If you really want to give a character an obstacle to overcome, a need, I mean the base one is life and death. The following is a conversation with Matthew McConaughey, a legendary Oscar-winning actor and one of the most unique, charismatic, and inspiring humans and Texans who walked this earth.

He starred in films and shows loved by me and millions of others, including Interstellar, Dazed and Confused, Dallas Bias Club, Killer Joe, Mudd, True Detective, and soon a spin-off of Yellowstone. Off-screen, his words carry wisdom and power in his book called Green Lights and his new video course called Road Trip, where Matthew expands on the philosophy in his book and shows how to apply it to your life in order to find more happiness, success, and love.

This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Matthew McConaughey. Let's start with love. Your parents had a complicated love story. Divorced twice, married three times. What did you learn about love from your mom and dad and their love story?

That it's messy. That it takes work. That it's ugly. That no matter how ugly or messy it is, don't go to bed until you've come back together to either embrace or admit that you truly love each other, even if you hadn't solved what the hell you're bitching about. That love will win in the end, literally, three to two with my mom and dad.

Yeah. And that even in the two divorces and in the two times where they couldn't live with each other, they still loved each other. They just couldn't live with each other at that time for whatever reason they needed. And I don't know the details, but they needed their space, freedom or what, but they were never out of love with each other.

And that as a parent, if you just, when we're not sure what to do, and people give you a thousand books and advice, as a parent, if your kid knows you love them, you're in the black. That's the main thing. It won't work without that. And it can work and will usually can work with that.

They just know that fact. So it's not just love for each other. It's the love for the bigger family that ultimately helps you persist through the ups and downs. Well, I mean, I don't know how much, particularly my mom and dad were staying together at times, maybe when they didn't want to, because they had children.

I don't actually think they considered that. I think they were much less conscientious than say, I am today. I think my mom and dad were more like, they'll be fine. We love them. They'll be fine. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Right now, let's work it out between you and I is what I think my mom and dad were saying to each other or not.

They wanted and needed a relationship that was a tidal wave, rocky, right angles, tsunamis. And to this day in my life with Camille and I, which I don't, I like a river, has some swerves and some streams and some rapids, but I'm not looking for a tidal wave. My mom's like, what's all this, everything's so smooth stuff.

Come on, come on, come on, come on. So she challenges vitality, because that's what my mom needed to communicate. I don't think my dad needed it as much, the hard angles that their relationship drew. I don't think my dad needed it as much as my mom. But the clashes demonstrated the passion that underlies the love.

Yes. And I've always been asked, when I talk about my parents' love relationship, I tell the stories that are actually sometimes quite violent. There's some good stories there. They're beautiful. I think they're beautiful. Yeah, I think they're beautiful too. But I've had people go, wait a minute, that was unhealthy.

You can't... And I was like, no, that's, again, back to the beginning, love's messy. And what I love about those stories is that's where the love was actually. It was tested. And it could have broke and been over. Yeah. And it never was. Again, the love won. In the kitchen floor, the blood's drawn, knives are pulled.

Ketchup. Ketchup's all over. But we make love on the kitchen floor. I mean, come on, beautiful. So as romantic as it gets right there. What's a memory from childhood that helped set you on the trajectory of becoming the man you are today? Standing on the corner with Mr. Mayor, the principal of St.

Phillip School. I was in kindergarten. And I looked up and there was a cloud in the sky. And I said, "Mr. Mayor, is that cloud as big as the world?" And he paused for a minute and he goes, "Well, yes, it is, Matthew." Now in my seven-year-old mind, I went, "Okay, I can see the outlines of it.

And that must mean it is so far away, because if that's as big as the world..." I remember it took 15 hours just to drive from Longview to Florida last year. And I can't even see that far. So that cloud must be so far off that it's not worth me even considering space, dreams, any of that.

I was like, "Army, I'm looking down. I'm gonna put my head to the ground. I'm gonna look right in front of me and deal with what's in front of me." Because dealing with dreams and what's out there and not on this earth that gravity holds down, not worth considering.

You never make it. It's not even worth imagining. It's fairy dust. So I think I learned a lot of self-reliance from that. I think I got a work ethic from that. I think I got a, "Hey, focus on what's right in front of you. Do the deed. Take care of what's in front of you one at a time and slowly notch up your way, and hopefully there's some ascension to that." And it wasn't until quite years later, in some ways decades later, that I started to go, "Oh, I can project.

I can dream. Why?" Because literally the first time I got in a plane and in 30 seconds I was in a cloud, I'm like, "Whoa, we must be going a trillion miles an hour because we're already in that cloud that was as big as the world that I saw the edge of." And then I grew and learned enough to go, "Well, that's not true.

Planes don't go that fast." Oh, what Mr. Mayor said wasn't really true. That cloud is not as big as the world and it's not near as far away as I thought. But I'm glad he lied to me. What do you think about that, that tension of a way of living life between being a dreamer and a pragmatist?

Yeah. Which is a better way? Donnie holds the reciprocity of the two of them. I mean, I can't be present unless I got plans. I want to have the big picture in mind, but I got to go a day at a time. I like to write the headline or I think we need to have a North Star, something to look forward to.

But we all know that if we're staring at it, we're tripping on the way. If we're just, you know, the old, you read the Hallmark cards, which like irked me, you know, dream it, you can do it. I think that's a half-assed, horrible thing to tell somebody. And then on the other side, you have things like, you know, people say, "Hope means nothing." Well, yes, it does.

That's the dream. You just don't stop there. It's not a period after that word. Now, what do we do practically? And I think that constant tension, when that tension's a dance is when it's beautiful. There's an Osmond, but to see those as contradictions, I think is where we've just fallen short.

So, I don't, I, one on their own, if we silo the two, or if you silo the two, I guess the pragmatics the one to go with, because at least you'll get something done. But if you only silo the dream and don't do anything about it, that's, you're kind of living an illusion and kind of living in a virtual reality.

Yeah, it's tricky. Even the people you love can sometimes suffocate the dream, can make you believe that it's not possible. It feels like a lot of parents kind of want you to be safe, want you to be stable, want you to have a plan so that everything's gonna be okay.

And the dream feels like a threat to that. Yeah. How much of that though, I wonder, is proper initiation? Because if you throw in dreams out, I call it conservative, very liberal late. Let's learn to block and tackle. Let's learn that work ethic, those things, those pragmatics first. Learn the rules of the road, the rules of the game, the things that we can all kind of rely on.

This is how the world's supposed to work. Now, it doesn't always work that way. You teach a child to drive. It's like, yeah, you stay in the lane, you go to speed limit, this is all helpful, but that doesn't guarantee that no one else is running the red light, but we learn that later.

There's an initiation, I think, that's proper. With the dream. I mean, I think parents, my parents were very much that way. The idea of going to chase an acting career or something was, what? That was a different vernacular. That was like not in our, I was taught to work your way up a company ladder and nine to five, do your job.

But the day I brought it up and said, I want to go to film school. And I thought my dad was going to go, you want to do what boy? He was like, gave me some of the best advice ever and told me not to half-ass it. And he said, go.

In between the lines, what he heard from me was that made him so happy as a father, I believe, and makes any parent happy is when our child doesn't ask us permission to go chase a dream. Oh, yeah. When they're going, I'm bringing it up to you with full respect, but I'm doing this with or without you.

That's when a parent goes, oh, yes. I've done something right enough. I helped my child be secure enough in the pragmatics to have a foundation enough where they have the courage to go, I'm flying the nest. To take the leap. You wrote after my dad died, I had a dream that left me with a statement, less impressed, more involved.

Yeah. What do those words mean to you? We got to be more than just happy to be here. I'm big on gratitude, but we got to be more than just thankful to be here. Dream it, you can do it. It's got to be more than just dream it, you can do it.

That's impressed. The dream is still other than. If I'm here and so impressed with talking to you today, if I have a reverence to an extent, I will not be able to be involved in this conversation. I'll be too impressed. I'll be anticipating, oh, what's that question he's going to ask?

Oh, I think I know where he's going with this. Oh, I think I know what answer he might love to hear. Oh, I'm not involved in conversation. I'm too impressed. So I'm removed from the present. For me, what that literally meant to me when that came to me in a dream, and I carved it in, I remember carved it in a tree.

It took a couple hours. I still know where that tree is, Santa Monica. It was, my father had moved on. He'd left this life. All of a sudden, it hit me. Oh, I don't have the safety net. My dad was above law and above religion to me. He had me.

If I really was in the shit, if I really needed him, I trusted that he had my back, above law, above anything. All of a sudden, he's gone. I go, okay. It hit me how much I'd been pretending to be the young man I was trying to be and not actually put my ass on the line and have enough courage to take risk and actually own up to the man that he was teaching me to be.

