Matthew McConaughey LIVE at The Painted Porch

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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've said this joke to other authors before, but basically, you spend the first chunk of your career hoping to convince your publisher to let you do a book tour, to send you on book tour. They usually don't because the economics of them are not great. Even if you have a good turnout at a small bookstore, 100 people, 200 people, 300 people, the math just doesn't make sense. It can be okay for the store. It's just not that great for the author or the publisher because the author is making a dollar to a copy. They're not going to fly to 10 cities to sell 100 books in each city.

2:49It's a loss leader thing. So you want to go on tour though, because it seems glamorous and cool. And you, as early on as an author, you're like, anyone I can get into the audience I'm into. And then you do it a couple times and then you hope your publisher doesn't send you on book tour. The last big one I think I did was for Stillness is the Key. We had two kids under three and I was just like, I can't ever do this again. It was insane. And sometimes my wife and I go, can you believe that not only was I doing that? But then she flew to meet me at two different stops. Like, what were we thinking?

3:24So we don't do a lot of book events at the Painted Porch. I know Jack Carr did one. Was it for In the Blood? I forget which one of his books he came out and did it. Brent Underwood did one for Ghost Town Living, a Cerro Gordo book. I don't even think I've done one at the store now that I think about it. So I was pleasantly surprised, excited, and then had to figure out if we actually could and would do it when our friend Matthew McConaughey's people reached out and said, hey, Matthew's promoting the paperback of Greenlights. He wanted to do something with an independent bookstore. Would you want him to do an event at the Painted Porch?

4:01And then he'd also do the podcast in person, which we'd been talking about for a while. And I said, of course. And then we had to figure out how to do it. It was tough for him and us because we can't accommodate like 500 ,000 people the way that easily he could have brought. And we saw this because as he was leaving the event, like everyone had left and he was just walking out. Like you could just sense like celebrity energy, just because people driving by. Is that who that I think that is? So we sold 75 tickets. Some people flew in from all over the world. Some were just local residents of Bastrop.

4:33It was a lovely little mix. And we did it out on the back porch of the bookstore. And then Matthew you stuck around and signed books for everyone and pull this full circle. So the only reason to do a book tour these days is obviously it's nice to meet 75 fans, but you know, 75 people, that's not meeting people at scale. So that's not the reason to do the bookstore. But of course, we filmed it, we recorded it, we're running it here on the podcast. But this is the funny part. So I remember kind of feeling a little guilty, like Matthew's putting in all this time, he had to bring the security people out to just sell like a couple hundred books.

5:07Like, you know, this is an A-list actor. Is this going to be worth his time? Obviously, I enjoyed it. Selfishly, I had a great time and we got to hang out. Maybe that's why he did it. But that's what I was thinking about, right? And one of the questions, you'll hear this in the interview, somebody asked him about this thing he talked about in another podcast, which was a recipe he invented for tuna salad. It's sort of like the Matthew McConaughey tuna salad recipe, which actually is great. And we made it and I really liked it later. But somebody asked him this question and he gave this hilarious answer, very in depth.

5:38And I remember as I was leaving, I said to Chelsea, our social media person, I said, I think you should cut that as a clip and post it. Like, don't wait till the podcast comes out or the video comes out. Just grab that and post it. And she did. And on TikTok alone, it did like 7 million views. So when we think about like the economics and the reasons to do something like a book tour, it turns out it's the 75 people that you talk to or the 200 people that you talk to. That's all nice. And that's great for them and for you and fun. But in this social media, internet, video world that we live in, actually the value is in the people who weren't there.

6:16That's you listening to this right now. That's who benefits from it. And I'm happy to bring you this second part of our interview. This is us on the back porch of the Painted Porch, in front of the big orange mural, which you may have seen in some of our videos. I asked Matthew some questions first, and then we turned it over to Q &A with the audience in the second half. As I said, Greenlights is now available in paperback. There's a reason this book has sold millions and millions of copies. It's great. There's also a Greenlights journal. And then Matthew talked about the book he is working on next, so that's exciting.

6:47We sold out of all the signed copies at The Painted Porch almost immediately like the next day. But you can grab a paperback or a hardcover from us. I'll link to that in today's show notes. You can follow him at OfficiallyMcConaghey on Instagram, at McConaughey on Twitter, at MatthewMcConaghey on YouTube. Enjoy.

7:10Thanks, everyone. We'll just do a few questions, you and me, and then we'll open it up to you guys. So you were saying you've been to Bastrop once before, a couple times? Because Richard Linklater's place. Many times out here to Richard Linklater's place. But never to downtown Bastrop proper. Well, welcome. Thank you. Considering this is a bookstore, I thought I would ask you, can you think of some books that have been formative in your life that shaped you or shaped the writing of this book? I think I've talked to you about it before. One book that I'm still reading, haven't finished but keep going back to, is Emerson's essays, especially the one on self-reliance.

7:48Slow reader, because I read something like that or philosophy, and I can get two lines, and I have to shut the book on it because I've got to go. I've got to walk. I've got to walk for a week and try to test that out and see what life's given back if I live through that lens. But more than, I think, writing the book that found me was Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman in the World that found me at a time, and I talk about it in Greenlights, when I decided to go from law school to film school. It's one of those magic ones that sometimes we think they find us, and this one did. And I needed, because I had that ownership that it was mine for a reason, it gave me courage to make a decision and say I want to go to film school, which is the story where my dad said, well, don't half-ass it instead of telling me like hell you are.

