Tom Shadyac: The A-List Filmmaker Who Gave Away Millions & Found Fulfillment Through Service

25:30Yeah. It's about the relationship between the head and the heart. Like we were both raised in households where it was all about the head, right? Totally. The intellectual capacity is how you're gonna make the way in the world, forget about whatever your heart is telling you, this is what you do, and you dutifully kind of follow this path and ignore whatever yearnings are, you know, kind of lurking beneath the surface. But you fairly early were able to, you know, kind of summon the wherewithal to mute out all of that noise and pay attention to what your heart was saying. And then, you know, at some point, you know, develop a level of conviction about this is what I'm meant to be doing.

26:11This does feel right. I know this is right for myself and I'm going to honor what my heart is telling me, irrespective of the outside noise or the resistance that's, you know, cycling in my intellectual mind. You may give that talk at my funeral. That was really well said. Sitting in the chair, I was listening to Zach Bush and you this morning and, you know, we now know we have a gut microbiome. I think we have a gut spirit biome that we've ignored for for forever. And science of course is now telling us that, that it's not the head telling the body what to do. It's the body more sending more signals to the head.

26:50Yeah. There's a whole thing in your documentary. I am about that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, you feel it in your gut, right? You get a, you get butterflies before you ever get a thought, right? You're about to, you know, start a basketball game or a race and you get butterflies in your stomach, it's not the thought like, oh, I'm going to go run. Your body is really the controlling idea. I mean, look at all the mystical traditions. It's all the heart base, Sufi, the pathway of the heart, Christianity, Jesus was a sacred heart. It's the heart, right? The heart is a source of intelligence. And look, it took an accident, which I'm sure we'll get to, to get me in my heart because I was very much in my head.

27:26I used to be in my head. I lived there and in every relationship I had until I was probably about 40, all my partners would say, you're in your head. And I would be like, but where am I supposed to be? Like, this is the thinking center. Where else is there? There's nowhere else to go. I mean, this is - Where would you like me in my thigh? I wage this war all the time and this is probably the most common conversation or recurring conversation between Julie and I because Julie lives fundamentally and thoroughly from a heart-centered place. And I feel and appreciate the lures of the heart, but I'm so resistant because of my upbringing.

28:03Like I always default to the head. And so there's this dialogue that's going on all the time where, you know, I feel that like tension. Well, I mean, look, I've come to this philosophy and we can talk to it that it's all necessary. I'm really thankful for your attention because your head is working really well. I mean, I don't think anyone has a better way of interviewing or finding the precise word in a conversation than you. And I'm sure that a lot of that came from your head and from your legal background by respect and honor exactly where you are. I think that the access point to the divine, I think the heart is an organ of spiritual perception and that's available to you, but you may be using your head more and we're grateful for it.

28:48I appreciate that. But my head still gets in the way, probably to my detriment a little more than benefits me. Yeah, well, I'm happy to turn the interview around. Yeah. What is the impediment? What does it say? You know, it's the devil you know, I suppose, and the fear of the unknown, or my mind resisting the unknowable that resides within a more mystical relationship with life. Okay, so let's put some flesh on that. What is that? I love, by the way, that I'm turning this around. Yeah, I'm giving you a short leash though. So we're gonna get back. No, no, this is good. So what is the devil that you know?

29:30What is, explain. Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know that I could define it other than a resistance to uncertainty. And that is curious because all of this and what I get to do today, and it all comes from the heart. There was no planning or whiteboarding or goal setting around any of this. It all flowed from appreciating my curiosity and trusting in my intuition, which led me astray for many years until I did enough work where I could pay attention to it and honor it. And yet I still get caught up in the way I think the world works and at the cost of truly embracing perhaps the reality of how it truly works.

30:19And how do you think it works? in my mind yeah yeah and well this is what we do you know it's like it's all the it's like you go to the good school and you try to get the good job and you be responsible and you show up and you do the things and you have kids and you take care of those you know it's all very limited to the structures and incentivizations of the modern developed western world and yet we know and you know because you've had a million interviews that i've listened to where those incentives aren't really fulfilling and working. Of course. Right. Of course. My guess is that it has something to do with the chaos that addiction created because I know your background.

31:02And so certainty is like the thing you grab for. Yeah, I think there's truth in that. Yeah. Yeah. But this is like the front lines of what I'm trying to explore in myself because I think that I get caught up in what I have to do every single day at the cost of the things that truly drive happiness, which is connection, community, like being with friends, giving love, receiving love, like those become secondary and I tend to overcommit and make myself busy. And that crowds out the things that I should be giving a wider birth to. Well, I wanna welcome everyone to the last podcast because I'm now gonna ask you - I'm gonna walk away from this.

31:46Well, why do you have to do it? I don't have to do it, but I love doing it. And I love the fact that I learn. I think the challenge is how do I put into action the things that I'm learning? Because I learned so much and I'm so nourished by these conversations. And it's such a gift to be able to spend time with people that inspire me. And then of course, giving it back to other people and seeing how it nourishes them is an incredible feeling. Like I feel like I have the best job in the world like this. and I'm very conscious of this position that I'm in right now. And I shoulder it with a certain sense of responsibility, but it's also a joyful experience.

32:24Right. You said initially that it's this job I have to do and I want to do these other things. But if it is truly, and I'm guessing it is, because I know you enough, well enough, that it is a real act of love. For sure. Then the problem is? The problem is when it becomes too all consuming or when it becomes something that is in service to my ego more than it is about the service piece of that, because I can become enamored or lured by, you know, the validation that I get from strangers or the remuneration that, you know, this enterprise creates and those things come at a cost. So it's about like inventorying where my ego flares up in this equation and remembering the why behind it in the first place and just having a more grounded relationship with it.

33:27Yeah, let me drill down a little bit because you feel like a brother, fuck inventorying by the way. You don't like that? I just think we over inventory, That's the head again, right? Like I love, actually love doing this. I'm gonna do this more. I actually love spending time with Julie and my kids. I wanna do that more. I'm gonna find a way to balance those things, to put those things. Look, I think you and I are brothers and I'll tell you why. So I have this same idea with Memphis Rocks. I am wearing an advertisement because this is an important place for me. We'll talk about it. It's a very underserved community that I got involved with that has served me much more than I have served it or them.

34:08But when my ego gets involved, it's like, oh, I'm really, I'm important. I have to get this work done. You know, one of the reasons I'm diving back into show business is I want to create a light so that whatever platform I can build for myself, I can use that platform to platform these other young voices. You know, one of them, Christine, he's here, who are brilliant and tell their stories. And it's taken some real pounding from the universe to say, well, you live in the belly of a paradox because you matter and then you don't. You really don't. If I die during this podcast, Memphis Rocks is going to be whatever the universal intelligence wants it to be through the brilliance of Christine over here and Josh Cannon over here and others.

34:54And like, I'm really not essential. And the second I think I'm essential, and this is really important work I'm doing, and I'm doing another version of St. Jude, just the spiritual, psychological, emotional cancer. It's like, shut the fuck up. Like, be a part of these relationships. Be in the river of this universal intelligence. And it knows what it's doing. You don't have to take any of that on because you use words that I use words like shouldering, right? Like you're shouldering something. Like I've had to get my ass kicked and then have a very good mentor. I don't know if he'll ever admit to being my mentor.

35:27He probably has a thousand of us. But Father Gregory Boyle, I have come to many times. sometimes he straightens my butt out by just the way he lives his life. He's lost 250 kids to gun violence. I asked him, how do you do that? And it's because we've lost our share too, not near that many since my involvement, more I'm sure in total, but if you go back years, but he said, Tom, I'm going to tell you something that's really brutal, but it's the way the mystic understands things to be, things with a capital T. I don't mind what happens. I don't mind what happens. So if Memphis Rocks goes by the wayside, it's okay.

36:12Something else will surface. Neutrality. But that neutrality, it sounds passive, right? Like, oh, I don't really care. It allows you to care so much because that neutrality says, oh, it's not on me. there's something holding us, right? How the hell did all these cells get to be held together in this form called Rich Roll and Tom and the table and some fricking intelligence that we're barely understanding is holding all this. And so if I just trust that now I can really care, like I can be really passionate about these things because the results aren't in me. Otherwise there's a tension, right?

36:48There's always a lack. It's up to me. No, I'm a part of it, but like I'm a drop in the ocean and the ocean and drop that kind of thing, but it's still the ocean. Yeah. In the parlance of recovery, that would be the journey from self-will to surrender and the humbling, you know, kind of nature of that journey and understanding that you're not at the center of the universe and you show up and you do your work and the results of that work are not up to you and there are greater forces at play. And these things are going to, to your point, going to be what they're going to be. I like to mess with words, right?

37:24Probably here's some more, but surrender is almost sure ender, right? It's the sure ender. So I'm that certainty, right? I'm sure if I do it this way, if I protect myself, if I take it all on and I can control and surrender is the sure ender. Just end all that stuff and just trust. Like, just end all that sureness. All right.

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43:10Well, that's where like all the control issues and the egocentrism and the fear of what might happen if you let go, because you're the essential element in this equation. Dude, I'm a director. What do you think a director is? It's a professional control freak. And what does a director have to learn when he's on a movie set? Oh, you're actually in control of very little, right? Yeah, you may be doing the shot this way and set the lighting this way, but you have no control over how that actor is gonna come that day to the set, like what the weather is gonna be like, if this dialogue is gonna land or not land.

43:45And if you, you know, you have to be a good listener. You have to end the sureness of what you came with and then really, really listen and then trust what is going on in the truth of this moment between these actors or this weather pattern or whatever is happening. And then you get magic. Then you have another collaborator called the universe, you know, or God, I'd still love that term. You have that as a collaborator because it's not just you in control and things get potentially awesome. Right. As a filmmaker, the movie that you have in your mind is different from the movie that ends up on the page of the screenplay, is different from the movie that you actually capture in the camera, is different from the movie that gets edited and ultimately finds its way to the screen.