And I remember the world got flat. That cloud that Mr. Mayor, that I saw there was not way up there. It was fog in front of me now. And let's go into it. I'd say I probably gained even more respect for people and things, but I lost a certain amount of reverence that was keeping me from feeling like I deserved or I'd earned things or looking out for myself or holding myself to task.

And I remember all the things that I, and I was just getting, going into Hollywood at the time. So I was getting famous out there as one of those clouds, with being an actor and all of a sudden celebrity and becoming famous. The reverence I had, I remember it just, it lowered down to eye level and I was able to realize and go, that's not fairy dust.

And don't give it so much credit to make it fairy dust. Like, oh, not me. No, I could never. No, look that in the eye with full respect, but less reverence. And at the same time, equidistant, almost equal sublimation, I noticed where I had been condescending people and things and patronizing and sloughing things off as like less than me and not worthy of my time.

It raised up to eye level. And so they were all flat in front of me and the world was flat and I was able to, shoulders went back, my heart rose up, my chin lifted up. I looked things in the eye. I became probably less sentimental. Hopefully not to level that I got callous, but I know I became less sentimental.

I became more courageous because when you have someone pass in your life, or maybe it's similar to a situation you're going on in your own life, with your homeland, you sober up on these mendacities that we deal with every day. And this bullshit that we give too much credit or too much significance to.

And you're like, what am I doing? I'm not even gonna let myself emotionally get brought down or over-related by this situation. 'Cause it doesn't really matter in the big scheme. And so certain things that I found reverence for and hesitated from in my life, I was now engaging with because I was like, oh, it's live.

This life is live. Let's look it in the eye and go forward through it and deal with the consequences. What do you make of death? Does it scare you? I'm not looking forward to it, but it does not scare me. Do you think about it? Do you visualize it?

I do. I do. And it's a beautiful visualization and a beautiful dream when I go as part of the food chain. It's not a good visualization when I go as part of a random act of violence in a fricking drive-by or something. Because the second, the accident, it breaks a story that I believe has already been written.

At least I don't have the capacity yet to put it into a story, a divine story of the lives that we live. And so there's something ugly and gross about it. And it happens all the time to people all the time. I just feel like when it's part of the food chain, when I go as part of the food chain, I'm like, ah, that's poetry.

Part of the flow of nature, you return to nature. Yeah, there's grace and poetry in that. Do you miss your father? Think about him. Mm-hmm. When I think about him, I do. Now, when do I think about him? I thought about him yesterday, working through a script I'm working on right now, working on scene work.

And I just had that quick little reaction of wanting to show him, "Hey, check this out." I tried not to. And then I don't get sad. I go, "He would have loved this." Whereas my mom wants to be on the stage, my dad would have been on the front row.

He's more fun to show stuff to. Yeah, and he would have... He was a character. He knew characters. I've based parts of all kinds of characters I've played and the man that I am on people that he introduced me to and who he was. He would have loved the creative process of working on a script or talking about, "Hey, movie." That's why I always say I love the movie Mud, because it's the one that I visualized and seen my dad come to me so many times as a 12-year-old and put his arm around me and go, "Hey, little buddy, you've seen this movie called Mud?

God damn it, it's a good one. Let's go watch it." That. Now, my dad never got to see me start a career in film, but he was alive five days into the... He overlapped the first five days of me working on my first film, Days Confused. Now, that I think there's something beautiful about that.

He didn't ever, ever come to the set. We didn't talk about it, but he was alive for me to start something that was more than a fad, that was something that would become something that I love to do. And I do miss... Not him... And then I go out of that, do I...

We talked about him two nights ago with our daughter. I was rubbing my daughter's feet, and my mom, who's living with us, 91, comes in and goes, "Oh, look at you, just like your pop." And he's like, "What?" And he goes, "Oh," 'cause my dad loved to rub somebody's feet, rub my mom's feet, rubbed all of me and my brother's girlfriend's feet.

When we would have a date, they would come over early because they knew they were gonna get a foot rub from Jim McConaughey. And then we'd come out, me and my two older brothers on... This has been on for decades. We'd come out of the shower ready to go, buttoned up, and they looked at me like, "We ain't going anywhere right now." And so we told the story to my daughter, and I was like, "Oh, yeah, my dad's...

His hands, I miss his hands. His hands could heal." So you carry him in you? I hope so. I hope so. And it's a challenge for me, and I suppose it's like this for any son. How much do we hang on to, and how much do we let go and evolve and update the OS and try maybe better or different?

It's that there's certain things that I know that I fully believe in. It's like when do we... Religious, when do we cast away our father? When do we say, "No, I'm going after the dream. I'm not asking your permission." I question that from time to time for myself, and it almost feels blasphemic if that's a word sometimes.

I feel like, "You can't... What are you doing? You can't check that," and go like, "Well, no, I'm not sure if I want to." And then I immediately kind of let myself off because I believe where he is, he's going, "Go, buddy. You're free, man. I'm not gonna hold you back if you misread that or I didn't teach you that as well as maybe I wish I could have.

Go, you're free. You're not gonna lose. Trust that you're not gonna lose. It's in your DNA. It's in your lineage, young man." Still, it's scary to not have a safety net. Losing your father is scary in that way. You realize this world is just you. In some deep fundamental way, it's just you.

Yeah. You're alone. Yes. But also not having that. It's such a gift of deliverance, though, as well. Because it's an awesome feeling to know we're alone, to know we don't have that, to know you don't have take two or take three, that it's one take. I mean, the peripheral vision improves.

The link and understanding with our past improves. Because I know for me, I was not ever considerate of my past at all because my dad had that. If I needed it, he was my well for that. He's gone. I said, "He had the," literally, "had," they have our back.

Well, then when they no longer have our back, all of a sudden, I'm going, "Oh, well, maybe I need to look back and start giving some credit to how I got here, what I'm doing, and where I'm heading." It gave me the first time courage to even look over my shoulder.

Because again, I didn't have to because I don't have to look. Dad's got my back. No, dad's gone from this life. He doesn't have your back. Okay. I don't know. Me, because it's inevitable, I very quickly go to, "All right, in the pain, the loss, and yes, even loneliness, which is different from being alone, and loss." Pretty immediately, part and parcel with the pain, I felt it.

In the pain, you saw the gift, the red light of losing your father. Pretty immediately, less impressed, more involved. That came like a couple weeks after moving on. Is there a trick to that, to see the gift in the pain? That's a good question. Is there a trick to it?

Not that I know of. I mean, I don't, I have to catch myself from trying to intellectualize my way into the reasoning and not skip over real feelings and discomfort. I mean, I did get that from my mom, and I have to watch it, that so resilient that we just dust ourself off and get up and go.

You want to sit in the feeling. You want to feel it. You really deeply feel the pain. I want to deeply feel it. I want to look in the eye and deeply feel it, but I don't want to wallow in it. Yeah. Now, I was raised where you skip the deeply feel and let's go.

I've said it before, but that will lead to having turned into a person who is a repeat offender of the same crimes because you just get up and you don't have a winter in your life. You know what I mean? There's no introspective time. You don't look over your shoulder into the past.

You just get up and you're like, "All right, I've stepped in the same pile of whatever a hundred times, and I'm fine. I'll do it a hundred first. It doesn't hurt. Hell, it's good luck." Well, hang on a minute. Maybe we want to stop and go, "What can I learn from that?" But I don't know of a trick.

I think if there's any trick, I would say, how quickly can we admit the inevitable? That's what I talk about in the book of Agatha. Once you know it's inevitable, how do we get relative? Not skip it, not throw it to the side, not deny it, which I'd love to talk about that here sometimes too, but the value of denial sometimes.

The value of denial. Yeah. But how quickly do we, once something's inevitable, go, "Okay, any mind and heart time I'm spending about going, 'No, I can't believe that happened. No, did that really happen?' Any time we spend trying to deny what has already happened, that seems to me to be, I'm not sure the value of that time." So if there's any trick, I would say, once you know something's inevitable, even though how painful it is or how awesome it is, start getting relative with that.

And in the relativity is seeing, there's a gift here. And if I realize that gift, I'm honoring. Now I'm onto building up the beautiful passage of my father leaving this life. Now I'm on the march to go, "Yes, let's let the legacy, let this become omnipresent. Let him live through me.

Let me become more him." It's transformed. Yeah. So what value is there then to denial? Any? Oh, I think there's value to denial if you really commit to it. I get this from my mother. Yeah. So it's a very pragmatic value. Commit to the denial. Okay. And my mom does it to an extent that I'm like, "Mom, do you have any consideration for context of situations?" And she does.

This is the thing, every time I go, she's not a shallow woman. But if it is something, if something happens in her life that is keeping her from going where she wants to go or having a joy in her life that she does, she'll straight ass deny it happened.