8:34So that was a very similar book that found me. You know, those are two that were in my, I guess, college years. that I definitely wouldn't be sitting here without. Yeah, it's like there's a Zen saying, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I think sometimes certain books find us, and maybe we don't even read it all the way through. Sometimes it's just like the title strikes you, but it's exactly what you needed at that moment. And then you know that feeling is obviously true because you feel that it was yours. It was meant to be. There's something divine about that and to not be something that's different than if someone goes, hey, man, read this book.

9:16Yeah. You're like, ah, I'm already kind of, I have trouble reading books that someone goes, hey, please, you should read this book. Really? But if I find, yes, I do. Just a little contrarian? I don't mean to be. Interesting. But I feel like it didn't find me. I feel like whenever, when there'll be books, I'll see them a lot in the airport and I go, I'm like, I'm suspicious because it's so popular. And then when I read that book, I go, oh, yeah, that's why it's so popular. Like I always regret that snootiness or that resistance to like, you can't tell me, you know? Well, there's enough that you probably looked at.

9:48You were like, that's why I didn't want to read it. I guess sometimes. But I'm surprised. I'm usually pleasantly surprised. Well, that's encouraging. No, but I feel like, yeah, maybe to go to use your thing. Sometimes there's a book's giving you a green light and sometimes there's a red light. You're like, that's not for me. That's not the right time. And if I read it now, it wouldn't work. But a couple years later. I mean, look, I'm still that way to this day with movie scripts. When someone sends me something, I'm like, I'm going to read this, but promise me, it may be longer until I read it, but I have to be in a place where my mind is able to give this the justice it deserves.

10:27Because I could read an incredible script, but if I'm not in the right frame of mind, I won't see it. And I've had scripts like that that I passed on that people on my team go, dude mud i passed on a few times really and i had people that very close to me who's opinion i like said like no you've got to read this again and i went back and read it again and was like oh i see the magic killer joe complete pass thought it was horrible thought it was gross and then my great mentor penny i was like it's hilarious and i was like funny he has it funny she was like oh you don't get it and then i read it with a different meter in her mind and i got it and all of a sudden started laughing i was like i gotta do the film right interesting i remember they sent you a script from one of my books uh conspiracy they wanted you to play hulk hogan yes it was a good script yeah i'm a wwe fan i got kicked out of herge coliseum for throwing tomatoes at skandar akbar and spitting on king kong bundy first coliseum is a little coliseum where all the wrestling uh federation would go in uh shreveport i grew up a big wrestling fan that was a good script i thought so yeah charles randolph yes who wrote uh the big picture where is that did they go make it currently uh ben affleck is supposed to play hulk hogan ben affleck's gonna play hulk hogan yeah and gus van sant is attached to direct to direct that yeah but it's this is seven i don't know how you live in this world it's i've written seven books since that book was optioned and it's no closer to existing than it was then and matt damon is also attached I think to play Nick Denton.

12:09I forget who, but it's like as unreal of a package as you could imagine, but still doesn't exist. So it's. I would not have put that package together with Gus Van Zandt. And those two have teamed up with Gus Van Zandt many times. Huh? Yeah. It's a good script. Thank you. I didn't write it, but. It's good. It's good. No, but what struck me about that process, and we've talked about this before, but I think about it pretty regularly. You told me that your reputation in Hollywood, is a quick no, long yes. Long yes. Quick no, long yes. What does that mean? I mean pretty much what it says. If I'm going to say yes, I'm going to try and measure it from many different angles.

12:48I'm going to look at the cost of the move to the family. I'm not going to choose to do... If I like something, I'm not going to say no to it because I don't like the location. That's not what I'm saying. I just let myself go through a process of, if I like something, give myself two weeks, the first week of I'm not doing it. Our first week is I'm doing it. And now let me see how many times I, without consciously thinking about it, I'm going to write notes or I'm seeing the life through that lens, that being a real part of my future playing that role. And I'm taking notes on it and I'm thinking about it and I'm seeing people do things.

13:26I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And it has to do with that role. And then I give myself a week to go, you're not doing it. do I wake up in the middle of the night going, Oh, I got, I can't let that go. Right. Sometimes that happened with gold. That was a process I went through with gold. I woke up too many times thinking I, if I lose that, I'll regret that the rest of my life. That was a good sign when I was in the mind frame of I'm not doing it. That let me know you have to do it. So you're only doing something if you can't not do it. Trying to get to that place. Yes. And look, there are other things that I've, I'll look at the pedigree around it.

14:00Maybe I, maybe I love the director's work. Yeah. Maybe I, you know, and I'm like, I'm going to, this person's going to elevate this material. I don't love it yet. I could not, there's a way I could not do it. I can, I'm going to take a chance and dive in and believe that I can make, feel like this can be magical. And I'll get to a place where I'm like, no one else could have done it but me. I had to do that. Yeah. I had this experience with the last, moved my next film, Lost Bus, that I did with Paul Greengrass. I called him to pass. We had a Zoom. And he goes, well, if you know Paul Greengrass, very eloquent Englishman.

14:37And he went for 40 minutes. And at the end of 40 minutes, I was like, well, if that's how you want to go about it, I'm in. And we went and made it. And I'm really glad I did because we did work and create something that made me feel like I had ownership of it and was the only person that could do it. Because I've heard this rule, and it makes sense to me. It's hell yes or no. So you're either like all in. It's amazing. You're utterly convinced it's the right thing to do or you don't do it. And I understand that as a good way of judging things. But then a lot of the things that have been life changing that turned out to be my best work, I was like 51-50 on.

