E503 Robert Greene

Theo Von
I have some new tour dates to tell you about. We've added a third show in London on June 16 at the event Tim Apollo. We also have shows in New York City on May 31. Belfast in the UK on June 6. That's an added show.

June 7 is sold out. Idaho Falls. We've added a show on June 27, Salt Lake City, Utah on June 30 in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 5 and 6th at Resorts World Las Vegas. Get all your tickets@theovon.com tour and if tickets are too expensive, just wait. We'll come back around.

Make sure you buy them through our link and not off of a secondary site. Thank you guys so much for your support. Today's guest is one of the best selling authors of the last 20 years. You may know him from his books the 48 Laws of Power and Mastery, as well as the art of seduction and more books. We're going to talk about relationships, human interaction.

We cover a lot of ground. And I'm grateful to talk with Mister Robert Greene. Shine that light on me.

Robert Greene
I'll sit and tell you my story.

Theo Von
Shine on me and I will find a song thank you so much, man. You're very welcome. Really, please. That's really, really nice of you. My pleasure.

That's a wonderful gift to have 48 laws of power right there. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for coming. Nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you.

Robert Greene
Big fan. Oh, thanks. Same, yeah. Thank you for all the inspiration. Yeah.

Theo Von
Thank you for taking the time to think and write down your thoughts and things that make you feel something or things that you feel are worth sharing with the world. Yeah, well, it's been what I've been doing for 26, 28 years now. Hopefully I can keep going for another 1020 years. Yeah. Unless the government puts like a word limit on people or it's like it.

Robert Greene
Canceled or something for some reason. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think so, though. I don't think so. I think we would.

Theo Von
Sometimes I wish the government would put a word limit. Oh, sure. On a lot of people. God, yeah. Because then you'd have to be wonderful.

You'd have to really articulate. You mean for books or just in talking? Maybe only in talking. Because books. Because books, it's more of a choice.

People can go to choose to look in it, you know, and read it, but talking, it's like, yeah, you only got. You got a thousand words a day. Of course, some people would have more. Some people have less. If they're really obnoxious or irritating, we cut it down to like 200 words a day.

Yeah. Maybe your neighbors vote on how many you have, or there's. But, yeah, I think it would be great then, if you're at. Yeah. Like, especially, like, if a guy's.

Like. A lot of guys would be like, hey, guys, come over to the house today. You know, Marjorie only has four words left this month. That'd be wonderful. Yeah.

So the good times over here, you know, we're gonna be able to do whatever we want. Well, the ancient Greeks had this thing called Ostraki, where they would put on little clay tablets, fragments of a clay pot. You could write down the name of somebody that you wanted to banish from the city. Yes. And then every year, they would collect that, and they would banish the person who got the most votes, because, inevitably, the most obnoxious person in the whole city.

Robert Greene
Can you imagine how wonderful that would be if we had something like that? I would love that. Well, you would think if we get to vote people forward, we should be. Able to also vote people off the island. Yeah.

Right. Oh, that would be so wonderful. And it could even start in your own home, you know, with your kids. I mean. Okay.

Theo Von
I think it's up to the. I mean, it would be. It'd be quite a topic for family discussion. Oh, here it is right here. Ostracism.

Robert Greene
That's what the word ostracism comes from. Well, that's pretty cool. They got that. Yeah. Was an athenian democratic procedure in which any citizen could be expelled from the city state of Athens for ten years.

Theo Von
So you get a chance to get it together. While some instances clearly express popular anger at the citizen, ostracism was often used preemptively. It was used as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or a potential tyrant, though in many cases, popular opinion often informed the expulsion. Wow. Wow.

Robert Greene
That's pretty cool. They put that up there. Broken pottery shards were used, served as a kind of scrap paper. Yeah. Wow.

Theo Von
That'd be exciting. Yeah, it would. Yeah. Let's bring it back. Yeah, let's bring it back, huh?

Be a movement.

Yeah. You've written so much, man. 48 laws of power. Mastery are the books that I've absorb the most of, which is so nice to have this. This is so cool, man.

I really lit up when you gave me that. Thank you. And a lot of what we talk about on this show, for a lot of young men and women, is purpose. You know, and what it means to have purpose and how to find purpose. And you talk a lot about that in mastery about purpose?

Do you think that everyone has purpose? Well, it's a difficult question to answer. I mean, I believe that everyone. The way I look at it, is you, Theo, were born with a DNA that will never be replicated in the past or in the future. It's unique marker of you, right?

Robert Greene
So, genetically, there is something different about you. Weird, odd, great. Whatever you want to put it. Okay. And it's like something that's planted at your birth.

It's what makes you different from everybody else. It's even what makes you different from your parents. Right? I mean, you do inherit their genetics, but it's always different. Okay, and so that.

That's like a seed at your birth. If you cultivate that seed, if you cultivate your uniqueness, it gives you a purpose in life. It's what you. It's why you are unique. You can look at it as if somebody, or it's just nature, intended it to be this way, but it's what makes you you.

It's your energy, it's your character. It's your weirdness. It's your sense of humor. It's what draws you to certain things, what you hate about certain things. It's you.

If you listen to that, it's like a voice inside of your head. Instead of listening to all the other bullshit that surrounds you, what your parents are saying, what your teachers are saying, what your friends are saying. If you listen to that voice, clearly, it directs you. It gives you a purpose. Now, I'm saying everybody has that potential.

Theo Von
I see. But quite clearly, not everybody. In fact, few people actually go that far. So if you see somebody out there in the public eye, yourself or others, who's reached a level of fame and success, you can say that there's nobody else like them out there. They're unique.

Robert Greene
They're one of a kind. Right? You can say that about a Steve Jobs. You can say that about Elon Musk. You could say that about political figures, et cetera, et cetera.

Theo Von
Mister T. Yeah, okay. $0.50. Somebody I've worked with. There's only one person like them.

Robert Greene
That's because they found their uniqueness, and they brought it out and they cultivated it. They're not afraid of it. And that's what gives them their purpose. A lot of people are afraid of being different. That's one of the worst things that could happen to you, because it's what makes you different.

That is what makes you powerful. So, to answer your question, in my long winded way, everybody has a purpose, but not everybody follows it. Not everybody connects to it. Yeah, I guess there's a lot of fear in it because you're going to be different. You're going to have to choose to.

Theo Von
People are going to look at you. The eyes of the tribe are gonna turn towards you if you try to step out into a different march than the group. Yeah. You know, sometimes I would see, like. Yeah, sometimes.

You ever be, like, on a floor somewhere and you just see one ant by itself? Yeah. But then you're like, this guy is a gangster. Well, they're called scout ants. I mean, I wish they were gangsters, but what they're doing is they're looking for food or something and they're signaling to the army.

Robert Greene
Hey, guys, here's where it's happening. Let's follow me. Yeah, I thought they were dudes that were like, you know what? I'm gonna do something different. Well, that would be the more interesting interpretation, but.

Theo Von
So then are there some people? So it's not that some people don't have a purpose. It's just that some people are able to hear a voice inside of them that directs them more towards their purpose. Yeah, I mean, so what is it? I call it in mastery.

Robert Greene
I call it a primal inclination. So we see that in certain people. So at a very, very young age, and I maintain it happens to everybody, but you forget about it. So you look at, like, Albert Einstein. He was, like, four years old, and his father gave him a compass, and he was, like, mesmerized by it because it meant that there was some kind of force out there that was moving the needle of the compass, an invisible force for a child.

That was an overwhelming thought that there's something out there in the universe that is moving something, but you can't see it. It had a lasting influence on his whole way of science and wanting to discover these unseen forces. Tiger woods, when he was, like, two years old, his father would be hitting golf balls in the garage, and he would be going, the little baby tiger would be going crazy, like, I gotta do this. He was so enamored with just the physicality of it, he had to do it. I could go on and on and on with athletes, with dancers, with writers.

I mean, I'm not putting myself on their level, but I had a relationship when I was six years older, so to words. Words just mesmerized me. I couldn't believe that there was a word that meant something. I was entranced by the sound of it, by the look of it, etcetera. Yeah.

Theo Von
Well, even just to think that a bunch of letters would get together and party like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because I remember, like, first they taught us letters, and I was like, okay. But then the words showed up, and I was like, oh, okay.

They're in gangs. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's. There's some real turf wars out here.

Robert Greene
That's right. Yeah. So I guess the. The best way for a parent, then, to probably help, help associate their child or give them the best opportunity to find or to bring their purpose to a boil would be to present them with more options. Do you feel like.

Theo Von
Like, is that kind of what you're saying? Well, yes and no. I mean, parents try to do too much sometimes. So children are more interesting, they're more powerful. They're smarter than we think they are.

Robert Greene
We don't give them enough credit, so they find their ways to the things that excite them and interest them. What you're looking for in your child is that spark, that look in their eye of excitement. They can't control it. I'm so excited by this. I have to do it.

It can be physical activity. It could be music. It could be math. It could be technology. It could be objects and their colors.

When they have that excitement, lean into it. Don't try and tell them, oh, I don't know. You can't make a living doing that. You want to be a rock and roll star? You'll never make a living.

You got to go become a lawyer. Cut that crap out. Let them go into their lane of excitement, encourage it, because that is a sign of what I'm talking about. That purpose that you were born with. Is there, like, certain ways or times or moments that you would create for yourself or that you would suggest people create for themselves to try and hear that, that voice of purpose?

Well, it's a very interesting question, and it's a very difficult one, because I get a lot of people writing to me saying, you know, Robert, I hear what you said. I've read your book, but I have no idea. I can't hear it anymore. Right, right. I'm lost.

Right. Cause there's still a lot of guys who were young adolescents and middle aged and who are like, I still don't know what my purpose is. Yeah, well, so when you're younger, there's hope. Like, when you're 16, you'll find it, man. And I.

And I've helped people who are younger find that path. It's easier by the time you're 30 or 40, it gets more and more difficult. When you're 50. I don't know. It's possible, but it's harder and harder and harder.

I didn't really find my niche, if you will, until I was about 38 years old. But until then, I knew it was writing. I just couldn't figure out what kind of writing. But you have to go through a process. The problem that most people have is they're not connected to themselves.

They're too outer directed. They're not inner directed. So what you need to be doing is you need to be looking at yourself, not listening to others, not listening to what's on social media, not listening to what your peers are saying, but listening to yourself, who you are, what really, truly excites you. You have to cut out all that other stuff that your parents told you, that other people are telling you, and so you're looking for signs of things that bring back. You're looking for your childhood again, for that child inside of you that got so excited about those things, but that you forgot there is not a child on the planet that doesn't have that in mastery.

I have a story in there about a woman named Temple Grandin. Temple Grandin was born with severe autism. It like, she would have to be committed for her entire life to hospitalization. Right. She was very deep on the spectrum, but she had a teacher that kind of slowly drew her out, and she discovered at very early age that that excitement was animals.

And a lot of autistic people and people on the spectrum have a very intense relationship to animals. It's humans that they can't quite relate to, but animals excite the hell out of them. Yeah, well, humans can be so trashy, too. Yeah. And they can be so deceptive and tricky.

But animals are genuine. Right? She found animals I love, and she became a scientist dealing with animals, animal behavior. And so somebody born with deep, deep autism found her way to that voice. So I bring that up as if someone like that can do it, anybody can do it, but it's that she really, really wanted to break out of the shell that she had been in.

The level of desire, if you're 20 years old and you're lost and you're worried about it, but you're hungry and you don't want to be, like, your whole life wandering, you have a good chance, but a lot of people don't have that energy. They don't have that desire. It's not strong enough in them, and it's going to be a very much more difficult process. Bring up temple Grandin. I know she created.

Theo Von
Didn't she create a more.

I don't know if that's the right word. Heartwarming way to decease the animals. Yes. I mean, you put it more or less correctly. I mean, her idea was cattle.

