we should respect. He seemed very genuine when he said that. What kind of mirrors do you use? I got them from a circus, Arnold. Why do you ask? They were free. And I love them. I have a massive chest whenever I look at it. Then I see these other mirrors and I spit on them. But it's that you became comfortable with paint and you were kind of almost, It almost sounds like you were addicted to, not in a bad way, but addicted, so addicted to working out.

35:10I love this section of the book that as a young man, 15, 16 years old, you broke into a gym because it wasn't open on the weekend and you wanted to work out. Now, I've broken out of gyms. I have never broken into a gym. That intensity was always there, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. Our weightlifting club was in a stadium. and so on the weekends there were always games soccer games because it was underneath the stadium and so you were not allowed to go in underneath where the wrestling club was with the boxing club was the weightlifting club in order because it was for the soccer players and so I had to kind of sneak in so what they did on Friday night was I did I opened the latch off the window on top and so that from the outside I can open up the window and then crawl in.

36:04And sometimes one time I forgot to open it and I just broke the window. And I climbed into the back. And then I worked out for hours and hours and hours. It was like absolute heaven. But what is important here is to recognize that your brain and your mind is no different than the muscle. so the muscle grows uh by you know pushing it and going through pain and so discomfort well the same is with that with your head that if you really want to grow as a person and if you want to get tough you got to go through pain you know you should not shy away this is a lot of times today with today's youth you know when they talk about you know the boys are having a problem the girls having a problem this is a problem there's a problem everyone has a problem it's like they're getting softer and they're not willing anymore to kind of take themselves through this pain period and through the discomfort everyone wants to be in comfort people kids want to sleep in uh to seven eight o 'clock at night when i when i sleep longer than six o 'clock i already hear my father's voice who has been dead for more than 50 years but i still hear his voice arnold be useful because that's what my dad always said.

37:26And he always would say, he says, do you think this country was built by people sleeping in? No, this country was built by people that were able to work hard, work their ass off, and to go through torture, and to go through pain, and to do all of that. And so I was, that's what motivates me because I don't want to go and lie around and live in comfort. Yeah, when you go on vacation, of course, when we go skiing, I go to the Sun Valley, And then I live in comfort. I sit out in the jacuzzi after skiing and all that stuff. But I mean, throughout the year, it's all about, okay, we got to go and do something.

38:01Move the things forward. And if I don't have enough to do with my own work, then you do some stuff for the community. So there's always things to do. And so this is what I'm trying to teach people is to make this life rich. Not to exist, but to live. and living means really to go all out 24 hours a day. Yes, you sleep six hours a day, or if you need seven hours, so be it. But the rest of the time, there's so much that we can do. Well, I need 15 hours of sleep. 15 hours. No poor baby. Yeah. And then I need to sit in a bath of heavy cream. Sonia, you remember, you just have to pour the cream into the tub.

38:45Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many times do you have to change diapers during the night? And he needs his bottle. He has a person for the diaper change. You know what's fascinating to me is that, because you talk about your father a lot, and it's a complicated relationship because you've said that your father could be physically abusive. Absolutely, yeah. We were beaten with the hands, with the fist, with the belt, with the branches. I mean, you can think of it and that's exactly what happened. There was a whole inventory of things that he would use. And at the same time, he was the kindest and the sweetest man.

39:27So what happened was is that I realized that after I left home and I thought back about this time period, you know, that he was, you know, in the Second World War. I heard my mother talk a lot about that he had shrapnel in his body and that he had surgeries, back surgeries and stuff like that. They were buried in Leningrad during the Second World War and then shipped to Poland and then shipped home with back injuries and all this stuff. So, you know, he went through, you know, he had malaria. So he went through a lot of pain. And so the guys after the Second World War, and that was born in 1947, a lot of them were drinking.

