Josh Brolin on Embracing Life’s Messiness With Stoicism (PT. 2)

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1:19Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down. Be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:10Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I was reading this New York Times interview with the actor Garrett Hedlund the other day. Garrett Hedlund was in Troy and Four Brothers. He's in Tulsa King. He's in Friday Night Lights. Anyways, I'm just reading this interview. I don't know why it came up on the app or whatever, but I'm reading this thing. And it was asking about some books. And he recommends Awareness by Anthony DeMeo, which is a really good book. And then he says, The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. And he says, Josh Brolin turned me on to Ryan Holiday's works about a year ago because I I was always quoting Aurelius or Epictetus or Heraclitus or Socrates.

2:53He says it's really about taking some of the wonderful, formidable works of the Stoics and making them relatable to the working man with trials and tribulations. I would say well said, very nice. But I, of course, texted Josh Bolin about this. I said, hey, man, thanks. That is awesome. I love that. And that is actually been an experience I have had a bunch of times. Josh has been a huge supporter of Daily Stoic and my work. And I keep hearing from people that heard about it from him, which is always nice. It's not something you imagine when you write a book about ancient philosophy that like some A-list actor from movies you remember as a kid and now superhero movies and one of my all-time favorite movies, No Country for Old Men, that he's just going to be passing it around Hollywood or he's going to be passing it around on movie sets.

3:43but apparently that's what's been happening, which is always really cool. And so now it is my turn to return the favor. Josh has a new book called From Under the Truck, which came out back in November. It's about his childhood. It's about addiction. It's about his unusual mother, his unusual father, and his journey to, well, first through repeating many of their mistakes and then hopefully trying to break that pattern and cycle. Josh sent me a very nice signed copy of the book. It's got a cool like sort of half cover, which actually you see more often on international editions. But he said, Ryan, embrace the absurdity.

4:24Thanks for your impact, brother, Josh. So that is pretty cool. And as I was telling you in part one, there's a blurb from McConaughey on the back, which we chatted about when he was here at the studio after I read the book. But before Josh and I talked, I watched some other podcast he was on, and he was telling this story about how he had this pet pig as a kid, and his dad surprised him by slaughtering it and feeding it to the family. And I just said, dude, I do not like this pig story at all, and I live on a ranch. and it's true. I think some of us fantasize about what it would be like to be from royalty or Hollywood royalty, what it would feel like to be a famous movie star or an actor.

5:19It's not all that it's cracked up to be. As you read in Josh's book, it was a traumatic upbringing. He and I talked, there's that famous Philip Larkin poem about how our parents fuck us up. You know, that definitely comes through in the book, but he doesn't seem bitter about it. It definitely had its impact. It definitely took him a while to work through it. It definitely wasn't without its costs on him and other people. But he seems like he came out on the other side, which is something we bonded about. He's a fan of The Daily Dad. That's something we talk about in today's episode. it's not until you read some of these books that you go, oh, that's what it would be like.

6:04Oh, that's, I was lucky that I got my ordinary childhood that I didn't have exciting, glamorous, artistic parents that maybe I got off easy. You know, I didn't get hit by that truck. That was something I took from the book. Oh, and then it was funny. One of the things we talked about in the episode, we talked briefly at the end about Iron Maiden. And I was telling him that my son had been trying to learn AI to figure out how to make it a Christmas Eddie. And I texted him the picture after. It was an awesome interview. I was so glad to get it. And I thought it was a great conversation. We did part one earlier.

6:45This is part two of me and Josh Brolin talking about life, talking about stoicism, talking about reading and a whole bunch of other awesome topics. And I'm really excited to bring you this episode. You can grab copies of From Under the Truck at The Painted Porch. You can also get the audio book on Audible and anywhere books are sold. You can follow Josh on Instagram at Josh Brolin. And you can follow him on Twitter, The Josh Brolin.

7:18I'm sure you have a version of that experience, too, where because you were like a kid actor. You were you were like the young talent. Right. Right. And you can kind of get your identity stuck there. Like for a huge chunk of my career, I was always like I was so young. People were like weirded out that I was there. They're like, how did you get here? What are you doing here? You're like the young kid going places. And then you you wake up one day and you have gray hair and it makes perfect sense that you're there. Right. But your identity is still of that kid who maybe doesn't deserve to be there or that you think people are going to be suspicious of you.

