Lex Fridman Podcast: #384 – Matthew McConaughey: Freedom, Truth, Family, Hardship, and Love

The following is a conversation with Matthew McConaughey,

a legendary Oscar-winning actor and one of the most unique, charismatic,

and inspiring humans and Texans who walk this earth.

He starred in films and shows loved by me and millions of others,

including Interstellar, Dazed and Confused, Dallas Bias Club, Killer Joe, Mud, True Detective,

and soon a spin-off of Yellowstone.

Offscreen, his words carry wisdom and power in his book called Greenlights in his new video course

called Road Trip, where Matthew expands on the philosophy in his book and shows

how to apply to your life in order to find more happiness, success, and love.

And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor.

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We've got Riverside FM for the best remote video recording platform,

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description. And now, dear friends, here's Matthew McConaughey.

Let's start with love. Your parents had a complicated love story. Divorced twice, married three times.

What did you learn about love from your mom and dad and their love story?

That it's messy, that it takes work, that it's ugly, that no matter how ugly or messy it is,

don't go to bed until you've come back together to either embrace or admit that you truly love each

other, even if you hadn't solved what the hell you're bitching about, that love will win in the

literally three to two with my mom and dad. And that even in the two divorces and in the two

times where they couldn't live with each other, they still loved each other. They just couldn't

live with each other at that time for whatever reason they needed. And I don't know the details

if they needed their space, freedom or what, but they were never out of love with each other.

And that as a parent, when we're not sure what to do,

and people give you a thousand books and advice, that as a parent, if your kid

knows you love them, you're in the black. That's the main thing. It won't work without that

and it can work and we'll usually can work with that. They just know that fact.

So it's not just love for each other. It's the love for the bigger family

that ultimately helps you persist through the ups and downs.

Well, I mean, I don't know how much particularly my mom and dad were

staying together at times maybe when they didn't want to because they had children.

I don't actually think they considered that. I think they were much less conscientious than say

I am today. I think my mom and dad were more like, they'll be fine. We love them. They'll be fine,

but we'll cross that bridge. When we get there right now, let's work it out between

you and I is what I think my mom and dad were saying to each other or not.

They wanted and needed a relationship that was a tidal wave, rocky,

right angles, tsunamis. And to this day, in my life with Camilla and I, which I don't,

I like a river, has some swerves and some streams and some rapids, but I'm not looking for a tidal

wave. My mom's like, what's all this? Everything's so smooth and stuff. Come on, come on, come on,

come on. So she challenges vitality because that's what my mom needed to communicate. I don't think

my dad needed it as much. The hard angles that they're a relationship to. I think my dad needed

as much as my mom. But the clash has demonstrated the passion that underlies the love. Yes. And

that's, I've always been asked, when I talk about my parents' love relationship, I tell the stories

that are actually sometimes quite violent. And there's some good stories there. They're beautiful.

I think they're beautiful. Yeah, I think they're beautiful too. But I've had people go, wait a

minute, that was unhealthy. You can't, and I was like, no, that's, again, back to the beginning,

love's messy. And what I love about those stories is that's where the love was actually,

it was tested. And it could have broke and been over. And it never was. Again, the love won.

In the kitchen floor, the blood's drawn, knives are pulled, ketchup, ketchup's all over.

But we make love on the kitchen floor. I mean, come on, beautiful.

So as romantic as it gets right there. Whoa.

What's the memory from childhood that helped set you on the trajectory of becoming the man you are

today? Standing on the corner with Mr. Mayer, the principal of St. Philip's school. I was in kindergarten.

And I looked up and there was a cloud in the sky. And I said, Mr. Mayer,

is that cloud as big as the world? And he paused for a minute. And he goes,

well, yes, it is Matthew. Now in my seven year old mind, I went, okay, I can see the outlines of it.

And that must mean it is so far away. Because if that's as big as the world, I remember it took

15 hours to drive from Longview to Florida last year. And I can't even see that far. So that

cloud must be so far off that it's not worth me even considering space, dreams, anything. I was

like, army, I'm looking down. I'm going to put my head to the ground. I'm going to look right in

front of me and deal with what's in front of me. Because dealing with dreams and what's out there

and not on this earth that gravity holds down, not worth considering. You never make it. It's

not even worth imagining. It's very dust. So I think I got learned a lot of self-reliance

from that. I think I got a work ethic from that. I think I got a, hey, focus on what's right in

front of you. Do the deed. Take care of what's in front of you one at a time and slowly notch

up your way. And hopefully there's some ascension to that. And it wasn't until

quarter of years later, in some ways decades later, that I started to go, oh,

I can project. I can dream. Why? Because literally the first time I got in a plane,

and then 30 seconds, I was in a cloud. I'm like, whoa, we must be going a trillion miles an hour

because we're already in that cloud that was as big as the world that I saw the edge of.

And then I grew and learned enough to go, well, that's not true. Planes don't go that fast.

Oh, what Mr. Mayer said wasn't really true. That cloud is not as big as the world,

and it's not near as far away as I thought. But I'm glad he lied to me.

What do you think about that, that tension of a way of living life between being a dreamer

and a pragmatist? Yeah. Which is a better way?

Donnie holds the reciprocity of the two of them. I mean, I can't be present unless I got planned.

I want to have a big picture in mind, but I got to go a day at a time. I like to

write the headline or have a, I think we need to have a North Star, something to look forward to.

But we all know that if we're staring at it, we're tripping on the way. If we're just,

you know, the old, you read the Hallmark cards, which like,

irk me, you know, dream it, you can do it. I think that's a half-ass horrible thing to tell somebody.

Because when you talk, and then on the other side, you have things like,

you know, people say, hope means nothing. Well, yes, it does. That's the dream. You just don't

stop there. It's not a period after that word. Now, what do we do practically? And I think that

constant tension, when that tension's a dance, it's when it's beautiful. There's an honest

moment. But to see those as contradictions, I think is where we've fallen short. So I don't,

I want on their own, if we silo the two.

Well, if you silo the two, I guess that the pragmatics want to go with, because at least

you'll get something done. But if you only silo the dream and don't do anything about it,

that's you're kind of living an illusion and kind of living in a virtual reality.

Yeah, that's tricky. Even the people you love can sometimes suffocate the dream,

can make you believe that it's not possible. It feels like a lot of parents kind of

want you to be safe, want you to be stable, want you to have a plan so that everything's

going to be okay. And the dream feels like a threat to that.

Yeah. How much of that though, I wonder, is proper initiation?

Because if you throw in dreams out, I call it conservative, very liberal late. Let's learn

to block and tackle. Let's learn to that work ethic, those things, those pragmatics first.

Learn the rules of the road, the rules of the game, the things that we can all kind of

rely on, this is how the world's supposed to work. Now, it doesn't always work that way.

You know, you teach a child to drive. It's like, yeah, you stay in the lane,

you go the speed limit, this is all helpful. But that doesn't guarantee that no one else

is running the red light. But you learn that later. There's an initiation, I think that's proper

with the dream. I mean, I think parents, my parents very much that way. The idea of going to

chase an acting career or something was what? It was, that was a different vernacular. That was

like not an R. I was taught to work away up a company ladder and nine to five, do your job.

But the day I brought it up and said, I want to go to film school.

And I thought my dad was going to go, you want to do what boy? He was like,

gave me some of the best advice ever and told me not to half-ass it and

said, go. In between the lines, what he heard from me was that made him so happy as a father,

I believe, and makes any parent happy is when our child doesn't ask us permission to go chase a

dream. Oh yeah. When they're going, I'm bringing it up to you with full respect. Yeah. But I'm doing

this with her without you. That's when a parent goes, oh, yes. I've done something right enough. I

made, I helped my child be secure enough in the pragmatics to have a foundation enough

where they have the courage to go, I'm flying the nest. To take the leap. You wrote after my dad

died, I had a dream that left me with a statement less impressed, more involved. Yeah. What are

those words mean to you? We've got to be more than just happy to be here.

I'm big on gratitude, but we've got to be more than just thankful to be here. Dream it, you

can do it. It's got to be more than just dream it, you can do it. That's impressed. The dream is

still other than if I'm here and so impressed with talking to you today. If I have a reverence

to an extent, I will not be able to be involved in this conversation.

I'll be too impressed. I'll be anticipating. Oh, what's that question he's going to ask? Oh,

I think I know he's going this. Oh, I think I know what answer he might love to hear. Oh,

I'm not involved in conversation. I'm too impressed. So I'm removed from the present.

For me, what that literally meant to me when that came to me in a dream and I carved it in,

I remember carved it in a tree. It took a couple of hours. I still don't know where that tree is

in Santa Monica. My father had moved on. He'd left this life. All of a sudden,

it hit me. Oh, I don't have the safety net. My dad was above law and above religion to me. He had

me. If I really was in the shit, if I really needed him, I trusted that he had my back. Above law,

above anything. All of a sudden, he's gone. I'm going, okay, it hit me how much I'd been pretending

to be the young man I was trying to be and not actually put my ass on the line and have enough

courage to take risk and actually own up to the man that he was just trying to, that he was teaching

me to be. And I remember the world got flat. That cloud that Mr. Mayor, that I saw there,

was not way up there. It was, it was fog in front of me now. And let's go into it. It was,

I kept, I'd say I probably gained even more respect for people and things,

but I lost a certain amount of reverence that was keeping me from feeling like I'd deserved or

I'd earned things or looking out for myself or holding myself to task. And I remember all the

things that I, and I was just getting, going to Hollywood at the time, so I was getting fame was

out there as one of those clouds, you know, with being an actor and all of a sudden celebrity and

becoming famous. The reverence I had, I remember it just, it lowered down to eye level. And I was

able to realize it and go, that's not a, that's not fairy dust and don't give it so much credit to

make it fairy dust. Like, oh, not me. No, I could never, no, look that in the eye with full respect,

but less reverence. And at the same time, equidistant, almost equal sublimation, I'd noticed where I'd been

condescending people and things and patronizing and sluthing things off as like less than me

and not worthy of my time. It raised up to eye level. And so they were all flat in front of me

and the world was flat. And I was able to, shoulders went back, my heart rose up, my

chin lifted up. I looked the world, looked things in the eye. I became probably less sentimental,

hopefully not to level that I got callous, but I know became less sentimental.