40:07And so the problem was when they were in pain, they were drinking and they were drinking together. and said, like, once or twice a week, they would come home and you could hear it already at three in the morning. We would live in fear because we knew that he would be violent when he gets home. He would throw around dishes and all of that stuff. And, you know, so it would be that kind of an atmosphere because of his pain and because of the misery that he went through. But then again, he snaps into this kind of a wonderful man and very giving and giving us, getting us ice cream and desserts and treating us nice.

40:42And we were cuddling up with him in bed. And there was the sweetness. So it was this kind of... It'd be very confusing. Very, very confusing as a young kid. But that didn't mean that we didn't learn a lot from him. The discipline, you know, that we had to kind of do our 200 push-ups in the morning to earn breakfast. You know, we had to do our knee bends. We had to do running. Everything was always a competition between my brother and I. He set this up always to make us very competitive and so on. And so I think that all of that was really helpful for me. And when I think back, what gave me the drive was him and was my mother.

41:19You know, my mother gave me the love. He gave me the discipline. And both of them together made sure that I ran away from home as quickly as possible. So with the age of 18, I went into the military to become a tank driver. I wanted to go quickly as early as possible as I could legally to go in the military so I could get my passport and I could leave the country and could leave that home that I felt was miserable. I don't want to grow up like that. I don't want to continue my life like that. I want to go to America. You know, this is my new dream was to go to America and to live where the Empire State Building was, where the Gordongate Bridge was, where the six-lane highways were, where there's Hollywood, Muscle Beach and all of this stuff.

42:01So that was my motivation. So my father helped me in a way to get away from home and to build a new life. And it was his kind of brutality and his toughness and all of this stuff that made me who I am today. So I cannot say, oh, I hate my dad. I love my dad. I love that he gave me that discipline and that he pushed me all the time and that I'm here and I'm successful because of my dad. because of all of that. There's some other books that say, oh, if you visualize it, it will happen. And you're careful to say, you don't really believe that, but you do think having an image in your mind can be quite helpful.

42:43And you had an image in your mind of your name on the top of a marquee, Schwarzenegger. And when you come to Hollywood and you start to look like you're going to have some success in the business, you're getting a lot of pressure to change your last name. But you said, no, Schwarzenegger is going to look so great at the top of a movie marquee on the top of a movie poster. And you had all the experts telling you, no, you got to change it. And you said, it's going to look great. And you were right. I mean, but that was just you, you imagined it and you made it a reality to yourself. And you knew then that it could exist.

43:19You had to put in an incredible amount of work. But I think the fact that you didn't change your name was and is symbolic of a lot of things that you refused to do. I think that the cliche thing that people say always is see it, believe it, achieve it is absolutely so accurate. Because the fact of the matter is that if you don't see it, you're not going to go and become successful by accident. You know, you don't have your, you didn't have your show or this podcast because you never thought about it. Right. So, I mean, you first, of course, have to dream about it. You have to visualize it. And I could visualize, because I think there was nothing around, no TV or anything.

44:00So I was sitting a lot and daydreaming as a kid. And so I was kind of visualizing this stuff. And eventually I could see myself as a bodybuilding champion. And then when I became a bodybuilding champion, I could see myself as a leading man. Because I idolized Clint Eastwood and I said, well, if he can make it. and if my idols, Reg Park and Steve Reeves that did Hercules movies, if they can make it, why couldn't I? And then eventually it happened, even though, as I mentioned in the book, there were the naysayers. You know, for every great idea that you have, I'm sure that you went through the same thing, every great idea you have, people say, it's hard to do.

44:40That's impossible. These guys right here, you're sitting in a room, this is the naysaying crew right here. I tell them I could be a great bodybuilder, a male model, no, no, no. And then once I achieve that, which I will. We're more realists, by the way. Realists. Mad naysayers, just bringing you back to earth. It's always the naysayers. So, of course, imagine me. I weigh 250 pounds. I said I want to be a leading man. Of course, the agents and the producers say, look, the bodybuilding and the Hercules movies are out. And this is the 70s. You know, Dustin Hoffman is the idol. And, you know, Woody Allen.