15:12And I wasn't sure. And you take that sort of leap or that guess. And then later it becomes obvious. But at the moment, it's not always so clear. Yes, 100%. I mean, look, I've had many like that. Some of the work I've done where I'm like, look, this last job I did, my scares, I was like, it was too easy. I was too relaxed I went and saw the film last week it's good and I'm very happy with what I did I was like I'm glad you were that relaxed but Camille and I were like you're coming home so relaxed yeah are you and I'm like am I doing enough of the right work am I turning up and turning over enough stones here and I believe I did but but you know and other ones I've grinded you know and really broke a sweat daily for months and looked at the work and was like you know and then there's other times where I've grinded and I was like you every bit of your grind is up there and you can see it and it worked.

16:01I'm glad you grinded that much. Yeah. But I do probably have a little fear of, uh, uh, ever being lazy. Cause I tell that story in green lights about taking that role. I get the bright idea that I'm not going to read the scene. I'm in one scene. I get the idea. I'm not going to read the scene because I'm just going to go there and be my man and do what he would do. Yeah. And he was a drug runner on the Mexican border and the coyotes come and he steals the drugs and kills them and runs off with it. I'm like, that's what I'll do. And then I get there and I show up and, we're on our marks about to, about to shoot the scene.

16:35And evidently I got a little nervous because I said, can I see the, uh, the sides, which are the small pages of what the scene's actually written. And I look at page one, I flip it. I look at page two, I flip it. I look at page three, I flip it. I look at page four. And it was a four page monologue by my guy in Spanish. And a little bead of sweat went down the back of my neck. And I remember going to no one in particular, can I get 12 minutes? And the reason I said 12 minutes, because I is one, I didn't want to be rude to the crew. And I thought 12 minutes was a short enough time to not be rude to the crew.

17:07Yeah. I also thought that 12 minutes might be just enough time for me to learn four page monologue in Spanish because I took Spanish my sophomore year in high school and went to Madrid once. Well, I wasn't rude to the crew, but I definitely wanted enough time to learn the Spanish. And I remember I've never been able to watch it. I spoke some Spanglish and I don't, and I know it could have been very good and i remember going home that day pulling over on the side of the road just beating the heck out of the steering wheel going never again yeah embarrass yourself like that so i always have a little bit of that sort of don't come up short or over prepare don't under prepare there have been very few times in my life that i have left thinking i over prepared for that like it's almost always the opposite you almost always could have done more going in well if you when we were talking about it earlier about you know you're writing notes for something to talk about in speech but then maybe you throw them away or don't look at them at the time is that you know if if you can over prepare to where you feel like you have to be bestowed to those notes you've taken and if you don't get all of those out yes you didn't live up to what you want to do that's that would be i think a form of over preparing the wrong way true but i've i mean I think I've learned, hopefully I've learned that to maybe prepare a lot more than one might think is necessary.

18:25Yeah. But knowing what to just let go of because it's on the day, I'm kind of trying to let go of all of it. Yeah. And we talked about this, that overpreparation to come in and be relaxed when it's game time because you've overprepared allows you to call audibles. Yes. that you didn't prepare for because you were relaxed enough to not have tension and you could take in some moment that happened you get a magic moment because you were so prepared and like i'm ready bring at me what you want to so that's what i think my favorite thing about preparation is to know it well enough to be confident to know that you can do throw at me whatever you want blindfold me put me on neptune take it off roll camera i'll be ready i'll do what my character would do.

19:09Yeah. You know, wherever upside down and backwards, I'm ready. You said that this frame of thinking about things as green lights was helpful, not just writing the book, but sort of how you live. How, since you've done the book, how have you, I can't imagine that you can put away that frame now. You probably see green lights everywhere. How do you, how do you think about that? What's a green light you've seen recently? Oh, got three this morning. Kids up, went going out the door they're all going to school as eight same time i said bye levi bye vita bye livingston and in unison like a song i heard this love you love you love you and it was three and they were out the door and i was like that was some music and even camilla stepped back in she goes that was like a little song i was like it happened just bing bing bing that was a green light but we were talking about this earlier and i've spoken about it a little bit a few times about green lights but when i say that you know every red light or yellow every yellow lights can turn red every red light's going to turn green.

20:03The notion that it doesn't mean necessarily tomorrow, next week, next month, or even this life. You were saying what we're going through now are results of what our great, great grandfather's decisions they made. Maybe hardships or sacrifices or red lights, different generations in the past have, we're now reaping a benefit maybe from. So that's a green light could be in another generation. So I think being able to just, I mean, project that I think scientifically it's true that some of the things, hardships are going through now that we deem a red light. Maybe we don't get that answer and see what was the upside or the asset of that crisis we're having.