I became more courageous because, you know, when you have someone pass in your life,

or maybe it's similar to a situation you're going on in your own life, your homeland,

you sober up on these mendacities that we deal with every day and this, this, this bullshit that we,

that we, that we, we owe, we give too much credit or too much significance to and you're like,

what am I, what am I doing? Why am I, I'm not even gonna let myself emotionally get brought down or

over related by this situation because I'm, this is, it doesn't really matter in the big scheme.

And so we, we, we certain things that I found reverence for and, and hesitated from in my life,

I was now engaging with because I was like, oh, it's live. This life is live. Let's look at the eye

and go forward through it and deal with the consequences.

What do you make of death? Does it scare you?

I'm not looking forward to it, but it does not scare me. Do you think about it? Do you visualize it?

I do. I do. And it's a beautiful visualization and a beautiful dream when I go as part of the food chain.

It's not a good visualization when I go as part of a random act of violence and a

fricking drive by or something because the second, the accident,

it, it, it, it breaks a story that I believe has already been written. At least I don't have the

capacity yet to, to, to put it into a, a, a, a story, a divine story of the lives that we, we live.

And so there's something ugly and gross about it.

And it happens all the, all the time. You know, to, to, to people all the time, I just feel like

when it's part of the food chain, when I go as part of the food chain, I'm like, ah, that's poetry.

Part of the flow of nature, you return to nature. Yeah, there's grace and poetry in that.

Do you miss your father?

Think about him.

When I think about him, I do. Now, when do I think about him?

I thought about him yesterday, working through a script I'm working on right now, working on scene work.

And I just had that quick little reaction of wanting to show him, hey, check the scene.

That's right. And then I, I don't get sad. I go, yeah, he would have loved, he would have loved this.

Whereas my mom wants to be on the stage, my dad would have been on the front row.

He's more fun to show stuff too.

Yeah. And he would have, and he, you know, as, as what he would have, we would have,

he knew, he was a character. He knew characters. I've based parts of all kinds of

characters I've played and the, and the man that, that I am on people that he introduced

me to and who he was. He would have loved the creative process of working on a script or,

or talking about, hey, movie. Do I always say I love the movie mud?

Because it's the one that I, I visualized and seen my dad come to me so many times

as a 12 year old and put his arm around me and go, hey little buddy, you see this movie called mud?

Damn it's a good one. Let's go watch it.

That, now my dad was, never got to see me start a career in film, but he was alive five days

into the, he overlapped the first five days of me working on my first film, Days Confused.

Now that, I think there's something beautiful about that. He didn't never ever come to the set.

We didn't talk about it, but he was alive for me to start something that was more than,

more than a fad. That was something that would become something that I love to do.

And I do miss, not him, you know, and then I go out of that. Do I, I, I, I, we talked about him

two nights ago with our, with our daughter. I was, I was rubbing my daughter's feet.

And my mom who's living with this 91 comes in and goes, oh, look at you just like your pop.

He's like, what? And he goes, oh, because my dad loved to rub somebody's feet, rub my mom's feet,

rubbed all of me and my brother's girlfriend's feet. When we would have a date, they would come

over early because they knew they were going to get a foot rub from Jim McConaughey. And then we'd

come out, me and my two older brothers on, this has been on for decades, we'd come out and shout,

ready to go buttoned up. And they looked, I'm like, we ain't going anywhere right now.

And so we told the story, you know, to my, to my daughter. And I was like, oh yeah,

my dad's, his hands, I miss his hands. His hands could heal.

So you carry him in you?

I hope so. I, I hope so. And in,

in, it's a, a challenge

for me. And I suppose it's like this for any son.

How much do we hang on to? And how much do we let go and evolve and update the

DLS and, and, and, and try maybe better or different. You know, it's that there's certain

things that I know that I fully believe in. It's like, when do we, religious, when do we

cast away our father? You know, when do we say, no, I'm going after the dream. I'm not asking your

permission. I, I, I, I question that from time to time for myself because I, and it almost feels

blasphemic if that's a word. Sometimes I feel like you can't, what are you doing? You can't

check that and go like, well, no, I'm not sure if I want it. And then I immediately kind of let

myself off because I believe where he is. He's going, go, but you're free, man. Yeah. You know,

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to hold you back if you misread that or I didn't teach you that as

well as maybe I wish I could have go. You're free. You're not going to lose. Trust that you're not

going to lose. It's in your DNA. It's in your lineage, young man. Still, it's scary to not have a

safety net. Losing your father is scary in that way. You realize this world is just you and some

deep fundamental way. It's just you. Yeah. You're alone. Yes. But I mean, also not having that.

It's such a gift of deliverance though, as well. Because I think it's an, I mean,

it's an awesome feeling to know, to know we're alone, to know we don't have that, to know you

don't have take two or take three, that it's one take. I mean, the peripheral vision improves,

you know, the, the, the, the, the, the link and understanding with our past improves. Because

I know for me, I was not ever considered of my past at all because that, but dad had that.

If I needed it, he was my will for that. Well, he's gone, you know, except he had the literary

had they have our back. Well, then when they longer have our back, also I'm going, oh, well,

maybe I need to look back and start giving some credit to how I got here. What I'm doing and

where I'm heading, it gave me the first time courage to even look over my shoulder. Because,

again, I didn't have to, because I don't have to look. Dad's got my back. No, that's gone

on from this life. He doesn't have your back. Okay. So, I mean, I don't know, me, because it's

inevitable, I, I very quickly go to, all right, in the, in the pain, the loss and yes,

even loanliness, which is different from being alone and loss.

Pretty immediately, part and parcel with the pain, I felt it.

In the pain, you saw the gift, the red light of losing your, losing your father.

Pretty immediately, less impressed, more involved. I came like

a couple of weeks after moving on.

Is there a trick to that? To see the gift in the pain?

That's a good question. Is there a trick to it? Not that I know of. I mean, I don't,

I have to, I have to catch myself from trying to intellectualize my way into the reasoning

and not skip over real feelings and discomfort. I mean, I did get that from my mom and I have

to watch it, that, that so resilient that we just dust herself off and get up and go.

You want to sit in the feeling, you want to feel it, you really deeply feel the pain.

I want to, I want to deeply feel it. I want to look at the eye and deeply feel it,

but I don't want to wallow in it. Yeah.

Now, I was raised where you'd skip the deeply feel and let's go.

And I've said it before, but that will lead to having

turned into a person who is a repeat offender of the same crimes because you, you just get up and

you don't, you don't have a winter in your life. You know what I mean? You don't have,

there's no introspective time. You don't look over your shoulder at the end of the past.

And so you just get up and you're like, all right, I've stepped in the same pile of whatever 100

times and I'm fine. I'll do it a hundred and first. Doesn't hurt. Hell, it's good luck.

Well, hang on a minute. Maybe we want to stop and go, what can I learn from that?

But it, it, it, it, I don't know of a trick.

I think, I think that, I think that, I think there's any trick I would say

it's just it, it, how quickly can we admit the inevitable?

That's what I'm talking about in the book of act. Like once you, once you know it's inevitable,

how do we get relative? Not skip it, not throw it to the side, not deny it,

which I'd love to talk about that here sometimes too, about the value of denial sometimes.

The value of denial. Yeah. But how quickly do we, do we

want something's inevitable? Go, okay, any mind and heart time I'm spending about going,

no, I can't believe that happened. No, did that really happen? Anytime we spend trying to deny

that what has already happened, that seems to me to be, I'm not sure the value of that time.

So if any, if there's any trick, I would say once you know something's inevitable, even though

how painful it is or how awesome it is, start getting relative with that. And then the relativity

is seeing there's a gift here. And if I realized that gift, I'm honoring. Now I'm on to building up

the beautiful passage of my father leaving this life. Now I'm on the march to go,

yes, let's let the legacy, let this become omnipresent, let him live through me,

let me become more him that. It's transformed. Yeah. So what value is there then to denial?

Any? Oh, I think there's value to denial, if you really commit to it.

I get this from my mother. Yeah. So it's a very pragmatic value, commit to the denial.

Okay. And my mom does it to an extent that I'm like, Mom, do you have any consideration

or context of situations? And she does. This is the thing, every time I go, she's not a shallow woman.

But if it is not, if it is something, if it is something happens in her life, that is,

keeping her from going where she wants to go, or having a joy in her life that she does,

she'll straight ass deny it happened, didn't happen. No, didn't. Mom, we're right here. I heard you

what you said. No, I didn't, you heard something else. Mom, now that she gets a man to see on that,

she's 91. Hell yeah, she gets some amnesty on that. But I've, she's not,

yeah, does she repeat offend? Yeah, but it's misdemeanors. You know what I mean? I mean,

it's like we all, it's part of that thing when you got a family member, you're like, yep, that's

just what they do, just go with it. And it's ingenious in a way. It's a tool. She does. I think

it is more of a trick with her, but she wouldn't, so ingrained her, it's not a trick. It's just,

do it, done. And I, another reason I bring this up, it's outside of just my mother is

I did this road trip course in this art of living event a few weeks ago.

Out of hundreds of thousands of chats that came in and responses that came in afterwards,

it seemed to me that about 80% of people's challenges and problems even in their life were

something in the past that they were hung up on, that they could not seem to get past. And it was,

it was holding them from going where they wanted to in their future. And so

I thought that was revealing. I would have thought, I would have thought that was, I don't

know, going in 40%. It was 80, it seemed to be 80%. And then I thought about, okay,

if you're here in the live show and you want to get the course, you're into some sort of therapy

or education or development or self-help or whatever, okay.

And I have a lot of friends and I know a lot of people that

earn weekly and daily therapy. And then I know there's a lot of people that are on prescriptions,

drugs. And while the therapy and the right prescription to the right person for the right

diagnosis is necessary, I'm questioning, is there value to going,

if you're not getting past this today, this week, this month, this year, all of a sudden,

a decade goes by and you're still hung up and you can't get rid of that thing and your memory

and it's got you paralyzed and you're a victim of it. And you're doing the therapy and you're

doing the work and you're taking a prescription if that's what you're saying. Where is there,

is there value in going, if it's holding you back from going where you want to go,

maybe you should just deny the fucking thing ever fucking happened, kick it in the head,

kick it off the curb, I'm done with you, I'm sick of you, I'm tired of hanging out with you,

I'm tired of that thing, whatever it is, holding me back from going where I want to go. So if I

can't wax the car, you know, and get past this thing, just kick it. That's so powerful. So

one thing to do, like with the loss of your father, is to try to transform it to discover

the gift in it, the gift in the pain. But if you can't keep looking, keep looking,

you can't find the gift in the pain, just deny it ever happened.