45:16and... You need to lose 240 pounds. Yeah, exactly. And get some glasses. That's right. And a New York accent. Yeah, that's exactly what they said. I'm walking here. Yeah. So they said, you're out. So why don't you just stay with bodybuilding and open up a health food store or something like that? They can help you with that, but not to get into movies. So there was no, no, no. They said the body was too big. I have an accent. People are scared of the German accent. It rubs people the wrong way. and the name no one can pronounce it, so forget it. And true enough, all of those things, an ant, became assets.

45:50You know, when they did Conan the Barbarian, John Milius, the director and famous writer, said if we wouldn't have had Schwarzenegger, we would have had to build one. So all of a sudden the party was, without this party, they couldn't have done Conan the Barbarian. Yeah. That movie ruined my life, by the way. Yeah. When I grew up, Conan was just an interesting name, and no one really knew about the comic books. And then that movie came out. And everywhere I went, it was, Hey, where's your sword? Where's your sword, Conan? Leave me alone. And that created something for me to fight against. Oh, absolutely.

46:28I can imagine. That's how I grew. That's how you grew. Because I was so different from Conan that that forced me to be a comedian because that was my only recourse. I don't even know how you did it. Some would say I haven't. Exactly. No, but I mean, it was like, it was really interesting that all of a sudden the body was the thing to have. Otherwise we couldn't do Conan. The muscles were welcome. Then when the Determinator, Jim Cameron said, if Schwarzenegger wouldn't have talked like a machine, uh, you know, naturally with his German accent, this movie wouldn't have worked. You know, so all of a sudden the accent became like a big plus.

47:05And then with the name in the eighties, obviously they said, you know, the actors don't really change their names anymore. now they keep the Gina Lola Bridgeta name and Arnold Schwarzenegger name and all those long difficult names they keep those names because if it's hard to remember then it's hard to forget hey there you go you know you say something in the book that's very funny you said at one point in the book that you hired a coach to help you get rid of your accent and you want your money back that's right well let's be honest here I mean let's be honest I remember sitting there have you ever heard of this guy, Robert Easton?

47:39So he was like a speech coach and a voice coach. And he was an expert in like hundreds of different accents. And he started then and he worked with a lot of famous actors, helped them to get an Irish accent or to adopt the Australian accent. He was just so good or German accent, whatever. And so you would go to him also, if you have a German accent to get rid of it. And so he would do have you do exercises. He says, you know, the Germans always say everyth with an s so he says 3333 he says no it's 3333 with ath not with an s so he says let's practice that now over and over that was running around you know 3333 and one third and then also we don't have kind of the v and the w sounds you know so for us it's says, I have some red wine.

48:33Not wine, but wine with a V. So he had me practice the fine wine grows on a vine. Oh my God. And the zinc is made out of zinc. So things like that, because this guy was pranking you. I don't think he's a speech coach. This was a fraternity prank. Tell him to say this. Robert Ison. I'm going to go after his estate. He already passed away. But I'm going to go after SSA because this did not work. And I'm still having the accent. But no one wants you to lose the accent. No, I know. That's the thing. That's you. For how many years people said you would never make it because of this accent. And then all of a sudden, I'm turning on Saturday Night Live.

49:19And there's Hans and Franz. Yeah. You know, having the greatest time. And it's becoming this huge hit because of the accent. So people ask me, do you mind to make fun of your accent? And I said, no, they legitimize it. They make it real. Now it becomes part of America's fabric here. Yes, it is. It's fantastic. And so then they invited me on the show, and we had a great time. And even when I was in front of the White House, and we did the great American workout, you know, when I was the chairman of the President's Council of Fitness, I had Hans in France come and do a whole stick there. I remember that.