7:55That must be weird as an actor where you go from playing a kid to playing an old man. But your identity is somewhere between those things. Totally. Because also you're being accepted. There's an element where the audience is accepting you in a certain way or you're trying to, you know, I don't dye my hair. I would if I had to for a role, you know, or lose weight or gain weight or whatever it is. but it all happened in one year for Outer Range, a show that I did for Amazon and Dune, where Dune, I was called Old Man and Outer Range, I was playing the grandpa. And I was like, when the fuck did this happen?

8:37And it literally happened in one year. Those are the two things I did that year. And you go, wow. But at the same time, what comes with that, it's like Sebastian Stan was just nominated for two things today. And when he did The Apprentice, because I did W, he called me and he said, I'm freaking out. Like, how do I get into this? You know, somebody who exists and somebody who. So there was there was a great vulnerability that he came to me with. Or I just kind of hit me and I go, wow, I'm that I'm that guy. I'm not the kid on The Goonies that has no idea what he's doing. that's reading every book on Stanislavski and Antonin Artaud and the theater of cruelty and the poor theater and, you know, all this stuff to try and accumulate as much information I can with zero experience and zero knowledge of how to kind of utilize all this information.

9:31And now it's been 40 years of utilizing information and, you know, trial and error and all this stuff where I would sit in a corner and slap myself in the face and want to be like, Brando or want to be like Montgomery Clift or James Dean. And then at some point, like with this book, you know, at some point you find your voice, you find your technique, you find your writing style, you know, and you don't have to write like Kerouac anymore. You don't have to write like, you try to write like Norman Mailer. You try to look at these masterclasses and go, God, if I could only write like that. I remember there was a great story of Hunter S.

10:15Thompson writing out, I can't remember what the novels are, but he'd written out two novels. I think one was Hemingway and one was somebody else. He just wanted to feel the words. He just wanted to feel brilliance, what it was like to construct sentences and paragraphs in an entire novel in that way and just through his fingertips, even though none of the words were his. And I understand that. and as you're going through different writers and if you're like what you said, truly a reader, and you're going through different writers and you're going, God, I wish that I could be this good. And then one day you just have your voice.

10:52And when I read this book, Zev Boro, one of the two guys that I sent it to while I was writing it, he said, if nothing else, this book is 100 % you. And I appreciate it. That's about the highest praise you can get, right? Is that you settled into yourself and you did what you were capable of doing. That's what you want in life and with each individual piece of work. And accepting it and not shame spiraling because of it. You know, there was a moment where I did the, I think you and I talked about this, the audible. Oh, that's the worst. There's nothing worse. I've done like four in this room and I hate it every time.

11:30Every single sentence of it. I mean, and I'm a good, I read well. I read publicly well. And I'm fairly comfortable with it. And I'm reading my book and I'm stuttering through every sentence and I refuse to listen to it. I heard it's good. People are seemingly loving the audible. but I was about halfway through that process and I just started spiraling. And I said, I wish that I could burn any evidence that this ever existed as an idea or as a reality, as a manifestation. And then I came to the other side of it, which is I am who I am, but it took a while. And I'm not somebody who spins often. I mean, but I spun.

12:19Well, somebody told me, and they might have just been being nice, but there's something about, and there's also probably a metaphor in it, there's something about the way you hear your voice, and then the way you hear it in a recording. Because when you hear it coming out of your mouth, it's vibrating through your head, and your ears are picking it up differently than when you hear it on a recording. but there's something just totally mortifying about hearing your voice come back to you. Just as there is, you know, you work on the pages of a book for months and months and years and years, and then you have to read it out loud and you're like, who's this?

12:55Who's this like poser, right? Like this guy sucks because you're, you're getting it reflected back to you in a different context than how you made it.

13:10We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone. And then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that. But I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

13:45My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for Good Inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It Over the Holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

14:22Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events. Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house.

15:04It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in. We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour.

15:48And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

16:16Can you watch yourself on screen? Yeah, I can. And I'm pretty objective. That's why everything that you're saying doesn't necessarily pertain to me because I do Comcast, I do voiceovers, I do, you know, I hear my voice and I can objectively, I'm fairly good at being objective and saying that doesn't sound right. That doesn't sound, I know, I know where the sweet spot is, you know, rhythmically. I was listening to Matthew a while, you know, probably two, I don't know when his book came out, but two years ago, listening to his audible and he reads super fast. He reads really fast. And I was like, oh, okay, well, if this works and he's reading fast and I always felt like he had to slow down and all this kind of stuff.