You could call that a trick, but I think it's more than a trick because, let me say this,

my mom, after my father died, went on and found a second love of her life.

For 19 years, they were together. C.J. Carlich. Love you, buddy. He's moved on now.

Did she check with us a little bit? Like, is this okay? She gave us a little lingering half

a second look that we knew that maybe was what she was asking, and we came and was like,

yes, it's okay. And you know who else is saying it's okay? Who's dancing up there for you? Dad.

So was that her denying that the man she was divorced from twice and married

to three times and had three children with had moved on? No. But she didn't say, I'm not, you know,

well, what's the book on how long I'm supposed to say single before I can be interested in

another? You know, there's not a book on these things. How do you feel? Is loving C.J. mean

you love dad less? No. Is finding a new life and a new dance partner in this life? And C.J.

Mean that dad wasn't your dance partner? That dad wasn't the love of your life?

No. So I don't know. I mean, in there, maybe, you know, maybe there's another where I think it's

denial, but it's not really denial because it's not like it didn't happen. That's an

earlier example I was giving my mom. She will absolutely go. That light's not on. Mom,

the light's on. That light's not on. If I say it's not on, sometimes you're just like,

that makes no sense. You're just absolutely denying what just happened. We even have it recorded

and she'll go, well, the recordings line. Yeah. I mean, that's part of a coping deal with her,

but I mean, one of the things more important or more valuable is to talk about this.

She didn't deny my dad dying. I didn't, but she sure as hell turned the page

and said, I can still start a whole new category, a new life, a new love. Let my,

let my heart love and be loved by someone living in this life today that I'm still living in.

And that will not trespass on my love for my husband, your father, Jim McConaughey.

And I think, I mean, we were just thought that was beautiful. Yes, mom, go. Talk about a green

light, go. Now, if we're hung up going, can't have one or the, it can't have them both.

Gotta have one or the other. Now we start to make a contradiction of the two ideas again,

which don't, not contradictions get us in trouble all the time, man.

That's life though, the contradictions, right? But isn't life, if we just admit the contradictions

are so much, don't they become a paradox? We just admit that that's part of it?

If contradictions are inevitable, they, hencely they do become a paradox, don't they?

Then we're in the honey hole. Then we're singing and dancing and have leniency with

ourselves while still holding ourself to task. And it's, I think it's holding on to

no, each contradiction. Oh, here it is again. So it's a one off. It lives on its own separate

from the last one. No, it doesn't. They're connected. That's why they are a paradox.

And then that's, I think that's a much, I think that's where life really is.

In the paradox. Yes.

In the dance of it. I think the metaphor of red, yellow, green lights is just so simple and so

powerful. You write about some green lights being engineered and some being mystical,

which I love the difference of that. What's the difference of the engineered green lights

and the mystical? Such a cool word, mystical.

Yeah. Well, the engineered ones have reason and the mystical ones have rhyme.

Yeah. You know, life's a mystery going forward, but it's a science looking back.

I've prepared, I've had ideas and written headlines and had goals and

athlete gets in shape for an event. I get in shape for a role. I read, I study, I work, I prepare

and I go and I'm prepared and I behave and I do it and I look at it and I go, yes.

That's what I wanted to do. It's engineered green light. It's a conscious delayed gratification.

It's that if I do it today, that pragmatic head down, believe that no cloud out there,

but then I trust that there is one out there. If I do keep my head down to do it, I'll get

that to that dream. We can engineer those, habit, work ethic, prep, expertise, education.

And the mystical ones, though, don't make any sense. They're not supposed to make sense.

They only make sense after, right when they happen, you backlog and you connect the dots

with how they got there. That red light you went into that made you 30 seconds later to

get to the restaurant. As you walked in, she walked out and you went,

good morning. And she went, good morning. And too much later, you're dating.

Two years later, you're married. You're after that, got a family and now you're sitting here 40 years

later going, I love you. Look at what we built. And you go back and go.

What if I wouldn't hit that red light? Those 30 seconds made all the difference.

So strange that this life is this way. Yeah. And that's just rhyme. I mean,

we can't really add that up. It's a science when you look back, you see why it was that

you were upset and ticked off that you had to pick up the kids' toys before you left and

they were supposed to pick them up. And therefore, you were late for the thing that made you ran into

and you ran into the person that was walking in the office. That's the guy that you did the interview.

That's the guy you were looking for, the job you wanted. And you caught him because you were in

the elevator with him. And that 90 seconds on that elevator, that's what got you that job

that led you to do what you want to do. I mean, the significance is there, but I think

what we also got to watch is, again, in that balance. What did we chase? Because we just

chased the engineering, we miss magic. If we just chased the mystical,

we find ourselves caught up in trying to give meaning to the Lego set that was on the floor

that kids didn't pick up. And what color was it? And why did I walk out that door and see,

you know, almost step on the Legos? But if I'd gone out the other door, I usually go out of,

I would have gone there, I would have got there early and wouldn't have run into the

boss. So you can start to give too much meaning on that as well. I think we can give significance

in too many places. And all of a sudden, I think we've all been there where you're seeing art

in every single thing. Man, that can be paralyzing. It's like, it's hard to leave a room

if everything's significant, or if everything's a sign.

How much of success in life do you think is engineered and how much is mystical?

How much is it different from person to person? Because for me personally,

maybe I enjoy it, maybe I'm genetically built that way, but I exist more in the mystical.

So I don't make plans. I traveled last summer in Ukraine with no plan. I just went there.

No plan. I didn't know how I'm going to meet the president of the country. I didn't know anybody.

And so there's no plan. There's no clear thing. You're just roaming around.

And that's how I've existed in life. And there's something about giving yourself over to the flow

of nature that I just enjoy. It makes life so much fun. It's awesome when you can do it.

Did you engineer, though, I'm going to put myself in the place when you got on the plane to go to

the destination? That was an engineered choice. Yes. With the intent of. And maybe I'll meet

and I'll run into and I can work up a sit down with. So the engineered choice was putting your

shoes on perverbally. I always say this to the hardest part about going to the gyms,

putting your shoes on, right? So getting on the plane, that was an engineered thought with the

goal in mind, but I don't know how I'm going to do it. The choice. Yeah. Putting the shoes on. Yeah.

But there's not a clear, it's a fog what happens after the shoes go on. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just going to take that leap. So I wonder how much

for people who are successful in this world and finding what makes them

truly happy and fulfilled, how much of it is engineered? How much is this mystical?

How much was it for you? Well, I'll say this, when I went to write

the book Green Lights, which is basically the last 40 years of my life, I thought that 85,

90% of my successes were going to be obviously engineered, where I could see the science,

solve the habits. Here's what I did. Yep, that add up, got the solution, got the conclusion.

I was very surprised when I noticed that it was probably less than 50%.

And that most of the real successes of my life were when I

trusted the mystical, when I trusted that I didn't have to define it, that I only trusted

that I didn't have to go, well, what's the measurement? What's the score?

This leads to what? What's next?

And I, for me, that's still a challenge for me daily.

Now it's a trust and not because I think I can be overly practical,

and I think I can overcompensate and miss out on magic because I'm still

going, wait, but are we giving enough, are we giving enough

measure and credit to actuality? Are we, are we giving enough credit to this is,

these are the steps to take? And this is reality? I think

I'm reminded when I, when I trust, because that's going with the mystic, just to put

yourself on the plane was the engineer, but getting there, and as you say, you were seeing,

you say you roll in that mystical, it takes a lot of trust.

Yeah, trust in the inevitable. Amen on that, too.

But not knowing where it actually ends you up. It's a feeling more than,

I don't think it's a clear vision. Right.

It's kind of like a feeling that guides you towards, towards a place with,

without a clear name, without clear characteristics, it just kind of pulls you there.

Where do you get that courage and trust to go with your gut, your feeling?

And is there, for instance, three days later you sit down, is there, if you didn't, if that,

if that doesn't happen, is there a sense a week, two weeks later, now when you come back

to America, they're like, I failed?

Sort of looking back to try to analyze what went right, what went wrong, that kind of thing.

Yeah, that, that engine is always there, but I think what pulls me forward in life, what makes

me really grateful and fulfilled is noticing the thing you mentioned, noticing the magic,

and kind of going towards it. Sort of just sitting back,

both in tragedy and in triumph. So in war, there's a lot of tragedy, but there's somehow,

one of the things you see in, in war, and this is the first war I've experienced and seen,

seen the front, is the loss that people lose their homes and all this kind of stuff.

The thing that rises from that is the love for each other. So they, the people I've spoken with,

don't give a damn about the home, don't give a damn about the, on farms and the animals they

lost, don't give a damn about having to move and all this kind of stuff, as long as the family's

still there, as long as the people they love are still there. And there's like, that's the,

there's this melancholy smile they have on their face. Like, yeah, this world is full of bullshit,

it's full of tragedy, but life is fucking awesome. And that, and you just notice that in little ways

everywhere, you just sit back and, yeah, notice the magic. And I want more of that.

You just kind of follow along, like a little ant, keep noticing that kind of thing. But,

I don't know, I hope, you know, what I, what I think it is, is other people notice that you're

the kind of person that notices it. And they're like, I want to hang out with that person. He

seems all right. Like, he seems one of the, one of the good ones, one of the good ants.

Do you have any certain non-negotiable structure before that freedom to go with the feeling?

I think so. There's such set of principles of just basically integrity of being good to other

people. Like, whatever that means for me, there's specific things. Like, I'm really into loyalty

above the law. Right. There's kind of like, there's a circle of friends I have, and that means

everything. There's just a basic deep kindness towards others.

Empathy, empathy towards people that others, that others might label as even evil. I have that kind

of empathy. I believe all of us have the capacity to do good and evil. And so, I just kind of see

everybody as little babies that grow up in different conditions. And so, some do evil, some do good.