49:51In front of the White House about, you know, the Hans in France, and we did our little stick with the accent and all this. And people were howling. They loved it every minute of it. So it was really great. Those guys were terrific. It's also, it's so much in the fabric that my son has grown up and he's aware of you and he's seen some of the movies, but primarily he knows you as your counterpart on The Simpsons, Rainier Wolfcastle. And so you are woven into, there's a Simpsons character who's based on you clearly, who talks like you. and he to me that's the real achievement is when even if someone tried to avoid I'm not going to see any Arnold Schwarzenegger movies I'm not going to have anything I'm not going to know anything about his time as governor I'm going to try and ignore everything he's done as a physical fitness champion I'm just going to watch the Simpsons you're going to run into Arnold Schwarzenegger you're everywhere absolutely but it has become so odd in a way because I will be sitting I will be in an elevator and I will be talking to somebody and the door opens up and then someone will walk in and say, I knew it was you.

50:55And I said, what do you mean? I said, I just heard your voice and I knew it was you. So it's my voice and my accent is so identifiable now. I know that people don't even have to see you and they immediately detect that it was you. Yeah, how do you order a pizza and not have the person on the other end just go like, okay, Arnold, you know, we know this is you. Do you know what I mean? And I'm sure you're ordering a ton of pizzas. I would like to have 7 ,000 pizzas 7 ,000 pizzas You asked him how he orders the pizza I want the Wienerschnitzel pizza Extra Wienerschnitzel I want the Weisswurst pizza Aber ganz schnell Is this Arnold Schwarzenegger again?

51:41No Exactly He ordered a pizza You know, in the early part of the book, when you're talking so much about you come here to Los Angeles to be a bodybuilder and you realize that it's not as far along as you thought it was. You know, the bodybuilding and you really had to become part of changing that movement and adding a lot to the sport and that it was a challenge to become, you know, a bodybuilder. builder, even though you had had all this success in Europe, when you came to the U.S., you felt like almost like you were starting again. Well, it was really funny because, you know, the magazines that I got as a kid were American magazines, a lot of them.

52:24And so in this American Weeder magazines, you know, he had pictures of bodybuilders in Hollywood. You know, this was Dave Draper was doing the movie Don't Make Waves with Tony Curtis. And there were others that were doing movies in Chino Chita in Rome. And all this. They said, oh, this bodybuilding is really big. Not here in Austria, but, I mean, in America. So then when I go to America, I realized that people were asking me, what do you do? Why are you so muscular? Are you a football player? Are you a bouncer? What's going on here? Are you a wrestler? Oh, you're a professional wrestler. But they would guess everything except bodybuilder.

53:07Because it almost didn't exist. It didn't exist, exactly. So I realized that. I, of course, loved the sport. And I felt like, okay, Arnold, you learned how to sell. You were an apprentice in selling and being a salesperson. So let's sell bodybuilding. And so I started approaching it in the same way as a product, any product. And I started hiring a publicist. this girl by the name of Shelly Sullivan. I remember her name. She was working for a big agency, publicity agency and she was kind of like beginning on her craft and that's why they gave her to me and they said, okay, you deal with this bodybuilder and she was very good.

53:48She got me on the Tonight Show and on the Merv Griffin Show and all these various different talk shows and an interview with the LA Times and we got going and we started promoting the sport And then the book Pumping Iron started coming out. And those guys, Charles Gaines and George Butler, did an extraordinary job with the photographs and with the writing of Pumping Iron. And then eventually the documentary came out and we did that. And that was like a huge hit. One of the biggest documentaries in the 70s. And so all of a sudden bodybuilding started to grow and grow. And it became really fashionable and it became in.

54:24I'm curious now at this age, what do you do? because you look fantastic, but obviously you've probably completely changed up your regimen because you have different goals now. So what do you do when you get up in the morning, 6, 6.05, 6.06? You've had your Wiener schnitzel pizza. You've made sure you've gone online and checked in on Conan O 'Brien, what he's up to. You've listened to his latest podcast. That's all out of the way. You've watched some of my classic clips. Now it's 8 o 'clock, 9 o 'clock, but you go to work out. What do you do? Is the goal now to try and increase weights? Do you want to - So everything that you said is absolutely true.