20:43And maybe we won't. And maybe our kids won't. And maybe their kids won't. But some generation, somebody in particular, or some generation will. Yeah, when we say the obstacle is the way, it's not necessarily a great thing for you. Right. But we learn from the painful trial and error and experiences and pain points that other people many years in the past went through. And there was no real upside for them. The upside is the next generation. The upside is the lesson. The upside is they touched the stove and now we know it's hot. And that was a service of them to us. Yes. And you can, you can tell yourself that story about what you're going through, that it might not have any redemptive qualities for you, except that other people can learn to not do that or to do it differently or yeah yeah especially when you have kids you can think well i can at least tell them about this and maybe do it differently yeah i was talking to you earlier now i've got two teenagers one of the fun parts about it is i don't have to edit my good stories as much anymore you know i can they can kind of i can tell them i can keep in the fun details they can be kind of like oh yeah really where i did have to edit them more before and that's one of the funds of uh parenting a teenager now uh with the challenges that come with that um it's be more of a um on the journey from father to friend i'm getting to be more of a big brother to him which is i didn't know that was a part of the bridge between father and friend which i'm finding really enjoyable what's a what's a red light you're thinking about in your life a red light something like or a check engine light or whatever check engine light my mother's my mom my mom is 92 wow i realize and it was and this was somebody told me this remember buddy these are bonus you're in bonus time every time you can spend with her now it's bonus time and although she doesn't think she's ever gonna die which is why she's 92 and doing so well it's gonna happen but to realize that it's that it's that it's not take her granted that it is bonus time because it's we she's self-reliant she's doing her own thing she's not asking for more of anything or time or anything but boy as much as we can get her around the grandkids grandkids we had her with us for four years so she just moved back on her own um about a year and a half ago but to realize that's bonus time that'll be a that will be a big red light yeah will be one.

23:18So just the anticipation of that's actually coming soon. Yeah. As soon as it's ever, as soon as it's ever going to come. Sure. That she's in that part of the fourth quarter, no matter how much modern medicine does or how fortunate she is, it's, it's, it's bonus time. Yeah. And, and we're sort of, I think most people are removed from that. Like I've not many people know a 92 year old, let alone live with one. Right. Right. So we kind of have set up society to push away the unpleasantness of that idea, but that's, which is nice, but it also removes you from the wisdom and the perspective and the urgency that comes with being exposed to that.

23:58Yeah. Uh, we were talking about that term obedient, you know, to death, um, or until death, uh, earlier. I mean, look, that she can be around. It's good for her. I'm sit there and look that my kids her grandkids see that we're taking care of my mom and if it comes a day it's going to be a very normal thing for them to take care of us because they saw it do us do their mom i'm going there's a bunch of beautiful little assets of this yeah i mean i asked her i said what do you think your secret of of livelihood and being healthy healthy for this long alive and she's It's like, I truly cannot imagine not being here.

24:42And it's a bit of that Dan Buettner found this out with those centurions. He was like, people that live longer aren't trying not, they're not trying to live longer. They're forgetting to die. There's something, there's like amnesty in that. There's almost like, ah, well, that's relaxing. You know? And then it's easier than we think sometimes. Because we don't, well, we don't like to. Even in religion, we talk about, can't wait to get there, but boy, we don't want it. Uh-uh.

25:18We 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.

25:53My 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.

26:31Becky. 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.

27:12It 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.

27:57And 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

28:23there was a guy richard overton who lived in east austin and i would go sit on his front porch sometimes it was like this and he was 112 when he died he would smoke cigars every day and drink whiskey every day so maybe it just canceled it all out or something but i remember i asked him one time, you know, what's the secret? And I was like, do you just take it day by day? And he was like, at my age, you take it day by night. He's like, I'm just trying to live through the night. Okay. Okay. Hope I'll wake up in the morning. Yeah. You just radically shrink the time span. But I think that's the point.

28:52There's not a goal. They're not trying to live to a certain point. They're just kind of in it. And sometimes that's the dice you roll. And sometimes you roll very different dice. And I've found that, you know, she lives in a retirement community out in Del Webb, But, boy, they are so unsentimental about death. Because they're surrounded by it. Every few months you show up and go, well, what happened to Bob? Oh, he moved on. He passed away. And they're just back to playing Marjohn. Yeah. Right. And it's just like, yeah, it's about time, you know? Yeah. No, my grandmother is 94, and she was telling me a story about my grandfather who died when he was 80 or I guess 90.

29:29She was telling me at his retirement community, you know, they all sit at dinner. and um there was this guy and he kept talking about his health or you know they didn't like so they asked him to not come to their table anymore and and i was like oh that's harsh and she was like they just didn't know how many times they'd have at the table and they didn't want this guy like so so you know you get you get better at having uncomfortable conversations oh i don't even think they're uncomfortable anymore yeah right because you don't have time yeah and it hurt their feelings so what yeah exactly they voted him off the island because and don't have one sense of regret i said exactly i asked my mom one time because she started we caught her in a big lie another one i'll tell you the story please my brother pat this is after my father passed away my mom had been dating this guy jack and uh they've been dating for a few months maybe gotten pretty serious six months or so brother pat's coming golf he's heading off on the first tee his group of four men on the 18th or ninth tee were coming back in the fairway on the other side of the creek and they start yelling over hey pat congratulations congratulations congratulations pat's like well what they call him over the creek and they go congratulations he goes on what he goes your mom and jack getting married and pat's like my mom and jack ain't married man they didn't get he comes to me and tells me we got like what mom do mom do we go in the kitchen she's in there cooking we're like mom what'd you do so we're talking about no we heard these guys came up tells her the story the guys yell over and she goes oh that what'd you do mom well so the club dues are 400 a month if you're just a couple but they're only 250 if you're married so we told them we were married because we're going to save 150 a month And we're like, golly.