And then, yeah, there's all kinds of other principles. I love the dynamic between the

different humans and their full diversity. I love the dynamic between the masculine,

the feminine, and enjoy it, the dance of it. Yeah, yeah.

So, you have a constitution with which you embark into chasing. Yes, I hope so.

And then, for me, I'd like to, it's inspiring to hear something like yourself go,

I go and I just land and I just go, I'm going to feel it. I can go back and go,

yeah, my greatest truths I've crossed, my greatest successes in my life, or when

I just trusted that and go, I took a one-way ticket.

Amazon, Africa. Yeah. And those were spiritual and very pragmatic because they led to

dealing with succeeding in other ways that are more pragmatic, 100%,

and gave much more meaning to those things. But that's to be able to

go out and say, that's how you, do you have family? I really want to get married and have kids,

but I'm not married and don't have kids yet. So, actually, one of the nice things about that

is you can take bigger risks. Yes. So, while I'm not married and don't have kids, I feel

I owe it to myself to take, just to go, go to the Amazon. Yes. Throw that backpack on and

one-way ticket. Yeah, because that does get harder to do.

I miss that sometimes. The whim, the song that comes on. Yeah. Where's that guy from?

Oh, they're from the place that I want to go that I had a dream about. I'll go there

one-way ticket. What do I got to do? I'll get a couple shots. Okay, go. That was fun.

Just get up and go. Yeah. And go when you're back. When I get there? Yeah. It's a beautiful thing.

Maybe never. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, you'll be coming to visit me in this new place, maybe.

Yeah. How did the Amazon, how did the trip there change you? What do you remember of it?

Such a magical place. I stripped a lot of my past symbols and talismans while I was there.

I remember getting there and just having so much adrenaline on the anticipation of

getting to the Amazon. In the first 10 days, I wasn't really enjoying the trip. I was just charging

to get to the destination, to get to the banks of the river that I had a dream about.

And then it just humbled me. I got so fatigued on night, whatever, 12,

and was so sick and tired of the internal dialogue I was having with myself. I was not enjoying my

company. That I purged. And I remember and stripped off identity markers that I had been

hanging on to for everything from what it means to be an American. My dad's ring,

M from McConaughey, a meltdown of my mom and dad's classrooms from University of Kentucky were

gold from her teeth and his classroom melted down. Taking that off was really hard to go,

I'm casting, am I casting out my father? I wasn't casting him out. I was just removing to say,

I don't have to rely on that being all of my identity. So to pull that off, to strip down

and just to where I was just a mammal. That next morning, I was light. I got present. I remember

writing something down. It was like, all that I want is what I can see and what I can see is

in front of me. That sense of not, I wasn't leaning around, looking around every corner to get there.

And as soon as that hit me, talking about mystical successes and realities and truths,

as soon as that hit me and for the first time in 12 days, I didn't care about getting there or what

was around the corner. Guess what was around the next game corner? The Amazon. I mean, not

around a few corners. The next corner, there it was. And that was just like a touche.

You know, those times when the prime mover, the universe, God, what we want to name or believe in

says, ding, there you go. And that form of detachment from holding on for dear life to things

in past so hard that's not letting the beauty that's right in front of you to feel correctly

and follow our intuitions, to have those, not cast them out. I didn't burn them. I didn't

get rid of those things. I just took them off and had to recognize, you're still here. You are you.

You're much more, that is a talisman. That's a symbol. That means something to you. And that's

good. Don't cast out the meaning. But it's not like when the rings off and the hats off and the

crucifixes off your neck that you're like, you're going to die. And I know those are reminders.

Hang on to what they mean for you as we go forward. But as we go forward,

quit worrying about so much about you. Again, I was looking at the proverbial dream,

the cloud so much that I was tripping over myself to get there. And like clockwork,

just amazing grace, boom, as soon as it hit me. And I was like, oh, that's it. All I want is what

I can see and all I can see is in front of me. Literally looking down at the ground

at what was a sea of 10,000 wild neon blue Amazonian butterflies on the ground.

As soon as they fluttered up, my head came up with them.

I took a few more steps and there's the Amazon. That's what you came over here for. Oh, howdy.

Those kind of, that truth like that. Well, the Amazon is interesting too, because

it really has no past or future. It lives in the moment because of how fast it churns. It just

eats up life. If a thing dies, it just gets swallowed up. Because maybe because of the

humidity, because of all that, because there's so many living creatures that kind of eat each

other, live on each other. So it really exists in the moment. And all this kind of diversity

of life there. It's such an interesting place. Talk about food chain. Yeah. You're just part of it

there. Yeah. We humans somehow escaped that food chain, but we're still, the roots are still there.

Are we, I think we're a bit arrogant to think we've escaped.

Do you think I'd be a romantic in that notion? Well, sometimes when you're in a big city,

when you're in Austin, Texas and LA, you can think like, oh, we're in a car, we're in a house,

we're safe. But yeah, somehow, somehow's nature's still a part of us. Our roots are still a part

of us. I think it is more than we realize, more than we give credit for. I actually have a,

believe that we are, that it's a really arrogant notion to think that we are separate. Meaning,

you know, people talk about pollution on a larger scale, that the climate would have you.

I think ours can be just fine. Yeah. We maybe not be here for it, but I think we have a bit of

arrogance sometimes to think that we can trump mother nature. I think we have more, more of

the natural law in us. And I sure hope so if I'm wrong. Well, there's an interesting, I've recently

been, there's a guy named Max Tagmark at MIT who really worries about nuclear war. And he was part

of constructing a simulation of what happens when a nuclear war happens. And it's interesting to see

that, you know, some very large percentage of humans on earth starved to death because they

don't die first from the explosion. They die from starvation because basically dust covers the entire

North America and entirety of Europe. And so the crops all die, all the food sources all die,

and people suffocate and starve to death. But, you know, the lesson you learn from that over

a period of a few months, even though most of the human population of earth dies,

earth finds a way, life finds a way to adapt. And it's going to be just fine.

In terms of the big living ecosystem that is life on earth. And yeah, it's humbling to think about,

well, maybe we're just the stepping stone. Same thing with talked offline about artificial

intelligence. Maybe humans are just the stepping stone to the development of these other

super intelligent entities. Yeah. Yeah. And is it

unconsciously in our nature that that's just part of the evolution and adaptation

of our species? And we'll, because we're going to, we were talking about earlier, what AI becomes

is completely 100% based on who we are.

And we get to see it for some time, a mirror to ourselves. Okay, this is what human civilization

is like. These AI systems, large language models are trained on human communication.

And you get to ask it questions and you get to have conversations with it. You get to realize,

wow, this is what the collective intelligence of the human species,

our collective wisdom and knowledge is what it looks like. All the bias, the hate,

the paradoxes, all that is in there. Yeah. The contradictions. You can even convince those models.

You can tell them they're lying and they're going to start changing their mind. It's interesting

to play with them. It's also interesting to consider that maybe they become smarter than us and

become almost life forms that live among us and maybe one day kind of we merge with them.

There's all kinds of possible trajectories that we take here. How much of that excites you? How

much of it scares you? Is it possible to exist in a place where it is both exciting and scary,

but to exist in that dance? Mostly I'm really excited because

I see human beings as deeply lonely. Like there's a deep loneliness at all. That's how we see

connection. That's why we see connection in others. That's why love is so beautiful when we find other

people we're connected with. And I just think AI can add to that. You can add friends that you can

have great conversations with. And then some of those friends would be AI systems.

They'll call you out in your bullshit in the most fascinating and interesting of ways

and challenge you and help you explore ideas together. So I'm excited by that.

Is that different? And if so, how from the internet and the Facebooks and these groups and

communities that were, I think it's fair to say, set out to say this all-access of information

and people will help us find more common denominators than divisive ones? Do you see them

similar? Yeah, similar, but further into that direction. I think the internet has done an amazing

thing in connecting us and expanding our minds and helping us find community that feels like our

community and then communities that are totally different that you learn from them. I mean Wikipedia

alone, one of my favorite websites just opens your mind to all kinds of cool stuff. Yeah,

it does. And not to do just some system anymore. And so I think AI just makes that even easier

because Wikipedia have to read and have to do a lot of work with an AI system,

like a large language model, it can just shoot the shit. It's more like drinking a beer versus

doing homework. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's already happening. What do you think about that

becoming the new family to where you said you're not married, you don't have kids? Could you see

a future for yourself or do you have a relationship with AI and that is your family? That's the main,

that's the primary, even romantic relationship. Yeah, I can see it. That one worries me.

I like to keep it at friends. Right. I think I'm not ready to commit to the romantic.

It's, I wonder how much that now that takes us back to the Amazon in nature,

how much we still need the human touch and whatever magic there is between two humans,

which takes the leap into the romantic versus just the intimacy of a good friendship. I don't know.

So, correct or wrong, you see AI as having a deep and meaningful friendship.

And hopefully it will be a friend that will help you evolve and be able to love even more and be

loved and you can take that into humanity and find another homo sapien. Yes. Yes. And thank you AI,

my great friend for opening me up to this beauty that I have myself. I can see in you,

my fellow human. And let's come together and biologically create family if we want to. And

let's all remain friends with my friend and make your own friends with my friend's friends on AI.

And let's have these great neighbor. It's a good friend, that great friend that's a neighbor.

Mentor and friend. Just like now there's AI systems that play chess far, far, far better than humans

and we humans still play chess with each other or the chess is still a game that's fun for us humans.

Right. And then we use the AI systems to get better at chess to learn, to train,

to discover new ideas, but ultimately return to the chess board between two humans.

But of course, this world is full of dangerous people. And so those same AI systems can be used

to harm, to create false narratives, to do social engineering and manipulate the masses

in terms of what they believe and all that kind of stuff. That's scary.

Yeah. Well, and I get it when we, and I have my own fear and distrust of AI is based on my

own fear and distrust of myself and others. There's something, it's so very simple,

but I think it's a really fun sort of way to just set up this reality. It's kind of a duh,

but it still needs to be said that AI is a prompt. It doesn't do anything unless we ask it.

So what questions are we going to ask is a question, is what we need to ask ourselves

because we're going to be looking in the mirror at our digital God that we create

from ourselves. And just to know that that's that place where it's awesome and scary, exciting,

and scary, we go, oh, it's our creation, which is awesome. At the same time, oh, shit.