55:06That's how my day starts. The only thing that you forgot, which is kind of like very selfish thinking, because you forgot my animals. Oh, you're right. You see, before I watch Conan and before I listen to you, I go and feed Lulu in whiskey. That's right. And then I feed, of course, Schnelli, which is my pig. You have a pig and is... And then I have three dogs. You have three dogs. Yes. And Lulu and Schnelli... Lulu is the miniature donkey. Miniature donkey. And Whiskey is the miniature pony. How did you get to have a miniature donkey? Well, my girlfriend gave it to me. Okay. That's the answer to most things.

55:49So I had Whiskey, which is my daughter's miniature pony. and my daughter somewhat abandoned this whiskey. So, you know, she used to be hanging out and taking her around and everything like this on shows and walking with her. And then all of a sudden, from one day to the next, she didn't do anything. And this whiskey was, this miniature pony was down at the stable down in Mandeville Canyon by herself. and no one really did pay attention. So I said to one of these guys down there, can you bring the whiskey up to the house? And so I have a big backyard. I have two and a half acres of flat ground.

56:34And so he brought whiskey up. And so I had to run around up there and then I brought it into the kitchen. I started feeding her some cookies and some, you know, carrots and all this stuff. You have a pony in the kitchen. Yeah. There's a pony and a donkey in the kitchen. Miniature, miniature. Now, a few years later, my girlfriend says, okay, you cannot have a pony alone. It needs company. So she gets me for Christmas a miniature donkey. So I get this little miniature donkey, which was very young, nine months old. And they fell in love with each other and they hang out together. Now they both come into the house in the morning.

57:09So when I get up in the morning and get them out of the stable at six in the morning, they come into the kitchen and I feed them cookies. and that the pig comes running. Are they supposed to be eating cookies? Well, no, they said oatmeal cookies. Oh, oatmeal cookies. I thought you were just like, here's an Oreo. An Oreo for you. An Oreo for you. Now get the fuck out of here. Exactly. I got those oatmeal cookies. I got those oatmeal cookies made for myself because I didn't want to have the regular commercial oatmeal cookies with the sugar. So I said, just make it with honey. So they did. So I have this big jaw of oatmeal cookies.

57:41So then all of a sudden, I was eating this cookie and the horse was pushing me. So I said, let me try it. So I give her the cookie, eating it immediately, then pushing me again. So I give her another cookie. Then I give Lulu the cookie. So all of a sudden it became a shtick, right? Now we make extra cookies for the horses. But the dogs sit down next to me while the horses are eating the cookies. So now they're begging and they're reaching up with their paw. So now I'm giving cookies to the dogs. Then the pig comes around and now there's like all of them sitting there And I'm just, you know, for 10 minutes handing out cookies.

58:17Dude, I don't have to make pounds and pounds of cookies every day. You are Snow White. You're Snow White. He's Dr. Doolittle. You're Dr. Heinz Doolittle. Yeah. Listen, I don't understand. We're Tony. So that's what I do. So you know, Conan, that's what I do before I listen to your podcast. I mean, for Christ's sake. You can do it while listening to the podcast.

58:50this is the delight of arnold schorsinger is that we're talking and i think well here's what we're going to talk about is his new body work bodybuilding regime at this age now what do you do now and before i know it you're in a room you're basically in a keyboard elf tree making cookies for pigs donkeys and ponies that's right exactly it's madness and then i go to the gym So now I drive down to the beach. Do you ride the little pony? No, you're kidding me. I have my grandchildren. They ride the pony. Got it. And they ride the miniature donkey. But I hold on to the kids because you never know. You never know.