17:01But when I, to answer your question, when I watched myself, even during No Country, we would go and watch, you know, dailies and all that in a trailer all together. And it was really like, am I in the zone here? Am I doing what needs to be done for the story as opposed to, oh God, you said that line so bad and oh, please don't use that. Oh my God. You know, or why did you look, did you just look at the camera? But with this, I think it was because of what, I think it's because it was so naked and so raw. Yeah. You had 40 years of thick skin in the other domain and then you have almost none here.

17:42And when, yeah, when you go out on a limb, when you do something that's unexpected or unusual, like if you were suddenly to record music or something, I think you'd probably have a different sensitivity to it because you haven't built up that callous of, I know more than you. So I know if this is good or not. And I also, you know, what we talked about in the beginning, writing has been, you know, I think painting, acting, I've had a strange relationship with that I think has changed recently. I think because my dad was an actor and what that represented and there was a celebrity, you know, aspect of it that really irritated him.

18:23And so there was all this other stuff that came, whereas writers don't, for the most part, maybe you're the exception, become celebrities, you know, where it's like, you know, you wrote a book and, you know, what's a good sell on a book? You know, you sold. The numbers are very small. Dude, they're minuscule. And when like Dana White, you know, posts something and says, you know, 900 ,000 people saw this post in your book in an hour. And you go, oh, my God. So does that transfer? Let's say it transfers to 5%. That's a lot of books. No, it transfers to like 0.0000001. and you go, wow. But writing has always meant, I think the most to me writing and painting, because when I was traveling, I took off.

19:17I remember my mom was like, she didn't want me to do this. And she goes, you know, I'm going to call the cops and I'm going to have you jailed. It's like, I'm just going to Europe. I'm just going to backpack through Europe. This is a good thing. And I took, I did a, an episode of a double episode of highway to heaven with Michael Landon. And I took that money and I took off to Europe and I meant to go for six weeks and I ended up staying there for six months. And I just loved it. And I had the URL pass. So I would sleep on the train and all that. But I was reading a lot of books then. I spent a lot of time alone.

19:49So I was lonely, even though I traveled with people who I met in train stations and all that. And so it was all about bookstores and museums. So there was this relationship with books that gave me a life when I was super lonely and with paintings where I would go into like, you know, in Florence to the Uffizi for eight hours at a time and just stare at paintings. And I still have that relationship with paintings. I still have a thing where it's not like, oh, there's an affectation of I collect Jamie Holmes. I also collect Daniel McKinney. I go, no, no, no. these things have like visceral meaning to me, you know?

20:31Well, I bet that's what it is, is that because your father grew up in movies and TV and you saw it and you saw it as a, like you would have seen Hollywood as an industry town, right? I think this is the interesting part about the sort of the Nepo baby discussion that people miss is, sure, there are a bunch of advantages, but the biggest of the advantage is not access, it's demystification. Like Steph Curry obviously gets a bunch of genetics from his father, but growing up in basketball arenas and seeing being a basketball player as a job was probably the greatest asset that you get, right? You go, oh, this is just a thing.

21:13But so for you, as acting gets demystified, books and other forms of art probably get elevated, Right. Because you saw them as being more pure or different, even though it's just as much a nuts and bolts. You know, we slap a cover on this thing and we hope it'll sell a couple of copies. Like, even though it's publishing to me is that industry, you know, I imagine that probably contributed to why doing a book and doing an audio book was so tough is because you had you had extra mystified it in a way that you don't. You know how a movie comes together. You know it sucks at the beginning. That's the biggest asset.

21:55But I also think it's just another, like why my dad became an actor. He talks about movies and he talks about, you know, having that fear and confronting that fear. And I think the difference and especially in doing, I remember when I was 21 or 22, I did a play in Rochester, New York called Pitts and Joe and my dad came to see it. And he was confused afterwards. He said, I don't know how you did that. And I played a guy with traumatic brainstem injury who had gotten into a motorcycle accident. And the play, he goes back and forth. So you'll go into kind of past sequences where the lights change and he's fallen out of his wheelchair and then he'll be normal.