Robert Greene
She had a very deep connection to cows and cattle. They're going to be slaughtered anyway. She's not going to end. She herself eats steak, etcetera. She's not going to end it.

But if you're going to have to kill them so that, you know, for people who eat meat, then let's do it as humanely as possible. So she created a way. One of the worst things is the whole process of how we slaughter animals. It's so horrifying for them. Right.

So she had found a way to make them comfortable so that they don't really know where they're going when they're being led to the slaughterhouse, where she knew exactly how to comfort them, how to make them feel soothed in those moments. A little more bait and sweat, like, yeah, just something to. Yeah, just not make it such. So horrific. Yeah, not make it such a haunted house.

Yeah. Well, because also, when they're so distressed, they release all these kind of hormones and things that are actually very bad for us as well. And then it's in the food. I believe that a ton. So does everyone have the chance to find their purpose?

Theo Von
Say, if somebody, like, they accidentally got a girlfriend pregnant in high school, something like that, and they got really put off track, developed a lot more responsibility. Cause sometimes responsibility takes away the freedom that you have and even just the space in your life to feel anything. But those people aren't. They don't not have a purpose. Maybe they just haven't been able to reach it.

Robert Greene
Well, yeah, I mean, these things happen to everyone. We're all human beings. We're flawed. We don't have. We can't see the future, especially when we're young.

We make mistakes. We do things that we would later regret, et cetera. And I've dealt with people who say, you know, I'm stuck in a horrible, horrible job. I have, just like your scenario. I have a child.

I have to support, a family to support. And I'm flipping burger. I'm working at Dairy Queen. I don't care, whatever it is. Right?

Theo Von
Yes. What am I doing? Selling. Yeah. Braiding hair at the beach, something like that.

Robert Greene
Or telemarketing back in the day, you know. So what do I do? Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to realize that you have to want to get out of it, and you have to want it badly enough. So you got to figure out a path out of this trap that you're in. And it is a trap because if you're living paycheck to paycheck, it becomes a habit and it's going to stay with you your whole life.

So every time there isn't a paycheck, you're going to freak out and you're going to go get the quickest, easiest job that you can get. You have to break out of that. So I tell people, even in the most despondent circumstances, first of all, think of what is that childhood thing that you loved? It doesn't have to be specific. It doesn't have to be a very specific job.

It's just something that excited you. All right. Okay. We want to start moving in that direction. So let's say you're flipping burgers.

But what really excites you is video games and program, which is fine. That could be a path in life, right? But you want to be a programmer. You want to be the person creating video games. All right, so let's do some research.

What is the first step? That usually what's the entry level job that people take? What is the education that will lead to that kind of thing? All right, here's step. It's like three possibilities.

You go to school, you study this, you get a job doing that, whatever. Okay. You can choose one of them, right? And you're going to start doing it right away. So you still have your job, you're still paying for your family, but you're going to go to school at night.

You're going to take a side job when you go home at night. You're going to study things on the Internet, which is an amazing resource that nobody had 30 years ago. You're going to learn new skills in your spare time, even in the only two or 3 hours a day that you have. You're going to create a little space in your brain for moving in that direction, a little wedge that's going to open up. And I've.

And I've had this feedback just knowing that that's happening, that's just knowing that's a possibility, that I don't have to be flipping burgers, that I don't have to be this horrifying, soul sucking salesman my whole life, and that I can go this other route. It's enough to excite the hell out of it. It's enough to get you out of it. It's enough to give your life some meaning and some purpose. Yeah.

Theo Von
And then you will build, you will follow that sort of thing. That energy. It's like it really becomes a magnet in your life. Yeah. How did you find your way?

Robert Greene
What was it? What was it that. Can you go back? Yeah, I remember. Well, I wanted to.

Theo Von
I. I think I wanted to make my mother laugh. You know, my mother was always stressed out, and. I don't mean to laugh. No, it's funny.

Robert Greene
It's terrible. It's. It is what it is, you know? And she would. But sometimes she'd go lay in her bikini outside and have a beer or whatever, and so we'd left her alone on that during those hours.

Theo Von
But otherwise, I think I wanted to make her laugh. I don't know. The second I saw.

This may sound crazy to some people. I remember being, like, in a. Might have just been my bed or. I don't think it was a crib. Cause I hate when people say that.

I remember at four months old like that, I think, no. You kidding? Yeah, you've been using. But I remember one time, I just remember being in my bed, and my brother, like, poked his head up, and I just remember it just made me laugh. And it was, like, the first thing I remember that made me feel so good, and I just.

I loved it. That's interesting. And then when I saw, like, if somebody laughed, that they. Even if they were sad, like. And you could get them to laugh, that someone could be crying, and then a laugh could get through that, and, man, I just found that it was like watching lightning.

Robert Greene
It's like power. Yeah. And it was just like watching lightning, I think. And so, yeah, I think I loved that. And then the other thing that ever.

Theo Von
The happiest day I ever had in my life, I was. I was a student, actually, on an exchange thing, and I was in India, the country, and we had to. We worked at this children's home, clearing the land or something so they could make a playground there. And I just. I still remembered it was the greatest feeling that I ever had.

Just that this one day. So, yeah, those are things in my life. How old were you, the India part? I was probably 20. But the laughter was just.

Most of my youth, I just became obsessed with laughter. I just. Cause it was a trump card. It was like, it could be a sad moment. It could already be a happy moment.

You could take it to another level. Well, let's just imagine a scenario where you're 26 and you're you, and you somehow got off on the wrong track somewhere. Would you be able to, like, remember that? And remember the power and the feeling that you had when you. That laughter and then when you were a kid and you brought.

Robert Greene
And then go back to it in some way. Yeah, I think I would notice. I think it's. You can know, I feel like it's kind of easy to know what really makes you feel good. Yeah.

Theo Von
I just think that sometimes circumstances have sailed our ship, you know, kind of far another in other directions. And so we may be able to appease ourselves, but we may not get to a level of mastery of it in this lifetime. That's right. Just because of circumstances, you know?

And then if people. Another thing I notice is, like, a lot of times, you know, some people aren't always gonna be trying to achieve and do more. I notice a lot of times I enjoy also just feeling content. Like, if I can feel content, that is a victory, right? Like, what do you mean?

Like, just if I can feel at peace, right? Like, not. Not only maybe. Maybe I might be a little bummed if I'm not striving for something, but I'm not upset that I'm. That I'm not at a level or in a place with something, a certain thing.

Right. So being just content, like, is there. There's nothing wrong with being content. No. The only thing is, if you're completely lost in life, if you didn't, if you hadn't become a comedian, you've gone on the wrong track.

Robert Greene
It's harder to have those moments of contentment. Cause it gnaws at you and you become a little bit bitter. And as you get older and those childhood dreams start getting fading, you feel resentful, and some dark energy can start taking over. And that contentment can be harder and harder to come by. But to have moments of peace, to have moments where you're just happy and you've got your kids, you're raising them well, etcetera, etcetera.

That's fine. That's beautiful. That's another form of mastery, I just think. And I could be wrong, because I'm not inside the skin of other people, and I've only known myself, I have to say. But if I could say that pretty confidently.

But I have the feeling that if you don't know what you're doing and you're just flailing around in life, it's hard to have those peaceful moments in your day to day existence. You may find them, but what will happen is you will try and grab, because this is the nature of the human animal, you will try to grab that contentment through quick things through drugs, through online porn, through whatever will give you that quick, instant little buzz of gratification. Oh, yeah, watch porno and that'll become your habit. And you'll feel kind of, I don't know if it's contentment, you know, you'll feel something, some form of pleasure. But those pleasures become harder and become smaller and smaller and smaller and quicker and quicker and quicker.

And so it's a trap that you fall into. So I still believe that if you figure out what you were meant to do in life, it opens up doors to having other moments where you don't have to constantly be pursuing, you don't have to constantly be striving, you know, like, I can sit down and I can watch a basketball game tonight and enjoy it and not feel like I'm wasting my time because I work so much hard during the day. Right. Yeah. I think that's kind of what I'm getting at is it doesn't have to be occupational finding your purpose.

No. Yeah. Yeah. Cause sometimes I think the best thing that a person could be could be a parent for sure. Believe me, we need more of them.

Theo Von
Yeah. God damn, that should be like a job that people should get a degree for. Yeah. I would subsidize if government subsidized parenting. Good parenting.

Robert Greene
Wow. I would be. Or put people to school to go learn how to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Theo Von
Oh, well, there should be a. There should be at least a fan flip when you leave the hospital that says, hey, these are seven things you have to do. Right. But, you know, I think I don't have kids. So it's easy for me to say.

Oh, yeah, me either. So we're just obviously a couple of grifters yelling at people. Yeah, right. But no, I do think, though, that there should be something that tells a parent basic things because you can't just assume everyone has that has the knowledge just because they can conceive a child. That's right.

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You talk a lot about how unique humans are, you know, and just how rare. Like, how unique is it that a person exists? How unique is an individual? Well, it's something I'm going into in my new book, and I'm trying to tell you how you must realize how strange it is for you to be alive at this moment. I don't know if that's quite what your question is.

No, I think it is kind of. How rare is it? Like how. Like sometimes I want to be able to remember how rare I am. And not just me, I just.

I mean that as a voice of a human, I want to be. I want to remind myself more often that I am a one of one and not me, but every person. Yeah. Well, the way I try to describe it in my new book, I'm not going to go into the full thing because it'll take hours. But first of all, the idea that our planet has life on it is incredibly strange and weird.

Robert Greene
It was like an accident. Totally fortuitous. We know billions of other planets that have no life, right? So something snapped 3 billion years ago, 4 billion years ago that we don't understand. Wow.

All right. From that point on, life evolved in this weird fashion. And there was this moment about 600 million years ago called. The word escapes me. It's a period in history.

Theo Von
Mesoloic? No, no, no. It's before that. It'll come to me later. It's 600 million years ago.

Robert Greene
600 million years ago. Suddenly life became complex. It'll come to me at some point. Maybe it's the cretaceous period. Spring or something.

Cretaceous. Cretaceous, Cretaceous. So some suddenly complex life evolved. Cambrian explosion. Cambrian explosion.

Thank you, sir. Sorry. Not to cut you off, but 600 million years ago, the Earth experienced an evolutionary event which has never been repeated. The cambrian explosion saw a huge increase in new life forms, many of which laid the foundations for the body plans of all subsequent animal life. Wow.

Theo Von
I've never even heard that. So, yeah. So there's this guy, Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote a book about the cambrian explosion and how there were these forms of life. And he has pictures in his book of these really grotesque looking creatures that lived in the ocean. Cause all life was in water then.

Robert Greene
And if only one plan survived, which is the plan that all bodies basically have, right? With a head, et cetera, et cetera. But if that hadn't happened, and it almost didn't, the strangest, most weird looking forms of life would be walking around this planet. You have to see these pictures to believe it. Right?

Anyway, that happened. Okay, I can go on and on and on. Then there were the dinosaurs. And the dinosaurs disappeared because of, we now know, because of a meteor, what do you call it? Heat or something?

No, no, no. A meteor hit the. Oh, big bang. Yeah. Or like a.

Theo Von
Yeah, a meteor wiped everything out. Yeah. It shook the whole thing, huh? About 60 million years ago, right? It ended up to the extinction of dinosaurs.

Robert Greene
But that meteor could have easily missed planet Earth. If it had shifted just a slight degree, it could have hit somewhere else. But it landed in exactly the spot in the yucatan peninsula that caused the greatest amount of damage. If that hadn't happened, dinosaurs would still be roaming the planet and then we wouldn't. We wouldn't.

Humans, about 80,000 years ago, nearly went extinct. There were only about 8000 of us. We had been decimated by various illnesses, et cetera. We very nearly went extinct as a species. Okay, so humans surviving all of that, surviving that life evolves, surviving that life evolved in the way that it did, that dinosaurs disappeared, that mammals came on is extremely unlikely.