59:28They're very feisty, those animals. They always didn't charge and run off and all this stuff. So I want to make sure that they're safe. But the grandchildren love coming over to the house and seeing all the animals. I want to come. Every one of the grandkids has their favorite animal. Can I see Jerry? Can I see Schnelly? Can I see Lulu? Can I see this? And then what I do a lot of times is I have a cousin that is 95 years old in New York. And he's kind of old. And so he's very fragile. So what I do, and I have also a cousin by the name of Monica in Austria. So what I do a lot of times is while I'm feeding the animals, I go and dial their number on my iPad, and I film the whole thing.

1:00:17And they love it. They talk about it the entire day. They just really love it. So people really get entertained with that. A lot of times people ask me, can I come over to your house and see the animals? Not to see, can I come and visit you? No. No one is interested in that. They just want to go and see the animals. And then they come over to see the animals with their kids or whatever it is. You've now got third billing to a pig. Exactly, that's right. But anyway, so then I go down to the beach. Yeah, tell me what you do there. What do you do? I take my bike off my Yukon, and then I drive to Gorge Gym.

1:00:49Then I work out 45 minutes at Gorge Gym, and then I ride back, put my bike back on a truck, and then drive home and have breakfast. Or have nothing, and then it just continue on with my work. I would love to work out with you someday. Yeah, you can. And you might be surprised. I might be in better shape than you think I am. You know, I'm just saying. Or you might be surprised the other way that a man my age could let himself go that much. It could go either way. And why would I have to be surprised in the first place? That's true. What is the obsession about me being surprised? You're right. I guess I'm trying to impress you one way or the other.

1:01:23Well, that's okay. Even in the positive way or the negative way. I just want to make some impression. I want to be the last thing you think of at night before you say goodnight to shlutle, doodle. So he wakes up watching Conan and going to sleep thinking about you. Yeah, exactly. After he says, good night, Sludel, good night, Sludel. That is his vision. Yeah. That is his vision. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Yeah, I'm sorry. What is going on here? I need to be medicated. Yeah. And I am medicated. I just need more medication. You talk in the book that you say that your favorite, and you've had so many great jobs.

1:01:52I mean, in your life, you achieved all these great dreams. You said your favorite job ever was being governor of California. Yeah. All-time favorite job. The toughest job, without any doubt, because to bring 120 legislators together and make them agree on anything, it's kind of like impossible. But we made it possible. We figured it out. And I think that to serve 40 million people and to be the governor of the greatest state in the union, greatest state in the country, Out of 50 states, California is by far the greatest state with the most revenues and the most power, the most diversity. Unbelievable.

1:02:36And not only that, but we are actually now the fourth largest economy in the world. So to be governor of that, it's just unbelievable the responsibility. And you learn a lot. I mean, it was the most extraordinary learning experience to sit in that capital and to have meetings. Think about that. If a meeting from 9 to 10 with the nurses union and they want to have a better ratio between patients and nurses. If, you know, for every four patients, one nurse rather than for every six patients, one nurse. and I never even heard of that before, the ratio. So you learn about all of that and what is it that nurses go through and why is it important?

1:03:29Because when they lift a patient from the operating table, you know, under their bed, these two women cannot sometimes do it if it's a heavier patient. So they need a male patient there. So they were fighting also they have male patients that are a little stronger to lift the patient. Male nurses, yeah, yeah. All of this stuff, I've never even heard of those debates. Then the prison guards come in and say, we're working so much overtime that we need to have more prison guards. We need to hire more, and we have to have more salaries and more wages and more benefits. So they talk about that issue.

1:04:02Then the teachers come in. The teachers union, they talk about the teaching and the challenges teachers go through. Then the people that represent the kids come in. So this is how it goes on and on and on from morning to night. and it's always issues that you have not really been aware of. So in the beginning, it was kind of like a university where you study new subjects and new issues all the time and you become so smart with all of this stuff. And I had one advantage and that was, I was not a real ideologue. You know, yes, I was conservative. Yes, I'm a Republican, but I'm not stuck in this ideological corner.