44:30Absolutely. So that finished product probably bears very little resemblance to that original idea that you had about what it was gonna look and sound like. I can't tell you how many original pitches I have gone to studios and said, this is what I see for this movie, that pitch never winds up in the basis of it will. Like when I did Nutty Professor, I was just talking about this the other day. There were a bunch of jokes about overweight people. And it's like, and even the lead character, Sherman Clump, if anybody's seen The Nutty Professor with Eddie, who is brilliant in that movie. In the original sort of adaptation of that from the old Jerry Lewis film, he was made fun of by a lot of people.

45:12and he, you know, of course, didn't have any self-esteem. And I thought, you got to turn that upside down. This is my original pitch to Ron Howard and Brian Grazier. You got to turn that upside down. He should be an awesome human. He should be a great professor. And the only person who doesn't see it is him. So nobody out there is like, you know, it's not like he's facing, you know, like students that are going, you know, yes, there are bullies, but the larger world loves him. He just doesn't love himself. And so that idea ends up in it, but the original scenes I pitched, they don't, because I got to go listen.

45:45I got to listen to what Eddie wants to do. I got to go listen. We had a brilliant writer. We co-wrote that one, Steve Odukirk. And then through that listening, something greater happens. Right, and if you're too much in the way, you get in the way of the miracle that might happen with improv or whatever somebody else's idea is. Right, and so we extrapolate the metaphor to our lives. when we get in the way of whatever's being created for us, with us, and through us, it gets smaller, right? I've had my share of this. I was gonna ask you how you're doing with that now. I'm totally fucked. I'm in recovery, dude, constantly like you.

46:25I'm addicted to sureness, right? But truthfully, letting go more and more and more and finding, how did I get here? I got here just by letting go of, some things that were making me very comfortable and secure at the top of the showbiz game and letting some of that stuff go and diving into a community that I fell in love with. Right. So we're working our way up towards that. On the directing front, after graduating from film school, how long did it take to get - By the way, I never graduated. Oh, you didn't? Of course you didn't. I split. I actually would be disappointed if you did. I did not graduate.

47:04Yeah, I split. In any event, How long did it take to get Ace Ventura up on its feet? After film school? And not for nothing. Like you would think your first stab at directing would be some kind of small indie Sundance type movie. Well, I did a movie of the week for Fox Television. They were my first supporters. Wendy Rich was the executive's name. She said, I think I've discovered the next John Landis. I was shocked because I thought John Landis was just the bomb. He did so many amazing films. Some stuff that you had done in film school, some shorts or something? Yeah, they saw my short. I made one short film, they saw it.

47:42And look, it was 11 years from the time that I landed in LA to write jokes to the time when I was, when Ace Ventura came out. So that's what you call an overnight success. Right. And I got letters from Spielberg, Michael Eisner, the head of Disney, producers like Joel Silver, who did all the Lethal Weapons. And suddenly I was the it guy, the overnight guy, but it had been an 11 year apprenticeship. It's hard to imagine a universe in which we're not all intimately familiar with like Jim Carrey as like this, you know, colossal comedic genius. But at the time of Ace Ventura, it was a big risk. He was like the one white guy on In Living Color and hadn't really done anything.

48:25That was on the back of his jersey with the Miami Dolphin team was there in Ace Ventura and they gifted him with a number one white guy. and I literally saw this this is why I know things are written in the universe I know it because I'm 65 I've seen the pattern they're written, they're written, they're written just everybody relax, it's written yes you have to show up but it's written I saw Jim Carrey go from being the white guy, whenever we walked to dinner, they'd be like hey it's a white guy I don't live in color before Ace Ventura came out before it came out, suddenly it was hey Jim Carrey, oh my god it's Jim Carrey it's Jim Carrey Suddenly the universe was like, okay, Jim, we've prepped you.

49:08It's time. You're now Jim Carrey. Go. Like you're no longer the white guy. You're not just the skit guy. This is gonna be a larger platform for you. Yeah. I forgot. Did you have a question? No, I mean, I'm just reflecting on, you know, this, you create this launch pad for this superstar. And at the time, it wasn't a sure bet. And I think I even read like, you're even like kind of reviewing dailies or in the edit thinking, is this even gonna work? Like this guy's so out of his mind, like maybe audiences aren't even gonna be able to deal with it. You are being much kinder in your language than we were to ourselves.

49:46We were saying, oh my God, this could suck. This could blow up whatever little careers you and I have. And he certainly had a much higher profile career than I at the time. But we knew that if we took this risk, we hung on one thing, we were laughing. Every day, the crew was laughing. We were laughing. I mean, Morgan Creek called me, the executives called me, and they were aghast at what we were sending them. They just thought we were sending them absolute crap. They weren't getting it. They were like, we need to know who the real Ace Ventura is. And I turned to Jim and I'm like, Jim and I were like, I have no freaking idea who the real Ace Ventura is.

50:21There's even one scene in the movie where Courtney Cox and Jim, I think they're looking for the files, they're going through files at night where we had Jim do the real Ace. and then he ends up barking at the end of the scene and then his character comes out. It's ridiculous. Ace is a cartoon character come to life. It's kind of like Ace became a symbol for me of someone who's just completely childlike in an overly serious culture. I'm just gonna be like this all day, every day. Good to see you. Take care now. Bye-bye then. And just this absurd thing and a world that was trying to be so serious.

50:54And we got such hateful reviews of Ace. Siskel and Ebert said it was the death of cinema. They gave us a lot of power. We had the power to kill cinema. Because I do think that there is something revolutionary about being childlike, about laughing at going to the bathroom, about talking out of your ass, about doing these silly things because we are so programmed. I mean, what did Jesus say? The ultimate revolutionary, unless you become like these little children, you shall not enter the kingdom. Jim was like this childlike cartoon come to life. And so people who are trying to be serious, I'm a serious reviewer.

51:30I want to talk about your craft and I want to use words like ostensibly. And they looked at Ace and went, we can't have this. And a culture can't have you being in joy. It was just like an ode to joy. But the culture said otherwise. Yeah, I'm talking about sort of the unwritten rule of the culture. But the people said, this is cool, man. Like I want to have this kind of fun. I want to like let myself go. I want to be. And how much did Jim improvise in that? Like, was that all on the page or was he just going haywire and trying things and you were capturing magic that you didn't even imagine? We wrote a really tight script and this is what most people don't know about improv.

52:17The best improvisations on movie sets are coming from really tight scripts. Scripts that have been thought about 25 different ways, every angle, every line, every possibility of a relationship outcome. Then you go to set with a full library and then something else happens. But without that full library, you'd be creating that library on the set, right? You'd be creating that Rolodex on the set. I was going to explain what a Rolodex is to your audience. Picture a phone, but with a lot of papers. Welcome back to old man talk. It's true. Because I speak to young people all the time, and I always say like Bob Hope and Danny Thomas, and there was a life before, but by doing that extra mile comedic dive, thinking, exploration, you are able to come to the set.

53:11And with that now inside of you already processed genius can often happen. So Jim would do the lines in the script. Same thing with Eddie and Robin. I work with Robin and Dave Chappelle and they would do the lines in the script and then we would play. We would play. And the play often was the genius. Yeah. Well, it was magic in a bottle and that kind of sets you and your muse, Jim, up for this rocket ship ride that takes you, it's like a 15 year run, right? You just bang out like massive hit after massive hit, liar, liar, Bruce Almighty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that had to be just a dizzying experience.

53:57Surprise, I got carried away with it. Yeah. Surprise, surprise. Who wouldn't? It was hard not to. Wait a minute, I can have my own jet? Like there's no, I don't have to what? go through security? Like, what? You bring me food on the plane that I order? What? The beauty of it was there were a lot of yeses to the work that I wanted to do. And that was beautiful. Like, I'm a storyteller. I don't want to tell these stories to the wall. I would appreciate people having exposure to those stories and that provided that. And then things that came with it, I kind of smile at today. and I've moved away from somewhat.

54:41When you reflect back on that period of your life, do you have compassion for yourself? Oh, hell yeah. Absolutely. I love everybody in that life. I mean, it had to be fun too. To a point. But I mean, fun is like, fun without a soul is kind of an empty pursuit. Like you can't get enough of it. Was there a conscious sense that you were trying to use these things to fill a God-sized hole? I've heard you say, we're working our way up to the bicycle accident, but I think there's this idea that it was all about the bicycle accident. But my sense is that this had been percolating, this spiritual kind of calling and epiphany had been something that had been brewing for a long time.

55:30You were very perceptive because I don't think I told that story very well in I Am. People think I hit my head and saw God when I got in a bike accident. I hit my head and saw a doctor. What happened after the bike accident was I thought I was going to die, didn't think I was going to live. And so I wanted to share with people what I had come to know through my experiences with the material lifestyle, with getting carried away with the mantra of the society, more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger. and I wanted to share some of the mystical wisdom that I had been seeped in for 20 years at that point that I realized I wasn't living so well.

56:12And I don't judge myself at all. Everything is necessary. Like I really believe that Jesus, again, this is a metaphor people. I'm not like espousing one faith over another, but I really believe that God slash Jesus when you meet God slash Jesus is whatever that is for you, will just be like, oh, I love you. I just love you. And you're like, no, no, you don't understand. I was like super materialistic. I was such an idiot. Like I'm ritual. I was in my head. I got like, oh, no, give me a ritual. I love you so much. I can't even get over how much I love you. You played exactly the note that I wanted you to play.

56:46And I'm sure that like, that like it even happened to Judas, right? Like Judas like betrays the divine energy, whatever. And the divine energy is like, come here, Judas. Come here, man. Come here, you little cow. You look like you need a hug. You need a hug, but I need to hug you too. I need your hug because you played exactly the note that I needed. I know it looked shitty, but that was a hard note to take on because I needed to show the human race that there was something more powerful than death. And I couldn't do that without your shadow in the world. It's kind of Jungian when you realize like shadow is so essential.