Didn't happen. No, it didn't. "Mom, we're right here. I heard you, what you said." "No, I didn't. You heard something else." "Mom." Now, does she get some amnesty on that? She's 91. Hell, yes, she gets some amnesty on that. But she's not... Yeah, does she repeat offend? Yeah, but it's misdemeanors.

You know what I mean? It's like we all... It's part of that thing when you got a family member and you're like, "Yep, that's just what they do. Just go with it." It's ingenious in a way. It's a tool. She does. I think it is more of a trick with her, but she wouldn't...

So ingrained in her, it's not a trick. It's just, "Do it. Done." Another reason I bring this up, it's outside of just my mother, is I did this road trip course in this Art of Living event a few weeks ago. Out of the hundreds of thousands of chats that came in and responses that came in afterward, it seemed to me that about 80% of people's challenges and problems even in their life were something in the past that they were hung up on, that they could not seem to get past, and it was holding them from going where they wanted to in their future.

And so I thought that was revealing. I would have thought that was, I don't know, going in 40%. It seemed to be 80%. Yeah. And then I thought about, "Okay, if you're here in the live show and you wanna get the course, you're into some sort of therapy or education or development or self-help or whatever.

Okay." And I have a lot of friends and I know a lot of people that are in weekly and daily therapy. And then I know there's a lot of people that are on prescriptions, drugs. And while a therapy and the right prescription to the right person for the right diagnosis is necessary, I'm questioning, "Is there a value to going, if you're not getting past this today, this week, this month, this year, almost in a decade goes by and you're still hung up and you can't get rid of that thing in your memory where it's got you paralyzed and you're a victim of it, and you're doing the therapy and you're doing the work and you're taking a prescription if that's what you're taking, is there a value in going...

If it's holding you back from going where you wanna go, maybe you should just deny the fucking thing ever fucking happened. Kick it in the head, kick it off the curb. I'm done with you. I'm sick of you. I'm tired of hanging out with you. I'm tired of that thing, whatever it is, holding me back from going where I wanna go.

So if I can't wax the car and get past this thing, kick it. That's so powerful. So one thing to do like with the loss of your father is to try to transform it, to discover the gift in it, the gift in the pain. But if you can't, keep looking, keep looking, you can't find the gift in the pain, just deny it ever happened.

You could call that a trick, but I think it's more than a trick because let me say this, my mom, after my father died, went on and found a second love of her life. For 19 years, they were together, CJ Carlick. Love you, buddy. He's moved on now. Did she check with us a little bit?

Like, is this okay? She gave us a little lingering half a second look that we knew that maybe is what she was asking. And we came to her, it was like, yes, it's okay. And you know who else is saying it's okay? Who's dancing up there for you? Dad.

So was that her denying that the man she was divorced from twice and married to three times and had three children with had moved on? No. But she didn't say, "Well, what's the book on how long I'm supposed to stay single before I can be interested in other?" There's not a book on these things.

How do you feel? Is loving CJ mean you love dad less? No. Is finding a new life and a new dance partner in this life and CJ mean that dad wasn't your dance partner? That dad wasn't the love of your life? No. So I don't know. I mean, in there, maybe there's another word.

I think it's denial, but it's not really denial because it's not like it didn't happen. That's an earlier example I was giving my mom. She will absolutely go, "That light's not on." "Mom, the light's on." "That light's not on. If I say it's not on." Sometimes you're just like, "That makes no sense." You're just absolutely denying what just happened.

We even have it recorded and she'll go, "Well, the recording's lying." Yeah. I mean, that's part of a coping deal with her. But I mean, what I think is more important or more valuable is to talk about this. She didn't deny my dad dying. I didn't, but she sure as hell turned the page and said, "I can still start a whole new category, a new life, a new love.

Let my heart love and be loved by someone living in this life today that I'm still living in and that will not trespass on my love for my husband, your father, Jim McConaughey." And I think, I mean, we were just, thought that was beautiful. "Yes, mom, go. Talk about a green light, go." Now if we're hung up going, "Can't have one or the, can't have them both.

Gotta have one or the other." Now we start to make a contradiction of the two ideas again, which, darn, our contradictions get us in trouble all the time, man. That's life though, the contradictions, right? But isn't life, if we just admit the contradictions are so much, don't they become a paradox?

We just admit that that's part of it? Yeah. If contradictions are inevitable, they, hencely, they do become a paradox, don't they? Then we're in the honey hole. Then we're singing and dancing and have leniency with ourself while still holding ourself to task. And it's, I think it's holding on to know each contradiction, "Oh, here it is again." So it's a one-off.

It lives on its own, separate from the last one. No, it doesn't. They're connected. That's why they are a paradox. And then that's, I think that's a much, I think that's where life really is. In the paradox. Yes. In the dance of it. I think the metaphor of red, yellow, green lights is just so simple and so powerful.

You write about some green lights being engineered and some being mystical, which I love the difference of that. What's the difference of the engineered green lights and the mystical? Such a cool word, mystical. Yeah. Well, the engineered ones have reason and the mystical ones have rhyme. Yeah. Life's a mystery going forward, but it's a science looking back.

I've prepared, I've had ideas and written headlines and had goals and an athlete gets in shape for an event. I get in shape for a role. I read, I study, I work, I prepare and I go and I'm prepared and I behave and I do it. And I look at it and I go, "Yes, that's what I wanted to do." It's engineered, green light.

It's a conscious delayed gratification. It's that if I do it today, that pragmatic head down, believe there's no cloud out there, but then I trust that there is one out there. If I keep my head down and do it, I'll get that dream. We can engineer those, habit, work ethic, prep, expertise, education.

And the mystical ones though, don't make any sense. They're not supposed to make sense. They only make sense after, right when they happen, you backlog and you connect the dots with how they got there. That red light you ran into that made you 30 seconds later to get to the restaurant.

As you walked in, she walked out and you went, "Good morning." And she went, "Good morning." And two months later, you're dating, two years later, you're married. You're after that, you've got a family. And now you're sitting here 40 years later going, "I love you. Look at what we built." And you go back and go, "What if I wouldn't hit that red light?" Those 30 seconds made all the difference.

So strange that this life is this way. Yeah. And that's just rhyme. I mean, we can't really add that up. Yeah. It's a science when you look back, you see why it was that you were upset and ticked off that you had to pick up the kids' toys before you left and they were supposed to pick them up.

And therefore you were late for the thing that maybe you ran into and you ran into the person that was walking in the office. That's the guy that you did the interview. That's the guy you were looking for, the job you wanted. And you caught him because you were in the elevator with him.

And that 90 seconds on that elevator is what got you that job that led you doing what you want to do. I mean, the significance is there, but I think what we also got to watch is, again, in that balance, what do we chase? Because if we just chase the engineering, we miss magic.

If we just chase the mystical, we find ourself caught up in trying to give meaning to that Lego set that was on the floor that the kids didn't pick up. And what color was it? And why did I walk out that door and see, almost step on the Legos?

But if I had gone out the other door, I usually go out, if I would have gone there, I would have got there early and wouldn't have run into the boss. So you can start to give too much meaning on that as well. I think we can give significance in too many places and all of a sudden, I think we've all been there where you're seeing art in every single thing.

Man, that can be paralyzing. It's like, it's hard to leave a room if everything's significant, or if everything's a sign. How much of success in life do you think is engineered and how much is mystical? And how much is it different from person to person? 'Cause for me personally, maybe I enjoy it, maybe I'm genetically built that way, but I exist more in the mystical.

So I don't make plans. I traveled last summer in Ukraine with no plan. I just went there. No plan. I didn't know how I'm going to meet the president of the country. I didn't know anybody. And so there's no plan, there's no clear thing. You're just roaming around and that's how I've existed in life.

And there's something about giving yourself over to the flow of nature that I just enjoy. It makes life so much fun. It's awesome when you can do it. Did you engineer though, I'm going to put myself in the place when you got on the plane to go to the destination?

That was an engineered choice. Yes. With the intent of, and maybe I'll meet and I'll run into, and I can work up a sit down with. So the engineered choice was putting your shoes on, proverbially. I always say this, the hardest part about going to the gym is putting your shoes on.

So getting on the plane, that was an engineered thought with the goal in mind, but I don't know how I'm going to do it. The choice. Yeah. Putting the shoes on. Yeah. But there's not a clear, it's a fog what happens after the shoes go on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just going to take that leap. So I wonder how much, for people who are successful in this world and finding what makes them truly happy and fulfilled, how much of it is engineered, how much is mystical? How much was it for you? Well, I'll say this, like when I went to write the book Greenlights, which is basically the last 40 years of my life, I thought that 85, 90% of my successes were going to be obviously engineered, where I could see the signs, saw the habits, here's what I did.

Yep, that add up, got the solution, got the conclusion. I was very surprised when I noticed that it was probably less than 50% and that most of the real successes of my life were when I trusted, when I trusted that I didn't have to define it, that I only trusted that I didn't have to go, "Well, what's the measurement?