And then add on to this, theo, the fact that your parents met and there was a chance that they, the chance that they met was probably a bit unlikely. It could have easily been somebody else who was your father, right. And then you would still be you. But you wouldn't be you. Exactly.

You'd be different. Multiply that by 70,000 generations, going back to the earliest humans. If they hadn't met in a certain way, if they hadn't met each other, you would be completely. You wouldn't be you at all, right? So the fact that you were here, the odds against it are so astronomical that you, I say in the book, you must just sit down on your knees and it's like, almost like a religion.

You must think it is so strange, it is so miraculous that I'm so grateful that I am who I am. It is incredible. There's a reason for that. Yeah. Yeah.

Theo Von
I think that's something. Yeah. That we all should. Yeah. It's like that.

You were here. Like you were. There was purpose in you. There was some. The universe chose this, whoever you are, the universe chose you.

Whatever pain, whatever prosperity, whatever this walk is right now, that you were chosen for it, I feel like it just gives. I don't know if it helps me have some ownership when I'm thinking of myself or. I don't know what it does for me, but I think it's important to hear that, because I think more than ever now, it feels like that individuality is getting lost for how rare we are to exist. Like, no, we only. Only some of us have the same fingerprint.

None of us have same fingerprints. Right, right. That's crazy, bro. Yeah. You know, and I think also is this.

I think I read that this. Everybody has a. Nobody has the same sphincter either, which is. Yeah. The 11th fingerprint.

Robert Greene
Never thought of it that way. Yeah. So that's crazy just to think that it. You know, at the. At both ends, they really got you sealed off, you know, very, you know, uniquely.

Theo Von
But it's definitely just. But I feel like, for as unique as we are, we're losing individuality sometimes, and that's a problem that I feel like is going on today. A lot of it is social media. I mean, you don't want to beat that drum too much, but I think there's some. Some truth to it.

Robert Greene
We're too much attuned to what other people are doing, and it's hard for us to think about what we want, what makes us different. You know, a lot of young people going to high school. I mean, I know. I remember when I was in high school being weird and different. You could be laughed at, but I think it's much, much worse right now.

Theo Von
Really? Yes, I do. I mean. I mean, I was kind of a loner in high school, kind of as a hippie. Had very long hair, did a lot of drugs.

Yeah, buddy. Oh, there you are right there. Bobby Green. Robert Green, right there. That's me.

Robert Greene
That's the 19 year old Robert. Bro, you look like you were looping right there, goomin on. Yeah, we were doing a lot of LSD at that time. Yeah, you could see the tie dyed sofa behind me, man. A tie dyed sofa.

Yeah, look at that. Look at that thing. Yeah, we were, like, getting into the Grateful dead, if you can believe it. Oh, yeah, american beauty. Yeah, that album was out.

Theo Von
Yeah. Working class dead was the one that. Working man's dead was the one that we were. That came out just at that time. Would you.

Who would you. Who would you take it with by yourself, or would you take it with friends? Oh, we took it with friends. Yeah. You really want me to go into this.

Robert Greene
I mean, the drug that we really, really, really liked at this point, we're talking about the seventies. I'm an old dude, man. Was peyote. Wow. I never got to do it.

It was really big. Cause this was in Berkeley, and it was like. It was like the trendy thing. There were these buttons from cactus from Mexico or Arizona. And if you ate them, you would be incredibly sick.

So you had to pull out all these little hairs so that you could digest them without throwing up. Wow. Then you had to. And they tasted absolutely horrible. Put them into these tiny little pieces and eat it in, like, peanut butter or like a milkshake.

So you didn't have just swallowed it, man, you'd be tripping like you now. Can't believe it. It was just unbelievable. Totally transcendent. The most spiritual drug of all.

Theo Von
Really? Yeah. How would it get more like. Cause spiritual is a unique word to use. Cause LSD would get, like, freaky and weird sometimes.

Mushrooms would get more spiritual. I felt like, definitely. So, peyote, you felt like, went even more spiritual than that. I think so. I think so.

Robert Greene
I mean, I did it probably maybe about a dozen times when I was younger. Yeah. And I've done lsd and I've done. Mushrooms are pretty spiritual. God, I'm revealing all this crap of my youth.

Theo Von
But, no, I think it's important. A lot of people do these things, especially psychedelics are coming back more than ever now. Well, I must say, I don't do them anymore. I mean, I've tried little tiny micro dosing of mushrooms. I don't do it anymore.

Robert Greene
But it had a very positive impact on me. It opened my mind to things that I will never forget. Right. Experiences that still resonate in my brain that I may not create through drugs, but I create through other means. I, like, try to return to spiritual sensations that are very powerful.

So those drugs could be used? Could be, I say, for very positive purposes. They shouldn't be used just for partying and just for forgetting yourself, but they can be used to open what Aldous Huxley called the doors of perception. Yeah, that's a great way. Yeah, that's the biggest thing, is just the perception, because perception is how you change everything about your life.

Theo Von
Like, yeah, mushrooms have helped me many times to have perception adjustment, to realize where I was being, not giving myself enough grace or just being. To trying to be. Control things to, you know, just to relate, just to have a little more. Cause mushrooms is like a sponge, you know, just to add a little bit more space into my. Into your.

How you view things or see things, and it could be anything, a relationship. I mean, there's business situations. I mean, they can help so much, I feel like. And they're being used more than ever, it seems like, you know. Cause, yeah, I've microdosed before that.

Just microdosing. I'll just, like, during the day at one point, I'll just start. I'll see a mosquito, and I'll kind of follow him around the house for a minute. Then I'll go back to work. But that's about as, like, weird as it gets, you know?

Robert Greene
It's pretty damn weird. Yeah. I'm just kind of curious, you know? Yeah. Just doing a little air traffic control.

You see the little ant on the ground there? Yeah. To see where he's going. Tell me if you're a scout. Yeah.

Theo Von
Hey, look, dude, if you're trying to get away from something, blink once, you know? So how long did peyote last? Did it last for, like, a long time? You mean when you took it? Well, like, all those drugs, you would take effect after about 40 minutes or so, and then it'd be very intense for about four or 5 hours, and then it would kind of wear off.

Robert Greene
It's kind of had the same sort of span as mushrooms in a way. It just depended on how many buttons you consumed. If you consumed, like a dozen button man, you'd be tripping for, like, several days. I don't think we went that far. Yeah, your damn elevator car at that point, dude, you're going up, bro.

Yeah, but, I mean, it has an incredible history among Native Americans and Mexicans. Yeah. What did they use it for? Can you bring that up, Nick? I want to learn.

Theo Von
Like, if there was a distinctive, like, were they trying to talk to a God? Cause I can't imagine the first time they took it. It must have blown their minds. Well, it was the first time people experimented with all kinds of drugs. You know, that fascinates me, how they.

Robert Greene
How they didn't kill themselves, how they knew that it had that effect. In the late 18 hundreds, the modern day native american church was formed, a key part of which is the ingestion of peyote as a religious sacrament during all night prayer ceremonies. In this context, peyote is not viewed as a drug, but rather as a medicine for healing. Wow. Yeah.

Theo Von
Yeah. That kind of reminds you of how ayahuasca is these days. It is very much so. I've never done it. I think ayahuasca sounds even more intense.

Robert Greene
Yeah, so I don't know, but I think it's similar to that. Yeah. I've had some good experiences with it. For me, it's been very therapeutic. Oh, really?

Theo Von
Yeah, I don't think of it as a drug, and I understand if other people do, that's fine. I think of it as a medicinal drug, but I don't think of it as a party. You know, it's very painful to go sit there and you go through the filing cabinet of who you are and pull out some files and kind of burn them in a way, you know? I don't know. I'm a little bit frightened about that myself at my age, you know?

Oh, you could rock in there, I think. You think so? Yeah. It doesn't. I find it to be actually not super invasive.

I could get up and go pee or go get a snack in the kitchen and then go sit back down and drop back into the meditation. Really? Yeah, and I felt very okay with that. Well, I don't consider it. Yeah.

How do you feel? Like we're like, well, one thing that I worry about with society today is since we watch so much of each other, right. We're never spending that time, like, getting to know ourselves, kind of. We're not. You know, I remember you used to just lie around all the time, and sure, you'd seem like you were bored, but your brain was, like, maybe coming up slowly, building ideas or, you know, forming, like, thoughts or hopes.

Dude, I remember you used to be able to hope so much because you would hope you would see this girl across town, or you would hope that she was gonna be at some summer camp, or there was just no way to know everything, so you had so much hope all the time, and now there's so much information that I feel like it's taken away a lot of hope, but I feel like, even more so that. And I don't want to be like Debbie Downer. There's still hope, but I feel like it's subdued hope, but I feel like if you're looking. If we're always watching stuff, then do we start to just mimic it instead of being individual? That's what I worry about.

Do you think that's possible? Like, if we're always. Do we become more mimics than creators? And has it always been that way, do you think? No, I think things are getting worse, of course.

Robert Greene
I don't know. I don't have. You know, I can't see everything, but my feeling is it is getting worse. I mean, you know, I do believe that there is something as vague as that word is. That is like a soul that a person has.

And that soul is connected to who you are as an individual. Like, you're kind of born with it, right? And when you know who you are, when you go deep into it, when you connect to things that you really love, when you connect to your memories, from childhood to things that make you different, that soul's kind of alive. It feels alive. It feels vibrant.

It feels right. The feeling of rightness, which is something people don't understand. Some things feel right, some things don't. Okay? And I know for myself, and I'm guilty of it, if I spend an hour on Instagram chasing this thing or that thing or wasting my time on this website or whatever, I have this feeling like a bit of my soul was sucked out of me.

Theo Von
Yes. That I kind of lost something, that I'm just this kind of machine that's just processing data and I'm not a human being anymore. And I feel that soul kind of. It's like a vapor that's escaping me. Right.

So, yeah, I feel like they got me. They tricked me. Yeah. The second I set it down, I feel like it almost takes a couple of seconds for it to you to get out of this trance. Yeah, in a way, it is a trance.

You're like, dang, they tricked me. They did. They did trick me. Yeah. Because a lot of the algorithms and.

And just the entertainment value of it is so strong. Sure, it's entertaining, but with all the time you spend doing that or that I or anybody spends, it's time that I feel like you could be doing things that would get me to know myself better. Yeah, but it's. That's what I wonder, are the scales of that other stuff getting so heavy? So, like, have they narrowed the algorithm so cleanly with the.

With everything? The pornography? It's taken away so many. Like, it's frightening. It's frightening.

That's what I wonder. Do you feel like there is a way for that? Is it just a cycle and there's a way out of that? Well, the possible optimistic scenario, which I don't know will happen, is that human beings have a spirit and that we'll get so disgusted with it that we'll rebel, that a young generation will evolve, probably not Gen Z, probably three or four generations from now, that will find it so lifeless and so, you know, sick. Sick, but, you know, so unfruitful, not giving them anything, that they will rebel and they will be angry and they'll say, screw all this crap.

Robert Greene
I want to go back to something else. I want to go back to something in the past or whatever, however far back. Or I want to create something new, a real revolution of sorts, a consciousness revolution that can happen because human beings have that capacity. And it's happened before in history where we've gone through these cycles of kind of our soul disappearing. Really?

Yes, definitely. And people kind of going crazy in moments of chaos. Yeah. Does one come to mind? Well, I mean, think of the people that have succumbed to things like Nazism or, you know, those kind of things where they're mass hallucinations and being drugged.

Theo Von
Yeah. And the Germans. Now, I mean, however, you might not like Germans. I don't know. I mean, they're nice people.

I'm fine with them. I'm fine with them. I don't know all of them, but. They'Re not like that anymore. Right.

Robert Greene
So they emerged from that. That's a good point. So kind of mass hallucination sort of thing, but there were periods. I'm going to get kind of wonky here, but I believe it was the third century or fourth century BC in Greece, where they went through this incredible crisis where their belief, their gods, all that was disappearing, people who didn't believe in it anymore, and there was a crisis. You know, human beings need to believe in something.