But it's prompted by our questions and gives us patterns from that which we give it.

But that prompting, that's the art of life. We prompt each other in conversation,

our loved ones. When you go out and buy your day today, the next word you say,

the next word you say to me, the question I ask of you, that's prompting.

And it can change everything. I can say so many things right now that will completely,

the set of possibilities where both of our lives can take given on the selection of words

I use and you use is crazy. So it makes conversation fun.

And the same thing with AI. Except the nice thing about AI is it's tireless.

Tireless. Right. Let me ask you this. If you can falsely condemn me right now,

and I prove you falsely condemn me, I can forgive you. And we can march forward stronger than before.

Yes. And AI's tirelessness and retention.

Can it forgive? I mean, can it, can it, can it go, oh, okay. Yep. Sorry about that one.

That was wrong. Can it amend? Yes. Yeah, you could prompt it to ask for forgiveness and it'll

forgive you. Like when I talk it around with it, and you ask, what should I be afraid of?

The dooms toward you. Its answer was always, well, it's up to you.

Which it was awesome, right? There you go. Again, it's up to us. And it brought up,

you know, make me synonymous with your human values and ethics and responsibilities. But it

doesn't deal with it. I didn't find anyway, deal with defining or making choices on its own of

what those are. Yeah, I think some of that is manually, those are constraints put on by it,

by the creators of those large language models, basically not letting the systems have an identity

of their own. And some of it is just not engineered in yet. But I believe that we'll have systems

that have an identity, have a belief, have a set of opinions that carry through time.

And will we go to them like certain states where we agree with the law and disagree with the law

or nations? And I'm a member of this AI. Oh, well, you're from this AI tribe. Y'all believe this?

Yeah, there'll be an anarchist set of AIs. There'll be the communists. There'll be the

Nazis. There'll be the Democrats and the Republicans. There'll be the people who

are in the keto diet, and the people that are in this other kind of diet, this other kind of lifestyle

that just like we have now, there's little groups and there'll be AI systems. They're gonna be super

charged. Yeah, they'll be either the leaders or the foundation on which we build those groups.

And there'll be, it'll be the possibility of all the fun we can have is endless. Of course,

the dangers always rise up there, because I mentioned the Nazis. I mentioned all the dangerous

ideas. The set of ideas that humans have come up with, a lot of them are awesome. Most of them

are awesome, I would say, but some of them are dangerous. The reason they're dangerous is because

they become viral. There's something exciting in us about those ideas, but they also harm others

a lot, because that's who we are as humans. We're capable of envy and all the dark stuff,

of hate and all this. Capable, yes. We also choose it.

Do you think most people are good?

Yes, but I also believe we got the good and the evil and all of this,

and it's which wolf we've eaten.

You ask people to draw a distinction to describe

where are you acting and where are you being? What's the difference? What's the difference

between being fake, if I may use that word, and being real? Okay. Yeah, and the word authentic

gets thrown around a lot. And I don't mean, I used to think, I used to feel this way,

Bob Dylan loosened me up on this idea a little bit. The thing was all about get to be your only

one and only true self. That's it. Everything else is fake. And then you hear Bob go,

well, I mean, we are what we create ourselves to be. We are our own creations, which I'm like,

yes. Yes, we are. Thank you, Bob. I'm all for bullshittered and bullshitting.

I'm not as big a fan of liars and lying. What's the distinction? You talking about the art form

of bullshitting? Liars faking it but not admitting to themselves that, yeah, it's a

fucking creation. I'm faking it. A liar, I'm lying to your face right now and I don't give you that

hair of a wink out of my right eye that lets you know, hey, go with me here. I think there's value

in the bullshitting. Now, the lying becomes troublesome because one, I've duped you and I

didn't let you know, come on, I was telling the story about catching the fish. The fish always

gets bigger every year we tell a story. Come on, go with it, all right? Yeah. But the lying all

of a sudden, I don't know my own. I don't know when I'm emanating something and creating something,

telling the truth, being authentic or lying. And I'm, shit, all of a sudden I'm leaving crumbs

with myself. That constitution gets blurry. Lying to yourself and to others. Yeah, well,

you start to lie. You lie to others enough. You start to lie to yourself and you don't even know

it. And that, I believe, is dangerous territory. That's why I'm trying to push this admit because

that goes, I'm trying to come in at a kindergarten level because we immediately jump to, well,

I'm going to judge that. Boom, that's bad. That's wrong. No, no, no, no. Hold back on that. Let's

go back to base love or let's just admit that we all fucking do it. Lies we tell others. Lies

we tell ourselves. Lies we believe for convenience sake. I do it. I'm guilty of it. I try to catch

myself on it. If I can just call it and go, you know, you're believing that lie out of convenience.

I'm like, I know. And then I have to see whether I'm saying that in the mirror or writing it down

or sharing with a friend, you know? And I go, okay, well, now I've inherently become a bullshitter

then because I admitted it. That I can shake hands with. That's the little slight wink to

ourselves and someone else go, come on, it's a better story this way. In the course road trip,

you start with step one, admit. How do you do that? How do you kind of step back and

do that inventory? Yeah. Is there a trick to that?

Oh, if there's a trick to it, I think it's just that courage of having the,

because it's, I don't think any of us like to admit

our lies or look deep enough in to go. I've relied so much on that lie that it's become my reality.

Yeah. And I don't want to be so puritanical.

As I say, again, that's why I say admit instead of judge. But I don't want to be so puritanical,

I should go and admit it and get rid of it. No, I'm just saying to admit it. Just bring it to the surface.

Yeah. I'm saying this and I'm doing something different.

I preach this, but I actually, my actions, just admit it. Just admit them. And

I think that's the first step to where we begin to either forgive ourselves and give ourselves

some amnesty and go, yeah, I'm a human. Trying to make it through life as best I can. I'm going

to let myself slide on that one. Okay. And maybe I've been getting away with it for so long,

whole family, my whole network works well on it. Okay. Forget this, get to the base of the truth

of the matter. Let me just admit it. And then it will also help, it'll be easier to then

expose to ourselves. Which ones do we go? No. I'm not letting myself slide on that one anymore.

That is actually a lie I've been believing that's been keeping me from getting

more of what I want in life. That's actually a lie I've been living that I haven't admitted that

is not allowing me to enjoy life as much as I damn well should be, deserve to be,

or have earned to be, or just sort of let myself.

It's not all the hard stuff. Sometimes it can be a fun thing. I talk about how many times we

major in our minors. Let's admit where we sit there and we go, all right, I give myself a 12-hour

workday, but I notice I'm spending eight on my hobbies and four on my career while I'm majoring

in my minors. Well, let me admit that. There's the math. Why don't we invert that? How about

four hours on my hobbies and eight on my career? First off, just admitting it allows me to go

and now I can do the math or rearrange the math by time of day, but look, I just found a hobby

tennis, the first hobby I've had in 25 years. I had to admit that I went to play tennis,

started to love it for the first month. I started feeling guilty. I was like,

is it okay to have this much fun? I'm having so much fun and I'm getting a great workout.

Yes, it's okay. Congratulations, but you found something that you're finding quite pleasurable

for straight pleasure. You don't have to forget all this other stuff, but yeah,

but I'm also getting a workout. We ain't getting that too, but you don't have to

excuse the pleasure based on, oh, but it's good for you. No, damn it. The real reason you love it

is because you're having so much damn fun at it. I had to admit that to let myself go,

damn right, I'm going to play tennis again today or tomorrow. It was a simple fun thing.

So it's not always about the hardcore stuff that we have to go. This is a deep dark lie that I've

been living by and it's having me live falsely and it's having harmful consequences on my loved ones.

Some of those will probably arise when we admit. I mean, he's just having a look around and it's

just saying and when we admit it, then we go, when we admit a lie, then we become something

much more valuable, a bullshitter. Yeah, you had a little wink in your eye. I love the distinction.

I'm bullshitting myself on that thing. Yeah, I'm lying. Therefore, if I call it a lie,

I'm admitting, oh, yep, well, now, yep, I'm bullshitting. Yeah, that's just out. Didn't judge it.

But now I'm bullshitting. That, I think we can work with.

Well, you're an interesting case study because you're one of the most famous,

one of the most charismatic, successful humans in the world. There's a lot, millions of people

love you, hang on every one of your words. That's a hard place to be. How do you call yourself?

How do you admit that you've been living a lie? How do you admit yourself in big ways and small

ways on lies at this point, given how many people love you, how famous you are?

10 years ago, I don't know.

I don't know. Someone was talking about like, yeah, they really admire this so-and-so person

because they're not someone who looks in the mirror. And I was like, yeah. And all of a sudden, I was

like, man, I gotta catch myself looking in the mirror a lot. And then I go in and I, you know,

look at my wife's side of her bathroom, how many different creams and stuff she has out there.

And I look at my side, I got a lot more on my side. I'm like, oh, I notice how if I'm out

and all the look working out, maybe doing push-ups, maybe I do a few more. If there's a group of people

walking by that maybe I'd like to impress, then I may do a few more than I do if I was on my own.

I'm like, you are vain, McConaughey. And the knee jerk is, oh, vanity bad. And all of a sudden, I was like,

all of a sudden, I became a bullshitter once I admitted. And then I was like, well,

bravo, vanity. Let's go vanity. Let's, instead of putting it in the cupboard in the lie section,

in the vein, because that's a debit, no, admit it. And then go, what's the value in it? Well,

I can look at, yeah, I've actually gotten better shape because of my vanity. Actually, I eat better.

It's better than half-morning. And that led to being a better husband, better dad,

doing something with my kids when I'd rather be over there writing this work I'm working on. But

I know that tomorrow, when they leave town, they're going to remember this time that we had

together. That's a selfish act to go spend that time with my kids. Even though I'd rather not

be doing it at that time, I'd rather be doing something for myself. Because when they leave

tomorrow, they'll have this great memory that they spent with their dad right before they went.

I could call that vanity. I could group that and say, that's very vain of you. I was for self.

Yeah. Because it was also for someone that I cared about.

Are there people in your life that call you all in your bullshit in the bad sense of the word

bullshit? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's either, I got a pretty thick threshold for how far I can go

with my bullshit. Like what tickles me and my bruise others to watch it.

That's a good line.

Yeah. It tickles me and my bruise others. But I also, I go back and talk about the bullshit.