What's the score? This leads to what? What's next?" For me, that's still a challenge for me daily now is to trust and not be, 'cause I can be, I think I can be overly practical and I think I can overcompensate and miss out on magic because I'm still going, "Wait, but are we giving enough measure and credit to actuality?

Am I giving enough credit to these are the steps to take and this is reality?" I think I'm reminded when I trust, 'cause going with the mystic, just to put yourself on the plane with the engineer, but getting there, and as you say, you roll in that mystical, it takes a lot of trust.

- Yeah. Trust in the inevitable. - Aim in on that. - But not knowing where it actually ends you up. It's a feeling more than, I don't think it's a clear vision. - Right. - It's kind of like a feeling that guides you towards a place without a clear name, without clear characteristics.

It's just kind of pulls you there. - Where do you get that courage and trust to go with your gut, your feeling? And is there, for instance, three days later you sit down, is there, if you didn't, if that doesn't happen, is there a sense a week, two weeks later, now when you come back to America, that like, "Ah, I failed?" - Sort of looking back to try to analyze what went right, what went wrong, that kind of thing.

Yeah, that engine is always there, but I think what pulls me forward in life, what makes me really grateful and fulfilled is noticing the thing you mentioned, noticing the magic and kind of going towards it. Sort of just sitting back, both in tragedy and in triumph. So in war, there's a lot of tragedy, but there's somehow, one of the things you see in war, and this is the first war I've experienced and seen, seen the front, is the loss, the people lose their homes and all this kind of stuff.

The thing that rises from that is the love for each other. So the people I've spoken with, don't give a damn about the home, don't give a damn about on farms and the animals they lost, don't give a damn about having to move and all this kind of stuff, as long as the family's still there, as long as the people they love are still there.

And there's this melancholy smile they have on their face. Like, yeah, this world is full of bullshit, it's full of tragedy, but life is fucking awesome. And you just notice that in little ways everywhere. You just sit back and notice the magic. And I want more of that. And just kind of follow along like a little ant.

Keep noticing that kind of thing. But I don't know, I hope, what I think it is, is other people notice that you're the kind of person that notices it. And they're like, I want to hang out with that person. He seems all right. He seems one of the good ones.

One of the good ants. Do you have any certain non-negotiable structure before that freedom to go with the feeling? I think so. There's a set of principles of just basically integrity of being good to other people. Like, whatever that means for me. There's specific things. Like, I'm really into loyalty above the law.

There's a circle of friends I have, and that means everything. There's just a basic deep kindness towards others. Empathy. Empathy towards people that others might label as even evil. I have that kind of empathy. I believe all of us have the capacity to do good and evil. So I just kind of see everybody as little babies that grew up in different conditions.

Some do evil, some do good. And there's all kinds of other principles. I love the dynamic between the different humans and their full diversity. I love the dynamic between the masculine and the feminine. I enjoy it. I dig the dance of it. Yeah. So you have a constitution with which you embark?

You do too. You're chasing. Yes, I hope so. And for me, I'd like to, it's inspiring to hear someone like yourself go, "I go and I just land and I just go, I'm gonna feel it." I can go back and go, "Yeah, my greatest truths I've crossed, my greatest successes in my life were when I trusted that." And go, "I took a one-way ticket." Amazon, Africa.

Yeah. And those were spiritual and very pragmatic because they led to succeeding in other ways that are more pragmatic 100% and gave much more meaning to those things. But to be able to go out and say that's how you... Do you have family? I really wanna get married and have kids, but I'm not married and don't have kids yet.

Okay. So actually, one of the nice things about that is you can take bigger risks. Yes. So while I'm not married and don't have kids, I feel I owe it to myself to take, just to go, go to the Amazon. Yes. Throw that backpack on and a one-way ticket.

Yeah. That does get harder to do. I miss that sometimes. The whim, a song that comes on, you know. Yeah. "Where's that guy from?" Yeah. "Oh, they're from the place that I wanna go, that I dream about. I'll go there. One-way ticket. What do I gotta do? Oh, get a couple shots.

Okay, go." That was fun. Gotta do this. It's get up and go, you're free to go. Yeah. And go, "When are you back?" "When I get there?" Yeah. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Maybe never. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. "You'll be coming to visit me." "In this new place, maybe." Yeah.

How did the Amazon, how did the trip there change you? What do you remember of it? Such a magical place. I stripped a lot of my past, symbols and talismans while I was there. I remember getting there and just having so much adrenaline on the anticipation, anticipation of getting to the Amazon.

In the first 10 days, I wasn't really enjoying the trip, I was just charging to get to the destination, to get to the banks of the river that I had a dream about. And then it just humbled me. I got so fatigued on night, whatever, 12, and was so sick and tired, I was just whatever, 12, and was so sick and tired of the internal dialogue I was having with myself.

I was not enjoying my company. That I purged, and I remember, and stripped off identity markers that I'd sort of been hanging on to for everything from what it means to be an American, my dad's ring, M from McConaughey, a meltdown of my mom and dad's class rings from University of Kentucky were gold from her teeth, and his class ring melted down.

Taking that off was really hard to go, "Am I casting out my father?" I wasn't casting him out, I was just removing to say, "I don't have to rely on that being all of my identity." So to pull that off, to strip down and just to where I was just a mammal.

That next morning, I was light, I got present. I remember writing something down, it was like, "All that I want is what I can see, and what I can see is in front of me." That sense of not, I wasn't leaning around, looking around every corner to get there.

And as soon as that hit me, you talk about mystical successes and realities and truth, as soon as that hit me, and for the first time in 12 days, I didn't care about getting there or what was around the corner, guess what was around the next damn corner? The Amazon.

I mean, not around a few corners, the next corner, there it was. And that was just like a touche. You know, those times when the prime mover, the universe, God, what we want to name or believe in says, "Ding, there you go." And that form of detachment from holding on for dear life to things in past, so hard that you're not letting the beauty that's right in front of you to feel correctly and follow our intuitions, to have those, not cast them out, I didn't burn them, I didn't get rid of those things, I just took them off and had to recognize you're still here, you are you, you're much more, that is a talisman, that's a symbol, that means something to you, and that's good, don't cast out the meaning.

But it's not like when the ring's off and the hat's off and the crucifix is off your neck that you're like, "You're gonna die." And I know, those are reminders. Hang on to what they mean for you as we go forward, but as we go forward, quit worrying about so much about, again, I was looking at the proverbial dream, the cloud, so much that I was tripping over myself to get there.

And like clockwork, just amazing grace, boom, as soon as it hit me, and I was like, "Oh, that's it, all I want is what I can see and all I can see is in front of me." Literally looking down at the ground at what was a sea of 10,000 wild neon blue Amazonian butterflies on the ground, as soon as they fluttered up, my head came up with them.

Took a few more steps and there's the Amazon, that's what you came over here for. Oh, howdy. Those kind of, truth like that. Well, the Amazon's interesting too, because it really has no past or future, losing the moment 'cause how fast it churns, it just eats up life. If a thing dies, it just gets swallowed up.

Maybe because of the humidity, because of all that, because there's so many living creatures that eat each other, live on each other, so it really exists in the moment. And all this kind of diversity of life there, it's such an interesting place. Talk about food chain. Yeah, you're just part of it there.

We humans somehow escaped that food chain, but the roots are still there. I think we're a bit arrogant to think we've escaped. You think I'm being romantic in that notion? Well, sometimes when you're in a big city, when you're in Austin, Texas and LA, you can think like, "Oh, we're in a car, we're in a house, we're safe." But somehow nature's still a part of us.

Our roots are still a part of us. I think it is more than we realize, more than we give it credit for. I actually believe that it's a really arrogant notion to think that we are separate. Meaning people talk about pollution on a larger scale, the climate, what have you.

I think Earth's gonna be just fine. We may not be here for it, but I think we have a bit of arrogance sometimes to think that we can trump Mother Nature. I think we have more of the natural law in us, and I sure hope so if I'm wrong.

Well, there's an interesting, I've recently been, there's a guy named Max Tegmark at MIT who really worries about nuclear war, and he was part of constructing a simulation of what happens when a nuclear war happens. It's interesting to see that some very large percentage of humans on Earth starve to death, because they don't die first from the explosion, they die from starvation.

Because basically dust covers the entire North America, and entirety of Europe, and so the crops all die, all the food sources all die, and people suffocate and starve to death. But the lesson you learn from that over a period of a few months, even though most of the human population of Earth dies, Earth finds a way, life finds a way.

- To adapt. - Yeah, to adapt. And it's gonna be just fine. - Yeah. - In terms of the big living ecosystem that is life on Earth. And yeah, it's humbling to think about, well, maybe we're just a stepping stone. Same thing with, we've talked offline about artificial intelligence, maybe humans are just a stepping stone to the development of these other super intelligent entities.