22:36And then suddenly he's back to being just traumatic brainstem injury. But I think the difference is, and maybe this has to do with what the it's in the book and whatever trauma or however you want to look at it and just a an unconventional you know wildlife upbringing is what makes people do what they do and why and i think that's been the the innate fascination for me which is would make sense as opposed to just being for me and paying for my own therapy at 14 years old and going, I don't, none of this makes sense to me. And nor does it, it still doesn't make sense to me. Why do people do what they do?

23:23I've seen people who are the most calm, freak out. I've seen people who are, who I consider are deemed bad, do amazing things and, you know, full of compassion and all that. And you just never can kind of pigeonhole anything ever, you know? And again, you go back to this AA thing and you go, listen, man, everybody deserves a chance. And you see the guy who's on the street and he's drinking a half gallon of vodka a day and you go, well, that guy will never get it. He's done. He's over. And then you see that guy five years later and he's thriving. And you go, wow, I never saw that coming. You know, so I think that's always been, I mean, I know it's everybody's fascination, but it's always been this insatiable fascination with me of like, why do people do what they do?

24:17And this, like what you were saying with your wife, your wife is the more stoic of the two of you. This is me not trying to figure it out, but feeling like I've come to some peace with and you go, okay, so let's experience the trauma through this child's eyes anecdotally, or through a fable, or through paintings, or through prose poems, impressions, all that kind of stuff. and then and then and then what has come out of that a deep appreciation for children a deep appreciation for friendship for communal effort you know why do i why is aa which people see you know aa you don't drink what's the thing but it's a community yeah and i love the idea of being able to rely on your fellow man you know what's a chopper crew that's a community you know you if you're going 80 miles an hour down the freeway, you have to peripherally, you have to be so in sync not to die.

25:18And I love that, that reliance on other people or what I just said about the gratitude list. Like, I don't want to do a gratitude list myself and I love the sun and I love the ocean. And, you know, and you go, what if, what if we all do this together? What if we're all relying on each other to grow at least 1 % each day, a little bit better, 1 % better. Let's just strive to go a little bit further and be a little more communal because if we're not sharing, what the fuck is all this for? Well, you do seem to be spreading the word about stoicism, which I appreciate. I've heard from so many people that have heard about my stuff or about the stoics from you.

25:59I'm curious, what makes you want to talk to someone about, or when you're when you're saying, hey, check out this book, Meditations or Seneca or one of the Stokes, what's your what's your pitch? I'd be curious to hear yours. The pit. I mean, the pitch is something that I've already said. And that's there's the practical way there is a messy there is a messiness to life that we have not embraced because we're looking for the comfort in it all. And there is comfort and there is thriving in the discomfort of it all. and, and, and, you know, certain Stoics, you're saying, I can't remember who it is.

26:34I can't remember who it is right now, but who would literally had everything and was, you know, was doing so great and had every comfort and would literally go outside of himself to challenge himself and eat nothing. Who was it? Was it Nero? It's Seneca. It's Seneca. So Seneca would do it and, and, and challenge himself and embrace that discomfort, not for a day, not for an hour, because that's cheating and that's not really doing it, but actually doing challenging yourself in a way where you go, listen, you're almost putting yourself not in other people's shoes, but you're, you give yourself more of an opportunity to be compassionate and to be inclusive when you don't just rely on this thing that you, that is not, what am I trying to say?

27:23Not just most comfortable, but just wrapped up in your own capsule. Well, he was saying that the lesson, he would practice poverty. He would wear, like one day a month, he would wear shitty clothes, stay outside of his palace, he'd sleep on the floor, he'd eat bad food, you know, whatever. He wanted to experience poverty, he said, so he could tell himself, so he could answer the question, is this what you're afraid of? The point was to eliminate the fear of the thing that we prefer not to happen. You get so used to things being the way that they are. And that's why you work so hard. And that's why you made them the way that they are, is that they're better.

28:06But then you can become almost addicted and dependent on them. And then you become anxious and afraid that they might go away. Exactly. And the addictive thing and forget all about the stuff, but the addictive thing and the habit of something is an idea that I've always loved breaking. I've always loved challenging that. So it's like, you know, there was a moment, you know, around Avengers, you know, and I and I'm listen, man, I'm in a position where I'm around so many actors who had so many different, you know, levels of success. and I'm vulnerable to, oh, you know, maybe I should present myself in this way.