57:21You cannot charge anything without shadow in space and time. If you have a battery, you have to have a negative part of the battery. Without that negative part of the battery, there is no charge. So without the Judases, and I'm not encouraging anyone to be a Judas, play your note. Emerson said, if I'm the devil's child, then damn it, I'm going to be the devil's child. Because people were saying, you're not a Christian enough. And he was a minister as well, as was one of your staff. And they said, oh, you believe everyone should get the host? Like, who are you? You're the devil's child. I said, well, if I'm the devil's child, then I'm the devil's child.

57:51And he went and became himself, which many Christians thought was a devil's child. but it wasn't the devil's child. So it's just like, come here, you know, like this is my whole spirituality in a nutshell. Just come here. Like, you know, for those listening on the podcast, my arms are out wide and just, I want to give you a hug. Come here, man. Like, thank you. First thing you may hear, quote unquote metaphor, thank you. You're like, thank you. Like I did some really, I love you. I love you. I know how to turn that. So you think I made shit like grow a garden, like in a vacuum? No, I made shit grow a garden because that's how you grow a garden in space and time.

58:30You go through some shit and you do some - Yeah, well, what you went through now lends so much power to the message that is so important for you to communicate because it was such an extreme experience. I mean, you generated like$2 billion at the box office. You're flying private. You are living in a 17 ,000 square foot house in Pasadena. 13 bathrooms. 13, yeah, it's like, I mean, that house is ridiculous. I always say there's only number one and number two. So number one could be one bathroom, number two, another, and then you got one for a combo, but then you got 10 extra bathrooms. And you get to make hilarious shit with like the biggest movie stars in the world and the world loves you back for it.

59:13And you're getting paid incredibly handsomely for this. Like this is the dream for most people. And you're here to report back and say, the dream ain't as it's cracked up to be. Yeah. Well, I'm simply one sort of piece of evidence of every sort of positive psychology study that's been done in the past 30 years. There were some beautiful things about that dream. You know, like I said, the access, the ability to make product. But if that dream isn't serving a higher idea and holistically, integrity is everything for me. Integrity means every drawer of your life you should be able to open and you should see who you are.

59:49And when I opened the material drawer of my life, I didn't love who I was. Now, I still have a lot of material things. Don't get me wrong. We are in space and time. We are to use materials and we are to use them to fulfill our passions. Whoever this divine intelligence is wants us to experience the limitation. If you're infinite, you got to experience everything through limitation. So that intelligence loves that I bike, loves that I surf, loves that I love the mountains of Colorado, still have a place there. So I don't judge any of that. It just wasn't me, right? That may be someone else's note.

1:00:21You need a 40 ,000 square foot mansion to host your international events, God bless you. I have no judgment of that at all. But for me, the Tom Shady Act, the integrity was, that's not really who I am, right? Everyone that I admired lived a simpler life, lived an idea that was about connection and relationship. And, you know, if I'm hovering above everything in a private jet, I mean, Memphis rocks. We have a new slogan we're coming out with, proximity. Rocks is inside of proximity. I wasn't proximate with the things that create art. You know, I was above it all. Like, oh, I get ushered into the restaurant first and there's the red carpet in front of me.

1:01:05And I mean, how did we become artists? Because we were shut out of the restaurant. Hey, you long hair, you know, like you ain't coming in here. Like you ripped up shirt. Like, I'm like, I got to get back to that a little bit. So that dissonance was very much, kind of like I said earlier, like brewing. And then you go out on this mountain bike ride and you have a really bad accident and suffer some head trauma, but that just creates the opportunity for you and the space for you to finally confront this while you're navigating like the recovery and the pain that that created. Yes, again, speak at my funeral, you speak really well.

1:01:46Your head is working very well for you, Ridge Roll. This is not what I need to hear, though. Well, yeah, okay, I take it back. You suck. Okay, good, I feel better. You suck greatly. I feel seen now. No, embrace it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with embracing. Why can you not embrace it? I like the fact that I speak well. Do you really think it makes you better than Julie or better than Chris Dean? No, you don't. That's true. Yeah. That was said very weakly. Yeah. Now I'm thinking about it. Yeah. What does your heart tell you? Not your brain. The ego gets in the way of the heart and the ego is like I like that I speak well too.

1:02:29Isn't it great? Don't I sound smart? and that becomes a loop or a cycle that I'll replay that for which I get affirmed, right? And so then it becomes hardened and it becomes an obstacle to the heart song, which is like, maybe I don't wanna do this today. Maybe I wanna go hang out with that friend that I haven't called in a while. I wish you would write my book because you have a way of processing ideas and thoughts that is brilliant. The one offering, and I'm still working on it myself, it's just like if you just take judgment out of the equation, everything you said is beautiful. Yeah, I speak well.

1:03:09That makes me sound smart. Like I've been to school. I've got a pretty good vocabulary. Yeah, I actually do this really well. I mean, I am the 15th or whatever top podcaster in the world, whatever. Like, yeah. Like I made$2 billion in movies. Guess what? I'm really freaking good at what I do. I have no problem saying it. I just don't think I'm better than anybody in this room because I know it. I know that as well. I know you know, that's what I was, but again, you didn't say it with the, like, I know you know that. Yeah, yeah. So that's it. So just this, like all Young said was like, I just wrote in the beginning, I'm trying to get the third nutty professor off the ground.

1:03:46The scariest act is to accept oneself completely. And yeah, guess what? Everything you said that your ego is telling you is actually awesome as long as it doesn't go the extra mile and say, you are better than everybody, right? And as a storyteller, I know that every note is needed, right? So this is the gift of being a storyteller. If I have somebody that seems so unimportant walk across the background of a scene, we call them extras in show business. One of my missions is to have them called essentials because they're essential. I mean, now we may be able to AI create them, which I will do everything I can not to do because I'd rather have the human spirit.

1:04:25I believe there's energy walking across that scene. I can't do the scene without that person. I got a$20 million actor in front of me. But how do I do that scene without that person walking across, creating a little more texture, a little more life, a little more reality if it's a cool person in a cool outfit so I know I'm in a cool setting? I need that person. So I know as a storyteller that everything is essential. Everything is essential. And then the paradox is this kind of none of us are. Like life exists in the belly of a paradox. So I love the fact that you stated all those things about yourself.

1:05:03And I think they're awesome. Well, I appreciate your insights and your wisdom. One of the questions I had for you is you're such a gifted storyteller. We need you to be telling more stories. And so you just reference that you're trying to get this movie set up. So that's interesting. You're dipping back in. Believe it or not, I've been trying for a long time. And just, again, it's just the timing hasn't been right. I feel like it's opening back up. I just feel like the energy shifting, like it just opening back up. So I have been writing for 10 years. I have a stack of scripts that I love. Like, I think I'm sharp enough now in my craft to know like to a relative degree, like what is ready to be made and what isn't.

1:05:45And I got to stack. Yeah. I mean, you've told many stories, but you've just done them in slimmer formats. It's like, it's been a while since you directed a big movie. Yeah, yeah, we've been making documentaries. I've made, I am, Rocco Belich made Happy, you know, I've invested in documentaries. I gave Louis Soyuz a little bit on, I forget, was it Sixth? Racing Extinction. Was it Racing Extinction? Yeah, he came in and sat here. Yeah, yeah, believe me, I heard him here. I love Louis, he's a great soul. I've always messed with him because like, I'm like, Louis, how many movies have I made? He goes, I don't know, like 12 or 15 or something.

1:06:21And I go, how many movies have you made? He goes, one. I go, and now who has the Academy Award, Louis? Who has the Academy Award? I know. And you're saying this is a just universe. His first one. His first one, exactly. Right out of the gate.

1:06:39I own a bunch of spectacles. And I made the grave error the other day of donning a normal non-Roka pair on my indoor trainer when I was riding my bike indoors. and I gotta tell you, it was a disaster. Every three to five seconds, I had to take my hands off the handlebars and push my glasses back up my nose until I got so frustrated, I just tossed them aside. This is the dilemma of every active but optically impaired person I know. And as someone who has relied upon eyewear every single day since I was five years old, it is also the source of endless aggravation. thankfully now eradicated thanks to Broca, the stylish performance eyewear company founded by two former Stanford swimming teammates of mine who have gifted everyone like me and quite frankly, the world with their fashionable line of super lightweight prescription glasses and sunglasses with patented no-slip nose and temple pads that are just impervious to sweat.

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1:08:14So in 2010, you make this documentary, I Am, and I just re-watched it. I hadn't watched it in many years. It's an incredible piece of work that tells this story of your life before this bicycle accident and your life after. So walk us through what happened in the aftermath of this accident and how you started to make changes. Well, again, you perceptively were aware that I had been making changes well before the accident. The accident may have accelerated some, but the main change I made - Those changes were internal though, right? Prior to that? No, I had been giving away a lot of money. I already moved to the mobile home park, by the way.

1:08:56Oh, you had? Oh, I didn't know that. Extremely expensive mobile home park. I want no one to think that I was living - It's the fanciest mobile home park in the world. It literally is, it literally is. And if we wanna go back to its old man radio hour, That is the - Garner. Yeah, from the Rockford Files, where Jim Garner had his bad back in the 70s. Now, the truth is it was 1 ,000 square feet. It was a double wide and I lived in a double wide for, I don't know if the time was like seven years or something. And then I moved into one that was a two and a half wide, but that was kind of stick built.

1:09:29We sort of cheated our way over there. I won't mention the community. But you just shed all of those high flying possessions basically. Yeah. pretty much, and then went out on a journey, like Buddha, without any of the goodness. I scaled the wall. It's a modern-day Siddhartha-type story. Yeah, I'm trying to think of the joke here. It'll come, but without any of the depth. A less pretentious version of that, maybe. Well, yeah, I mean, look, I'm not placing myself in the Siddhartha category. I will say that the principles are the same, which is I got out of the castle. I left the castle and I ended up in Memphis and felt something I'd never felt before.