- Yeah. Yeah. And is it unconsciously in our nature that that's just part of the evolution and adaptation of our species? Because we're gonna, we were talking about earlier, what AI becomes is completely 100% based on who we are. And we get to see it for some time, a mirror to ourselves.

- Okay, this is what human civilization is like. These AI systems, large language models are trained on human communication, and you get to ask it questions, and you get to have conversations with it. You get to realize, wow, this is what the collective intelligence of the human species, our collective wisdom and knowledge, is what it looks like.

All the bias, the hate, the paradoxes, all of that is in there. - Yeah. - The contradictions. You can even convince those models, you can tell them they're lying, and they're gonna start changing their mind. It's interesting to play with them. It's also interesting to consider that maybe they become smarter than us and become almost life forms that live among us, and maybe one day we merge with them.

There's all kinds of possible trajectories that we take here. - How much of that excites you? How much of it scares you? - Is it possible to exist in a place where it is both exciting and scary, but to exist in that dance? Mostly I'm really excited because I see human beings as deeply lonely.

There's a deep loneliness in all of us. That's how we seek connection. That's why we seek connection with others. That's why love is so beautiful when we find other people we're connected with. I just think AI can add to that. It can add friends that you can have great conversations with.

And then some of those friends would be AI systems. They'll call you out on your bullshit in the most fascinating and interesting of ways, and challenge you and help you explore ideas together. So I'm excited by that. - Is that different? And if so, how from the internet and Facebooks and these groups and communities that were, I think it's fair to say, set out to say this all access of information and people will help us find more common denominators than divisive ones.

Do you see it as similar? - Yeah, it's similar but further into that direction. I think the internet has done an amazing thing in connecting us and expanding our minds and helping us find community that feels like our community and then the communities that are totally different and you learn from them.

I mean, Wikipedia alone, one of my favorite websites, just opens your mind to all kinds of cool stuff. - Yeah, it does. - And- - Not the Dewey Decimal System anymore. - No. And so I think AI just makes that even easier because Wikipedia, you have to read and you have to do a lot of work.

With an AI system, like a large language model, you can just shoot the shit. It's more like drinking a beer versus like doing homework. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's already happening. What do you think about that becoming the new family to where you said, "Mary, you don't have kids.

Could you see a future for yourself where you have a relationship with AI and that is your family?" - That's the main, that's the primary, even romantic relationship. - Yeah. - I can see it. That one worries me. I like to keep it at friends. - Right. (laughing) - I think I'm not ready to commit to the romantic.

(laughing) I wonder how much, now that takes us back to the Amazon in nature, how much we still need the human touch and whatever magic there is between two humans, which takes the leap into the romantic versus just the intimacy of a good friendship. I don't know. - So, correct me if I'm wrong, you see AI as having a deep and meaningful friendship.

- Yes. - And hopefully it will be a friend that will help you evolve and be able to love even more and be loved. And you can take that into humanity and find another homo sapien. - Yes. - To go, "Yes." And thank you, AI, my great friend, for opening me up to this beauty that I have myself and I can see in you, my fellow human.

And let's come together and biologically create family if we want to. And let's all remain friends with my friend and make your own friends with my friend's friends on AI. And let's have these great neighbor. It's a good friend, a great friend that's a neighbor. - Yeah. - Okay.

- Mentor and friend. Just like now there's AI systems that play chess far, far, far better than humans. And we humans still play chess with each other. Or chess is still a game that's fun for us humans. And then we use the AI systems to get better at chess, to learn, to train, to discover new ideas, but ultimately return to the chessboard between two humans.

But of course, this world is full of dangerous people. And so those same AI systems can be used to harm, to create false narratives, to do social engineering and manipulate the masses in terms of what they believe and all that kind of stuff. - That's scary. - Yeah. - Well, and I get it when we, and I have my own fear and distrust of AI is based on my own fear and distrust of myself and others.

There's something, it's very simple, but I think it's a really fun sort of way to just set up this reality. And it's kind of a duh, but it still needs to be said that AI is a prompt. It doesn't do anything unless we ask it. So what questions are we gonna ask is a question, is what we need to ask ourselves.

'Cause we're going to be looking in the mirror at our digital God that we create from ourselves. And just to know that that's that place where it's awesome and scary, exciting and scary. We go, "Oh, it's our creation, which is awesome." At the same time, "Oh shit." But it's prompted by our questions and gives us patterns from that which we give it.

- But that prompting, that's the art of life. Like we prompt each other in conversation, our loved ones. When you go about your day to day, the next word you say, the next word you say to me, the question I ask of you, that's prompting. - Yeah. - And it can change everything.

I can say so many things right now that will completely just, the set of possibilities where both of our lives can take given on the selection of words I use and you use is crazy. So it makes conversation fun. And the same thing with AI. Except the nice thing about AI is it's tireless.

- Tireless, right. Let me ask you this. If you can falsely condemn me right now, and I prove you falsely condemn me, I can forgive you and we can march forward stronger than before. - Yes. - And AI's tirelessness and retention, can it forgive? I mean, can it go, "Oh, oh, okay.

Yep. Sorry about that one. That was wrong." Can it amend? - Yes. Yeah. You could prompt it to ask for forgiveness, it'll forgive you. - Well, like when I talk it around with it, and you ask, "What should I be afraid of with you? Or what's the dooms toward you?" Its answer was always, "Well, it's up to you." Which it was awesome, right?

- Yeah. - There you go again, it's up to us. And it brought up, you know, maybe synonymous with your human values and ethics and responsibilities. But it doesn't deal, that I didn't find anyway, deal with defining or making choices on its own of what those are. - Yeah, I think some of that is manually, those are constraints put on by it, by the creators of those large language models, basically not letting the systems have an identity of their own.

And some of it is just not engineered in yet, but I believe that we'll have systems that have an identity, have a belief, have a set of opinions that carry through time. - And will we go to them, like certain states where we agree with the law and disagree with the law, or nations?

"I'm a member of this AI." "Oh, well, you're from this AI tribe. Y'all believe this." - Yeah, there'll be an anarchist set of AIs, there'll be the communists, there'll be the Nazis, there'll be the Democrats and the Republicans, there'll be the people who are on the keto diet, and the people that are on this other kind of diet, this other kind of lifestyle, just like we have now, there's little groups, and there'll be AI systems.

- They're gonna be supercharged. - Yeah, they'll be either the leaders or the foundation on which we build those groups, and the possibility of all the fun we can have is endless. Of course, the dangers always rise up there, because I mentioned the Nazis, I mentioned all the dangerous ideas.

The set of ideas that humans have come up with, a lot of them are awesome, most of them are awesome, I would say, but some of them are dangerous. The reason they're dangerous is because they become viral, there's something exciting in us about those ideas, but they also harm others a lot, 'cause that's who we are as humans, we're capable of envy and all the dark stuff, of hate and all this.

- Capable, yes. We also choose it. - Do you think most people are good? - Yes, but I also believe we got the good and evil in all of us, and it's which wolf we feed. - You ask people to draw a distinction, to describe where are you acting and where are you being.

What's the difference? What's the difference between being fake, if I may use that word, and being real? - Okay, yeah, and the word authentic gets thrown around a lot, and I don't mean, I used to feel this way, but Bob Dylan loosened me up on this idea a little bit.

(Rhett laughs) He was all about get to be your only one and only true self, that's it, everything else is fake. And then you hear Bob go, "Well, I mean, we are what we create ourselves to be, we are our own creations," which I'm like, "Ah, yes, yes, we are, thank you, Bob, Bobby." I'm all for bullshitters and bullshitting.

I'm not as big a fan of liars and lying. - What's the distinction? You're talking about the art form of bullshitting? - A liar's faking it, but not admitting to themselves that, "Yeah, it's a fucking creation, I'm faking it." A liar, I'm lying to your face right now, and I don't give you that hair of a wink out of my right eye that lets you know, "Hey, go with me here." I think there's value in the bullshitting.

Now, the lying becomes troublesome because one, I've duped you, and I didn't let you know, come on, I was just telling the story about catching the fish, the fish always gets bigger every year we tell a story, come on, go with it, all right? - Yeah. - But the lying, all of a sudden, I don't know my own.

I don't know when I'm emanating something, creating something, telling the truth, being authentic or lying, and I'm, shit, all of a sudden I'm leaving crumbs with myself, that constitution gets blurry. - Lying to yourself and to others. - Yeah, well, you start to lie, you lie to others enough, you start to lie to yourself, you don't even know it, and that, I believe, is dangerous territory.

That's why I'm trying to push this admit, because that goes, I'm trying to come in at a kindergarten level, because we immediately jump to, "Well, I'm gonna judge that." Boom, that's bad, that's wrong. No, no, no, no, no, no, hold back on that. Let's go back to base level, let's just admit that we all fucking do it.