That's over there with those mystical successes. It's the, yeah, no, no, go with it.

Don't pull a parachute yet. Let's see how far we can go. Let's see how hot it can get. Let's try it

one more time. Yes, two more please. That's where a lot of great pleasure and stories and

successes will come from. Those are mystical. They don't add up. It's like, we're not talking

about reason right now. We're not talking logic. Just go with this. Let's talk about the virtual

and making it real. The old line of fake it till you make it. I mean, what is that? There's

something to that. There's definitely something to it. But I would, you know,

where people will go fake it as I would go back to Dylan's or create it,

recreate it, create and recreate it, you know, until it becomes, till you make it.

So I'll have people call them on bullshit and a lot of times are right. I think

when I handle it the most healthy way is I admit, yes, and I'm aware. So I'm, and I'm going to keep

going. So you're not like resisting it, denying it, putting it away? Oh, I will. I will. And I have

to watch that where I'm like, no, I'm not. That's not what I'm doing. And usually,

when it's coming from people that are going, no, you are, I want to bid it. And then that's

where I'm telling a lie. And that'll come up, get me later and I'll go,

I didn't see it. I didn't see I was doing that. I was either unaware, I wouldn't let myself be

aware. I was denying that I was doing that. Would you say that's ego? Has ego been bad or good for

you? Gosh, I think it's been, thank, I'm so thankful for ego.

Do, does it get off the bridle for me sometimes and run loose and run in places and where it's

not of service to others and has it hurt loved ones and even strangers? Yes.

But I also, when my ego is really strong,

it's in sync with serving. It's in sync with where I serve myself also serves others,

it's those two are part and parcel. They're intertwined. And that's the capital ego that I

think it hope we all need more of. And that's what I mean when I talk about selfish, that's

to redefine that with the real true meaning of that is not doing something for self at expense

of your neighbor or harming others. It's for personal profit and pleasure that also is profit

and pleasure for an utilitarian sense more of others. And there's, again, back to the paradox

that I think there's a place, I know there's a place, I believe there's a place where those are

in sync. And when my ego's healthy, I'm able to say I'm sorry sooner for a lie or a misdemeanor

harm somebody. I'm able to be more empathetic because I got the confidence. Yeah. To be so,

I'm able to be more humble.

But still have my chin high and my heart high and look in the eye and go, yep, my bad, bogey,

guilty. I shank that one out of bounds, man.

That's beautiful if you put it so ego can be constructive, not destructive.

You won an Oscar for your performance in Dallas Buyers Club.

Can you tell the story of becoming that character Ron Woodruff? What was the toughest part?

The toughest part, which was the most enlightening part,

was getting to know who he was in between the lines. We're based on a life story in an hour

and a half of film and script is great. But who was he in between the lines? Who was he before

he started business before he was on a crusade? Before he went to alternative medicines.

You know, the obvious thing people always talk about, well, how'd you lose all that weight? That

was not hard. That was just a militaristic decision. This is what I can eat each day. And if I do this

each day for a week, I'll lose 2.5 pounds in a week. So I'm going to give myself five months to

do that. 2.5 times as 10, there's 47 pounds. That was like clockwork. So that was easy. That

decision was made. I didn't go to the Pizza Hut buffet and have temptation in front of me. I had

certain meals. I ate that when the weight just went off like clockwork. It was the who is

Ron Woodruff in between the lines and what the gift I got given that gave me the insight to who

that man was. I went to see his family and as I was leaving, his family offered me his diary.

And I remember it kind of has it going, wow, yes, but I kind of hesitated because it felt

maybe a little too intimate of a thing for me to have. It felt like it was kind of maybe

infringing a bit, but I opened my hand and took it. And what I got in the diary was,

I got to know who Ron was before he had HIV. And little thing, the diary he'd write in and the

dreamer he was, getting all set on a Sunday night and laying his shirt out and ironing it

for the next morning, making sure that his little pager had fresh batteries in it because tomorrow

morning he was going across town to hook up some speakers for 38 bucks or whatever. And

then getting up that morning and writing about what kind of coffee he drank and how much gas it

was going to take to get over across town to do that job and hook up those speakers. And then

on the way over, Paige coming in to say, no, we don't need you. We've gone with somebody else to hook

him up. And here he was all buttoned up, two cups of coffee in, hair slicked over, shirt ironed,

a little less than half a tank of gas, but enough to get back home. Now where does this Monday go?

The hope and the disappointment. He has to take all that in. That's part of that man.

I'm just going to go to Sonic and get a double cheese bacon burger because

Sheila over there, man, she's kind of cute. She always gives me high price on it,

which leads to rolling the joint, hanging off till Sheila gets off the work,

sneaking over to the local motel and shagging up in room 16. That's my lucky number, 16. Sheila!

Then wandering out that night, getting home one in the morning, no plans for Tuesday,

and maybe later in the week, think about what am I going to do about work or job? And these

little dreams would get me peak and want to, and then something would happen where he wouldn't

follow through or the deal would go south. In there was where I saw who.

He was a dreamer, and he just couldn't catch the break and didn't follow through. And then I

remembered his family said, oh yeah, he invented it. He got patents on him, a whole bunch of things,

he had things to get patent, but never would follow through to get the government patent.

And then later on, you'd see the product be made or sold on QVC or something. They'd be like,

Ron, that was yours! Are they still your idea? Did you patent that? He'd be like, no.

Like, never would. There's something beautiful and sad about that that let me inside who he was

in his heart and who he wanted to be. And when he was hoping to be and trying to be,

couldn't quite pull off. When you go that deep, does a part of him stay in you forever?

Are you able to let go? I mean, I hope so. I get, I look, there's a tenacity

to survive that I got from him. I look, hopefully I can try and find some of that in

different ways in any character that I go play, because that's, if you really want to give a

character an obstacle to overcome, a need. I mean, the base one is life and death,

whether that's the need to survive or the need to stave off extinction.

I'm not talking about what the rules, the laws are, the social mores, the manners and graces.

I'm fighting, you gonna fight for your own life in a world that's not supporting you to do so?

You, there's a wonderful courage of, okay, watch this. What do I got to lose?

My life or I'm in charge of extending it and get out of the way. And I'll pick your pocket along

whatever it takes. So there's a tenacity to live by whatever means necessary to survive that I,

that I, that I reminded of, that I learned from Ron. So on that line of survival between life

and death, you starred in True Detective, which I think explores some darker aspects of human nature.

What did you take from that, from that role, that experience, philosophically, psychologically?

The freedom of being on an island.

He was such a singular character and have a singular mind. And as you know, it wasn't a

dance party up there in his mind. It was some, some heavy stuff, but also

existentially for him always like

death would be a deliverance for him. It also be a cop out in a way. It also would be

he was not, not a man who was going to give himself amnesty and didn't allow it

from the rest of the world. It wouldn't give himself an out. And while living

in his head and heart and spirit was more of a hell than arguably dying,

it was not no alternative. That's not negotiable for that man.

And that's why he was such a, that's why he was the best detective that ever

walk the earth. That's why he was such a superhero in a way to have that singular. You don't go,

oh, I wish I was him. No, but you go like, wow, that constitution, that clarity of identity.

Talk about a measure in a man's constitution. He didn't allow anybody off the hook, especially

himself. You wanted him to forgive a little bit or give himself a little amnesty. You wanted

him to like, man, it's Saturday, bro. Can you go on a date? You wanted him to like enjoy something,

but he was connected to something and his DNA was who he was doing something much

more baseline truth. And that's why he was such a good detective. So that, but there's an island

as much as that company can be. I said earlier in my Amazon trip, I didn't want to join the company.

There's parts I think that I maybe gave to myself to Rustin Cole and also that Rustin

Cole has given back to me that I like, yeah, when you're, when you want to pull the parachute,

because you can't stand the company that you're in, McConaughey and your own mind,

this gratic dialogue is driving you freaking crazy. Don't pull the parachute, stick with it,

go through it. So you were able to walk around with that torment in mind

of his. Tormented. I didn't have very much patience for mendacious talk. I didn't have as much

patience for small talk. I wasn't tormented. But the character was and you have to embody him.

So is that, I mean, does some of that bleed over? Are you able to

separate the man you are from the character? It's not, look, am I able to separate? Yeah,

I came home to my kids and when they walk in the door and greet me and go, what'd you do today?

And you got three kids under 10 years old, you don't tell them about the scene where you

helped someone commit suicide. It's just, you know, so you turn it into a parable.

And actually, I've always said this, having kids has made me a better actor, a better storyteller,

because I have to parabilize certain things, you know, and tell it in ways that I go,

oh, neat, you know. So

I, did I go, did I bring it home? I didn't bring torment. Did I bring introspection into my own?

Characters for me, and I think this is true for a lot of actors and actresses,

we don't, it's not a separation. If I've got, we each have everyone

else in us. It's just seeing, diving into Rust and Gold, knowing where

his mind and heart is from the hand of Nick Pizzolato, who wrote the character and wrote

the whole series, understanding, number one, what the hell am I saying? What's he talking about?

Then going deeper into that, well, if that, this person really believes that,

what does that say about how they move? Then I'm going all of a sudden, well, who is that in me?

What part of my left brain is locked into that? What part of my reptilian brain is

latched onto that? This other stuff is non-negotiable.

Then I just live in that, and it's, I always talk like a 70s equalizer. Remember the old

at Marantz equalizers, you can, you move up your 500 HKZ, you move up your 60, you just re, you re,

rebalance the equalizer, and we all have, so it's just going to those parts of me,

where I'll turn up the volume, some parts of the base, the treble on the equalizer,

and turn down other parts of myself, and I'll, I'm not coming home tormented as Rust and Coal.

Am I coming home seeing torment, where it should be seen? Am I reading the news differently?

Are things coming out of the news and catching my eye?

As being bullshit or lies or truth that is just hard, and going, yep, yeah,

I'm seeing it through a different lens, but I'm seeing my own life through a different lens,

a lens that was opened up, and an aperture that was opened up through Rust and Coal.

I mean, the process of being an actor, an actress, I guess is a really interesting way

to be a philosopher of human nature. Yeah, I mean, it's an incredible dive into the humanities,

yeah, and all theologies and philosophy, and as I said, I'm going to, going to,

as I opened up that question, like that the, being on an island is a vacation.