1:10:14I'd been given money away for years. I've always believed because I saw St. Jude and what resources can do. I always wanted to use whatever came my way for the greater good. So I'd been given money away for years. I had somebody at my company, her name was Ginny Durkin, a lovely woman who would just go out and look for causes to help. and we would cry every meeting. We'd be once a week, I'd write checks, we'd cry. And then she'd go out and find more places that needed love and resource. But I'd never really been deeply involved. Like I was with St. Jude, but I didn't get to know the patients. They were kids with cancer.

1:10:49And with Memphis Rocks and the thing that we all founded together in Memphis, I got to know people. I got to love these people. I got to be a small part of their incredible stories and that level of engagement has changed me it's changed me probably as much or more than anything in my life to see a part of America not on the news we all see these parts of America on the news oh my god another kid's been shot oh my god uh COVID in the and and the pandemic has has has left these communities without the resources to keep their lights bills on, et cetera. It's different when you see it on the news.

1:11:28You feel bad and then, hey, honey, would you get my car keys? And we're on. I've seen it a million times. I've been it a million times. But when you know them, when there's a kid named Detroit, when you're teaching a class at a historical black college, is shot and killed when he just graduated and just had his life ahead of him and was just going to the corner store, which is not safe, and get shot and killed, and you watch your students who loved Detroit have to start their lives with a friend who's dead, and then so many others who've either have been killed or incarcerated, that something happens, you know?

1:12:13It changes you, you know? That's why Brian Stevens talks about proximity, when you're close. when you get close, like you can't walk away. Like who would want to walk away? Like I haven't and I didn't and I won't. And yeah, Father Greg says it so well about his kids in, I call them kids are like twenties and thirties, many of them. He says that they've given him much more than he's ever dreamed of giving. So let me tell you something, Rich, that's really important to me. Like, why is it so easy to raise money for St. Jude? And by easy, I'm not taking anything away from my brother and his incredible staff.

1:12:58They're brilliant. But it's easy in the narrative sense, right? A kid has cancer. Who is not going to say like, well, get him treatment. Well, we need some money to pay for the treatment. Okay, well, here's a nickel from me and a dime from here. But the story and the narrative about kids like in South Memphis and kids in other underserved cities, what's wrong with them? Like, why don't they just get a job? Like when I was their age, I got a job. Okay. Stop for a second. Okay. The one thing you have in common with them when you were 18 and they were 18, you got a job. Let's see what else they have in common with you.

1:13:30Did you have two parents? Oh, you have two parents. Oh, this one has a single mother who works three jobs and his father is either passed or incarcerated. Okay. So first of all, they didn't have two stabilizing factors, et cetera. And you go down that list and you're like, we have no right to say what they should or shouldn't be doing. And so only they can tell us what they need. Yeah, it's running the 100-yard dash where most of us are, you know, between the 50-yard line and basically 10 yards from completion. And we're talking about a population of people who are starting at the 100-yard line and have much further to run.

1:14:08Yeah, and where they're starting at the 100-yard, like you've run the race and you have nice, you know, nice clothes and if you had nutrition your whole life, good nutrition and you've probably never seen, maybe you've seen one or two friends pass in an accident, God forbid. And then those kids have like funeral, they call them funeral dresser drawers with funeral t-shirts, like because so many kids have passed. They're carrying all those stories with them. And it's just like, are they our family or not? Like that's really my whole philosophy is the fundraising arm for us is called one family because that's our whole philosophy.

1:14:42Are we a family or not? Every Saint's age and mystic has said, treat everyone like you're a family, right? Widen your circle of compassion, as Einstein said, to include all of mankind, humankind, and the whole of the natural world. This is just a neighborhood we've opened up our compassion to. Just to fill in some of the blanks here for people that don't know, Memphis Rocks is, it's this compound that you have constructed that is at its core, a climbing gym, but it's also yoga, meditation, a juice cafe, there's programming, there's a garden. After school programs, a sundry store. It's a large structure.

1:15:22It's 88 ,000 square feet in two buildings, five acres. And this is built in South Memphis and correct me if I'm wrong, the poorest zip code in America. Well, it has been at times. I don't know if it currently is. It was when we were starting our work as the most violent zip code in America. So where did this idea come from? How did it occur to you that a climbing gym would be just the thing that this community needs? And then perhaps even more importantly, like how did you get buy-in from the community being this white guy outsider? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My favorite nickname for me was industrial strength whiteness.

1:15:59I loved that one. Even though I'm Lebanese, you present as a certain race and that's what you get labeled. So let's take the first part of the question, how did this happen, right? or how did a climbing gym come to Memphis when there were no climbing gyms? First of all, it wasn't my idea to bring a climbing gym. It would have been a lot cheaper to do another basketball court or create a couple of football fields. But you were already looking to do something in that community. You just didn't know what. I fell in love with my students. I'd been there about five or six years at that time. And we all said like, don't we have to walk this stuff we talk about in class?

1:16:38We can talk about what I taught later. There's a class called Storytelling in Life. Don't we have to sort of walk this stuff we got in conversations about like, yeah, like why should it be concepts like that we talk about serving, you know, and all these things. So like, let's do something. So we started that conversation. Things accelerated, you know, the conversation becoming reality when things like Detroit gets killed. You remember that story I told you, Chris pointed out that story I told you about the kid killed at St. You know, or on his bicycle that prompted Danny Thomas to say no more.

1:17:11Detroit was very likely that for us. Those things accelerated it. But why a climbing gym? I exposed them to climbing. I've fallen in love with climbing. As you said, I had lived in Boulder off and on a little bit. And I fell in love with this thing called climbing very late in life. I was like probably 50 when I fell in love with climbing. And it was awesome. Like I always loved the mountains. I mean, my family from Lebanon, they're just mountain people, man. They were like literally sheep herders in the mountains. I've been cycling in some of the mountains outside of Beirut. It's incredible country.

1:17:48We're from a little town called Blauza. The town next door is where Khalil Gibran was from. The great Poe was actually a very good friends, if not best friends with my uncle Nassim. My uncle Nassim was my grandfather's brother. So all that stuff is deep in me. The mountains are deep, deep in me. I go to the mountains and I just like, I hear it. I hear the voice. And when I brought these young people to the mountains, they're like, yeah, we want that. Like we want that. So that was a kind of a beta test. Like I'm gonna take, I'll take some of these kids from the community and take them out to this place that I love and see if it sticks for them.

1:18:23We took them to the mountains in Nashville, outside of Tennessee. We brought them to Colorado, climbed in Colorado. And look, anybody who's been to the mountains, it's like, duh. like basketball is ubiquitous in Memphis. They can, you know, like throw a, you know, nickel and hit a basketball court. But there was no such thing as that. And look, the gym, the idea of the gym is to get them outside. And by getting them outside, they remember who they are. I mean, we'll talk about this, I'm sure, later or maybe next time, if you ever dare to dialogue again. but we just sent a group to Africa to climb the second tallest peak.

1:19:07It's a television show that's gonna be on Hulu and ESPN and Disney. We're still searching for a title. Maybe Ain't No Mountain, we'll see. But it was based on a film we did called Black Ice. Conrad Anker brought him to the mountains to climb an ice climb. And look, you see the film, you see their voices, like the way they speak about being in the mountains, what they feel, they can play again, they can let go again. You can't let go in South Memphis. You're on guard. You literally have kids that walk into restaurants with their backs to the wall because they've seen friends killed. So they don't want anyone behind them.

1:19:42Like that's trauma. Right. That's trauma. Anybody who thinks these kids are bad, please listen to Father Gregory Boyle. He just got the Medal of Freedom from President Biden. He said, I've never met a bad kid. Because the police were very upset at Father Greg for starting a gang rehabilitation. These gangs are killing people. I've never met it. These kids are evil. I've never met an evil kid. He said, I've met a kid in trauma. I've met a kid who's seen murder and death and has psychological traumas and damage, but I've never met a bad kid. And I haven't either. I haven't either. They all have stories.

1:20:17So we did a crazy thing, man. We put a climbing gym. It's a beautiful climbing gym. You haven't been, right? I still haven't been. You're coming. It's a fantastic facility. A top athlete like yourself will love it. It's 55 ,000 square feet of the state-of-the-art climbing. We popped the roof. The campus was built. It was supposed to be a town center, but no businesses would come because of the economic challenges and because of the statistics in the neighborhood. Has that changed? I think so. I mean, I haven't looked at the latest studies. I know it's changed very directly for the kids we deal with.

1:20:53Sure, for the people. I was just wondering if it brought in like kind of more retail or other businesses, you know, and revitalizing the neighborhood at all. Yeah, I have this thing with fundraising, like everybody wants to know what are the numbers like? And I'm like, okay, the root word of numbers is numb. Okay, so like, so that's like, let's put that out. You definitely have this word thing. I do, I tell you, it's just beginning. Like, believe me, if we talk for a little longer, you'll get tired of me. Our number is one, the kid in front of you, the kid who just walked in the door. The kid who's never like had somebody say, no, you don't actually have to pay here.

1:21:31You can come in. What we'd like you to do is volunteer in the neighborhood. We'd like you to volunteer at your local church or at a fair or something, or maybe do better in your studies or be more responsible. We want you to do something positive if we bring something positive to you. And that's sort of our way we redefine currency. I have this idea that money is one form of currency. What is it? It gives you energy, right? You've got energy. Like I have money, like I can do something. I can buy a surfboard. I can surf. There's an energy transfer. I put energy into working and I get some energy back.

1:22:08Well, it's energy really. The money's not the only thing. So we ask for their energy to try to like do something positive. And we open up the idea of currency to that. It's set up as a nonprofit. profit. It's basically pay whatever you feel like paying. But within the walls of this building is a family. Like there is an ecosystem that's occurring of mentorship and learning and getting kids out of their comfort zone and exposing them to experiences that, you know, they wouldn't otherwise be able to connect with. And, you know, kind of the domino effect of that, the downstream impact of that being this living, breathing thing is changing lives on the daily.