Lies we tell others, lies we tell ourselves, lies we believe for convenience sake. I do it, I'm guilty of it, I try to catch myself on it, if I can just call it and go, "You know you're believing that lie out of convenience." I'm like, "I know." And then I have to, see if I'm saying that in the mirror or writing it down or sharing with a friend, you know?

And I go, "Okay, well, now I've inherently become a bullshitter then, because I admitted it." That I can shake hands with. That's the little slight wink to ourself and someone else goes, "Come on, it's a better story this way." In the course of a road trip, you start with step one, admit.

How do you do that? How do you kind of step back and... Do that inventory? Yeah. Is there a trick to that? Oh, if there's a trick to it, I think it's just about courage of having the... 'Cause it's... I don't think any of us like to admit our lies or look deep enough in to go, "I've relied so much on that lie that it's become my reality." Yeah.

And I don't wanna be so puritanical as to say... Again, that's why I say admit instead of judge, but I don't wanna be so puritanical as to go and admit it and get rid of it. No, I'm just saying admit it, just bring it to the surface. Yeah, I'm saying this and I'm doing something different.

I preached this, but I actually... Just admit it. Just admit them. And I think that's the first step to where we begin to either forgive ourself and give ourselves some amnesty and go, "Yeah, I'm a human. Trying to make it through life as best I can. I'm gonna let myself slide on that one." Okay?

And maybe I've been getting away with it for so long, whole family, my whole network works well on it, okay? Forget this get to the base of the truth of the matter, but just admit it. And then it will also help... It'll be easier to then expose to ourselves.

Which one do we go? No, I'm not letting myself slide on that one anymore. That is actually a lie I've been believing that's been keeping me from getting more of what I want in life. That's actually a lie I've been living that I haven't admitted that is not allowing me to enjoy life as much as I damn well should be, deserve to be, or I've earned to be, or just sort of let myself.

Excuse me, I had on... It's not all the hard stuff. Sometimes it can be a fun thing. I talk about how many times we major in our minors. Let's admit where we sit there and we go, "All right, I give myself 12 hour workday, but I noticed I'm spending eight on my hobbies and four on my career while I'm majoring in my minors." Well, let me admit that.

There's the math. Why don't we invert that? How about four hours on my hobbies and eight on my career? First off, just admitting it allows me to go, "Well, now I can do the math or rearrange the math by time of day." But look, I just found a hobby, tennis.

First hobby I've had in 25 years. I had to admit that I went to play tennis, started to love it for the first month. I started feeling guilty. I was like, "Is it okay to have this much fun? I'm having so much fun and I'm getting a great workout." I just admit, I was like, "Yes, it's okay.

Congratulations, buddy. You found something that you're finding quite pleasurable for straight pleasure. You don't have to forget all this other stuff about, 'Yeah, but I'm also getting a workout.'" "Well, yeah, you're getting that too, but you don't have to excuse the pleasure based on, 'Oh, but it's good for you.'" No, damn it.

The real reason you love it is because you're having so much damn fun at it. I had to admit that to let myself go, "Damn, Ron, I'm going to play tennis again today or tomorrow." It was a simple fun thing. So it's not always about the hardcore stuff that we have to go, "This is a deep, dark lie that I've been living by and it's having me live falsely and it's having harmful consequences on my loved ones." Some of those will probably arise when we admit.

I think it's just having a look around and just saying. And when we admit it, then we go, when we admit a lie, then we become something much more valuable, a bullshitter. You had the little wink in your eye. I love the distinction. I'm bullshitting myself on that thing.

Yep, I'm lying. Therefore, if I call it a lie, I'm admitting a lie. Yep, well, now, yep, I'm bullshitting. Yep, now, it's just out. Didn't judge it. But now I'm bullshitting. That, I think we can work with. Well, you're an interesting case study because you're one of the most famous, one of the most charismatic, successful humans in the world.

There's a lot, millions of people love you, hang on every one of your words. That's a hard place to be. How do you call yourself? How do you admit that you've been living a lie? How do you admit yourself in big ways and small ways on lies at this point, given how many people love you, how famous you are?

10 years ago, I don't know. I don't know. Someone was talking about like, they really admire this so-and-so person because they're not someone who looks in the mirror. And I was like, yeah. All of a sudden, I was like, man, I catch myself looking in the mirror a lot.

And then I go in and I look at my wife's side of her bathroom, how many different creams and stuff she has out there. I look at my side, I got a lot more on my side. I'm like, oh, I notice how if I'm out in public, working out, maybe doing pushups, maybe I do a few more.

If there's a group of people walking by that maybe I'd like to impress, then I may do a few more than I do if I was on my own. I'm like, you are vain, McConaughey. And the knee jerk is, oh, vanity bad. And all of a sudden, I was like, all of a sudden, I became a bullshitter once I admitted I'm vain.

I was like, well, bravo vanity. Let's go vanity. Instead of putting it in the cupboard in the lie section, oh, I'm vain because that's a debit. No, admit it. And then go, what's the value in it? Well, I can look at, yeah, I'm actually got in better shape because of my vanity.

Actually, I eat better. And that led to being a better husband, better dad, doing something with my kids when I'd rather be over there writing this work I'm working on. But I know that tomorrow, when they leave town, they're gonna remember this time that we had together. That's a selfish act to go spend that time with my kids, even though I'd rather not be doing it at that time.

I'd be doing something for myself because when they leave tomorrow, they'll have this great memory that they spent with their dad right before they went. I could call that vanity. I could group that and say, that was very vain of you. That was for self. Yeah. Because it was also for someone that I cared about.

Are there people in your life that call you out on your bullshit, in the bad sense of the word bullshit? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's either, I got a pretty thick threshold for how far I can go with my bullshit. Like what tickles me might bruise others to watch it.

That's a good line. Yeah. Tickles me might bruise others. But I also, I go back and talk about the bullshit, that's over there with those mystical successes. It's the, yeah, no, go with it. Don't pull a parachute yet. Let's see how far we can go. Let's see how hot I can get.

Let's try it one more time. Yes, two more, please. Yeah. That's where a lot of great pleasure and stories and successes will come from. Those are mystical, they don't add up. It's like, we're not talking about reason right now. We're not talking logic. Just go with this. Let's talk about the virtual and making it real.

The old line of fake it till you make it. I mean, what is that? There's something to that. There's definitely something to it. But I would, where people go fake it as, I would go back to Dillinger and create it, recreate it, create and recreate it, until it becomes, till you make it.

So I'll have people call my bullshit and a lot of times are right. I think when I handle it the most healthy way is I admit yes. And I'm aware. So I'm, and I'm going to keep going. So you're not like resisting and denying it. Oh, I will. I will.

And I have to watch that where I'm like, no, I'm not. That's not what I'm doing. And usually when it's coming from people that are there going, no, you are, it's like, I want to admit it. And then that's where I'm telling a lie. And that'll come up, get me later and I'll go, I didn't see it.

I didn't see I was doing that. I was either unaware, I wouldn't let myself be aware. I was denying that I was doing that. Would you say that's ego? Has ego been bad or good for you? Gosh, I think it's been, I'm so thankful for ego. Does it get off the bridle for me sometimes and run loose and run in places and where it's not of service to others and has it hurt loved ones and even strangers?

Yes. But I also, when my ego is really strong, it's in sync with serving. It's in sync with where I serve myself also serves others. Those two are part and parcel. They're intertwined. And that's the capital E, ego that I think and hope we all need more of. And that's what I mean when I talk about selfish.

That's the redefining that the real true meaning of that is not doing something for self at expense of your neighbor or harming others. It's for personal profit and pleasure that also is profit and pleasure for a utilitarian sense more of others. And there's, again, back to the paradox that I think there's a place, I know there's a place, I believe there's a place where those are in sync.

And when my ego is healthy, I'm able to say I'm sorry sooner for a lie or a misdemeanor or harm to somebody. I'm able to be more empathetic because I got the confidence to be so. I'm able to be more humble. But still have my chin high and my heart high and look in the eye and go, yep, my bad, bogey, guilty.

I shanked that one out of bound, man. - That's beautiful. So ego can be constructive, not destructive. You won an Oscar for your performance in Dallas Buyers Club. Can you tell the story of becoming that character, Ron Woodruff? What was the toughest part? - Toughest part, which was the most enlightening part, was getting to know who he was in between the lines.

We're basing a life story in an hour and a half of film, and the script was great. But who was he in between the lines? Who was he before he started a business, before he was on a crusade, before he went to alternative medicines? You know, the obvious thing people always talk about, well, how'd you lose all that weight?

That was not hard. That was just a militaristic decision. This is what I can eat each day. And if I do this each day for a week, I'll lose 2.5 pounds in a week. So I'm going to give myself five months to do that. 2.5 times that is 10.