28:51So I should only take private flights. I should only do this. I should only convey high success. I should use my money doing that, even though I'll go through the money so fast doing it. And I go, and I'm vulnerable to that because I go, oh, you know, I should be doing this as opposed to resorting to myself and doing and doing my own thing. And I think what your books have done, they've applauded something that I've already chosen. And that is living a life that is as challenging to the status quo as possible. It's like, this is the way you're supposed to do it. This is the way that's acceptable to us.

29:39And I go, I'm not rebelling against that thing. I just want to be able to stick my toe in all the different waters. Yeah. And to me, resilience is the ability to be okay in just about any situation, right? To be able to go, this is fine. It's totally fine. You know, and that's one of the weird things when you're successful, people, stuff goes wrong all the time. That doesn't change. What happens is that people run up to you and they go, is this okay? We're so sorry. Can we fix this for you? And to be able to retain the ability to be like, yeah, it's totally fine. I don't care where I sit. Like I did a talk the other day and they had to push it 30 minutes and they were just like, we are so sorry.

30:21And then I was like, it's fine. I'll just go back to my hotel room. I'll see you in 30 minutes. And then afterwards they were like, you are the best. Thank you so much. And it was like, I literally just, I went back and I did literally nothing. This is, you're paying me either way. What do I give a shit? You know, but, but you get, you get used to being that person. And then that person is very fragile. Yeah. That's why it's good. Taking road trips are good because people don't give a shit and you're staying in motels and some things are not clean and some things are gross and some TVs don't work and some people at the front.

30:56And I'm very lucky in that way. You know, I mean, I've done very well in my chosen profession, but I'm also, and I remember Robert De Niro saying this in, you know, one of the heights of his career, he was saying, you'll be recognized if you want to be recognized. If you're an actor, you should have the ability to be able to disappear into a crowd also. And I remember always taking that to heart, not that I was in a position then to challenge that, but I think now I am, you know, and I go, if, if I'm going around and I'm presenting myself as somebody who needs to be perceived as important. Yeah.

31:33It's nice to put yourself in a position where you're right-sized and you're just another fucking human being getting along in this life, looking to commune with other people, looking to have experiences, looking to be able to share and feeling lonely, like going back to that place and feeling lonely in Europe. I do. I try to, I try to re insert myself into that same mentality again and again, because it does create something. It creates something inside of you that wants to express or that wants to reach out or that puts your, you know, that, that makes you extend when you wouldn't necessarily extend.

32:13And what you're saying, when you're surrounded by a bunch of yes people, which is the grossest thing ever, you know what I mean? When you have way too many people working for you that you don't need, you know, and that, and I have a really good group of people in that way. My, my assistant, Erica, who's wanted, she's from new Orleans and I'll be like, I'll do a scene and I'll come down and I'll go, what'd you think? And she goes, Oh, I was reading. I didn't see it. And I go, and part of me is like, well, fucking watch, man. And then the other part of me is like, that's okay. You're doing stuff that you have to do.

32:52and my job is just to get up there and do my work. We just did this thing, Knives Out 3 and it was a very, very, very challenging role with an amazing director and amazing actors and I had to give these big speeches and me getting up and I was terrified, man. I mean, after 40 years, I was terrified to get up there and I was like, do I know my stuff? Am I well enough prepped? And all this kind of stuff. And I loved, there was something because I think content is soft today for the most part. Maybe that will change soon. I've heard there's some really good movies coming out. But the challenge was I felt adolescent again.

33:30And I felt like I didn't know anything. And I felt like I wanted to go read another acting book to try and get my footing again. And I liked it. I liked being scared again. And I think it's a thing that I keep trying to throw myself into again and again, whether you're writing a book and knowing that people are going to come around and go, this is stupid. Yeah, there's got to be an element of danger to it. There has to be an element of danger. Yeah.

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34:38Well, I think to go to your point about staying normal, that is one of the wonderful things about having kids, they just don't give a shit about your professional self. Like I saw someone the other day and he was with his kid and I asked his kid, I was like, do you listen to your dad's podcast or do you watch? And he was like, oh yeah, I love it. And my son was like, what? You know, he was like, you care about what your dad, like, cause my kids don't give a shit at all. Like my son the other day goes, dad, what do you think the worst book in our bookstore is? I mean, besides yours. You know, like they're just like relentlessly busting my balls just all the time.