I am also conscious for five months, when I'm playing Rust and Coal, that this is an interesting

thing. I've, I've never, I was as strong spiritually with my relationship with God

when I did True Detective as I've ever been. Why is that? Okay, which you would say, wait a minute,

in some ways that's a, those are antonyms. No, but my, I pretty, pretty safely can say that my

own strength of spirit in my own personal life, Matthew's life there, gave me the confidence to

go further away, deeper into the torture and deeper into the, but it was still, he was still

always going after truth. That was the thing. He was not, he was not an evil man. I don't even

know if you can call him a non-believer, but he was always going after the truth, and the truth

burned, and he would take the scar and get burned for it. He'd die for it. That, something was actually

biblical about that, you know? And, and so, but I've been, I don't think it's

coincidence that I was, had so much jureve of diving into the depths of that tortured character,

because I trusted that when I go out, I'll come up the other side. It's always like jumping in a

pool of water, and can you trust you'll come up the other side and not, you know, you go play a

criminal. You trust you're gonna, not gonna come out the other side of tyrant in real life.

He's go, ah, God, I got to go do that, came out, and I'm still alive. Got all my faculties. I'm not

in jail. I'm not, you know, whatever it is. And so, my own spirituality at that time, definitely,

I think, gave me a certain trust and confidence to go further into the dark.

It was a knowledge that you'd be starring in a Yellowstone spinoff show.

What do you think about the cowboy ethos that permeates Yellowstone and other shows created

by Taylor Sheridan? You're Texan. I'm a Texan. Yeah. What do you think about that like philosophy

and way of life? I admire the simplicity of it. I mean, one bit, one way you could explain

Yellowstone and Costner's Rolls, what will, what will man do to protect land and family?

Yeah. In a world that's trying to encroach, in a world where

there's a cowboy ethos that deems trespassing more clear earlier than other, other hats.

I admire that simplicity of right and wrong. And that the simplicity of that right and wrong

doesn't always correlate, coincide with the law? No, it's above the law. You mentioned something

earlier. I don't remember where it was in the conversation, but it's a little bit of like,

okay, for law, I am handling this. I am. And then it is,

law's not going to handle this. Therefore, I am. And then it is, I'm handling this.

Law? Talk to them when you get to them. I'm handling this. There's a honesty to that. It just seems,

of course, it's dangerous because it's a slippery slope. Because of the power in that power corrupts,

it can be a slippery slope where you completely disregard the law and you can hurt a lot of people.

But when done right, there feels to be something really authentic and human about that. Protect

family, protect land, above all else. Yeah. This is a broader question, but I'm going to piggyback

it off of this. Back to the dreams and reality and evolved species and how long we do in creating a

digital God and AI and these communities and friends that challenge us and think like us,

we like to hang out with. Do you think we're a less evolved species than we give our self-credit for?

Do you think we give our self-credit for being more evolved than we actually are?

I think we do. I do. I think we need to admit that.

I think probably the Cowboy Ethos is a step towards admitting that.

And that's why it's so appealing to people. It kind of wakes them up to realize that we're not so

far from our ancestors, that the values of loyalty are really important,

trust on the basic human level. How do you know if you can trust someone?

I don't know if I can trust someone. Well, I don't know a trick to it. I do not know a trick to it,

but I do come in, as I believe you do, with high trust. I come in with a, I'm told,

sometimes I think, I'm told that I trust too much sometimes.

Have you been hurt? Have you been betrayed? And if you have, has that hurt your willingness to trust?

No, it hurt. And I put that person and those people in another category back here and

do my best not to let them know that it bothered me at all, but I know when I am with those people.

By a new person, you're still willing to trust?

No, I'm not going to do that. I think that's the beginning of cynicism,

which I think is a horrible disease of getting older. I'm not going to do that.

So you're fighting cynicism off as much as you can?

No way, no way, no way. There's no residual in it. There's no win. It's easy, clever,

gets the laugh at the party, but and if it sleeps well, it shouldn't be.

Don't get comfortable in the cynicism. I have to ask you about being a Texan.

You're like, when I think Texas, I think Matthew McConaughey,

what's it mean to be a Texan to you? I recently moved to Austin, Texas

some two years in. All right. All right. Welcome. What's it mean to be a Texan? Educators.

Texas is about independence.

It's about independence, independence of spirit, sovereignty. Texas is about exploration.

One of the things I love about Texas is I run into so many Texans around the world.

You Texans are taught to go be tech conservative or learn who we are. Then go,

go, explore, pioneer, journey, and hopefully you come on back with some goods and some stories.

You Texan. And underneath that is this kind of freedom of being an individual

in the full meaning of that word. Yeah. Well, Texas is liberal on your entrance.

Very liberal on your entrance. Less regulation. Hey, welcome. High trust. High trust, sir. Welcome

to our state. Come on in. Yes, yes, yes. But if you like cheat steel, we're conservative on our

consequences. Yeah, that's a good line. You've briefly pondered running for governor. I don't

know if that's in your future. I hope it is yet a few good lines about it. Do you think about

that kind of stuff, about what the future holds in terms of political office?

I don't think about it in terms of political office. I've graduated to a broader, larger thought of

what's my future hold and where would I be most useful as a leader? I think that's a fair word.

Whether that's thought, whether that's the leader of my family right now,

as a parent, as a father, the leader of people that work with me. Politics,

I'm not going to say it's because it's not small. That's why I say that. I do think it needs to

re-engineer and redefine what its purpose is before because it's just chasing its own tail

right now with the two parties that seem to me to be completely about just invalidation

of the opposition instead of vision of themselves. I think it needs redefinition of what it is

because it is important. That's what I mean. That's what I said. I don't mean small. It needs

to think bigger about what it is and how it's useful. When it seeks to invalidate its small,

when it seeks vision, it can be big. Yes. Well, one's affirmative, one's

going into that cynicism we were talking about and validation of any opposing thought,

or maybe that we're even opposing. Opposition is an arrogant term. That's too strong.

It's a lot of times not even opposition. Alternative, other than another way of thinking about it.

Oh, could both be true. Oh, how could we parlay those two ideas?

You know, one of the challenges with these ideas of a third party or

Meach in the Middle, it's got this historic notion of being, oh, well, come see, come

see. It's sort of mister in between, kind of go which way the wind blows. I think

down in the right way, and it doesn't have to be under a third party's name necessarily, but

it's actually an incredibly rebellious position right now. And it's actually, and I love sports,

it's tactically the place with which to move most advantageously. I think of a free safety

in the game of football. They're in the middle of the field and they're deep.

They choose to defend left or right according to the play that's been called by the offense.

Similar to the offense, the running back, you read the defense, and then you're going to run

right to run left to go away from that opposition. It's a tactical spot. To be truly independent

and respond. And respond.

So do you think you have a role in that in political officers?

I don't know. It's on mind. It's not out of my mental box. And I gave it real sincere thought

and discernment for over a year. And it's a wonderful, whether I end up being in politics

or not, it was a wonderful exercise. One that if anyone else got time to do it, do it. To ask

yourself what you would do if you were CEO of the state, CEO of the nation, CEO of the world.

That's a great thing to go. You want to get your values in line? You want to admit where you lie

and throw yourself some pop quizzes? And what if this phone call comes at 4 a.m.?

Who you want to surround yourself with? It's really great questions to ask. And I think it's

helped me on a more micro level be a better father and better man, taking considerations

that I did not maybe take in as seriously as before considering it. I don't know if that's in

my future. I got to, you know, useful is a big word. It's got to be, I would have to be useful.

I have to be useful in the right way. And is that my lane to be most useful?

It's a good question for a leader to ask. How can I be useful?

I have to ask you about Interstellar. So I think it's an incredible film. I've seen it inspire so

many scientists and engineers. It's just philosophy. Everybody, humans, it explores space travel,

physics of space time, human nature, human condition, human connection. How has that

film expanded your understanding of the universe and our place in it?

Well, it's got the old Mr. Mayor on the corner. How big is that cloud metaphor in it? Because that

was the character I played, Cooper's. That was the existential question for him. Head down, practical,

stay here, be a father to my children. But it's dream before his children would go explore

space. So when he's taken that truck out and the countdown's going down, that's the hinge of the

existential question that we all face in some form. The sense of time, I wish I think everyone

loves that sense of where time can run at different speeds. And there's an incredible scene where

Cooper's a father's getting video feed from his children who've aged and he's realizing he's missed

all that. Overall, that concept makes me consider and imagine. We're talking about

mystical successes instead of engineered ones, like the engineered ones. There's ethos from that

film and what Nolan put into that film and theories that make me go, yeah, what does it do?

Maybe we are. It makes me go, maybe this is all, it's already all been written. What's happening

right now in this flip of time you're here, 53 years so far, we'll see how many we get.

What other parallel timelines are happening out there? Is it small-minded of us to define

life on other planets as only something that can live within a climate that has water in this

amount of O2? Those terms may be too small. What do you mean? What are we saying? Only life has to

have water in this amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide? Maybe there's a whole redefinition

of the ingredients that other life forms need. It's short and a similar way to contact.

This is a movie I did with Bob Zemeckis. It inspires me that the universe is more active and

lively and God's backyard's bigger than I thought and wow, that's exciting. People go now, yeah,

you believe in extraterrestrial life. I said, yes, man, I think it'd be arrogant not to.

I sure hope so. You think there's alien civilizations all out there,

intelligent ones just far on distant stars? I hope so and I think it's possible.

May have many among us right here. I go for the why not in that just to keep that

train of thought open to learn and consider those existential questions. I think be arrogant

not to. There's so many hundreds of billions of planets just in our galaxy. Just in ours.

I can't imagine there's not life out there. I suspect it's very different, like you said,

than we are and we have to have a humility to open our eyes to how different life could be.

And if and when we cross it, unlike we've had tendencies to do when we try to go with some

nation takeovers, I think it would be our inherent glitch to go in

believing that any other life form civilization wants to take over territories, to go into it

with thinking that, okay, this is an opposition. I mean, I think that's a human trait of ours.

And to consider that another life form would have an interest that more land or more territory

is good for them. I think it's a shallow idea. I think of it more like when I think of heaven,

those considerations are not in anyone's mind, heart or intent in the heaven that I think of.