There you go. There's 47 pounds. That was like clockwork. So that was easy. That decision was made. I didn't go to the Pizza Hut buffet and have temptation for certain meals. I ate that and the weight just went off like clockwork. It was the, who is Ron Woodruff in between the lines?

And the gift I got given that gave me the insight to who that man was, was I went to see his family before I was leaving. His family offered me his diary. And I remember it kind of has it going, wow, yes, but I kind of hesitated because it felt maybe a little too intimate of a thing for me to have.

It felt like it was kind of maybe infringing a bit, but I opened my hand and took it. And what I got in the diary was I got to know who Ron was before he had HIV. And little thing, the diary he'd write in and the dreamer he was and getting all set on a Sunday night and laying his shirt out and ironing it for the next morning, making sure that his little pager had fresh batteries in it.

Because tomorrow morning he was going across town to hook up some speakers for 38 bucks or whatever. And then getting up that morning and writing about what kind of coffee he drank and how much gas it was going to take to get over across town to do that job and hook up those speakers.

And then on the way over, Paige coming in to say, "No, we don't need you. We've gone with somebody else to hook them up." And here he was all buttoned up, two cups of coffee in, hair slicked over, shirt ironed, a little less than half a tank of gas, but enough to get back home.

Now where's this Monday go? The hope and the disappointment. You have to take all that in. That's part of that, man. I'm just going to go to Sonic and get a double cheese bacon burger because Sheila over there, man, she's kind of cute. She always gives me high price on it.

Which leads to rolling the joint, hanging off till Sheila gets off the work, sneaking over to the local motel and shagging up in room 16. That's my lucky number 16, Sheila. Then wandering out that night, getting home one in the morning, no plans for Tuesday. And maybe later in the week, think about what am I going to do about work or job?

And these little dreams would get me peak and want to, and then something would happen where he wouldn't follow through or the deal would go south. That, knowing that there's in there was where I saw who he was a dreamer and he just couldn't catch the break and didn't follow through.

And then I remembered his family said, "Oh yeah, he invented it. He got patents on a whole bunch of things, but he never would." He had things to get patent, but never would follow through to get the government patent. And then later on, you'd see the product be made or sold on QVC or something.

They'd be like, "Ron, that was yours. They stole your idea. Did you patent that?" He'd be like, "No." There's something beautiful and sad about that. That let me inside who he was in his heart and who he wanted to be. And what he was hoping to be and trying to be, but couldn't quite pull off.

When you go that deep, does a part of him stay in you forever? Are you able to let go? I hope so. I get, I look, there's a tenacity to survive that I got from him. Hopefully I can try and find some of that in different ways in any character that I go play.

Because if you really want to give a character an obstacle to overcome, a need, I mean, the base one is life and death. Whether that's the need to survive or the need to stave off extinction. I'm not talking about what the rules, the laws are, the social mores, the manners and graces.

You're going to fight for your own life in a world that's not supporting you to do so. There's a wonderful courage of, "Okay, watch this. What do I got to lose? My life or I'm in charge of extending it? Get out of the way. And I'll pick your pocket along the way, whatever it takes." So there's a tenacity to live by whatever means necessary to survive that I'm reminded of, that I learned from Ron.

So on that line of survival between life and death, you starred in "True Detective," which I think explores some darker aspects of human nature. What did you take from that? From that role, that experience, philosophically, psychologically? The freedom of being on an island. He was such a singular character and of a singular mind.

And as you know, it wasn't a dance party up there in his mind. It was some heavy stuff. But also existentially for him, always like death would be a deliverance for him. It'd also be a cop-out in a way. It'd also be... He was not a man who was going to give himself amnesty and didn't allow it from the rest of the world.

He wouldn't give himself an out. And while living in his head and heart and spirit was more of a hell than arguably dying, there was no alternative. That's not negotiable for that man. And that's why he was the best detective that ever walked the earth. That's why he was such a superhero in a way, to have that singular.

You don't go, "Oh, I wish I was him." No, but you're like, "Wow, that constitution, that clarity of identity?" Talk about a measure in a man's constitution. He didn't allow anybody off the hook, especially himself. You wanted him to forgive a little bit or give himself a little amnesty.

You wanted him to like, "Man, it's Saturday, bro. Can you go on a date?" You wanted him to enjoy something. But he was connected to something in his DNA, who's who he was, to something much more baseline truth. And that's why he was such a good detective. So that...

But there's an island, as much as that company can be. I said earlier on that Amazon trip that I went and joined the company. There's parts, I think, that I maybe gave to myself, to Rustin Cole, and also that Rustin Cole has given back to me, that are like, "Yeah, when you want to pull the parachute, because you can't stand the company that you're in, McConaughey, in your own mind, the Socratic dialogue is driving you freaking crazy, don't pull the parachute.

Stick with it. Go through it." So you were able to walk around with that tormented mind of his? Tormented. I didn't have very much patience for mendacious talk. I didn't have as much patience for small talk. I wasn't tormented. But the character was, and you have to embody him.

So does some of that bleed over? Are you able to separate the man you are from the character? It's not... Look, am I able to separate? Yeah, I came home to my kids, and when they walk in the door and greet me and go, "What'd you do today?" And you got three kids under 10 years old, you don't tell them about the scene where you help someone commit suicide.

It's just... So you turn it into a parable. Actually, I've always said this, having kids has made me a better actor and a better storyteller, because I have to parabolize certain things, and tell it in ways that they go, "Oh, neat." So did I go, did I bring it home?

I didn't bring torment. Did I bring introspection into my own? Characters for me, and I think this is true for a lot of actors and actresses, it's not a separation. If I've got... We each have everyone else in us. It's just seeing, diving into Rustin Cole, knowing where his mind and heart is from the hand of Nick Pizzolatto, who wrote the character and wrote the whole series, understanding, number one, what the hell am I saying?

What's he talking about? Then going deeper into that, well, this person really believes that. What does that say about how they move? Then I'm going, all of a sudden, well, who is that in me? What part of my left brain is locked into that? What part of my reptilian brain is latched onto that?

This other stuff is non-negotiable. Then I just live in that, and I always talk like a '70s equalizer. Remember the old Epmiront equalizers? You move up your 500 HKZ, you move up your 60, you just rebalance the equalizer. It's just going to those parts of me where I'll turn up the volume, some parts of the bass, the treble on the equalizer, and turn down other parts of myself.

I'm not coming home tormented as Rustin Cole. Am I coming home seeing torment where it should be seen? Am I reading the news differently? Are things coming out of the news and catching my eye as being bullshit or lies or truth that is just hard and going, "Yep, yeah." I'm seeing it through a different lens, but I'm seeing my own life through a different lens, a lens that was opened up and an aperture that was opened up through Rustin Cole.

I mean, the process of being an actor, an actress, I guess is a really interesting way to be a philosopher of human nature. Yeah. I mean, it's an incredible- Really, isn't it? Dive into the humanities and all the ologies and philosophy. As I said, I'm going to, as I opened up that question, being on an island is a vacation.

I am also conscious for five months when I'm playing Rustin Cole that, this is an interesting fact. I was as strong spiritually with my relationship with God when I did True Detective as I've ever been. Why is that? Okay. Which you would say, "Wait a minute." In some ways, those are antonyms.

Yeah. No, but I pretty safely can say that my own strength of spirit in my own personal life, Matthew's life, gave me the confidence to go further away. Mm-hmm. Further away. Deeper into the torture and deeper into the... But he was still always going after truth. Mm-hmm. That was the thing.

He was not an evil man. I don't even know if you can call him a nonbeliever, but he was always going after the truth and the truth burned and he would take the scar and get burned for it. He'd die for it. That, something was actually biblical about that.

You know? And so, but I don't think it's coincidence that I had so much journe of diving into the depths of that tortured character because I trusted that when I go out, I'll come up the other side. It's always like jumping in a pool of water. And can you trust you'll come up the other side and not...

You go play a criminal, you trust you're not going to come out the other side a tyrant in real life. You just go, "Oh, God, I got to go do that. Came out and I'm still alive. Got all my faculties. I'm not in jail. I'm whatever it is." And so my own spirituality at that time, definitely I think gave me a certain trust and confidence to go further into the dark.

It was announced that you'll be starring in a Yellowstone spinoff show. What do you think about the cowboy ethos that permeates Yellowstone and other shows created by Taylor Sheridan? You're a Texan. I am a Texan. Yeah. What do you think about that philosophy and way of life? I admire the simplicity of it.

I mean, one way you could explain Yellowstone and Costner's role is what will man do to protect land and family in a world that's trying to encroach, in a world where there's a cowboy ethos that deems trespassing more clear earlier than other hats. I admire that simplicity of right and wrong.