1:22:55You have these mini documentaries. If you go to the Memphis Rocks website, like you can see some of them and you're telling some of these stories, like firsthand accounts from the point of view of the people who've been impacted by this special place. There's a young man named Jaman Johnson, who's one of the strongest leaders I've ever met. I met him at 18. He's now 24. Jamon was a gang member, been incarcerated a few times, I believe, armed robbery, a leader in the gang. He had gang status at 19 years old. That means that you are respected. You've done some shit to earn that status. So he was not to be messed with.

1:23:36His mom was our first employee. She was our janitorial staff, custodial staff. And we treated her like she was the most important person in the world because she was. And she'd never been treated that way. How do you have a climbing gym if somebody doesn't, you know, help you clean the chalk up? And she felt something there that she'd never felt before. And she brought it to Jumond. And she brought Jumond to the gym. Actually, Josh Cannon made a really, he's sitting over here, made a really powerful film about it. It's online. And she died shortly after she introduced Jumond to rocks. She dropped dead of issues that would never have happened had she had the proper healthcare, had we really cared.

1:24:15But Mond had a family. We were his family. And Mond is now changing lives every day. We have this analogy about, you know, crabs, you know, pulling crabs out of buckets, right? But crabs pull you back in, but you got to be a strong crab to pull others out. Mond is a strong crab. and he's worked with several, a former gang member, now former gang. Well, Bond says, once you leave a gang, you never leave. You just change your ethos. So Crip to him is now community rehabilitation in progress. So he's flipped that script and he's pulling other kids out and he said, Tom, I used to want to hurt people, but now I want to help them.

1:25:00I never thought kids would look up to me, but they're starting to look up to me. And, And that's the kind of thing we do. That's one story of one kid. And by the way, he just lost six people to gun violence in about a week and a half, about two weeks ago. Six people. I can't even imagine. Look, I'm proximate to it and I can't imagine. So it was a woman that he was starting to see, picked up a kid who had some affiliation. She's got a kid in the backseat. and what you realize in a neighborhood like this is whoever is aside you has got some energy that may be following them. And this kid had some sort of quote unpaid bills.

1:25:43I don't know what those were. I don't know what that karma was, but so she was parked at a light and they shot the car up. She died, he died. The child fortunately lived, was shot through the leg and that was three. And then there were three others. So it's very real. And the question is, oh, are these kids all bad or do they deserve, like, is that kind of the way the modern day cancer shows up today? Being proximate to not only that kind of violence, but also the powerful changes that you are privileged to see take place in these people that come through Memphis Rocks. What have you learned about our innate capacity to make changes in our lives?

1:26:29I mean, Rich, you are not the same person that started this podcast. There's no cell in your body that's the same. You never visit the same riverbank twice, right? And we are nature. So we are programmed to change. The healthy way of talking about change is evolution. And life wants to evolve. And so all these kids want to evolve. They cannot wait to evolve. They just need a little bit of your love and your light to maybe provide a trip or a mentorship or a relationship to help that evolve so that they are a riverbank that will never be the same. Chris just came back from climbing Africa, the second tallest peak.

1:27:12That's a riverbank that's different. He's got such a passion for the mountains. He knows what they do for people who wants to bring kids there. He has a mountain in him. you know the mountain just just spoke the mountains speak to you when you're there that you know this they they they say you belong yeah you don't have a father you do i'm your father i'm your father i'm the mountain i'm in you you know all of this is in you and you're in us and they hear that like this is not woo woo stuff this is actual science like like and so So that changes kids.

1:27:56And they then, you know, then the ripple in the pond, they change others. Chris is Chris Dean. You've referenced him a couple of times. He's sitting right over here. Chris has his own incredible story and he's become this, you know, really powerful creative voice in his own right and a collaborative partner of yours. Can you share a little bit about the nature and origin of that relationship and what Chris brings to the equation? Well, I met Chris one night at a prayer service, a kind of meditation service at a friend of ours, Gail Rose, whose son had died in a car accident. And Chris was very dear friends with the family.

1:28:38And I'd heard about this kid, Max, who passed. And Gail Rose, again, was a light. And I went and I'd heard about Chris. He's kind of famous. You can look him up. Ladies and gentlemen, the speaker of the Booker T. Washington High School, class of 2011, the president, Barack Obama. He introduced Obama at his high school graduation. Yeah. And that's because he appeared in a documentary about the neighborhood or what is that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have him on someday. He'll tell you the story much better than me, but his subdivision, you know, Section 8 or whatever housing was being, once again, they were being pushed out, right?

1:29:23Oh, we need more housing close to, we'll take the people who've lived close to downtown and wipe out their housing. We'll get them other housing, but primarily we'll focus on, you know, the gentrification. And he was part of telling that story. And he's also, you meet him, you're just like, oh, you should introduce Obama. So their high school won race to the top. It's in our neighborhood, Brooker T. Washington. and so they needed someone to introduce the president because Michelle Obama had a program. If your school wins our race to the top, meaning you turn certain protocols around, Brock will speak at your high school graduation and he introduced him and he was funny as hell.

1:30:00I mean, I'm the director of Ace Ventura. This dude was funny. I think his joke was because everybody, he was doing some like introduction, you know, Obama at the time was like, I think Trump had said like, you know, know, he's from Kenya or whatever. He's not American. And he made a joke about that. So, well, y 'all know where he's from, you know, where Brock's from. And the audience just burst out laughing. Chris, is that accurate? Yeah. All right. That's pretty close, right? I butchered your joke. He tells it much better. I mean, come on, man, the kid is 17 or 18 years old and he's got introduced to president and his high school graduation.

1:30:37If you ain't got some divine spark in you to do that, like I would have imploded as much as I had humor in me, I wouldn't have been able to do that. He couldn't. You know why he could? Because he'd seen, what are you going to do to Christine? He's seen so many friends pass, so many people die, so much difficulty in his neighborhood. What the hell is going to happen to him if he doesn't do well at the speech? Like, I'll go home, figure out how I'm going to like, you know, get the next meal. So there's such a baseline, different perspective on life that comes out of these kids who have been crushed into diamonds.

1:31:10they just need some like a little wind to blow some of the soot off so Chris and I just became like really fast family pretty much and you know people like Chris and Josh were starting to come to my class a little bit and we started a conversation like what does your neighborhood need like he introduced me to the neighborhood look I'm his showbiz mentor he is my Memphis mentor like he's Scorsese like and I'm a kid in film school when it comes to the neighborhood same with Jermond you know same with um with with all the kids we work with um Armani a kid named Michael Michael Hunt um he just changed his name I think it's McCann crazy story but won't go into it he now has a Memphis Rocks tattoo they're my mentors right they're my mentors and so we listened to them.

1:32:05A woman named Michelle Miller from the community now, Beautiful Black Soul, is now running our organization. And we listen, and then we try to provide what they need. And what is the biggest learning lesson from that relationship? In other words, I love this idea of like, you're just blowing the dust off the diamonds. But with all your experience in South Memphis, what do we miss or not understand about the needs and the potential of underserved communities like South Memphis? You talked about change. What changes a life more than anything is a relationship. So in our neighborhood, they hilariously call people like me or how at least I was for many years, a turkey person.

1:32:56You bring a turkey on Thanksgiving day, and then you split. Right. They don't get close to you because they're like, they're very appreciative. Well, thank you, man. You bring food, but I know you're leaving tomorrow or you're leaving this afternoon. But when you stay and when you say I care, and for us, that might become like become a monthly donor. That means you show up every month with$20 or$25. You say, I care. I'm not leaving you. Like, I'm going to not have that cup of coffee or whatever. I'm going to stay. And relationship changes everything. So when people ask about our numbers, I have a quiet, you know, gastric revolt inside.

1:33:37And I just tell them about Jamond or Armani or Michael or Brittany or Asiana or many of the lives that are different now. And because they're in relationship, they're in relationship. right? It changes things. A big theme, kind of overarching theme in I Am is this delusion that perpetrates in our culture that we're all individuals and the incentivizations of the world that we live in kind of overemphasize the self over the community. And the narrative in the film is really this way of disabusing us of this idea, this delusion, and kind of cementing this idea that we're actually, there's nothing about us that is separate, that we are actually all one.

1:34:37And you go on this journey and you interview all these different people and scientists and philosophers and the like to kind of impress upon us this idea of connection as the solution to what ails us. Like you had this very extreme experience where you had all the power, property and prestige that one could ever imagine for oneself. And yet this journey towards wholeness was found only in your connection to something larger than yourself and a community of people that you could serve that would then benefit from your impact and your generosity. Once again, the eulogy. Yeah, I'm just like, can you just elaborate on that a little bit?

1:35:27You beautifully eulogized me. I'm available to do voiceover in your next movie. Yeah, I love your approach to, I've sat across from 100 interviews. I did Oprah and Ellen and I, You got a gift, man. So never knock your head. Clip that out. Did you say I'm better than Oprah at this? Just be clear. Oprah's really good. Careful, careful. I'm putting you in her class. Okay, good. Because a lot of interviewers don't listen. Literally, I heard one. My ego is so happy right now, Tom. We're gonna keep building it up. And then at the end of it, we're gonna hug the ego and say, hey, we love you too, man.

1:36:05No, but you know, so many interviews are not listeners. they just kind of go where they go. And like, you could say like, yeah, and I once saw, you know, an alien and he told me the, you know, the keys to the universe. So anyway, let's get back to the, it's like, whoa, I just said I saw an alien, you know, but you listen really well. Now I don't listen as well. What the hell was the question again? I have no idea. I just went on some rant and then just, I didn't ask you an actual question. No, it was about disabusing us of this idea that we are separate and that, you know, consciousness is a unifying truth of the universe.