31:24Anyway, Mom would pull up these lies like this. We'd bust her. And I was sitting there going, Mom, Mom. One day telling her, Mom, you taught us not to lie. And you taught us to do these things. But now you do all these things. I mean, do you have anything that you regret? Anything at the end of the day that you sit there and go, I could have done that better? She goes, oh, honey, I do. I have a long list mentally that I make every night before I go to bed of things I would change or things I would do better or things I'm sorry for, things that I regret. I was like, ah, okay. hey she goes but the thing is honey when i wake up i forgot them all

32:01so forgiving yourself quickly seems to be another secret she i will say this she has a book maybe you should have it in there that she wrote long before mine really titled i amaze myself i came with conaghy she'd love to come sit over here and talk to you about it Anything else you want to tell people about? And then maybe we can get to questions. I will go questions. So, quick question about the game this Saturday. Yes. What's your prediction for the outcome? The prediction for the outcome this weekend? Yes. 27-21 Texas. I think we go beat them. They came and hit us in the mouth pretty good here.

32:42They did. Second half, we dominated. First half, different story. Yeah, we just got to look. We can't try and give it away. We tried to give it away to A &M last week. That's right. That was my next question. So, second-half adjustments. What should we have done different besides the interception and the fumble? Well, look, you've got a special teams. You've got a pump block. You've got an interception pick six, tip ball, which Quinn's thrown a few of those. You've got a fumble on it. I mean, that's just a little tighter understanding of where you are, what the score is, and don't have a negative play and don't turn the ball over.

33:17and sometimes you just get three and all of a sudden you're up 20 to nothing instead of 14 at that point. I mean, but that's not gonna, that's, I mean, we, if you looked at the game and look at the numbers, we won that game 28 to nothing, you know, but we kept them, we kept them close. So we play a cleaner game against Georgia. I think we can beat them. Yeah. Hi. Yes. Okay. This isn't football, so I'm sorry. Um, no. Uh, so I try and ask this of everyone that I know who creates. so when you sat down to write the book or when you're working on script analysis or anything like that there's going to be days you don't want to and Ryan I think I've asked you this too what are your tricks to beating resistance tricks to beating resistance I mean look it seems to be an art that's independent and individual for each one of us a lot of times I lean in and and sweat through it and bulldog through it now that I've gotten older and trust my work ethic and trust that I'm not a lazy man, I'll give myself a little more leniency to go, no, you're not feeling it.

34:19Fine. And if I give myself that freedom, I will naturally do double time the next day and go, yeah. And so, you know, I was telling you about the book I'm working on now. I was working really hard and grinding on some academia and some reason and some logic logic and all of a sudden i'm like man this is really hard i'm gonna what am i naturally writing when i'm off hours i'm writing rhymes poems and prayers well okay let's back off and give yourself that if that's what's naturally flowing and trust that if we write finish that other book that idea it'll still be there or new one will take take you me over and and you know like anything it's uh you know when you can't not not do something when i was writing green lights i once i got far enough in it, it was writing itself.

35:11I couldn't, I didn't have to give myself hours. What I had to do was remind myself to eat, to drink water and to get a little bit of sleep because I had the fever of writing. I couldn't get enough. And I go away for 17 days, each 17 day trip at the end of 17 days, I had lost nine pounds and wasn't exercising. I was just staying up all night writing. I was like, okay, that's, you went far enough. Let's go get some rest and nourish ourself but i got the fever and i was writing averaging 17 hours a day and so yeah hi uh to that point was there something you wrote that didn't end up in the book or something that was really hard to relive to rewrite there's a few things that and i'll i'll uh try and say this the right way with the some of the age group um there's a few things in the beginning like i said i have I have this, this happened to be Papa, that I purposefully made it one line and said, there's a great story there, but I'm not writing that story because that'll be the headline.

36:17I'm not writing that story because someone will put that line in bold print. And that is not what this book is about. So I personally held back on some certain things and they're really good stories. But I knew being in my position, being a celebrity, that would have been a headline And it would have been the lead for a lot of the conversations. And I would have gotten tired of going, uh-uh, that's not what the book's about. You didn't got to get past that point. That would have been, it was too page six news. And so there were things I was conscious of. I was like, uh-uh, don't give them that.

36:47Even though it's a great story, hold that one back because you don't want anyone leading with that. And that is what they'll lead with. I was going to ask you about that because there's something, I saw you on The View and they tried to ask you a question. and you could tell that what they were trying to get was a soundbite that would either preemptively end the prospects of a political career before it started. That restraint, that ability to think, hey, instead of going off the cuff here, I'm going to dodge this trap, which it was, which so often that's what people are after. They want a sort of a gotcha thing.

37:20Or, you know, in sports, like the reason people trash talk is they want you to overreact and get in trouble. So, but, but there's something I think stoic about going, Hey, I see what you're trying to do here. I'm not mad about it, but I'm not going to fall for it either. Well, I've got done it long enough to not be mad about it. Yeah. Again, not to think it's unbelievable. I can't believe you asked a question. I'm always like, are there any questions offline? I'm like, no, ask whatever you want. I understand now I have the right to go none of your business to any question. Yeah. And to trust that pregnant pause though, when someone asks you a question and I didn't even do it in that view.

37:53I did retort. I made up for it and recontextualized my position. But what's really cool is to just sit there and straight face him and go. And let them get uncomfortable in the silence. And let someone else bring up. And then just go. He just stared at me. He wasn't angry. He just breathed. He just sat there. But you get the silence. We all get a little uncomfortable in the silence. So you want to feel it. And I did feel it. you know but what would really been cool which i've done a few times is just sit there and go when we live in a world now of social media where people aren't even asking you to weigh in people are just unsolicitedly stepping in it you know like what wait we just wake up and go what's my hot take on this culture war issue that no one asked you about and then eight years later you're in trouble for it or regret it or what like i there's very few things that i have said while I'm upset that I'm like later.