So in other civilizations, I hope that if we would just see and learn that it would be

the natural side of welcoming, it wouldn't be a primate response to, no, I have fire

and you're coming over trying to put it out or I have food and you're trying to steal my food.

I think it's a shallow thought to think that it's going to be about ownership and

we'd be trespassing. I don't think there would have a sense of borders as we do.

I just hope we humans are smart enough to detect and to see aliens because of how different they

are. We often have a very narrow definition of what is intelligence. It's very possible that

trees are extremely intelligent if we kind of zoom out at a different time scale or different,

just look at stuff from a bigger perspective that's outside of being so human-centric.

It's a great quote that someone told me, this astrophysicist told me this,

how accurate it is or not. Someone else can argue the validity of what I'm about to say or not,

but I thought it really was a perspective grabber for me. Look, the universe was created at midnight.

Humans came around at 11.59 and 36 seconds. I love the little nauties that put that frame

like that. Oh, yeah, the pale blue dot. There it is, that perspective. Something so relaxing

and empowering about that at the same time and humbling, but confidence boosting.

It allows forgiveness, allows ambition. I just love the perspective of that picture to picture it

that way in our timeline. Do you hope humans become a multi-planetary species as we're trying to do,

as SpaceX is pushing forward, traveling out to Mars, potentially colonizing Mars,

colonizing other planets? Yeah, I love the ambition of it. I love the

pioneering nature of it. I love the extension of what we consider our backyard becoming more

four-dimensional like that, not at the expense of, we still got stuff to take care of. We got

gardens to tend right here and sure as hell not to go, not to quit on us to go, oh, let's get

out of here because this isn't really working. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got a tithe we're

still supposed to pay here. That's part of this pressure testing us as a civilization and species.

Whether you call that restoration order or whether you call that, let's figure out how to adapt

best we can. No, not at the expense of quitting here on Earth. But let a few select folks explore.

Because that's like, I'd say go for it, please. One of the coolest things that we humans do is

kind of embody the human spirit, reach out into the unknown. But it's hard, I mean, as interstellar

shows and so on. Well, and Elon talks about it, this is not going to be a weekend daisy trip.

And he's just speculating how hard it could be much harder in different ways that he doesn't

understand yet. Well, that dance between the impossible and the inevitable, that's definitely

there with what SpaceX is doing, with all the folks who are trying to become a multi-planetary

species are doing. It's really hard. It's like to build rockets that fight off gravity

at a cost effective way. It's really hard. SpaceX is close to being bankrupt several

times. It's just hard. But it's also inspiring to that some people are just crazy enough,

bold enough to keep trying. Yeah. What advice would you give to young folks?

What advice would I give? In high school and college that are

thinking of how to make their way in this world.

If you haven't already, can you

can you define what you have an innate ability for

and match that with what you're willing to hustle to get?

Yeah. Sometimes we have an innate ability but we don't want to work for it. We take it for granted

and we end up doing something that may work. We pay the bills,

they get us by day to day, but we don't really like it. We have trouble finding a way to enjoy it.

Definitely don't love it. And then sometimes we don't know what our innate ability is and

we're hustling and working our tail off and breaking a sweat to do something that we really

aren't that good at on an innate level. And that's a good challenge.

And you can work and become good at something that you don't have an innate ability for. But

if you can match those two, what do you have an innate ability to do? Because we have an

innate ability to do when we do that well, we do kind of enjoy it.

And one of the things that requires is to kind of be really honest with yourself

at what your innate ability is. Because oftentimes there's a lot of noise when you're

growing up, people telling you what you're good at and not good at. Like really you have to look

at yourself, listen to yourself, that inner like a deep rigorous self-analysis of what am I actually

good at. Not what I hope to be good at, but what I'm actually good at. Right.

And then if you look at that and you can define those two,

hopefully you can activate it in a way where there's a demand for what you supply.

You found love with Camila Alves McConaughey. What advice would you give to people on how to

do just that? How to find love? This wonderful subject's been discussed in the beginning of time,

hadn't it? Love it. So I can tell you what things I've kind of learned and I'm still learning.

You know, love is one of those mystical successes. It doesn't make sense.

You know, when I was, before I met Camila, I had had, I was coming on to my late 30s.

As much as I'm not a person that is guided by timelines, I was, my life had not really added

up to what I thought it was going to be relationship wise. I thought about that time I would have met

the woman I loved, got married and started family and that hadn't happened. And I did find myself

doing that thing I was doing at the Amazon, looking around the corner. Any perspective

possible female I met that I was attracted to, I was like, maybe this is the one.

I make the joke, but it's true. I get every red light. I'm like checking out who's next to me in

the produce section at the supermarket. I'm like, who's in produce section? You know, it's like looking.

When you're in that zone, you can also be a little intrusive. You can trespass on people's,

you can get outside of yourself. You can be overly impressed and not as involved and have your own

constitution and sit back. And therefore, if you're outside of yourself, you're less attractive

to your possible mate. I've got a series of dreams that are written about, but I had one then that

was very spiritual. That was me as a 88 year old bachelor that never got married. And it was a

beautiful dream. We're on paper. I thought that should be a nightmare. It wasn't what that dream

did for me. It was allowed me to go, you may not find the woman for you and get married.

Not a life with her. That may not be. And for the first time in life, I was okay with that.

More than intellectually, spiritually, I was grounded. I was like, okay.

Then I'm moving through the world and on this particular night as myself, not

intruding. I was inviting. I did see her move across the room and did not say who is that. I said,

what is that? And then did move to call her across the room. So I did invite, but I was

not outside of myself. And I was able to be myself with her, what my eyes saw,

everything that she turned out to be when the lens got zoomed in, more details got known,

and we began to talk and got more intimate and closer together and spend more time,

became true and then some. But not every single thing that I imagined when I saw her move across

the room turned out to be true and then some. Just the image. We had a similar moral bottom line

about life, each other, how we treat ourselves, what we respect, what our own constitution to

are. We had similar perspectives on raising children, which is very important to me and her.

And then we just enjoyed each other's company. And we laughed together and we supported each

other and we promoted more of each other and we lit each other's fire. And we, if one was rolling,

we kept dishing, you go, go, go again, take the next shot, more, more, more, more.

This was a biggie too. Getting excited for each other's success. Yes. Yes.

To be able, I think it's very important. We all have jealousy. I get it. But it's very important

to be able, if you can, be happy for your lover when they succeed or are succeeding or are across

the room at the party laughing with the stranger to be happy for them when it has nothing to do with

you. She was, I would be away, she would, the questions and the talks, she was happy for me

about how excited I was about my day and my day had nothing to do with her. She was there.

And I found myself not telling myself to be happy for her, but being really,

really happy for her when she would tell me about something that happened that day

with her. And as much as I went through my head, oh, I'd have been great if I would have been there,

I was like, no, I don't want any trespass on that, that you had that independent of me. Bravo.

That's a choice you make not to give any time to the jealousy, to the very natural

jealousy that we humans have. It sure doesn't have any, I don't see the residuals in it.

True. I've got it. I've had it and I have it. I just don't,

you know, I haven't seen where it has any payback. I gotta ask you the biggest possible question.

What's the meaning of this whole thing? What's the meaning of life? Right.

Heh. Matthew McConaughey. Why? Why are we here?

I don't know why we're here. I prescribed to, in a religious sense, the restoration order

that we had to restore order. In a religious sense, I really, I purchased that and loved that

incentive and loved that, that view. But I don't really know why we're here, but I do know

to go back to the front, we are here. That part's inevitable. So now let's flip the script and go to

the why not. Just keep living. What, what are we doing? The base of everything. I can, we can

argue it all at the base of it. All I can come up with is, well, just keep living, man. I mean,

what else are we supposed to do when we don't have any idea what to do, when we know exactly what we

want to do? Make it matter. Even when it doesn't matter, that matters. Not for what? I don't know.

For the fun of it. That matters. Yeah, our ability to create meaning and beauty

in the mundane and the absurd. It's kind of cool. Yeah. And we share it with each other. Yeah. We get

excited. Yeah. And we create some pretty cool stuff along the way. I mean, I, I say I'm confident

enough that I might be arrogant at me to say, but I, I, I, I do believe

that we're here to each generation have a small ascension. Yeah.

Or else what, what's it for? And we're not really sure what the ascension is towards.

Just kind of. No. No. It's just, I just think it's up. I do think it's just up. I do think

that it is definitely arrogant to think

that we as a species or generation or people or humanity are going to reach the top of the

Ascended Staircase and go, ta-da. I think that's a, I think that is not only false, but I think

it's full hearted. And I think it's this recipe for being, having more angst and, and even cynicism

we talked about and unrest and lack of seeing beauty and joy in this life while we're in it.

I think life's a verb.

Live it as best we can. Hopefully. I mean, I don't know. Sometimes I'm just,

I don't have a grand plan, man. I'm just trying to connect the damn dot.

I'm confused, frustrated. I don't know what, I don't feel any gravity or building or

lineas towards what I'm doing. And I'm just like going.

What's that Peterson line? If you don't believe in heaven, do what you can to get as far away

from hell as possible. Sometimes. It's a great line. Sometimes I'm just trying to like, man,

just don't, don't sink the ship right now. Just keep your head above water.

Maintain, just try and hold on.

And hopefully give yourself a chance to notice the magic, the mystical. I try to do that.

Yeah. When it gets rough.

Because it's there. I do believe it's all around us all the time.

Just are we on a frequency and do we allow ourselves to receive it and see it?

We've got to tune the radio.

Yeah. Because if we look for it too hard, we see false idols and if we don't look at all,

become callous and miss it all.

It's a fun little life we've got.

Yeah.

Matthew, I'm a huge fan. I think you're an incredible person. Thank you for all the

everything you've created in this world. Thank you for being a unique human that inspires millions.

And thank you for talking today. I was nervous, but you made me feel at home. It was beautiful.

Oh, I felt at home talking with you as well. Thanks for sharing that with me.

I could go on and on.

Just two Texans.

That's right.

Having no chance.

New York, Austin, Texas. Here we go.

All right. Thank you, brother.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Matthew McConaughey.

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now let me leave you with some words from Matthew McConaughey himself.

Don't walk into a place like you want to buy it.

Walk in like you own it.

Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.