Need to believe in something larger than themselves. And when they don't, things can get really nasty and chaotic and soulless. And I think that's sort of what we're going through right now. That's kind of what I'm writing about in my new book. But I think people will find their way back to it.

It'll take young people who get disgusted with this kind of mechanical culture that we have. Will that happen? I don't know. These algorithms, as you say, are insanely powerful. Yeah.

Theo Von
It's like we're really up against this darkness that we've created, which is kind of fascinating, too. You know, it has very much a story. It's like all the stories, you know, it's like the perfect story. You know, it's like you create the Frankenstein. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, it really is. When it comes to, like, individuality, right? Yeah. What is a good way for people to start to get to know themselves? Does it make sense to you, what I'm asking?

Robert Greene
Kind of, yeah, it does. Well, I keep coming back to something that I tell a lot of people. I think is very important is the desire to know yourself. So people are very good at faking it, and you could be out there and listening, you go, yeah, I kind of want to know myself better. Okay, let me get online and get, you know, they just forget about it because the other forces are stronger than them.

You have to have a level, you know that if you're in recovery, a level of disgust. You have to hit bottom. Yeah, you have to go, I don't want to be like this anymore. I want to find out who I am. I want to touch that core of individuality that I know is still within me, that soul that I believe is still there.

You have to have the desire. If there's no desire there, if you're just mimicking, if you're just saying it just for the sake of it because it sounds good, I can't help you. But if it's still there. Yeah. You want to start by, I mean, there are many paths you can take.

A very good path is to take a journal and start journaling. Right. And writing down your thoughts and writing down your dreams. And when I say that, I say, don't do it on a computer. I mean, I know a lot of young people don't know how to handwrite anymore, but pick up a pen.

I still hand write a lot of things. Pick up a pen and a journal and write it down. Dreams. I know this sounds woo woo, but it's not. Dreams are really powerful.

Very interesting. They're going to tell you a lot about yourself. Right. It's going to tell you about those journeys your brain takes at night that are pretty fantastical. Okay, you write that down.

You go back into your childhood and you go, what was it that made me so different, that was so weird about me? What was it that I was attracted to? As you go through that process, things will start coming up. It's like you're digging, you're excavating, you're an archaeologist into your own past. Yeah.

Theo Von
It's like using a brush and brushing off and you see a little bit of bone and then you're like, yeah, what other questions can I ask around here that might help me remove a little more dirt? Yeah. And memories will come up, like your memory when you're two years old and your brother popping up his head. Things will start coming back to you and you'll start connecting to who you were when you were young and you're connecting to who you were as an adolescent. Adolescence is an extremely important part of our life.

Robert Greene
It really is almost the most formative part. It's where we really made that turn into this or into that. Right. And I find returning to your adolescence returning to those strong, powerful emotions that you felt. Those sexual things that were just so overwhelming.

Theo Von
Yeah. Those other things that, you know, that were happening, returning to that because people psychologists have studied, that is the period when you feel what makes you different the most. Right. It's when you feel the most rebellious, when you understand, this is who I am. I'm not like my parents.

Robert Greene
You're 13, you're 14. All of a sudden you go, I don't have to be like mom or dad. In fact, I want to be the help. I want to be totally different. Adolescence is, like, a really key thing to go deep into.

That will show you a lot about your individuality, about who you are and about who you've become. So it's a process, and it should be a very exciting process. Right, right. You shouldn't look at. Yeah, that's the thing.

Theo Von
If you look at it, it's like, oh, shit, I got to do this. You know? But to carve out a little time where you're like, yeah, let me think. Whatever. Some things.

Look at old photos and stuff like that. Really look at yourself a little bit. Like a. Like you're studying something, you know, even. Listen to the music that you liked, however embarrassing that might be.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. Would you listen to, man? Remember the first song that you heard?

Robert Greene
I can't go. I think I was four years old or so, and my sister, who's four years older than me, had a Beatles album, and it was. I mean, this is. I'm older. Abby Rhode.

No. God, no. I'm almost so much older than that. It was like, meet the Beatles. And it was the song.

I saw her standing there, I think, the single. And I was like, wow, this is so weird. This is so different. It's hard for people to imagine because the Beatles seem sort of cliched now, but when that sound first came out, I was like, there is nothing else like this out there. It's amazing.

It's fantastic. And I remember my grandmother was there, and she goes, she couldn't understand it. She thought it was awful, and I thought it was the most amazing thing. I think that was the first song I can remember. I can recall.

Theo Von
Yeah, yeah. I remember my mom used to play Bryan Adams all the time and make us clean the house to it. And then she would sometimes abuse us if we didn't clean up good, but. Brian Adams. Wow.

Yeah, it was a bit. It was kind of crazy, but then what else would we. Oh, yeah, I've told this story before, but the first a camp counselor, a woman picked me up and took me to camp one day because my mom couldn't take me in summer camp. And she reached over and put my seatbelt on me. And it was like the first time that, like, a woman other, I guess, than my mother had been near me.

Robert Greene
Oh, wow. And then she put on Bon Jovi. Wow. And I was like, what is going on, dude? Are we married?

Theo Von
Like, wow. How old were you? I. I was probably eight. Seven or eight.

And I'm sure I'd heard something before that, but nothing that, you know, this moment, that's. That was the first song I remember hearing and being like, yeah, I want to hear that song again. Wow. But, yeah, I think it was because there was a, you know, maybe because it was a woman there. Something.

But that was something that I remember. What was it? In a lot of your books, you have the art of seduction.

You have 48 laws of power. You have mastery. You're always looking at yourself and finding ways, it seems like, to encourage the most out of oneself. How did that kind of begin for you? What was there, like, a period in your time where you're like, I got like, I wasn't my best self, or, I'm not gonna let this happen to me again.

Like, what was that trigger kind of for you? Well, there were many triggers. So I was out of college. I decided to go into journalism. Cause I needed.

Robert Greene
I needed to make a living. I wanted to write, but I had to support myself. I was living in New York and, you know, I was very poor at the time. I had a very low level job, and it wasn't connecting to me. I felt like something was wrong.

I didn't like the fact that you would write something and then the next day you'd be on to something else. It was totally forgotten. It didn't last. And I was into something because I love history. If it doesn't last more than 24 hours, what's the point?

It should last like, twelve years, 2000 years. What you write should have some weight to it. I felt wrong, so I left it. I wandered around Europe for about four or five years, sometimes with the backpack. I worked in a hotel in Paris.

I did construction work in Greece because I ran out of money. I taught English in Barcelona. I worked in a crappy television show in London. I led a tour guide thing in Dublin, Ireland, trying to write novels. And I was starving.

Theo Von
It's like a John Irving story. It almost seems like it was. It was like. It's such a cliche. I was a cliche of the american great, the young american trying to write a novel.

Robert Greene
I had amazing experiences, you know, experiences that. That seeded all of my books, but nothing happened. And I was lonely and I was depressed and I felt like something was wrong. Were you basing your achievement on something? What do you think you were looking for in that?

Theo Von
Because it sounds like a searching kind of time. Well, I was trying to write a novel, but I couldn't write it. It wasn't happening. My mind wasn't. I don't think I would have been a good novelist because I'm too much into ideas.

Robert Greene
And my novels were just like these kind of big, kind of sticks with a big idea on it that you were supposed to read about. It didn't have life to. I think I could do it now, but something was wrong about it and I couldn't earn a living off of it. You know, I was on my own. I had to earn a living.

I didn't want to be doing all these crap jobs my whole life. So I came back to LA, where I'm from. My father wasn't well, and I got a job in Hollywood, thinking, this is the golden path. Money, writing, glamour, you know, whatever you would. The dream.

Theo Von
Fancy. Yeah. Cocaine, women, all of that. Yeah. And none of it happened.

Robert Greene
It was. I wasn't. It wasn't. Well, I mean, I had the will, I had the cocaine and all that stuff. I didn't have the success and all the other stuff, but none of the.

None of the really stuff I was after. And so, to answer your question, nothing was going right. Nothing was quite fitting right. And I had a moment, I was getting kind of desperate, and my girlfriend was saying, you know, maybe you gotta stop, like, trying to cut have it both ways where you have your writing, your creativity, and then you have earning a living. Maybe you can't have both.

So she said, I always wanted to write plays and theater and stuff. So she said, go ahead and do that. And that was a kind of a turning point where I'm gonna stop trying to just be this person that other people wanted me to be, and I'm going to follow what excites me, even though I can't make a living in it. And that was a very important part. It meant like, yeah, I can do something that's kind of fun and maybe it will turn into something.

Theo Von
Well, it's the same thing you talk about in mastery, too, kind of that we were talking about earlier. Yeah. And then. So sometimes fate has its weird ways of operating. Just as after I had done that writing the plays.

Robert Greene
We put them on here in Los Angeles. We performed them, I acted in them, she directed them. We did all the work ourselves. Very strange plays. Right after that, I met this man in Italy who offered me the chance to write a book.

And something clicked in me going, Robert, all the bad choices in your life, all the mistakes, everything can turn on this moment, right? You can go from being this kind of loser in your one bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. You could somehow turn this around. A book. Wow, I never thought of that before.

Not a novel, but a nonfiction book. I see. So you never really take. You'd never consider that? Of course not.

Theo Von
If you're thinking of fiction, you're thinking of, like, the, you know, the F. Scott Fitz Joe. You're thinking of, like, a magnificent piece, you know, on the road with Kerouac, you know, you're thinking of something that changed the tides, you know? Exactly. But then you're like, oh, damn.

Like a nerd book. Exactly. But I'm kind of a strange individual, I have to say. For better or worse. Cause till I was 38, it was for the worst, right?

Robert Greene
And my parents were getting really worried about me. But when I had the chance to write the 48 laws of power, my first book, I made it a book that you'll never. That's not like anything else out there, right? Because I'm sure it's something you've done in your comedy. There's nobody else out there like the ovon.

You're just. You're unique. I made the book look weird, feel weird. Nothing about it was like anything else. It was dark.

It was kind of like. Language was a little bit strong. It was controversial. It even looks biblical, almost. This one.

That one? Yeah. This copy. The coolest thing is the face that's in this. There's two faces.

Theo Von
Oh, is one of them Benjamin Franklin? One of them is you. Oh, no, wait. One of them is Henry. Henry.

Robert Greene
No, it's Machiavelli. Oh, Machiavelli and me. I was thinking it was a guy from black flag, you know, that is Henry. Henry Rollins? Yeah, it looks like Henry Rollins a little bit.

You mean me or Machiavelli? Well, unfortunately, Machiavelli. Oh, okay. You still look like you, but you look handsome. Henry Rollins is a lot more.

Yeah, I know. He's a lot beefier than I am. He's different than I am. He's more intimidating. Yeah, maybe he's more intimidating.

Is he still alive? What happened to him? I think he lives. I believe, actually, that he lives in Tennessee. Yeah.

Theo Von
Oh, I've heard that. Yeah, I heard he moved to Nashville. Yeah, I heard that he moved to Nashville. I would love to meet him sometime. Some of my friends have worked with him.

I think he's a very interesting guy. And there's Machiavelli. Now, I don't see a resemblance, really? There? Yeah.

Robert Greene
Maybe. Maybe the eyes. Yeah, yeah, maybe the eyes. They each have two eyes.

Theo Von
Thank you. That's a good one. Thank you for trying to support me there, Robert. Took me a little while to hear that catch on. It took me a while, too.

I didn't realize it was a joke until after I said it, but. So then at that point, that's you kind of, like, realizing something's different here. There's this voice that says, this could be something for you. You need to follow this. And was it hard for you to, like, start to make that happen for yourself?