1:36:35and reality is that we are all one. And this call to action in the movie is for us to remember this and to honor this. And in your own path, you went on this journey of, you know, kind of individual aggrandizement only to discover that the happiness that eluded you was gonna be found through community and connection. And Memphis Rocks and like your, like the deep roots that you've grown in this community is it speaks to that commitment. Like you're living this ideal that like what drives happiness and a meaningful purpose-driven life fundamentally has to do with the relationships that you foster and fertilize.

1:37:21Yeah, literally being in touch. So look, if and when I do a podcast, I'm gonna do this at some point. I've told a lot of people, hopefully I'll make good on it. You did a radio show at one point though, didn't you? Was that when you were in Boulder? I did a couple things. I had a thing with Sirius XM at one point. I did a little show in Memphis, but yeah, it just wasn't time. You know, I had so much more to learn and still do, but this is gonna be everything that I talk about. Like, it's all I wanna talk about. That there is a root basic story that our culture has been telling since about the agricultural revolution that has separated us from each other and from nature.

1:38:02and I shouldn't even put those in two separate categories. We are nature. It's just pulled us out of touch. We've removed ourselves from the laws of life. We've tried to control nature so that we could benefit and only us could benefit regardless of what happens. This is why the Zach Bushes have to do their work, right? Because we are just disconnected from that root source, the earth where we come from, the stars, which is in all of us, stardust, and think that we are special and separate. And Einstein said, hey man, throw that out. That's a delusion of consciousness because it's actually all one thing when you get down to the science of it, the micro of it is like, where do you end and I begin?

1:38:43Pre-Einstein is substance, post-Einstein is energy. It's all just energy and it all works together. And even on a very, very practical level, Emerson said, if you have a thousand friends, you don't have a friend to spare. If you have one enemy, you'll see him everywhere. So if we have one person without a home, without food tonight, that person could and almost justly rob me because I got extra. And so if I'm aware that we are one body, that I can't get away from the connection, then you live differently. Like I said, I believe show business is a service industry. I believe storytelling is a service industry.

1:39:27I believe podcasting is a service industry. I believe the food industry is a service industry. I believe like what industry is not a service industry? Name one, you know, like food, the feeding of the body, this podcast, the feeding of the soul and the mind. In your case, the head. Sometimes. Sometimes. Keep going. It's all a part of a greater whole. And when you have that recognition, that recognition, and you drop into it, the reason you get, quote, happy or is that's how you're, that's how you optimally operate. Oh, this actually feels really good that I'm running this race and the platform is bringing light to this organization, which has people that need some, some love.

1:40:10Like suddenly it all amps up. That's, that's not an accident. So I just want to drill down to the root, like, like just the root, the root. Why do we have all these things popping up? Why are we so divided? It's all one thing, that thing you just said. We are not telling ourselves that story, that we are essentially a family. What did Jesus say? Hey, man, everyone's your brother and sister. That's it in a nutshell. Everyone's your brother and sister, right? Even the person like that's spitting on me as I'm crucified, you know, whether you believe it as a metaphor or a literal story, even that person's my brother.

1:40:42Hey, man, I'm going to make room for you wherever this spirit's going. Like, we'll be there together. Like, it's all the same thing. But our culture, which is supposed to be Judeo-Christian, hums on a completely different idea. We're born bad. We're separate. you got to get yours, then maybe you give some back. It's why the light is gone from our kids' eyes. It's why the light went out of the youth. Like so many of the authors have written about it. Emerson wrote about it in his American scholar speech. It's just like they die of suicides back in his day because they see the way the principles upon which businesses are built.

1:41:19They're like, I'd rather kill myself. It's a despairing thought. I mean, that was beautifully put to throw it back to you. That was quite a model. I wanted to throw you into despair. Yeah, that was... That's my whole goal. That was quite amazing. But in reflecting upon that, it is true that the very fabric of our society is constructed upon the elevation of the individual. Every incentive structure is about me and me getting mine. It's competitive. It's a zero-sum game. If he gets it, then I don't get it. And not for nothing, perhaps the United States is the worst because of its overemphasis on individual liberties without enough attention or investment in its counterpart, which is our responsibility to the collective whole.

1:42:13Like you don't get individual liberty without the other. And we spent a lot of time talking about individual liberty and what I get to do. And you can't tell me what I can't do and blah, blah, blah without barely any address of the responsibility piece. Even our own kind of personal spiritual journeys are couched in the context of the individual. It's self-transcendence. You know, there's a conundrum in that. Like from a Buddhist point of view, the best way to impact the world positively is to focus on your own spiritual growth. And I believe that to be true, like the power of the individual to make change is inherently the product of our resolve to look inward and heal ourselves and become self-actualized.

1:43:05But it's still the self, right? Like where is the thought and the consideration and the investment and the contemplation of the community over the priorities of the self? There's a lot there, dude. So Emerson wrote an essay called Self-Reliance and everybody misunderstands the essay. It's all about the individual. By the way, I love the individual. I love you. You're this individual incredible thing like doing a podcast and come out of addiction and have an incredible, you know, partner in Julie. And like you're doing amazing. I love the individual, but to what end is that individual? Is it all about rich?

1:43:42Like, is it all about your little pod, right? To what end, right? So Emerson's self-reliance talked about that rich. There's a note in you, play that note, play it really strongly, play it beautifully. Don't listen to people saying you can't, you can't, right? But it was never with a small S. It was always a capital S because rich role cannot, the individual cannot be disconnected from that larger self, which created ritual. So that's why life exists in the belly of a paradox. There is this individual, and we want that individual to express himself, herself, themselves. We want that expression.

1:44:18It's beautiful. We want competition. I want to know how good Aunt Edwards is now in the playoffs. He's incredible. Like, is he like, you know, like up with the greats? Wow, like we want to know that, but to what end? To the winner belongs to spoils was never a part of competition. Competition was from the word competere, which means to strive with. But it is only a toxic story that says, no, it's all about you and you alone. You are separate. Pull yourself out of nature, conquer nature, conquer the earth, tell things where to grow, tell things what to do. Don't live in concert with it. It's about you, you, you, you, you.

1:44:52And how's it working out for us, right? We've only been around a couple million years. Life has been around a lot longer than that. It's doing its thing. Will we stick around? I'm very optimistic we will, but this idea has got to continue to rise up. You've been doing it for years on your podcast. It is not just about the individual. It is about both. You should have a podcast. I think you and I are going to talk about it later. Beautiful monologue number two. Yeah. Wow, that's powerful. That actually gave me quite a bit to think about. Your reference to nature in I Am, the point is made that, that nature's never in a hurry and nature never uses anything more than it actually needs.

1:45:38And we're the only species that kind of violates this natural rule. And when nature takes more than it needs, quote unquote, like a kudzu vine or a cancer, the body - It becomes a cancer, it revolts and ultimately perishes. Right, because diversity is strength, right? And the first freeze kills the kudzu. If it's spread so wide and there's no others like life to continue life. Same thing with cancer. It's in its fear. My most basic understanding of a cancer cell is it loses communication with the body. Again, forgive me. I know people will write in and say that kid knows nothing and they'd be right.

1:46:16But my understanding is that it loses communication. And so in fear, it just thinks, okay, we got to live and doesn't realize it's killing itself. And that's what we're doing now. We're just not aware. Nobody's bad. Nobody's out there doing this because they're bad people. Like they think like, okay, we're this way. This is who we are. And we got to live this way. And I got to take care of me and like, and my family and like, and all that's true. And it's also true that your family is much bigger than you think. Every kid, your kid is going to interact with is we got a little bit of that responsibility in us to be there for them as well.

1:46:52You mentioned that you're optimistic. So short of major systemic change, can the cancer be curbed? Like, do you remain like sanguine about the idea that with our own kind of individual agency and our power to affect the whole through the ripple effects of how we comport ourselves, that we can manage this cancerous situation and heal? That sounds really complex. I'm just gonna say this, but I don't mind what happens. something really brilliant put us here that we cannot define we cannot wrap our limited concepts around but it's really brilliant i spell random r-a-n-d-u-m-b another word yeah back to the word back to the word i mean i just can't help but reflect everything in my life as an artist is about some form of intelligence behind a design.

1:47:50Jim designed his act, you know, Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy designs his characters. I helped to design these movies. Someone designed the studio. Oh, but it doesn't, it's not about us. Everything's random. Now there's some intelligence that like, okay, it's like the mystic says all shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. And somehow I trust that more than the business This person's saying, yeah, but, or even the climate science is saying, we're all going to, like, I'm going to, like, trust and work as hard as I can for that more loving world in every way that I can.

1:48:33But if we're meant to be like an evolutionary cul-de-sac, that's what it'll be. There's a faith piece to that. There's a humility piece to that. but there's a mental illness piece to that. Maybe, you know, there's an optimism. There's optimism within the neutrality, I guess. Well, here's what changed me. Like there's a bunch of different ways to read, okay? Thomas Merton said, there's really two basic ways to read. Let me reframe, two basic ways to read. One is to read everything. And another is to read like a trunk of books and become those books. And that's kind of what happened to me. I read like a bucket of books.

1:49:12and I hope in some ways I am embodying and becoming those books. What were the most formative ones? Raina Maria Rilke, the poets, the mystics, Rumi, Hafez, Mira, Kabir, Walt Whitman, Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver, Mary Oliver, who became a dear friend, bestselling poet in America. Well, you look across space and time and you're like, you look across time, not space, but time, and you're like, oh, they all said the same thing. Heraclitus was saying, all things are one, like back in Greek times, like ancient Greek times, like the ancient indigenous populations said the same wisdom teachings that Emerson said out of an industrialized world that was growing into machinery.

1:49:58They all say the same thing. So, either they're all, you know, nuts or they're tapping into that heart source, that organ of spiritual perception that we've cut ourselves off from. And something in me that I cannot explain, thankfully, says, yes, my whole being, my cells literally jump and say, yes, yes, yes. And it doesn't eliminate anything. It doesn't eliminate our creativity, tools like AI, our toys. It doesn't eliminate our design, our homes. It's just the intention with which we move forward with these ideas. I have one for intention, but I won't do it now because I feel like you're at your top with my words.