1:04:38And I didn't look at the Democrats as the enemy. I always felt kind of like in order to make this work, you have to have Democrats and Republicans work together. So we worked together and we figured out what is it that we can do together and then let's fight over the other issues. People are so hungry for that. Yeah. And so that is really what we did. And that's why we were able to build all this infrastructure and why we were able to do the redistricting reform and get rid of gerrymandering. And why we were able to go and pick so many minority judges and women and all of this. So we were able to do things in the environmental issues that we tackled.

1:05:15I mean, it's the only state that really reduced its greenhouse gases, its pollution by 25 % within 10 years. So there was a lot of great stuff that was going on. But together, Democrats and Republicans together did this work. Not me, not the Republicans, but Democrats and Republicans. Here's what really I took away from your book and what you're saying right now is early in your career, it's you. and you are in a situation where you can control your body, you can control what you do to your body and how you build your body, you can be in full control as a bodybuilder, then control was very important to you when you got into movies.

1:05:53How can I prepare myself? What roles are right for me? What roles are wrong for me? If I'm going to do a comedy, what should that comedy be? And what would the best way for me to, how could I best show my humor? What would work? Who's the best this? Who's the best that? But when you become governor, you put yourself in a situation where a governor can do so much. It's almost like you willfully put yourself in a situation where you don't have a lot of control. There's a lot you can't control when a job is that big. Do you think there was some part of you that was pushing you into a situation where you can't control everything?

1:06:25All you can do is try, but there's a lot you can't control. Yeah, you're absolutely right. But you don't want to. Yeah. You know, because you don't want the dictatorship. You don't want to have one person make all of the decisions because we're not perfect. Right. You know, and sometimes that goes overboard and instead of going power crazy and stuff like that. So you need always to have a check and balance. I think that's really terrific. But what you can do in where you have total control over is motivating people to move forward and to do great things. So it doesn't matter what your philosophy is, but to say, we must sit down, guys.

1:06:59And we've got to build more highways and freeways, more tunnels and bridges, more on-ramps and off-ramps, more school buildings, more university buildings, affordable housing. Let's do it. We can do it. You know, so now they go and they go, you know, oh, this is great. And they sit down and you can motivate. So you become kind of the motivator and the force behind bringing people together and creating a vision. Like I said in the book, visualizing is the most important thing. I had very clear visions. of course, crazy visions of what California can be. I visualized, I told them, I visualize, you know, every city having a thousand cranes and they're building and building and building new dams, new highways, new this, new that.

1:07:42And it was a crazy vision, but you have to have a vision, but it motivated them to sit down and that we were able to do$60 billion of infrastructure, half of what I wanted, but we did it. And so this is really the great thing. So I think that one thing we have control over is motivating. And that's one of the things I feel like is missing today. There is no one in Washington that is really rallying up the troops and is motivating them and becoming kind of like their motivational kind of force behind it to bring people together because there's a way of doing it. There's a way of doing this. People are not saying, I don't want to get together with the other side.

1:08:23I think you just need someone that motivates them and really make it attractive and kind of like talk to them and communicate the right way. And so this is, I think there's certain powers that we do have that I was able to use. And I was always a positive person. You know me. I mean, it was never kind of like, I always see the world kind of like Norman Rockwell. You know, Norman Rockwell, he always painted everything that was fun. Kind of optimistic and fun. optimistic and fun and colorful and stuff so that's the way i that's the lens that i look through when i look at america or when i look at any of the issues or the problems anything it's always through that lens i see it brighter since don't see it dark and black and white or anything like this i always see it bright and there's a bright future ahead and i think that that to me is much more helpful than always being depressed and like say oh my god things are terrible things are going downhill and all that yeah i was i was very impressed too which i didn't realize in the book is you had uh uh surgery that was supposed to be routine just a couple of years ago and something went very wrong in the surgery and it was touch and go oh yeah i mean i was really pissed off and you i can tell you that i mean think about it you go i was pissed off that i had a life and death experience no but i mean think of it i mean you go in there and you say they say it's a two hour procedure.