Robert Greene
Well, you know, as I said, I was 38 years old. I hadn't really amounted to anything. And this guy, Jost elfers, who's the producer of the book, he offered me this chance. I pitched to him what turned out to be the 48 laws of power. He got so excited.

So what happened was, I went home to LA and I go, Robert. It was before 50 cent coined the expression. But it's either get rich or die trying here, right? You either make this book work or you're just going to be floundering the rest of your life. Right?

So I was so motivated, I was so hungry and desperate, and that this had to be it, that I put everything I had into it. And it's hard for me to understand now because it took two years to write. Now it takes me five years to write a damn book. Damn all that research, all that creating something that hadn't been out there before. I don't know how I did it, but all I can say is there was something else inside of me that was so hungry that it made it happen.

So there wasn't any, like, I can't do this kind of thing. It was like, if I don't do it, that's it. I have in my. In one book, in my book on strategy and warfare, this thing that I call death ground strategy. It's a great expression.

It comes from Sun Tzu, and it's if your back is to the ocean or your back is against a mountain and you're fighting the enemy, you're going to fight with ten times the energy, because it's either conquer them or you're going to die, right? So you put yourself on death ground. You either succeed or terrible things will happen. You find energy that you hadn't believed you had. You'll find creativity that you hadn't believed you had.

Theo Von
Did you lock yourself in a hole or something? Did you create that scenario for yourself? Did you change your habits? Cause it seems like you have to really change your habits to produce something that. Well, I had good work habits, and I had learned how to research, but one thing my girlfriend did was I had this cat who just would never leave me alone.

Oh, yeah. He was so attached to me, and quite honestly, he probably made it so I couldn't write a book. So she created this table, this very thin table that would fit right in here on the chair I could put my laptop on. He couldn't get on it. Oh.

It wasn't enough space for him. No. Wow. And that allowed me to write the book. Damn, dude.

They say a cat also, and I'll tell you, because I know this, but a cat will. If you die, a cat will start eating. Will probably start eating your face within, like, 48 hours. That's very nice to hear. Thank you for sharing that.

You're welcome. I'm not gonna look at my cat the same way now, but I just. Want to let you know, so don't be shocked that they will. They want to stop you from writing a book. Okay.

Robert Greene
Okay. He wanted to eat me. I'm just saying, they're playing a long game. Okay. You know what I'm saying?

Theo Von
They want to ruin it all. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, they're just. Yeah.

You know, they're just saving face, you know, by trying to get you to think that the writing the book is the issue. But that's so. It's like. But that's a. That's such a.

That's almost such a metaphor. Like, I'm gonna make a table that a cat can't get on, and that way I'll be able to write my. We still have the table. It's really cool looking. She made it.

Robert Greene
She painted it. She made these, like, these, like, kind of backgammon signs on it. It was really cool. Oh, that's super cool. Yeah.

Theo Von
What a neat. That's a fascinating little piece of information.

Did you feel more powerful after the book? Well, I couldn't have felt less powerful because I had no power, really, up until then. But you don't know because a lot of things fail in life, right? Oh, yeah. And the book could have flopped easily because it was so different and weird and so I had no idea.

Robert Greene
But then suddenly it starts selling well, and I'm getting, you know, the press was pretty good. And I remember in early 1999, I was invited to Italy for a book tour. And this was, like, the strangest moment of my life, probably. I don't know if, you know, at Disneyland, they have Mister Toad's wild ride where it's like he goes on this really weird adventure, and he kind of blows your mind if you're, like, four years old. This was like my mister Toad's wild ride, because suddenly I was invited to this conference where I was mingling with italian politicians, where paparazzi were following me around and taking my photograph.

Well, who am I? But this was the land of Machiavelli, and the 48 laws of power seemed really great to them, right? So suddenly I'm starting to realize, well, maybe this book has legs. Maybe something will happen. Then a couple years later, in Playboy magazine, there's an interview with Jay Z.

And Jay Z quotes the 48 laws of power. Wow. I would go, wow. It's like infiltrating that far. That's pretty interesting.

And slowly, slowly, the hip hop world, more and more and more meeting fifty cents. People were coming to me for advice. Me, that was always giving advice before I wrote the book, but nobody would ever listen to me. Now they were coming to me for advice about their businesses, et cetera, et cetera. I got put on the board of directors for the company american apparel.

It was like being on acid. It was so weird because I had had so little success before that. If you have success when you're 23, it kind of spoils you, and you think that this is what life should be like. I had so much loneliness. I had so much not being able to pay bills.

I had so much frustration and depression that when it happened, it was like, man, this is like. I'm like, on a drug. It's fantastic. Yeah. Cause the odds.

Theo Von
The odds of that are slim. They are very slim. Very slim. The odds of that are slim. I'm very grateful.

And did you feel like you had found mastery, though? Or do you just felt like you had found your calling? Did you feel like you just got fortunate? Did you write it? Sorry.

Yeah, that's the question, and I think it's three questions. Well, you know, there's luck involved in anything. So meeting this man who produced the book, I was in Italy. It could have not happened very easily. We could have not taken the walk that we'd taken, and I would have never improvised the idea that came to me.

So you met a man and took a walk? Yeah, in Venice. We were walking. It was a beautiful day. I was in a good mood, and I pitched this book idea, and I pitched other ideas, which he didn't like, but he liked that idea anyway.

Robert Greene
That's a slender, slender thread that the whole thing hangs upon, right? Me going to Italy, this man also being there, us taking this walk, me being in a good mood, me improvising it. Okay. But it's just as unique as going back to, like, how people are created. How an idea.

Theo Von
How something magnificent happens, how something unique happens, that this had to happen. Your grandparents had to meet each other on a ship, or somebody had to be a slave, or somebody had to work at a chick fil a or whatever. It's like there's all these little things, right? Twists of fate. Yeah.

Just twists of fate. Sorry, go on. So, you know, if that hadn't happened, there wouldn't be any book. But on the other hand, I might have. There's some feeling that I don't know if people out there can relate to, but some way, I had a feeling like it was meant to happen, that something about me or him drew us together, and that all of those bad experiences in life, all of the really awful bosses that I had.

Robert Greene
And I had some really bad ones. Right? Roger, too. I had this guy. Roger.

Roger. What was he? He was just. He was a damn deviant dude. He would make us work, and he would sit in his car, also, and smoke weed a lot of the time.

But where's Roger now? That's a good question. I know his wife left him. I'm not sure, but he was. You know, he also was a.

Theo Von
He was. He did lead our, like, company bowling team or whatever, so that was, like, the one redeeming thing he did. Well, that's. That's. That's pretty impressive.

It was nice of him to do so. He bought us all jerseys and everything, but anyway. Go on. Sorry. I'm sorry.

Robert Greene
Well, that's great story. Anyway. So. What other books did you pitch him that day?

You shouldn't ask that question, because I remember. So I really was into Louis XIV for whatever reason. Yeah. I'm from Louisiana, so. Oh, okay.

Theo Von
Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Louisiana purchase. Roulet le Bon.

Hey, bon don. You know les Bon ton roulant? Yeah, that's what they say. Right? Exactly.

Robert Greene
So I pitched an idea about how weird, how different people were in the court of Louis XIV. Like, what their psychology was, but it was kind of related to the 48 laws of power. But this other idea that I pitched was, I had read this book about nonsense and kind of, it was called the philosophy of nonsense. It's a very kind of theoretical book, but it was all about how nonsense could be actually kind of revolutionary. To take words and to kind of make you think that there's a meaning but there's no meaning.

Kind of excited me. Right. Yeah. Because it activates a part of your brain that's not a common path. Yeah, yeah.

Sort of like some of the things in Lewis Carroll. Like in Alice in Wonderland. Right. Like you're falling through a hole in the ground and come up into a new universe like world. Yeah, like ridiculous walking into mirrors.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Change of perception. Exactly. So I was pitching him an idea about. About nonsense, but it would be kind of a popular book that would sort of show, you know, how nonsense can be kind of a powerful force.

It can be very poetic and exciting. That idea didn't fly. Those were. Those are the ones I can remember. Yeah.

Theo Von
But, hey, that's what it takes, man. That's what it takes to get something that does fly. Yeah. You know, but, you know, I think it was. So what I was saying is, all the horrible bosses.

Robert Greene
I had all the bad experiences. I worked in a detective agency briefly here in Los Angeles, actually, in Pasadena, for PI private. Well, it was a firm. What is PI private investigator. That's private investigator.

I wasn't. I wasn't a dick. I wasn't a gumshoe. I was what's called a skip tracer. And it was one of the worst jobs I ever had, where basically, you know, some guy in Wisconsin jumps bail or owes this company this amount of money.

I'm in it, sitting in an office on the telephone, trying to find him. That's what literally means skip trace. You're tracing where he skipped. And they give you these dialogues you're supposed to follow. You call his mother up, and you pretend to be a high school buddy of his.

You do some research. You went to Kenosha high school, and you do little research, things you can say to kind of bullshit your way. And I was very good at bullshitting, and I would kind of do that, and she'd say, oh, he's. She'd give you a clue. Then you would find him, and then they would get the guy, and they'd get him to pay.

I felt so awful. I was, like, helping the law by these poor suckers. You were kind of a. Yeah, you weren't a snitch, but you was like, kind of. Yeah.

Theo Von
You was like a undercover kind of guy on the phone. Yeah. Not a cop. Yeah. And I had the worst boss there.

Robert Greene
I hated that son of a bitch. Anyway, all of those people went into the 48 laws of power. I kind of got my little digs into them because they sort of inspired some of these awful laws that I ended up creating. Yeah. Was some of the.

Theo Von
Was some of the 48 laws of power written with, like, vengeance? Was it written like. Yeah, I think you have to have something like that. You have to have a fire. You have to have.

Robert Greene
I was angry. Yeah. Were you angry at the world? Were you angry at circumstance, do you think? Cause I get angry a lot.

Theo Von
I try to think about what I'm angry at. It's hard for me to sometimes know what it is. It is hard to know what it is, what's, like, really underneath it, because you have to be superficially angry, but there's something else underneath that's gnawing at you. I think I was angry at people's bullshit about people pretending to be something that they're not. Is what really angers me and what angered me about Hollywood.

Robert Greene
I don't know your relationship to Hollywood. I know. I hate Hollywood. Oh, good. Thank you.

Yeah, well, you know, people pretending to be these liberal, wonderful people in favor of all the best causes out there to create art. What bullshit. They wanted power. They loved having the power over people. Right.

Producers and directors loved the power they had over actresses, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so I had a law in there about get other people to do the work, but always take the credit, which is one of the nastier laws. That's what happened to me a lot of times in Hollywood. I would do the work. I would write all the dialogue, et cetera, in some screenplay.

I wouldn't get any credit at all. So I was kind of, like, turning it around and telling people, this is how the world works. People will get you to do things, and they'll put their name on it, kind of thing. So is some of it not as much with 48 laws? Is not as much telling people to do these things, but making people aware of things.

Theo Von
It's almost like making people aware of different clocks that tick in time, but that aren't necessarily timekeeping clocks, but just clocks of, like, how things work. Does that make any sense? Almost. Almost. There's something there.

Thanks. Yeah, think about it. I feel like it started off good. I'm gonna go to bed thinking about that there is something there, or it's. Different, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's not all how to do things as much as some of them can be warnings or awareness. Well, there's a law in there about play on people's need to believe to create a cult like following. And the idea is that there are a lot of cults out there. Yeah, there's a lot of cults. Definitely.

30 seconds to Mars, I think, is one. What's that? It's a band, I guess. It's also, like a gps estimate, I guess, if you drive a space shuttle or something. Excuse my ignorance.

Yeah, no, it's. No, it's. I'm just joking. It's Jared Leto's and his brother's band. I'm just joking.

Robert Greene
Oh, Jared Leto. Okay. I am joking. But people always say that it's a cult, but, yeah, there's a lot of different cults out there. Yeah.