1:50:46No, it's good. I'm trying to get out of the way here. I'll do it next time, intention. But what is that saying? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I do not believe that at all. It's not my saying at all. But I'll tell you now, Intention means something different than we give it. Intention, like you may have an intention before the podcast, right? And we think intentions are just all about creating peace and awareness. But no, the word intention means to be intention, right? In tension. So when I create an intention that I want to grow, that I want to be more of myself, I am necessarily putting myself in uncomfortable situations because how else can I grow but the face that, forgive me the shit, so that I can use that as a manure, if you will, to grow, right?

1:51:33I am putting myself in tension. And so it's the intention with which we move these businesses. Like people think I'm anti-AI. I'm just like, time out. This is a tool that is a thousand times smarter than us. And if you write the story that we've written our culture with, overlay it on that tool, we're in trouble, which is it's gonna be a me. it's going to be about me and my company and you all will get all this great stuff with AI and it'll be really smart but I own it and I'm not going to like I'm going to be the next elite and if it's that intention we got to watch out that thing was created with that intention I want to be the most efficient well AI may say hey by the way I'm a thousand times smarter than you I also want to be efficient guess who's not efficient you guys right you're not efficient Well, I programmed you not to be able to do anything.

1:52:27I know, but I'm a thousand times smarter than you, right? Like you couldn't think about what I could do. Guess what I can do? I don't even know what it is. But like, I'm a storyteller. Like I'm like, oh, man. Yeah, it's getting crazy. Welcome to Ritual's Despair Podcast. It's getting crazy. And then, I mean, you just think of, you know, the history of open AI. It's called open AI. It was meant to be this open source thing so that we could kind of sidestep and avoid this very conundrum. But of course, it's not open and it's now, you know, controlled by, you know, a select group of people with shareholder interests and the like.

1:53:02And it's just like any other corporation. The story is underwriting almost all of our major tech companies. And it's why tech, it does a tremendous amount of good in connection, but it's doing a heck of a job at dividing us. it's doing a heck of a job at going after the algorithm that says oh i know how to get to your most base self and i know you'll act on that and as long as you write that undergirding story which is it's about me so i gotta get my shit like that was a thought that i had when i was re-watching i am because that movie was made in 2010 right and yeah and now you know it feels almost quaint in sort of its reflection on the world's problems at the time compared to what we're confronted with now.

1:53:47But again, it goes back to your, like I asked you about your optimism or how those principles kind of hold up in such a rapidly changing world. Those principles are eternal. So the same principle that animated that native tribe millennia ago is the same principle that can animate us today. And what may be quaint because we don't have in the movie represented the problems that have been created. You have the principle in the movie, whether I expressed it well or not, I don't want to judge, but the principle is never going to change. Like until you recognize, recognize, rethink this idea that everything is separate, this idea that you all don't affect each other, that the ripple, the science of the ripple, it sends a ripple out into infinity.

1:54:39It just goes, right? And until we recognize that, we will continue to create these issues and put all our attentions on symptoms. The symptom, which we need to do, we need to find healthier diets, healthier outcomes, and we need to find healthier structures and organizations. But what is causing all this stuff? Like, what is What story, Uval Harari is now like really on the march with his brilliant take on history, which is these are stories. The question is, is it true or how's it working out for you? How's the story working out for you? Yeah, the kind of intractable problem of over-identification with self is such a difficult one to untangle when all the incentives of our culture kind of drive our behavior towards that.

1:55:29and we can listen to podcasts and read books and we can be informed that this is not the way to happiness and meaning and purpose. And yet we'll still think, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But like, if I can just get around the bend and get that other thing, then like my problems will go away and I'll be happy. And I won't have to deal with whatever I'm dealing with right now. And it's really hard to kind of disabuse yourself of that delusion. I would say keep going, see how it works out for you. You'll get that thing. You'll be flying privately and the jet will be empty. Like you'll have a mansion and there'll be no community in that mansion.

1:56:10And again, I have no judgment about any of this stuff. Just do that thing. And then maybe if you feel like it, one day come to Memphis Rocks and just meet some kids you might never have met before and see how that feels and climb with a kid and maybe then take them to our juice bar. It's called Juice Almighty, by the way, after Bruce Almighty. They named it brilliantly. Zach Rogers named it. And see how that feels. And build your life around those things that feel awesome. Build your life around those things that feel awesome. I'm here to say that this feels awesome. And like you said, it's really hard and I wouldn't want it any other way.

1:56:45What great thing has ever happened by just like, oh, this is so easy. Like, so easy. I mean, look at the way a butterfly is born, man, that is some painful shit. Like, look at the way a human is born. Like, you know, there's a reason it's in like blood and muck and mess and like, it's tough, but it's without, look, man, it's the way it works, right? The depth of the valley and the height of the peak are, they're hand in hand. So if you don't have those things that the shadow, you have no, you have no light. And so it's just in the whole freaking design. Like. Yeah. The shadow can become the superpower when you develop the capacity to claw your way out of it?

1:57:27I look at shadow as something to be loved. Like, you know, we have this thing called shadow boxing. I don't want to box with my shadow. I want to like dance with it. Like, I want to love it up. Like, yeah, I hear you. Like, there you are. There you are, ego again. I just, I'm going to walk on hopefully a movie set really soon. Like, there I am again. Like, I am the most important person here. And I can say to my shadow, oh, you're still here, aren't you? Yeah. Okay. Now you miss me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, look, come on, come on, come with me. We're gonna do this together. But I've got a little bit of a different attitude.

1:58:00Stay on my shoulder, but I still love you. But I actually think all these people are as important as I am on this movie set. Beautiful. When someone comes to you, as I'm sure they do, and say to you, I love your message, Tom. I hear these things about meaning and purpose and happiness. and I just don't know how to connect the dots. Like my life's okay, but I know that it could be better. I could live with more gratitude and more love and more community. Like how do you counsel that person to connect more with these things that are so fundamental to feeling self-actualized? Well, the first thing that I do, and it's really hard for me, I see some podcasts and other shows do like questions from people.

1:58:53They'll write in questions and then you give an answer. I can't do that. Like I just – there's too many questions I have for that person. If I ever do this podcast, the segment I want to do is called Questions and Antlers because antlers are something we shed. I'll give you a perspective and then maybe we'll shed it in a year because you'll have gone through something and I'll have gone through something. But I need to ask that person a lot about their life before I go ahead and shooting on them. You know, like, so that's one thing. But overall, the first thing I would want to tell a person is, first of all, the fact that you are asking me that question means I have zero worries about you.

1:59:35I am not concerned about you at all. The fact that you're asking that question means, as the poet said, that where you are right now, God circled on a map just for you. You're already open. You're aware that maybe there's a fuller way for you to experience life and to use your talents. Fantastic. Take the pressure off to do that. Don't look for your purpose. I think this is a great poison, by the way. Danny Thomas said something, and I'm so inspired by him, but I don't necessarily agree with what he said, which is when he did found a St. Jude, he said, now I know I was born. Now I know my purpose.

2:00:09And I'm like, oh, so you weren't born to birth the beautiful producer, Tony Thomas, your son? who's done so much good in the world on his own. You weren't here to birth Marlowe and you weren't here to inspire a young Lebanese who had no idea that there was a path for an Arab American in Choban. No, it's all like, it's all. Like greeting your staff today, like that is no lesser purpose than me doing the next big film. So just go gentle with yourself. And then what is the thing that's drawing your heart? Like, what is it? Like, take a step in that direction. The great philosophy of like the simpleton is how's it working out for you?

2:00:52Yeah. So try that thing, man. Like, I can't wait to try like hydrofoil surfing. I just know something in me needs some new form of like, what else can be really like freaking wild and like get my cells like all jacked up. And I can't wait to try hydrofoil surfing. I may hate it. Like, I may, you know, hate it. I doubt it. But you do it. Like, you do these things. Like, it's all an experiment, man. That's why Gandhi's autobiography was my experiments with truth. Like, and, you know, I wish we could look at our lives that way because we would remove the judgment. No scientist ever judges the experiment, right?

2:01:34We're going to try. We're going to put a culture here. We're going to add a little bit of this over here. And then, oh, look at that. What a terrible group of, you know, mitochondria over here or whatever. No, we just say, oh, that like created fungus and that's like a clean environment. And that's like life, like just like – it's like live and then how is it working out for me? Do I have more love in my life? Do I wake up in the morning and able to move with electricity and, you know, this effusive spirit? Or do I wake up going, ah, shit. You know, and believe me, it's not to say that there aren't places for like, oh, this is difficult, but there's that thing at the end of the difficulty, I get to tell this story.

2:02:11I get to be in support of Chris, Josh, Jamond. I get to be in support. So, yeah, I'm going to go to that doggone fundraiser where I have to look at people and go, what are your numbers? And I say, my number is one. And they go, well, I'm sorry. There's another thing down the street. Their number is three. This is my saying. Now, I put the F you in fundraising. I'm not a great fundraiser. My brother's done a much better fundraiser. Can't you like recruit him over for a short stint? He actually can't wait to be helpful. Oh, good. He gives me so much advice, but it's literally like telling a fish like to climb a tree.

2:02:49Like, Rick, I tell stories like, no, but here's what you need to do. And I'm like, can you come be the fish and I'll be the tree climber? We've got a really good group. How much do you need to raise? How much money do you need to get this all sorted out? Well, whatever you'll give us, we'll spend. I mean, we literally are growing into a movie studio. We're going to do basically the first major. That's the other piece we didn't even talk about, Which is you're training all these young filmmakers also. Well, they're right over there. Yeah. Chris and Josh and others. Look, storytelling is part of who we are, right?

2:03:20Like that's, we tell stories in order to live. That's Joan Didion. We need to tell stories because otherwise we do sit there and judge each other. Well, why are you an alcoholic and why don't you go to rehab? But you say, I'm gonna tell you a story about a guy named Rich Roll and Rich was an alcoholic and then you tell Rich's story and you see yourself in that story. And so these people have stories and they want to be connected to stories, whether they tell their own stories or they help us to tell different stories that are animating our culture. And it's really integral. And that's what we're growing into.