35:16So it's wonderful. Like to watch in my son's eyes, the fact that another kid his age didn't do that was like amazing to him. And I was like, this is this is actually the more healthy thing. I don't need more people telling me my stuff is good. I need I need the yawn of indifference from my own family, you know, but it keeps you it pops the bubble because all they really care about is, you know stuff that in some ways is harder to do to be present you know to have fun to not take yourself seriously that that's what you they want yeah the yawn of indifference no man when you surround yourself with that and there's something so satisfying about it at the end of the day because you're you're again when you're humbled there's no feel there's no better feeling than being humbled you can talk a good game there's a lot of people and that's what i love about you too, man, is that, you know, there's a lot of people I know, and there's a lot of people I know, and not that this is self-help necessarily, but they talk a good game, you know, every, and then you get to know them and then you get to know what's behind the scenes.

36:23And, and you realize that they're not, they're not walking their, their talk. They're just not, it's just something that they like to pontificate and they like to be perceived in a certain way. And if you're not walking your talk to me, you're just not, you're not worth a shit, you know no i totally know that's the that's the hard part writing about it's easy doing it's hard last question for you i'll let you go but i was fascinated when your story as of now that i have young kids is you're you're on round two right so you had kids when you were very young and i ask this question to people a lot my friend casey neistat the the filmmaker he um he had a kid like in high school and then he has a kid now he's kids now the getting getting to do it again what do you feel like you learned the first time you're doing better the second time or how do you think about it having this second phase of life getting to try some of these things over and it's not like you don't have your other kids you still get you're still a parent to to round to round one it's what i always react to is that how do you feel you get to do it again and again it always always makes you feel like my older kids went somewhere um yeah it's i i love the continuation of being a parent.

37:37I will have been a parent my entire adult life. I will have gotten out of high school, had about a year to myself, a year and a half to myself. And then I became a parent. And then I will, my youngest will graduate when I'm around 70. So I will have been a parent, my, you know, raising kids. There was a little moment there where I kind of was off on my own doing my thing and my kids were adults, but not very long. And I, and I've always been a present parent. I've always had this incredible relationship with my older kids. What's different is that I'm, I mean, think about a 20 year old man. You know, when Debbie was pregnant with Trevor, I was looking at prison time, you know what I mean?

38:23So it was a different guy. And even though I think I've always been a very conscientious and good parent. I still had, which is basically what this book is about. You know, I had whatever chaotic vortex that I was living in, you know, that's the nature nurture part. I was still contending with that. And I was still unwilling to let it go. Meaning I was unwilling to grow up because I thought growing up meant kind of some weighted down idea of having to live this monotone life. And I just wasn't willing to do that. And because I didn't know that living the way that I'm living now is so much more vivacious and vivid than anything I ever lived before, you know, and it doesn't have the consequence of having to do jail time or whatever.

39:16But I, you know, it's healthier too. And it's, yeah, it's healthier too. And but there's something that's always existed with my kids about their sense of newness and discovery and awe that I think that I treat like people go to church for that reason or people go see Buddhists for that reason or people meditate for five hours a day for that reason. I feel that that is my version of that. I get to be around these kids and I'm not bullshitting when I say it. I've always felt that it is such a gift that I've been given to be able to be the parent of these four children. I think that's one of the best passages in the book.

40:00I have it here. You said, there's nothing so pure as the young who are just beginning to awe at that investment of a breath and slowly so painfully realizing how all the breaths of their passions hang in wait just out of touch into their maturity solace will hide with only a yearning scent of milk left in the air but there they are it is there your own sense of character to be cultivated i loved it the innocence the the the sense of discovery uh the excitement about things that yeah that's what lights me up that's that's the fucking best that's why that that makes the sleepless nights and the craziness and the yelling and the noise and the breaking of shit.

40:42It makes it all worth it. Which brings it all the way back to this, which is what I was saying, which is Daily Dad or Daily Stoic or all these fucking books that I have of yours. Literally, your books are everywhere. That remind me of that. It's like, look, you go through the insanity to be able to be more present for the gift. And the gift is right there. You don't have to seek it. It's not out of your grasp. It's literally right there. You know, I was thinking, oh, look at the opportunities that you're getting now that you're sober. I go, no, the opportunities were always there. I just I just wasn't available to them.