So I'm not telling you to go out and create a cult. Right. Although you could if you wanted to. I'm saying that you might be in a cult right now. And here's how to recognize when you're in a cult, these are the things that people do to kind of trap you into a cult.

They create, like, an us versus them dynamic. While there's an enemy out there that's trying to destroy. You better stay inside here where it's us. And then they create, like, they use numbers a lot. Like, this is the fifth level of the 6th domain that you have reached.

Then, you know, brother, you're in a cult, if that's what you're hearing, that. So it's not so much, like, go out there and create this cult, but, like, maybe you're in one. And here's how to recognize it. Yeah, dude, that's hilarious, man. Especially now with the media, it's like, definitely become cult like behavior, you know?

Theo Von
And with their force over society, what do you think has more effect on us these days, our government or our media? Like, who's a bigger power, Hollywood or the government? Well, a Hollywood. And you're also saying, like, tech, the tech world, like, social media. I'd say they have more power.

Robert Greene
I mean, I don't know what the numbers would be. I'd have to say, like, 70% and 30% would be the government. Yeah. I mean, at this point, though, it's reaching a point where the government and the media are kind of becoming one. Oh, I'll tell you a story.

Theo Von
So I'm at the mall the other day in Century City in Los Angeles. Right? West Los Angeles, kind of. I'm in there. A construction guy walks through.

He's like, theo, what's up? So I start talking to him, and he's like, dude, guess what we're building. I'm like, I don't know. You know, I thought maybe it could have been like a hardee's or something. He's like, we're building, like, a 20 story building, and ten floors of it are the CIA, and the other ten floors are a management company.

Hollywood management company. That's pretty spot on. I was like, you gotta be kidding me. He goes, bro, I wish I was joking with you. He's like, that is exactly who's gonna be in the building?

Because I was like, who's gonna be in the building? He's like, you're never gonna believe it. I'm like, wow. I used to be. I might still be.

Robert Greene
I don't think I am. I was with CAA, and they were trying to make movies out of my books. And you go to that building and they call that, like, the Death Star. I forget. Maybe that's the name of it.

And there are, like, you know, politicians who are being represented by CAA athletes, tech bros, influencers. Right? So that's where all of that kind of. Yeah, there's the Death Star. Yeah.

Theo Von
Cool looking building. Their building is awesome looking. It's pretty frightening, though, when you go inside, it's like all these people, everyone's, like, wearing a suit. Yeah, it's almost like. It's almost like dianetics.

Robert Greene
What's that called again? Scientology. It's almost like Scientology. Scientology. Hollywood's version of Scientology.

Theo Von
Yeah. Anyway, thank you. Yeah. That's a pretty building, though. Yeah.

So it feels like there is a merging these days of the government and social media. To me, social media is definitely the power. Oh, for sure. That's what it's like. That's all the influence.

I mean, the government couldn't even keep the post office open, you know? I mean, the post office is crazy, dude. You can go in there and just ask for mail and they'll give you some mail, bro. Really? Yeah.

You don't even have to have any. They're just like, here, here's some mail for you. You know, try that. Yeah, it's gotten way. They.

Yeah, they're, um. They really lowered the bar on, like, rules or whatever. Yeah, but the technology people, they've read all of the books on marketing, on psychology, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, they figured the whole thing out. They know how to move us around like little puppets on a string, you know? So, yeah, I wonder if we'll get.

To a point in. I have to pee. Do you or not? I have to pee. You do.

You go pee, and then I'll pee after you. Okay. But I wanted to ask you all, do you think, like, Hollywood has, like, an agenda like, that it's an organized agenda that they try and create through their art? Or do you think that's just, like, a conspiracy theory where people. That art just imitates life and that's just the way things are?

Robert Greene
Are you talking about the movie industry? You're talking about tech? You're talking about which aspect of it? That's a good question. Talking about video games or.

I mean, I guess I would probably. Talk more about, like, the movie industry. Well, there to me, for my being inside the belly of the beast, so to speak, is it's really all about money. I mean, there's so much money involved and at stake. That's really the motor that drives everything in Hollywood.

You know, people may pretend it's about creating art or supporting this cause or that cause, but when you bring it all down, it's about making money. I'm sorry. Yeah. You know, and that's capitalism. Yeah.

And that's what generates what they choose to make movies about. So for a while, it was all the franchise movies, you know, the mission impossibles. Then it was all the Marvel movies. Because, you know, they need to. They need to sell their products abroad.

If it sells in China, they make a killing. Right? If they can make one thing, it sells to everybody, then it's like, that's a super home run. Whereas if they make one thing that sells just to people in a certain region of America, that's more of, like, a single or a bunt. Right.

So that's what generates their mojo. That's why they make the things they make. So you don't want too much dialogue, because if it's, like in India or China, you know, you have to do all the subtitles. It doesn't work. Just a lot of action, a lot of people beating each other up, a lot of explosions.

So it's money, and then comes the art, and then comes, what do we actually film? That's how they think. I'm pretty damn sure of it. So I don't think there's a conspiracy to move a certain agenda, although there is a kind of certain woke quality. Excuse me.

That I won't deny that permeates it. Right. But it's more about, you know, they would drop the woke stuff tomorrow if they could make more money doing something else. It's just about what's gonna bring the bucks and big bucks. Cause that's what Hollywood's all about.

Theo Von
And Hollywood needs proof. So Hollywood, I feel like, is always a little behind the times in a lot of ways. Unless they do something indie, because they really need proof that something is going to bring in the money. So still they start to see, like, a swing in, like, ticket sales or streams or views. Then they are just riding whatever the previous few years were.

Robert Greene
Well, it used to be 30, 40 years ago when there was independent film that you could have somebody like a Jim Jarmusch, you know? Who was it? Huh? Jim Jarmusch. Who was it?

Bring him up. Yeah, bring up Jim Jarmusch, please. He was a really interesting film director. He might have been from the south in, like, the eighties and nineties. Let's bring him up.

Theo Von
Yeah. Jimmy Jarmusch. But what were some of the Fonz? Huh? He did that movie with Tom waits that I really like.

I haven't seen that. Down by law. Down by law. Down by law. Thank you.

Robert Greene
Yeah. Thanks, Zach, for saying that. Down by law. Put that on the list of things to watch, too. Yeah.

It's a really interesting movie. Tom Waits is the only time I ever seen him act. Yeah. Are you Tom Waits fan? Um, no.

Okay, well, that's all right. I won't wait. Uh, cripple Creek. Was that him? No, that's somebody else.

That's the band. That's the band? Yeah. Oh, the weight, I'm thinking of. That's also the band.

Theo Von
That's the band. Oh, Tom Waits. Bring him up. Decent guy. Oh, he's fantastic.

Do I know him? Oh, wait. Tom Waits, dude. Yeah, dude, I know Tom Waits. Yeah?

Yeah, I'm a fan of him, dude. I frickin know him. Oh, yeah. Show me another picture of him. Yeah.

Wow. He used to play, I think, with my buddy Josh Kelly. Uh huh. Tom Waits, dude. What's up?

Tom? He's one of my heroes from, like, I loved his music. Is he dead? He didn't know. He's jewish.

Robert Greene
Whoa. He lives in California now? No, he's still alive. Oh, thank God. I'll text him then.

Yeah, please say hello. That's cool, dude. Yeah, I went and I think he performed on a show with my buddy Josh with a musician friend of mine one time. He's amazing. He's amazing.

Theo Von
Yeah, with Josh Kelly. That's cool, man. So anyway, so back in the day, you'd have these weird independent filmmakers like even Jonathan Demi or Jim Jarmusch, and they would create something weird and different. Then it would start a trend, people would start doing independent films like that, kind of even films in black and white, et cetera, et cetera. And, but now, you know, you can't make a movie for a million dollars or half a million dollars like you could back then.

Robert Greene
Now you need at least ten, $20 million to even begin to think about making a movie. Well, to make a big movie, to make any movie. You think so? Yeah, because the costs have just gone way, way up, like, just to even think. Because my wife, she's a independent filmmaker, right?

And she used to make her own films that she would kind of raise the funds with. She could shoot a film for a million dollars. It's not possible now anymore. So, yeah, I mean, I think you probably at least, probably have to have maybe $5 million at least. Okay.

Theo Von
At least that I'll agree on. And they won't, they won't fund it, right? They're not going to fund, yeah, it's definitely hard. We've been trying to get a movie made for a while, and I, David Spade and I wrote a movie, and it's not a super expensive film, and it's been a nightmare. And so that's why sometimes it's like, I wonder, well, it's like, do they just not like us?

Is that why, like, William Morris won't help us make this thing? You know, like, why wouldn't, you know, like, you know, I don't know. I don't want to get petty in it. I don't feel petty. But it's like, why wouldn't they invest in it, you know?

Robert Greene
Well, what would happen is if you made your $5 million movie with David Spade, it could very well set a trend. It could very well make $80 million and be huge. But they don't want to take the risk. They're so scared. Their balls are so scrunched up in a little, you know, they've got, and they're just so afraid and timid that they only want to do what they know is a slam dunk where they can make a lot of money because their lives are on the line.

It's such a precarious world now. Hollywood, it's not doing very well. They're in kind of a crisis stage right now because of streaming, because it's so competitive. It's really hard to make money. So they're not willing to take risks.

And this is a problem that's happening in America in all fields. The amount of risk takers now is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking because people are so afraid, see? And that in a way is also taking away our individuality, because if we don't take risks, if there's not enough space to take a risk, or someone isn't brave enough or willing or is able to make it happen, it's not always bravery. A lot of people, they just, it's not feasible based on their life, and it's okay if they can't take a risk. But you need those people, you know?

You do need those people. You need those people for things to change, to start a new curve. Yeah, that's really interesting, man, thinking about what you just said a second ago. I had a, a friend of mine is a publicist, and he was saying the other day, he's like, man, Hollywood's just, nobody's making a lot of things, you know, like last year, I think Sony pictures only made like twelve movies last year. Really?

Theo Von
You know, that's crazy. I think this year they're on slate to make like 20 or 25. A lot of that had to do with the strike, right? Oh, that's a good point, too. But to think that, like probably ten years ago, they probably made a hundred movies, you know, and if you can bring up any numbers on that, that'd be great.

If you see anything, let me know. But, yeah, he was that, well, one of the problems also, I think, with Hollywood is you have like, nepotism is alive and well in America overall. So I think you get, I don't know if this is true, but I feel like you get people that are just now, it's the children of people. It's their sons. The creativity, the guy moving from, you know, Dubuque, Iowa, with a great idea isn't coming here anymore and bring it because they're giving that job to somebody's kid, or it's all, and you start to lose creativity because the creativity isn't going to come there after a while because it doesn't, it's not nurtured.

Robert Greene
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, there is a possibility, there is some hope that it's so cheap to make a movie with your iPhone. Right. The means of making a movie could be you could go out there if you're some 20 year old kid and you have a really interesting, weird idea and you just go ahead and make it.

Theo Von
Oh, totally. You could create a trend. But the problem is a lot of people, a lot of people are afraid to even make that step. You know, they want to make the money first. You know, sometimes I tell people it's okay to do something for free.

Robert Greene
It's okay to take a job where you're getting paid very little, but if you learn a valuable skill, if you actually make something that gets a lot of attention, the money will come in. But a lot of people are so afraid of making that step. Right. So if you're, like, a young person, you have an idea for film, don't sit there and wait and try and get William Morris and get all the other crap online. It never happened.

You know, just go out and make it on your own for $10,000, and something could happen. Right, but so you're saying right there, then you can make a movie for $10,000, but you can't make, like, a. It's a different looking movie. Yeah, but you could get a lot of attention for it, and you could maybe start a trend, and you could create something so weird and stylistic that reflects you 100%. That other concept.