38:51I'm so glad I weighed in on that. Well, there's also today with social media, you are, if somebody speaks up on something and it takes an opinion on one side in the culture or something or political, if the tribe that you're around all jump on that bandwagon and you do not comment condemning it, your silence means you believe the other or you disagree. and that's a that's a large leap too far totally and so then you get people you know right tweeting stuff that you're like i too condemn this you're like well duh who who doesn't yeah you know i mean did you need to con did you did you did you need to say that because maybe we all thought you did think it was okay before it's condemned right and so you're kind of jumping into that that game and i've tried to you know i tried to refrain from some of these things that you go there's a lot of context to this point that needs more than 40 characters so let's not go on online and make a statement when tomorrow or 10 years from now or even longer you're going to find out there was more more more of the story than you knew yeah so my question was kind of hijacked by you ryan sorry that's okay i was going to ask what your secret was to dealing with difficult people but i think you've already answered it dealing with difficult people yeah like how do you not let people get under your skin oh okay what's we kind of touched it but um the first thing is i mean i write about in green life this dumbest word in the dictionary unbelievable just quit being so like i can't believe they did that yeah they did it they do it all the time so just when somebody does something that makes you go just not being it's like oh of course you did it happens all the So to not be surprised at all when that happens, I think, is the first thing.

40:48And it makes it much less difficult. It's just not difficult if you don't let it be difficult. You measure, because I want to sit there and believe. I want to give more trust in a conversation, even with a stranger. I want to. But I want to be wise to understand that this conversation is not just between you and me right now, Ryan. It's right here, and it's going wherever whoever's recording it. It's like be conscious of those things. And, you know, you see people look, some of them are very good at baiting. But I've gotten pretty well seasoned in knowing just as I'm mid-sentence, oh, if I finish this the way I want to finish it, that's going to be bold print.

41:26So I'm going to keep talking and make sure I don't stop at the sentence period at the end so I can fill this out so they can't edit this down. And now I've made context and saved my backside. Okay. okay you know and so to be apparent uh be be to understand or aware that when speak sometimes hits me in a middle of a sentence and i can tell oh that's going to be in bold print or i'll finish and i'll go just want to go on the record yeah please don't print that unless you print what i'm about to say now which is the other side of that story which i do back both together but that alone please don't burn me on that and they the press has been pretty good with me so far with that

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42:41Yeah, really thinking about how the words you're going to say are going to be used or how they're going to be heard. I remember the first big profile of me in my work, there was a New York Times profile, and she was asking me, like, you know, how do we know you're not writing about ancient philosophy to make money? which I thought was a funny question and I said you know if if you're shameless enough you could you could sell anything to make money and then I paused and I said but why would I choose an obscure school of ancient philosophy if that's what I was you know after I was like there's better things I was like there's cryptocurrencies and drugs and you know there's other things you could tell but of course none of that only the first part of the quote is there right right and And so really thinking about how I like your idea of just, I'm not going to pause to allow this sentence to come to a clue.

43:31Don't give me the edit point. Yes, exactly. And then you will many times. I'll see things that are printed, and I'll go, no, no, no, watch the video. Yeah. Because you didn't get my jest or my context or that I led with, that's actually what I heard from someone else. Or you didn't get the setup of the joke wasn't there. Yes. you know um so if you watch the video you can use you can usually see oh i see what they were where they're at or they weren't finished with their sentence sure to go to your point about difficult people actually the the mark surrealist quote about how the obstacle is the way he's not talking about natural disasters or storms or traffic he's actually is a there's some ellipses in that quote he's talking about difficult people and he's saying that at the very least difficult people are an opportunity for you to practice being a good person or to practice restraint or to practice forgiveness or to practice any number of the opportunities that they present you with their obnoxiousness or difficulty or rudeness.

44:29And oftentimes they, they're there to remind us of how we don't want to be. Yes, totally. All right. You're up. How do you navigate moments where you don't live up to being your best self? I don't think I've ever lived up to being my best self. I am consistently underwhelmed. But. Don't pause there. I am. I am. I got a philosophy I'm called oversight. And I think I try to oversee myself. I try to oversee others. I try to oversee projects I do, art I make. that I have, I've never made one movie that turned out as good as I had in my mind it could be. And I've made a bunch of great movies. And I made it in, in, in, in the ones that came in underwhelming, most of them, I don't think I could have done a better job if I was directing it.

45:20That's not what I'm saying. They never reached the divinity of, in my mind, what it could be. That it could become a verb, a living form, a living thing that was just unanimous. I'm always going for that. I'm always going for perfection, but what I'm trying to do and get good at is when the relative does become inevitable. Okay, we've put in our cards. We've declared. We've called wrap. There's nothing else we can do about it. Now look at the scoreboard. Now look at the piece of art and go, how did we do? We went for the A+. Damn it, we made a B. Well, you know what? If we were going for a B, we probably would have made a C.

46:00or getting the most out of other people. If I'm giving more respect and trust and I get burned, I guarantee I got more out of them by expecting and hoping they would live up to my highest expectations. But then how quickly can we become okay with reality when it's underwhelming? Because I think it's always underwhelming. Because I have the highest bar that I've never reached, and I don't think I will ever reach it, and I don't think anyone else will ever reach it. So if I don't shake hands with the underwhelming reality, it's how relationships break up. It's how marriages break up. If you think your wife's got to be Wonder Woman and she thinks you're Superman, you're both going to come up short.