1:09:47And the next thing you know is you wake up and they say, okay, this is 16 hours later. And you're trying to talk. And you go, don't try to talk, Arnold. You still have this thing. They put a tube in your throat. In your throat. And so they did not put the tube out of my throat. You know, I'm coughing. And they say, all right, let us explain to you. Things went south. We punctured through the hard wall with the wire. Accidentally. This was the wire that was supposed to go up and remove your old valve, aortic valve. And then the other wire was supposed to replace that and put a new aortic valve in.

1:10:32But by accident, we punctured through the wall and it created internal bleeding that we had to do an emergency opening of your rib cage, rip everything open very quickly, otherwise he would have died. And now we had to then do this and this and that. And then we, by accident, also damaged the other valve. And this is how it went on. And so now 16 hours later, but we saved you. And you say, well, that is really fantastic. I had to kind of like, what I call their shifting gears. Yeah. You know, I had to shift gears because now this thing like going after, in the afternoon, then out and, you know, having a good time was out the window.

1:11:17Now I'm trying to survive. And this is just to reiterate, you thought you were going in for arthroscopic thing. And then you go home that night and have your pizza and pet your donkey. And then you wake up 16 hours later and they took all of your insides out and put them back in upside down. That's right. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, so this is what happened. and so now you have to shift gears because now you have to say when they tell you that you're not out of the woods yet because what happens a lot of times they say is you can die because of pneumonia and so this is why it's very important that within a day you must get out of bed and you got to go and start walking to really get lung exercises because that's what usually trips you up.

1:12:06And so it's very, very important. And I now start setting my mind, okay, I'm going to go and I'm going to get out of bed. As soon as they wheel me from this station over to my bedroom, I'm going to get out of the bed, you know, no matter what, and I'm going to start walking. And so this becomes like the mission, you know, to start walking. I don't want to die because of pneumonia. I've gotten through the surgery and blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, it was kind of a touch and go situation the first few days. But then I got stronger and stronger. And three months later, I started with Terminator 6.

1:12:40I started filming. Three months later, I started filming again. They couldn't believe it on the set. And I was back again working out regularly and all this stuff. So, you know, I think that, again, with the positive way of thinking, and I can do it, and nothing is going to stop me. You know, with that kind of an attitude, I was able to do that. This book is, I recommend it to everyone, Be Useful, Seven Tools for Life. I recommend it because the quality that comes through again and again and again in this book that's really sweet is humility. You have a lot of humility for someone who is almost like the cartoon representation of you can do it all and achieve everything.

1:13:17You're very, very humble. And you have a lot of empathy for people who maybe don't have some of your qualities or struggle. You have an incredible amount of empathy. And I could see that when you made these videos after January 6th and Ukraine, and that really spoke to me. And I thought, God, I'm happy this man's out there and he's doing this now with his platform. Thank you very much. I love being a motivational speaker out there and writing a motivational book and having a motivational newsletter that is out there every day. and to do all of those kind of things, the pump club and all this, you know, I felt kind of like I was motivated my whole life by people and I want to motivate other people now, millions of people around the world.

1:14:02That's my mission. I feel motivated. I mean, I don't think you're motivated. Oh, you don't? She's not very motivated, but I think I'm motivated. I'm still stuck in your hate Ashbury days. Well, I see that you're motivated. I don't know why Conan is after you. I mean it's like you're the only woman in this room and who is he attacking oh my god yes it's like unbelievable you know what I'm saying yes I'm gonna start a rumor that he has a hostile work environment I'll back you up it's not a rumor it's not a rumor I will back you up that is all I need right now it's not a rumor it's not a rumor it's not a rumor it's not a rumor yes yes Arnold Schwarzenegger thank you very much God bless absolutely thank you very much thank you that was fun Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend.

1:14:51With Conan O 'Brien, Sona Mufsesian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Nick D 'Leal, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britt Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you might find your review read on a future episode.

1:15:30Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. Life and Bank