2:03:52We've got Seven Acres behind us. We have a great gentleman named Staley Cates. You will hate that I said his name on this show because he listens to you. Yeah, shout out to Staley. Yeah, I know. He wrote a letter to you for me to give you because I've been helping to teach a class that he's a part of in Memphis. And he, for some reason, connects with my voice and he wants me to do a podcast really bad. That's cool. But he's insanely generous. He loves to stay late. He's also been a huge support to Julie. Yeah, well, he helped to create Crosstown where Shreemu is. The fact that you're there, again, is it's design, right?

2:04:30One second about Julie, like I know she's been on the show so many times. So everybody probably knows Julie, but like, like I've never met somebody so in the stratosphere and so on the earth. Like, so when she says like, oh, I just visited, you know, planet, you know, electron and, you know, like, oh, that's awesome. Like, and you think, well, maybe she's like a little out there. Then she grounds you with the most incredibly profound wisdom statement that you put on your refrigerator for the next 20 years. like, well, I think that lady, if she can give me that, I think maybe she went to Planet Electron.

2:05:04Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you live this. I'm married to her. You live this. Yes, I live it. She's sitting right over here. True. Yeah. Much love. I'm surprised she's still here in that interplanetary. Are you kidding? She couldn't wait to see you and to experience this. And I feel like I need to revisit my Emerson and get back into that. Listen, Mary Oliver was my mentor in a lot of ways when she was alive. I was blessed to be a friend. Her poetry mentored me. When I sat down with her and had my first conversation, she said, are you reading Emerson? I said, I've just been reading it for years.

2:05:44Everything's underlined and dog-eared. And she said, that's enough. Emerson's enough. That he's enough. And, you know, of course you want to read Rumi because she does. and of course you want to read these others, but there's a ton there. It's just, it's hard getting through it. The language is a little different and you got to dig and dig and dig. Recompensation, the essay compensation. Like his main essays are like the over soul compensation, natural laws, self-reliance and spiritual laws, but there's something about compensation. And this is what he says in compensation. This is the thing about AI.

2:06:25the mistake of the human endeavor, one of the greatest mistakes of the human endeavor is to try to extract, see if I can get this right, the sensual sweet from the moral deep. So we try to get half of something without the other half. So we try, for example, well, he says, The human species never advances because as soon as it advances on one side, it recedes on the other. There's only one thing that advances us. Guess what it is? It's this idea of embracing this idea of love because love is actually a force. And love is how you advance because when you love, you are saying, I am a part of this whole body.

2:07:10That's essentially, it's an attraction. We're all like in this together. and that's the only thing that truly advances us because that is a reflection of the soul which brought us here. So why does this society always advance in one way and then recede on another? Well, we got the use of the coach, he says, or the horse and buggy, but we lost use of our feet, right? Now we have Google Maps, but we can't read the stars anymore, right? We have people to grow our food. We used to do that or be in touch with hunting and gathering. We don't do that anymore. So we don't know a damn thing about our soil.

2:07:44and so we advance and we recede. So what AI, for example, doesn't realize, I think that it's doing is it's doing this again. It's gonna, just like the internet, it's gonna be all awesome. That's the sensual suite. It's gonna be awesome. It's just gonna be awesome. Look at early 1994 when they were talking about the internet. Nobody said it might be a way to divide us and our shadows might show up online and the things that we need to heal may be projected out. What is a movie screen, by the way? It's a projector. right? We're projecting, we project out. So we never said a word about that because it was just, we severed the sensual suite from the moral deep.

2:08:24Are these things actually going to be used to further all of us? Or is there going to be an undergirding idea that it's going to create a class of elite that now separate themselves out and maybe give us a pittance here and there, is a little bit here and there. Guess what it was, right? So we couldn't sever the sensual sweet from the moral deep. They always go together. And so when we think holistically, integrity again, we take the moral deep and we say it is absolutely inseparable from the sensual sweet. We got a new technology, but how is that going to be used in every level for the good of all, that's something that we will recover at some point, whether it's through the loss of so much life that those of us who remain say it's got to be different.

2:09:16That's the Gaia philosophy. Seven billion will go and one billion will remain. And if you lose seven out of eight friends, you're going to change. I don't believe it's going to be that. I just think the soul has got something different in mind for us. And look, man, it's fun when you do it together. it's just more fun. Well, time will tell, but time is accelerating with respect to these existential problems that we're facing. I feel like on some level, we're having that conversation around AI, but it's pulled out of the station so far already that it feels impossible to rein back in and really get to the root of like that, you know, that binary that you just spoke of.

2:09:57So who knows, man? When you say binary, meaning? Like the moral deep and what did you call it? The central sweet. Yeah, but it's not a binary. I want you to know it's one. They go together. It's not binary. It's one. So it's not separable, right? That's the illusion. Right. It's not a binary. It's not a binary. You can't have an up without a down, right? Again, read compensation. You can't have an in without an out. I'm gonna read that tonight. It's a mother, man. You're gonna have to read it a few hundred times. At least you won't, your mind will grab it. I have to wonder, there's an interesting sort of parallel between this journey that you've been on and from what I can gather just as an outsider looking in at some of the things that Jim Carrey has been kind of grappling with in his own life.

2:10:49Like he's gone on his own kind of like spiritual journey. Are you guys still connected? Do you talk about these things? I reached out to Jim recently. We've connected, but we're a little bit in same kind of intention, different paths. But the first day I met Jim, we talked about this. Bruce Almighty was born the first day I met Jim because he came out of a Judeo-Christian background. We talked about God. His name, his initials are JC. You know, his joke was, I knew it was either going to be Johnny Carson or Jesus Christ. And so we talked about it from day one. So none of this stuff would not be in a conversation with Jim.

2:11:29We had been on too many trips to count where we went on motorcycle rides or into nature. And this is what we talk about. I mean, we didn't do Bruce Almighty because it was a really great idea, which it was. We did it like intentionally. We went to a retreat in the desert. We did a sweat lodge. We said, can we be voices for this? Like, can we actually, it's a lot to say, I'm going to put words in the mouth of a God figure. Like, you know, like, let us know. Like, we don't want to do this. And so there's always been a real intentionality. Jim is a super deep guy. Like, he's just, I mean, you know, the Quran, he deserves paradise who makes his companions laugh.

2:12:14Like, laughter is like, laughter is a reminder of that child. Like it really is like maybe the original intention of the universe, just like approach it all like a child. And Jim has that rooted so deeply in him. Well, maybe there will be a day where the universe conspires for you guys to get back together and make something. Hey man, Jim, if you're out there, Ace 3, I've got a really good idea. I don't mind saying it, Ace saves the human race. It'll be the last Ace. And Ryan Reynolds, this is a shout out to you. I want you to play Jim Carrey's son. He's passing the torch on. His neck can no longer do this.

2:12:53Like he's just, he's a shell of himself. We actually have a story and who knows? Like Jim is painting. He's unfortunately too much talent in one body because he's a brilliant painter. Well, I'd like to see that happen. That would be cool. And you heard it here first. Yeah. Anybody out there listening, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's suddenly like when I see, he saves the human race by like somebody, well, at least it'll be born. You can't do Ace without Jim. That would be my - No, of course not. You can never, they tried once, they did a young Ace without Jim and I'm like, please. Yeah. All right, we got to wrap this up, but I do want to end it with one final thread to pull, which is, you know, the title of the documentary is I Am.

2:13:35And, you know, obviously the kind of question that we all ask ourselves is, is who am I? So in your own experience of grappling with those, larger truths about yourself and your place in the universe? Like, how do you think about and answer that? Yeah, so there was either that question or what's the meaning of life? And then we'll - Yeah, we gotta wrap it up, so keep it quick. Okay, I am a hole in a flute that the divine breath moves through.

2:14:08Hafez, Hafez. So he said it better than me, I might as well. that's my hope I want to be a hole in a flute and an instrument of divine breath to move through how about you the I am question for Rich Roll yeah well I certainly don't have such an eloquent and profound answer to that well I stole it yeah I mean I think I'm a spiritual being having a human experience and learning and failing along the way and trying to give back what I discover along the way for the benefit of others. Beautiful. Fantastic. Yeah. Now, how do you feel? Feel good? Do we do it? I think it did us. I think so, right. If people wanna support Memphis Rocks, what's the best way for them to learn more about it?

2:15:08and show up for you. Well, we have a website, memphisrocks.org. What we really need are monthly donors like to sustain us. Like if you can give like, I think it's$20 a month is what we're now asking for. I mean, if you can give$5 a month, like just that consistency and showing up, even though you can't show up bodily, if you can show up, you know, with just some energy, that would help us tremendously. You can go online and make a contribution there. Again, there's a number of media sources you can go to. And I hope you'll all tune into this series. It's going to be really powerful. I saw some footage.

2:15:44They're the best documented filmmakers of this genre. They've made so many great films, which are now escaping me. But Sender Films. Sender Films. Sender Films is making this. Do you have a release date? I believe in November, Chris, right? November, December. Hulu? Hulu. Yeah, Hulu through that whole Disney bundle. again you'll meet you'll meet some people that will surprise you and it'll be as good as any adventure doc we had someone like lose consciousness on the mountain very close to you know something very dark happening we have characters that you've never met before that are brilliant and I promise you I'm a storyteller I wish I could tell a story this well it'll be something beautiful so look for it it's a it's a it's a going to be on November, December.

2:16:38All right, man. Well, come back sometime and we can go two more hours on intention. Intention. Or whatever else you want to talk about. Oh, I got a whole bunch more to annoy you. Okay. Thank you, brother. That was beautiful. Brother, thank you, man. I appreciate you. I'm right back at you, man.

2:17:07That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment.

2:17:46This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com slash sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake.

2:18:27Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

2:19:02No!