46:46But if you're okay with, well, come up short. That's better than if I thought you were just like, you know, okay. you know and it's it's shaking hands i think with that reality that in going i'm i believe i got more out of reality because i went for something maybe more divine and then being okay that reality is underwhelming but it was better than it would have been if i wouldn't have gone for divine there's a line from epictetus where he says you know we can't be perfect but we can be someone aspiring to perfection right so you can be aiming at some goal and simultaneously be pretty sure you're not going to hit it right and not too hard on yourself for not hitting right and then the you don't dwell on you just it's a loop you're starting you're you're doing it over and over and over and over again trying to get better each time hope so yeah yeah hi i have kind of a fun question i hope um so recently your chicken salad recipe went viral the tuna salad yes yes and i have a clarifying question yes did you did you mean jalapeno chips or pickled jalapeno slices no the jalapeno chips but not the dry ones in the bag they come in a jar and they're in jalapeno oil and they're they're crispy so some people thought they were in a bag like jalapeno chips like potato chips no no no no not those do you have a brand preference there's only a couple of brands it's kind of an obscure little thing that i think is gonna really good thing to invest in right now maybe yeah maybe will you give us the recipe again just so people know what is it Yeah, well, it changes a bit every time.

48:21That's why it's, you know, I'm reading this one. Someone goes, Camilla goes, it says here, you said you were the master of tuna salad. And I started laughing. I was like, yeah, I did say that. I said, I'm going to stick with that one. What a funny thing to say. You're the master of them. Again, the tuna ones, you have to have, you've got to have your vinegar. You've got to have your lemon. But then you've got to have your mayo and mix some wasabi with that. Mayo is a trick that some people say they didn't know about the wasabi. some really good Italian dressing from one place that I go to. You get that base and lightly salt that, but don't over-salt it because we're going to be adding chopped olives.

48:56We're going to be adding chopped gherkins. We're going to add some other things. We're going to have salt. Heart to palm, have some salt. So know it's going to get a little saltier as you add more things. We're going to do a red onion. We're going to come in after you get that bite from the jalapenos and the wasabi. We're going to come in with a little agave just to bounce it sweet and soft and our apples at the end. And you want to do the apples at the end, and don't cut them in too small slices because they'll just fade away, and you want that little they're big enough slices they'll come out in that crispy little bite then a little additive that i just put out last night make it a little a tad too wet and then go get your favorite chips crunch them up drizzle them and the chips soak up some of that moisture put it in the fridge don't touch it till overnight like most good dishes they all get better overnight because it coagulates and comes together and then oh yeah those those peas at the end don't go too heavy on the peas you can over pee it the frozen peas frozen peas is this going to be in the new book as one of the recipes and corn niblets i'm forgetting there's other things too that i'm oh yes thank you critical stuff great question critical hi hi so first of all i want to say thank you for being here my pleasure um my husband is such a huge fan of your motivational speeches so I appreciate that as well.

50:12All right. My question is, you know, you've been in education for some time now. How has that transitioned from public figure to educator? Well, the education, I've started a couple of classes at University of Texas and they were all based on my own life experiences of making films. And the class I did was script to screen. What I noticed 15 years ago is that every movie I made, the final picture that y 'all have seen, was very different than the original script. Well, what's the journey that original script took to get there? When I was in film school at University of Texas, I thought that every word in that script needed to be shot word for word and exactly like that.

50:48And I didn't leave myself open to be turned on or find some magic or let somebody do an original performance that inspired me. I wasn't open to that. So I made some short films that were like, okay, it's a student film. It had no life to it. And so I wanted to take sort of the mystique off of that. for film students and say, we're going to take you through a journey of a lot of films I've done and show you. You're going to read the original script. You're going to talk about what you think the movie is. We're going to show you the rewrite. You're going to talk about what got cut and what got added.

51:21We're going to show you the shooting script. And then we're going to show you the final film. And that's going to be very different than the shooting script. And we're going to discuss the changes each time. And so just to loosen up the artist's instrument and the filmmaker's instrument to go, yeah, the script is there, but it's a blueprint if I'm inspired in a different way. You can get, you know, there are movies, My first film, three scenes turned into three weeks work. There's other performances out there where they were maybe the main character and got completely cut out. You don't know what's going to what's going to how it's going to happen, how it's going to get to the end product.

51:53So I was teaching from my own experience and I have one for advertising as well that we're doing now. I had to get the confidence to feel like I had it took me a while to get the confidence that I had enough experience to go actually teach something to young men and women in class. because I would say, we were talking about this earlier, I'm saying things that I thought they all knew, and they're like going, whoa. And I'm like, whoa? Like, we didn't know that. I was like, oh, sorry, I took that for granted. I've known that for so many years from experience. I'll share this stuff that I think is obvious, that you're going, don't skip that part.

52:28We never knew that. So it took me a couple years to get the confidence to go, I have learned some knowledge and had some experience that's worth sharing. All right, I think I'm the last in line. First thing I want to say is, of course, Hookham. So, you know, kind of read the preface of your book and everything. Green lights obviously are easy. Yellow lights sometimes you just got to put the hammer down to get through them. Red lights. Can you give an example of when knowing traffic is bad, terrible idea that you've actually had to run those red lights? Can you give an example of one time where you just, it's like, I got to pull the trigger.

53:01I've run a few red lights. I broke out of a couple hospitals. and said, I'm going to see how my own medicine works instead of this. Tripped myself running downhill so I could get a bloody nose and face plant it on purpose. I've self-destructed like that before. I mean, look, some of them you out endure, and that's how you kind of run it. It's red, and it may even turn green, and you're still sitting there, and they're honking behind you. You go, no, I'm sitting here. I don't deserve, I don't deserve, I haven't earned the right to move. You can go around me if you want. I'm going through this hell.