Yeah. That other people will now want to imitate. There just needs to be more of that. And the same thing's happening to the music industry as well right now. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. Well, I think music, it's an easier barrier to entry, probably because it is cheaper, maybe to create, you know, you need an instrument, you know? Cause then you have to pay editing, but maybe not really. These days, you can learn everything online.

Theo Von
I just wonder if we're. If we're less creative or more creative than ever, or maybe we're the same as we've always been. Well, being an old guy, I'd have to say less creative. But that's maybe just a misperception that comes with age, where you think everything was so much better back in the day, right? Sometimes I think that's possible, but I also think the imagination isn't used as much because there's so much why I can be like, okay, right now, could I think of something to entertain myself or to keep me busy or to see where my thoughts take me?

Or can I open up TikTok and just see something that's definitely gonna be entertaining. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so I think our imagination has started to, and I don't even know how you would measure that, but I think our imagination has started to become like the appendix or something, you know, in the body. We don't even know what it was for.

Robert Greene
Back in the day. George Carlin had a. Had a routine, you know? You know George Carlin? Oh, yeah.

About when he was a kid, he would just pick up a stick and he would play with it, and he would create all these amazing games with just a stick that he found on the road, he'd sit there and poke it and look at the animals. And then he would invent this, that, and the other. And he was, like, bemoaning how nobody can take a stick anymore and imagine something with it, you know? He had a much funnier way than I'm saying it right now, believe me. Trust me.

But the idea was that, you know, when you were a kid. I remember we created something when I was a kid. I was about eight years old, nine years old. It's called dirt village. And what it is, is we created a whole town in dirt on this hill near where my friend lived, and we created houses, et cetera, et cetera.

And then we had wars. We took all our army men, and then we would blast their city and destroy it. But they had created bridges, lakes, and all this stuff. It was, like, wonderful, you know, that kind of thing. Making your own world.

Theo Von
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think doing things like that was so interesting, doing, like, being creative. But one thing that always creates imagination in people is love. I feel like that's something that, like, you know, always, like, the risk of the siren in the distance, you know, always was the. That was a big factor for me, I think.

Robert Greene
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That always, like, sparked my imagination, whether I was writing a girl of poetry or making a collage, doing something, you know, trying to create romance or something. Or figuring out how to seduce her and how to strategize and where to take her and what would impress her and all that other stuff. Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I didn't even think.

Theo Von
I guess I didn't think of it. It's weird because you think of it. I guess seduction isn't just sexual, is it? Oh, okay. So, yeah.

Cause I would think about, like. Yeah, what could I go do that's nice with my girl? What would be. What would make her care about me? What would make me show her that I care about her?

I loved that stuff when I was young. Yeah, me, too. You know? Yeah. I mean, I think online porn has definitely degraded those skills.

It's ruined so much. I'm amazed that we allow it. I mean, you used to be like, if you wanted to meet, you were feeling lonely, you'd go to a party or a bar or something. You had took some guts. You had to, like, get outside of your house.

Robert Greene
You had to take the risk of somebody saying no, you know? And you were kind of afraid and timid. Yeah. You're kind of trembling, and then maybe you had a few beers and things went a little bit better. But it took, like, a skill that you had to develop a people skill.

But if everything is so quick and instant, you're afraid. So many young men are afraid of women. They get in their early twenties, they don't know how to approach them because they've never had to approach them. They've never had to deal with the fact that somebody could reject them, because. It'S just right there.

You don't have to deal with it. Never rejected. So then no interaction. So then this. Yeah, this weird feeling of weird fear.

Theo Von
I had a ton. I was definitely too much pornography. Too much. Oh, really? Yeah.

My twenties, dude. Bad news, dude. Jerking my. Yeah, just jerking my body off or just looking at porno. This is in the earlier days of porn.

This was. Yeah, 15 years ago, 13 years ago or whatever. Yeah. How much long ago was it? Yeah, it just was bad, man.

I would. Yeah, well, sometimes I would even set a date up, and then instead of going on the date, I would end up looking at some pornography and then just cancel the date.

Why am I gonna go on this? Because I think probably some of it was nerves. I didn't want to have to go. But then also, it was like you just found a loophole to make yourself feel sexually gratified, but the long term effects of that. Miserable, man.

Because then I started thinking anytime I was, like, engaging in sexual activity, I would think of it in almost, like, camera shots or something. You know what I'm saying? Like, it was all like. And I didn't even realize it, but it wasn't like, in a moment, it was just like I'd almost be just watching. Yeah.

Like, it wasn't. I wasn't in the moment, even the way I saw it. Right, right. Was I'd seen it so many times this way that I couldn't break the pattern. Wow, that's really scary.

Robert Greene
No idea. Yeah, it was tough, man. Ruined. Yeah. Ruined some relationship.

Theo Von
I'm not trying to be self pity. I'm just saying. Yeah, that I was a. Certainly not even a victim of it. I did it, you know?

And I wish that it hadn't have been there. Cause I do miss the days when I would just lay at home and just scream, like, where are all the chicks? You know, and just jerk off that way instead of at least, like, looking at the screen or whatever. And then their bodies could never measure up to what you saw. Yeah.

The lighting is never. It's all. It's never the light. It's never the same. So then next time a girl comes over to your place you have 700 watt bulbs in the ceiling.

She's like, what the hell's going on? But, dude, there was nothing. That's what drew you out into the world as a man. The fantasy. Even going to Europe or whatever.

What if I meet someone on the corner smoking a cigarette? Okay. I remember when I worked in this hotel in Paris. I was 21. It was the hotel where all of the models would stay.

Wow. Oh, my God. I would hide under a bed. It was like paradise, you know? I die in God of heaven.

Robert Greene
And there was this guy who kept showing up at the hotel. His name was Eduardo. He was this tall brazilian man. This is kind of where the art of seduction came from. I would watch this guy.

He was so smooth. He had every skill in the book. Wow. He was so relaxed that when women were around him, they just melted. Right?

And so I was thinking, what is this power that this guy has? Yeah, he was pretty good looking. He wasn't the most handsome person in the world, but he had some kind of skill that he had developed and, you know, he had crafted it coming to this hotel, partially, you know, because he had seduced so many of the models staying there. But I was saying, what is it about him? And I was kind of fascinated by him.

And I became friends with him briefly. And I realized it was his confidence, his calmness. There was nothing defensive about him. And the fact of him being so undefensive made him incredibly charming to women. What does undefensive mean?

He's not insecure. Yeah. He's not thinking about himself. He's not in the moment with a woman going, what do I need to say to impress her? He's not there at all.

He's like, so on them. On them inside their mind. So relaxed and not thinking about himself. That's what I mean. Eduardo.

Eduardo. Where is he now? God, probably with some chick. Probably. Well, he's.

Now he's going to be in his sixties or seventies. That ain't stopping him, dude. I'll tell you that. Maybe not. Maybe not.

Theo Von
Gosh. Yeah. I think seeing somebody be like, oh, I was always shocked when a guy was good with the girls. I was like, who is this wizard? Who is this damn wizard?

Robert Greene
Yeah. And there were people like that. They had something about them. And it wasn't just looks. No, dude.

Theo Von
Yeah. I mean, it was not. It's just a comfortability.

Sometimes there are moments I would get into that state where I would be fearless with women. Very rarely. But it's gotten better as I've gotten older. But yeah. When I was young, it was so hard just to, like, even look at a girl and talk at the same time.

I fucking. I don't even know. I feel like my legs were just gonna climb right into my butt. I just was so scared. Well, we've all been there.

Is that what propelled you out into Europe? Were you a ladies man growing up? I had a period. My twenties were a bit like that, yeah. And then I kind of grew out of it for whatever reason.

What do you mean, grew out of it? It got tiring. Oh, just chase and women kind of. Yeah. And it felt like.

Robert Greene
It felt like something, you know, like, it's okay when you're in your twenties. You're young, you look good, you've got energy, you got spiritual. You start getting into your thirties, you start getting into your forties, and it seems kind of pathetic. Yeah, it doesn't seem. That's how my.

Maybe if you're Mick Jagger, it's not pathetic. But for me, it's felt like it doesn't feel right anymore. But when I was in my twenties, I'm not saying I was. I wasn't on the level of Eduardo. No way, man.

But, you know, the interest was there. I was aspiring to be in his league, let's put it that way. And were you brave with women? Like, were you brave enough to go talk to them and stuff? Cause part of that is learning just the art.

Theo Von
Like, learning even being in the dance. Like, I never even put myself in the dance so many times. I'm like, dude, you gotta at least get on the. Get in the interaction moment, you know? Well, the key to me that I learned, and maybe it's just me, is that if you're really interested in her, if you're really excited by her, if it's not just about sex, but there's something about her that excites you, it'll bring something out of you that you didn't think was in you.

Robert Greene
It'll bring energy out of you. It will make you. They will feel that your excitement and your interest, they'll see that it's not mechanical, that's not just about sex, that you're genuinely interested in them. That will relax them, which in turn will relax you back and forth, back and forth. So if you choose somebody that you genuinely are, feel a connection to, and it's also sexual, it'll have this kind of reverberating effect where you will bring out your natural.

I remember sometimes I'd be funnier than I've ever been in my whole life. I'd be wittier, I'd be an actor. I'd be saying all kinds of weird things and, you know, they brought it out of me. But then other women know nothing at all like that. I'd be nervous it didn't happen.

But that kind of magic happens when it's like a real, a real connection. When there's purpose there. Yeah. Kind of like even what we were saying earlier about purpose showing up, how does it. That it shows up that there's something there, if you can navigate it, that a moment, there's something, there's some energy there that shows up that connects you to your purpose.

Yeah. It's very similar to the energy that shows up to connect you to a woman, in a way, I would say. Yeah. Or someone of the opposite sex. Yeah.

Theo Von
Did they outlaw. Sorry, the art of seduction in prison? I hope so.

Robert Greene
I wouldn't want that book in prison. I wouldn't feel very good about myself.

Theo Von
I meant to say I heard they outlawed the 48 laws of power in prison. Is that they might have outlawed artist deduction. I don't know.

Robert Greene
Yes, they did outlaw the 48 laws of power in a lot of prisons. Well, they picked the wrong book. Piggybacking on your joke earlier. Yeah. Why?

Theo Von
Why? They don't want people having power in there. Well. Robert Greens, 48 laws of power is second most banned book in prison. You know what the most, you know what the most banned book is?

Is it an obvious one or not? Oh, I know what it is. Hold on. I know exactly what it is, dude. You do?

Yes, I do, brother. I know exactly what it is. It is sasank redemption. No. No way.

Robert Greene
It's a recipe book about how to cook ramen. I kid you not. Prison ramen, the most commonly banned title. There you go. What?

There you go. Thank you. Why? The 48 laws of power is also one of them. The girl with the lower back tattoo, the art of war and cuba libre.

Yeah. Prison ramen. Don't ask me why. What is. Why is prison ramen?

Theo Von
Let's get the answer.

Why is your book banned in there? Well, because ostensibly it's because it's about manipulation and they're worried that people are going to use it in prison to manipulate other prisoners. But really, it's not really about that. Really. It's about prison is.

Robert Greene
And I have a lot of feedback from prisoners. I don't have a record. I've never been in prison, so I can say that. But I have a lot of sympathy for people in prison. I understand that if not for the grace of God.

I could be in that situation. There's a side of me, there's a slight criminal side to my psyche, I have to admit. So I understand that. And prison is about power. It's about making you feel.

It's about dividing the prisoners amongst themselves so they don't get together and see what's really going on. It's about controlling what they read, controlling what they see, controlling every aspect of their life, what they eat, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And it's a book about gaining some of that control back. And they're very much afraid of it. And I've had prisoners tell me about that.

Like, you know, the games that wardens play on prisoners and guards play are really powerful and really manipulative, very psychological. And they said that the book kind of helped them see through that. I have a woman who's in prison in Texas who. She had gotten the book from her, I think, husband or boyfriend, and I think she ended up committing a crime against him, something like that. But she realized how he was using the book against her, and the book opened up her mind, and she's in prison in Texas.