41:17And now I feel like I'm available to them. And and you and you've magnified that. And I'm not again, this is not I've done a lot of interviews for this book, man. And I appreciate you more than you probably will ever know. well that that means a ton to me i hope we can uh do it in person sometime but but this was awesome i i i love the book like i got two copies with notes i thought it was fantastic and uh yeah i hope you do another one me too i it's it's it's already happening so we'll see good all right well hit me up if you ever need anything and then hopefully we'll uh we just crossed we just missed each other when you're in austin but let me know when you're here next let me see your shirt real quick.

41:58Oh, this is Judas Priest. Fuck yeah. I took my kids. Actually, I took my son twice. I took him to see Iron Maiden in Sacramento, which is where I'm from. And then Judas Priest was opening. And so he was telling his five-year-old brother, who I thought was too young to care about this stuff. And then his brother got jealous. So then they were playing at the F1 track, which is near my house. And so my ranch is out in the country. And that's where we live. And it's the closest thing is that that track so i was driving him to school and i was like hey you know that band you just saw us playing and so anyways they wanted to go see judas priest so we missed judas priest when they came to the forum i literally i was supposed to go and i had tickets and i missed it oh dude judas priest when i was a kid rob help you know and then he was kicked out his book no dude super good that definitely he has two they're both very good uh he's a sober guy he talks a lot about that I was shocked one by how good the books were and then two seeing them live because I saw them once when I was in high school or I saw Hal for performing solo when I was in high school but when you were in high school he was already out right yeah I was shocked at how many songs they have like I'm a fan but then you're like oh yeah because they're you know they're not like an 80s band they're like a 70s band you know and so There's like an extra 10 years of songs.

43:24Totally. That's amazing. And by the way, Iron Maiden, and I know you have your old Iron Maiden shirt and all that, but Iron Maiden was it for me. I mean, I had Sex Pistols. I had the Germs. We had the punk rock era. But then Iron Maiden was, I mean, it was it. Eddie floating above the stage and all. I mean, it was just, that was it for us. And I still, when I was doing Milk, God, what was it? I can't remember the song. What was it? Number of the Beast, maybe. and when I was doing Milk I was staying in somebody's apartment right above what's the gay area of San Francisco? The Castro? The Castro I was staying right above the Castro and I was trying to work myself up into like a frenzy and I would eat a bunch of M &M's and I would just fucking bang out to Iron Maiden and that song over and over and over and even though I was a massive fan before it stuck in that kind of time because Milk was such an amazing experience.

44:22But yeah, Iron Maiden, massive, massive impactor. Massive. They're kind of a late 70s punk band at first. I mean, Paul D 'Anno just died. But they kind of started as that and then became a heavy metal band. It's kind of a late transition. Dude, in the car this morning, just because we're talking kid stuff, I'm trying to teach my kids about AI and how it works. So my son goes, hey, dad, do you think we could ask ChatGPT to make a Christmas version of Eddie. And I was like, what world am I living in? This is like the greatest thing that ever happened to me. And he did. This is what it made. I'll show it to you.

45:02Yeah, look at that. Wait, wait, wait. The camera's far away. Let me see how close I can get it. Oh, no way. Dude. And then he asked if we could do a black and white version so he could color it. How genius. Wait. get the fuck you have to send me that i will so so that's what we do in the in the morning sometimes what we'll do is we'll is we're trying to keep them off screens i feel like this doesn't count but well i'll be like what do you want to what do you want to color today they like to color so what do you want to color today and then they they ask chat gpt to make it for them and then you know because then because like their drawing ability is not good but their imagination is incredible and so they can imagine incredible things and then it makes it and then and then they get to fill it in.

45:48So, but I feel like it's teaching them how to use this technology that's not, that's gonna, you know, change the world. So for him to say that unsolicited this morning, I was just like, what is my life right now? This is amazing. My kid wants a Christmas Eddie. It's all you. It's amazing. Well, dude, I'll let you go. This was incredible. Sorry we didn't see each other in Austin. I really do. I would love to see you. I truly appreciate you. You're awesome. Now, likewise, man, This is the best.

46:24Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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