53:43I'm not out yet. Sometimes that's a way to get to a green. Look, the yellow light is more like life. That's the choice, right? You can either blow that SOB and not give the crisis credit, or you can slow down because you go, yep, I need a pause. I've got to take some inventory. I need to stop and deal with this right now, and I don't want to. I think some of us in different times in our life, we stop it. We slow down at too many yellow lights because we like that feeling almost of having a red light. We're looking for false drama. We want to create some kind of problem. We almost feel misery loves company for it.

54:22A lot of us run too many red yellow lights. And if you run in every yellow light, you're all catching greens. What happens if life's nothing but greens? You're getting dizzy and you're running out of gas. Eventually, you have to pull over to the side of the road. Because you didn't stop to refill. One of the tricky things is sometimes our biggest successes in life come from when we didn't take the no. Like we didn't listen to the no. We didn't listen to the people say it was a bad idea, that it would never work. You couldn't do it. Right? So we ran it. We pushed through a yellow light. We ran through a red light or whatever.

54:51And you can learn a dangerous lesson from that, which is never stop at red lights. Right? Or run every yellow light. And then sometimes, you know, the red light's there for a reason. If you're running every yellow, you will eventually get dizzy or an accident. You will. Yeah, you'll get sideswashed. We've got seasons. Look at this. It's just on a creature level. Here comes winter. It's time for hibernation. It's time to stay local a little bit more. We're not out singing a song in the summer, free in the breeze. I mean, there's seasons for it. It's an art. I think it's up to each one of us as a choice what to do when.

55:28um i mean look we were talking about what is it my dad when my dad died it was a major red light all right but i wasn't being a delusion i'm not delusionally optimistic when i was realized very soon oh i'm scared i don't have the crutch to have my back like i always had before and all those things he taught me that i've just been acting like because i knew i could just get away with acting like it being the man that he was trying to teach me to be now i have to be it i gotta have the courage to be it. So I grew up. His passing away, I don't think, I think I would have kept putting it off for another year, two, five, 10 years.

56:03I would have put things off before having the courage to go, man, I'm a kind of, hey, quit acting like one and be one. Major red light, but I got a gift from it. That gift that I got and seeing it as a green light doesn't mean I'm, I'm not, I don't have any, I don't have any empathy or it doesn't mean I'm, I don't have sympathy for moving on or that wasn't painful it was but there sure did have some green light assets in it that it gave me and that's very different than saying the glass half full no the damn glass is half empty too and that's maybe what i mean by saying earlier admit these things admit people will be difficult admit people will be you know what don't be surprised by no it's half empty.

56:46Life can suck. It's hard. Painful. For me and a lot of people, I think we don't admit that part. When it's going good, we go, ah, that's how it is. If I can bottle that, that's just how it stays. No, it doesn't. It just doesn't. So when we go into the debit, when life gets hard, just going, yep, this is part of the same adventure I've been on. And I think admitting that helps us deal with it better, deal with those red lights and saying this is just part of life instead of denying or going, no, this is unfair. No, why has this happened to me? So I think admitting those things helps us get past the red lights a lot.

57:27Admitting that they're necessary instead of the self-loathing of this is really unfair. No, it's very fair. It's kind of rules of the game, actually. I think we've got time for one more question. So for the last question on the topic of, I think, having that radical honesty about when you're hitting those yellow lights and red lights in life, I definitely relate to that and feel like I've had a yellow light of the soul kind of telling me that I need to go back to creating art and kind of piggybacking off the question that was asked earlier about film school. I know you came up through film school and now you're back teaching again, as you just discussed.

58:02And I'm curious how important you think film school is in pursuing a career in writing and in film. And now that you've had all this life experience, is that how you would encourage someone to restart their life if they want to make a big switch? Like to go back to school? Yeah. Probably not. I mean, I'm trying what I'm what I think our education system needs and what I specifically college communications, films, journalism, advertising is more experiential learning. I went I went to film school. I made my A's. Kiddos, I'm going to say this, but I did learn a lot more when I started getting work outside of school and made C's in class because I got the experiential learning.

58:47I read the books, the history of narrative. Two years of that didn't teach me as much as three weeks on the set with Richard Linklater on the movie, on the film Days Confused. I got to see the practice. I got to see it happen. I got to be around everyone. So as quickly as you can get internships or go get experiential knowledge and go get in around some creators and be doing and fail and do it poorly and try it again. It's easier and cheaper now to tell stories and moving pictures than it's ever been. And I think more people, it's like I was at the journalism class last, I forget when it was, a few months ago.

59:23And there was a protest on campus. And I was like, what are y 'all doing in class? Go. Well, you should be down there covering that. That's going to be so much better than whatever this class could have been about today. So I don't know if it's about going back to school unless that's something that's going to give you the structure, which is going to be that's on my schedule. And that's when I go concentrate on storytelling. And I'll be around some other people. So, I mean, but I just big proponent of the more experiential learning you can have now and you have the tools now. It's so easy, so much easier to do it now than it ever was with these mobile device or what have you.

59:58And there's a story in every one of our bedrooms before we get out of bed in the morning. There's a story right there from our point of view when we wake up with our eyes. There's an original story in our bedroom. And there's another one in the kitchen. And there's another one across the street. There's another one in the backyard. So they're all around us. Start shooting them. thank you all right well thanks everyone thank y 'all

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