They will not let her see it. So she has a kind of memorized. She remembered the chapters, but they're afraid of somebody getting a hold of that and learning about how the system operates, how other people operate, what the guards are up to, et cetera, et cetera. Wow. I think it's about that more than anything else.

Theo Von
Did that make you feel pretty cool? Yeah, I feel kind of bad about it. It's kind of cool? Yeah. I don't know why, but it's kind of cool.

Cause it's like your banned here. Robert. Don't you come around here, buddy. There's something about that, you know? But what if I ended up in prison?

Robert Greene
They'd have to ban me because it's all in here. I could tell everybody all the laws, you know? That'd be a good movie. I love that. Huh?

Let's go to William Morrison's, pitch that. Sure. In ten years we'll get it made.

Theo Von
What were some books you read that helped shape your worldview or things you liked reading growing up? I was a big John Irving guy. World according to Garp, prayer for Ombini Hotel, New Hampshire. Some of my favorite books. Confederacy of dunces.

That's a great book, dude. That's a great book, isn't it? Yeah, that's a very wicked book, Robert. O'toole, I think something. O'toole?

Robert Greene
Yeah. What did you like? Well, I was into some heavy stuff, but I also really liked Vonnegut kind of stuff. Well, like philosophy, like Nietzsche, like Machiavelli. But I was also very much into Carlos Castaneda.

You don't know Carlos Castaneda, but write. Him down so we can get one of his books. Well, Carlos Castaneda was really big in the sixties and seventies, kind of the hippie generation, and he writes a lot about peyote, et cetera. His book Journey to Ixitlan, that one on the second from the top, that had a big influence on me. Okay.

Carlos Castrene was a professor of anthropology at UCLA, and some people think he made it up. But he went to Mexico, and he met a kind of a courandero, a kind of a witch doctor type person named Don Juan who had magical powers but who ate a lot of peyote and took all of these journeys, and he taught him about the world. And I swear to God, that book had so much impact on me that a lot of the things in the 48 laws of power actually come from that book. Wow. There are ideas in there that are so amazing and practical and wonderful for a 16 year old.

It was one of the most wonderful books I have ever read. I really, really love that. And that's where, you know, like, a separate reality. They're all great. Yeah.

Theo Von
Wow. That's cool. No, I want to order that. Will you make sure to order that, too, Zachary. And you know who else?

Robert Greene
I also a writer named Herman Hess, german writer who wrote books like Siddhartha and Damien, which were really quite radical. I like things that were a little subversive and radical and weird, like clockwork. Orange, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Anthony Burgess, he was a great writer.

Sure. Yeah. That was always one of the crazier things that, like, when you were a kid, only, like, the weird kids knew about clockwork orange when I was growing up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the jocks and stuff, they didn't know about it.

Theo Von
No, but like, the weirdo kids who would sometimes take a little sip of gasoline knew about it. Just sips of gasoline. Not a lot. Wow. Think of the damage that did to you.

Robert Greene
Yeah. I can't even think about it. I think it killed off the cells. I would have used to think about it. Well, when I was in college, there's this Englishman.

This is when we were doing a lot of drugs, and he started telling us about something he did when he was a kid called Lady Esquire shoe Polish. And basically, you would take this shoe polish and you would put it in a rag, then you would sniff it and your brain would go crazy for like a minute. And then you felt deathly sick. But for that minute, you were like, whoa. And all you had to do was like, $1.25 shoe polish.

And he said, you know, he got us so excited that we went searching for it and we found a bottle of it in San Francisco. And we did and we sniffed it, and it was the most awful thing I've ever experienced in my life. It was like, way too intense. Like, everything was like. It was just awful.

It's the equivalent of gasoline. Yeah, there you go. That's your gasoline. We used to do everything, like, we heard about, like, cooking banana peels. There were always rumors that would go through town of things you could do to get high.

Nutmeg. Oh, we smoked everything in my buddy Jeff's kitchen. We. I remember one time we had, oh, one time I took a bag of mushrooms to a party and people had never taken them there, and so gave them to everybody. And then I was like, we're gonna play hide and go seek, right?

Theo Von
You guys go hide. And I'm an account, right? I'm account to like 700. And they all went and hid and I never went and found them. And then I went home.

Can you imagine that? Did they know you were giving them psychedelic mushrooms? Dude, fuck em. That's how I felt about it. That's a pretty good trick.

Basically. Like, Chris, they're probably still waiting for you. Some guy in a closet still wondering where you are. There was things like that I loved. Like, I remember we went camping one time with a Boy scouts or something, and I told everybody the day we left that Jay Leno had died, right?

So all weekend, everybody, this is for the Internet. Everybody's like, God, you hear people talking about it. So I would just lay in my tent and I would hear dads telling each other, you know, you hear that Jay Leno passed away. And I would be howling in there, like, laughing at a let. Like it was coming out of the, like, the core of the earth through me.

There was always. I loved that element of creating a scenario that nobody knows if it was real or not. You can't do that anymore, though, right? Because the Internet killed everything. It did.

You can't lie. You should be able to tell a woman you were a lawyer and she's like, you're eleven. And I'll be like, I object. Don't be such a bitch, man. I'm trying to meet a cool chick.

Robert Greene
You're right. It did ruin everything. Can't lie anymore. Um, your new book, siren. Is that what it's called?

Theo Von
I've heard you talk about a couple times. Siren. Sirens? No. What's that about?

I don't know. I thought it was a new book that you were working on. There was one, like. About police sirens or. No, about, like, the woman in the distance.

Robert Greene
No, that's. That's in the art of seduction. Okay. That's in the art of seduction. You talking about sirens?

Theo Von
There was some new book I heard you talking about. Are you writing a book on the sublime? The sublime, sorry, that was it. It's an s word. It's close enough.

That's what happened to me. Yeah, yeah. It's in the 50th law that I book I did with 50 cent. The last chapter is about confronting your mortality, because 50, you know, he nearly died. He got shot nine times, close range, and he had, like, a near death experience.

Robert Greene
So the last chapter, sort of about. I call it the sublime. And then in my last book, the laws of human nature. The last book. The last chapter is about confronting your mortality.

And when you do that, all the amazing little things that will happen to your brain and your mind and how it will make life seem that much more intense. That was also what I called the sublime. And then about three months after I wrote that chapter, I came this close to dying myself with a stroke, which you can see the results of. Oh, wow. So that's why you have this?

Theo Von
Some physical illness? Yeah, I had a stroke. Damn, dude. So, you know, I was driving here in LA, and my wife is in the car, and she basically saved my life. Could you feel it as it came on?

Robert Greene
Yeah.

I didn't recognize it. I was like, something weird's going on. And she noticed it right away. Like a whole side of my face was, like, elongated and weird and wrong. She knew right away.

She forced me to pull over and I'm going, what? What? What? And then I started to get out of the car and she came around and I don't remember anything else. Wow.

So, you know, there were some sounds that were a little bit weird. And I was kind of acting like nothing was going on, like it was all just a joke. But deep down, I knew something was. Was very, very wrong. Dang.

Theo Von
Anyway, so that was almost a near death experience thing. Kind of very, very close, you know, because if I'd been alone, which I often have, and it happened, it's just luck that she was with me even if I was driving, because most of the time I'd be alone. I'd be dead right now, or I'd have such bad brain damage it wouldn't be worth living. So I'm very lucky. But it was like I had written about it and now I lived it.

Robert Greene
And so the sublime is about experiences, a lot of them related to some of those drug experiences that make you realize that there is another level, another almost dimension to life itself that you're not aware of. So your mind can either shrink and it'll shrink with your phone to the confines of your stupid little phone and what people are eating for breakfast, where they're taking their vacations, etcetera. It gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Your circle of thinking gets narrower and narrower and narrower. Or it can expand and it can expand further and further.

Books can do it, drugs can do it. I'm trying to make this book something that will do, that will make you think about what it means to be in a universe where we're alive. A chapter about your childhood and how sublime your childhood was, about the human brain and how weird it is about animals and our connection to animals, about love and how love can be a sublime experience, about a relationship to the past and history. I'm doing a chapter now about what I call the demon, which is a sense of, like, there's a second self inside of you that's kind of guiding you, has to do with what we're talking about. Purpose is to get you out of the small thinking and get you into thinking that there's something very weird about being alive in the world and being a human being who's conscious.

So that's the book that I'm writing. Wow, that's fascinating. Do you think God put consciousness in us? Do you think we're just an anomaly?

Well, we now know that animals have consciousness, that animals think. So we're kind of knocked off our high hopes. How long have we known? Huh? How long have we known that?

Well, you can't know for sure because we can't get inside of them. But people who study this very seriously, who have studied what is consciousness, who study neuroscience, who study animals very deeply, they're convinced that animals have consciousness, and they have incredible proof for it, and even, like, bees and spiders. So I have a chapter about animals in the new book. Spiders actually think spiders are amazing, the powers that they have. And then I knew it.

Octopus, octopuses, water spiders are the most amazing animal on the planet. So this guy wrote a book called Alien? No, it's an anthology called Aliens. It's all about alien life and one of the chapters in there is by a neuroscientist, a really good, amazing neuroscientist named Anil Seth, an Englishman. He wrote a chapter on octopuses and he said if there's an alien consciousness that's different from ours in the universe, it could be like the octopuses.

Because octopuses have thinking, have brain neurons in their arms. They have like twelve different centers of consciousness. So they're thinking with their whole body. So animals are conscious. And what's interesting, we only have five senses.

Theo Von
That's not that many. Yeah, there are other senses out there that we don't have. Like snakes can pick up the heat. They have a sense of heat. There's a name for it where they could pick up the heat from a mammal in the area to attack and eat it.

Robert Greene
Birds have a sense of electromagnetic waves in the environment to navigate by. There are other senses like that. Spiders have a sense where they can pick up rhythms, where elephants have senses in their feet that pick up the vibrations from the ground. So I'm blowing your mind. There's just a lot out there.

Yeah. So there's a lot that's, we're not so special as we might think. Right. And it is amazing to marvel at ourselves in positive ways. In fact, we should do it more.

Theo Von
You know, I'm sometimes amazed how few times I look up at the sky or up at the gods, the universe that created me and even just let it see my face. Like, the universe created me and here I am all the time, just down here, like, just to go out there and be like, thank you, you know, or here I am, you know what? You know? Or even ask the universe for information. Like, it's like, here's the frickin universe and I'm down here trying to read a book, dude.

But you got, you know, I don't know if that works or anything, but it's like if I look up like this, I feel like something's, I feel a little different. Well, you can do that tonight. Yeah, I'll get out there tonight, Robert. Okay. So many thought provoking.

I want to say that's who you are. Oh, thank you. And I think that's one of the most unique things that somebody can be. And thank you for charting so much of it for us. Oh, thank you.

So we can go back through your thoughts and, um, and explore our own. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Robert Green.

Love to, uh, get to chat with you again sometime, dude. Or sit. Or if I come across any peyote, I'm not gonna say it out loud. Yeah, please. But I will come watch you do it.

Robert Greene
All right, well, um. Yeah, you want to. I'll do the peyote myself. You can watch me. Cool, dude.

Theo Von
I'll be right there with you, man. Okay. Yeah. When the next book comes out. Definitely would.

Robert Greene
Definitely, yeah, I would love to. The sublime. I want to know about it. If I get any neat ideas or things that I think are sublime, I'll send them your way. That would be great.

I'd love it. Not the jazz. It was kind of an insane thing to say to you. Robert Greene. Thank you so much, man.

Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, me too, bud. Now I'm just falling on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone oh, but when I reach reach that ground I'll. Share this piece of my life out.

Theo Von
I can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take a little.

E503 Robert Greene

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Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Understanding Purpose

3: Societal Influence and Individuality

4: Practical Steps to Mastery

5: Closing Thoughts

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