And that the simplicity of that right and wrong doesn't always correlate, coincide with the law. No, it's above the law. You mentioned something earlier, I remember where it wasn't in conversation, but a little bit of like, "Okay, if the law ain't handling this, I am." And then it is, "The law's not gonna handle this, therefore I am." And then it is, "I'm handling this." The law, talk to them when you get to them, "I'm handling this." There's an honesty to that.

It just seems, of course, it's dangerous because it's a slippery slope. Because of the power in that, power corrupts, it can be a slippery slope where you completely disregard the law and you can hurt a lot of people. But when done right, there feels to be something really authentic and human about that.

Protect family, protect land, above all else. Yeah. But this is a broader question, but I'm gonna piggyback it off of this. Back to the dreams and reality and evolved species and how and what we do in creating a digital God and AI and these communities and friends that challenge us and think like us, we like to hang out with.

Do you think we're a less evolved species than we give ourself credit for? Do you think we give ourselves credit for being more evolved than we actually are? I think we do. I do. I think we need to admit that. I think probably the cowboy ethos is a step towards admitting that.

And that's why it's so appealing to people. Kind of wakes them up to realize that we're not so far from our ancestors. That the values of loyalty are really important. Trust on the basic human level. How do you know if you can trust someone? I don't know if I can trust someone.

Well, I don't know a trick to it. I do not know a trick to it, but I do come in, as I believe you do, with high trust. I come in with a, I'm told, sometimes I think, I'm told that I trust too much sometimes. Have you been hurt?

Have you been betrayed? And if you have, has that hurt your willingness to trust? No, it hurt. And I put that person and those people in another category back here and do my best not to let them know that it bothered me at all, but I know when I am with those people.

But a new person, you're still willing to trust. No, I'm not going to do that. I think that's the beginning of cynicism, which I think is a horrible disease of getting older. I'm not going to do that. So you're fighting cynicism off as much as you can. No, no way, no way, no way.

I mean, there's no residual in it. There's no win. It's easy, it's clever, gets the laugh at the party. And if it sleeps well, it shouldn't be. Don't get comfortable in the cynicism. I have to ask you about being a Texan. You're like, when I think Texas, I think Matthew McConaughey.

What's it mean to be a Texan to you? I recently moved to Austin, Texas, two years in. All right, all right. Welcome. What's it mean to be a Texan? Educate us. Texas is about independence. Politically, Texas is not about Republican or Democrat. It's about independence, independence of spirit, sovereignty.

Texas is about exploration. One of the things I love about Texas is I run into so many Texans around the world. Texans are taught to go be conservative or learn who we are, then go, go, explore, pioneer, journey, and hopefully you come on back with some goods and some stories, you Texan.

And underneath that is this kind of freedom of being an individual in the full meaning of that word. Yeah, well, Texas is liberal on your entrance. Very liberal on your entrance. Less regulation. Hey, welcome. High trust. High trust, sir. Welcome to our state. Come on in. Yes, yes, yes.

But if you light sheet steel, we're conservative on our consequences. (laughing) Oh, yeah, that's a good line. You've briefly pondered running for governor. I don't know if that's in your future. I hope it is. You had a few good lines about it. Do you think about that kind of stuff?

About what the future holds in terms of political office? I don't think about it in terms of political office. I've graduated to a broader, larger thought of what's my future hold and where would I be most useful as a leader. I think that's a fair word. Whether that's thought, whether that's the leader of my family right now, as a parent, as a father, the leader of people that work with me.

Politics, I'm not gonna say it's, 'cause it's not small. That's why I say that out loud. It's not small. I do think it needs to re-engineer and redefine what its purpose is before, because it's just chasing its own tail right now with the two parties that seem to me to be completely about just invalidation of the opposition instead of vision of themselves.

So I think it needs redefinition of what it is, because it is important. That's what I mean. That's why I said I don't mean small. It needs to think bigger about what it is and how it's useful. When it seeks to invalidate, it's small. When it seeks vision, it can be big.

Yes. Well, one's affirmative. One's going into that cynicism we were talking about. Yeah. And validation of any opposing thought, or maybe that we're even opposing. Opposition is an arrogant term. That's too strong. So a lot of times it's not even opposition. Alternative, other than, another way of thinking about it.

Oh, could both be true? Oh, how could we parlay those two ideas? One of the challenges with these ideas of a third party or meet you in the middle, it's kind of got this historic notion of being, oh, well, comme ci, comme ça, it's sort of Mr. In-between, kind of go which way the wind blows.

I think, done in the right way, it's the, and it doesn't have to be under a third party's name necessarily, but it's actually an incredibly rebellious position right now. And it's actually, and I love sports, it's tactically the place with which to move most advantageously. I think of their free safety in the game of football.

They're in the middle of the field and they're deep. They choose to defend left or right according to the play that's been called by the offense. Similar to the offense, the running back, you read the defense and then you're gonna run right to run left to go away from that opposition.

It's a tactical spot. To be truly independent and respond and respond. So do you think you have a role in that in political officers? I don't know. It's on mind. It's not out of my mental box. And I gave it real sincere thought and discernment for over a year.

And it's a wonderful, whether I end up in politics or not, it was a wonderful exercise. One that if anyone else got time to do it, do it. To ask yourself what you would do if you were CEO of a state, CEO of a nation, CEO of the world, that's a great thing to go.

You wanna get your values in line? You wanna admit where you lie and throw yourself some pop quizzes? And what if this phone call comes at 4 a.m.? Who you wanna surround yourself with? It's really great questions to ask and I think has helped me at a more micro level, be a better father, a better man.

Taking considerations that I did not maybe take in as seriously before considering it. I don't know if that's in my future. Useful is a big word. It would have to be useful. I have to be useful in the right way. And is that my lane to be most useful?

It's a good question for a leader to ask. How can I be useful? I have to ask you about "Interstellar." So I think it's an incredible film. I've seen it inspire so many scientists and engineers. It's just philosopher, everybody, humans. It explores space travel, physics of space time, human nature, human condition, human connection.

How has that film expanded your understanding of the universe and our place in it? Yeah. Well, it's got the old Mr. Mayor on the corner, how big is that cloud metaphor in it? Because that was the character I played, Cooper's, that was the existential question for him. Head down, practical, stay here, be a father to my children.

But his dream before his children were to go explore space. So when he's taking that truck out and the countdown's going down, that's the hinge of the existential question that we all face in some form. The sense of time, which I think everyone loves, that sense of where time can run at different speeds.

And there's an incredible scene where Cooper as a father is getting video feed from his children who've aged and he's realizing he's missed all that. Yeah. You know, I mean, overall, that concept makes me consider and imagine. We talk about mystical successes instead of engineered ones, like the engineered ones, there's ethos from that film and what Nolan put into that film and theories that make me go, "Yeah, what does any of this matter?

Maybe we are, maybe we're AI." It makes me go, "It's already all been written. What's happening right now in this blip of time you're here, 53 years so far, we'll see how many we get. What other parallel timelines are happening out there do, is it small minded of us to define life on other planets as only something that can live within a climate that has water in this amount of O2?" Those terms may be too small.

What do you mean? Who are we saying only life has to have water in this amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide? There's a whole redefinition of the ingredients that other life forms need. It's sure in a similar way to Contact, which is a movie I did with Bob Zemeckis, inspires me that the universe is more active and lively and God's backyard's bigger than I thought.

And wow, that's exciting. And people go now, "Yeah, you believe in extraterrestrial life?" I said, "Yes, man, I think it'd be arrogant not to. I sure hope so." You think there's alien civilizations all out there, intelligent ones, just far on distant stars? I hope so. And I think it's possible.

May have many among us right here. And I go for the why not in that just to keep that train of thought open to learn and consider those existential questions. I think it'd be arrogant not to. There's so many hundreds of billions of planets just in our galaxy. Just in ours.

I can't imagine there's not life out there. But I suspect it's very different, like you said, than we are. And we have to have a humility to open our eyes to how different life could be. And if and when we cross it, unlike we've had a tendency to do when we tried to go with some nation takeovers, I think it would be our inherent glitch to go in believing that any other life form civilization wants to take over territories.

To go into it with thinking that, "Okay, this is an opposition." I think that's a human trait of ours. And to consider that another life form would have an interest that more land or more territory is good for them, I think is a shallow idea. I think of it more like when I think of heaven, those considerations are not in anyone's mind, heart, or intent in the heaven that I think of.

So in other civilizations, these things, I hope that if we would just see and learn, that would be the natural side of welcoming. It wouldn't be a primate response to, "No, I have fire and you're coming over trying to put it out," or, "I have food and you're trying to steal my food." I don't think it would be...

I think it's a shallow thought to think that, "Oh, it's gonna be about ownership and we'd be trespassing." I don't think they would have a sense of borders as we do. I just hope we humans are smart enough to detect and to see aliens, because of how different they are.

We often have a very narrow definition of what is intelligence. It's very possible that trees are extremely intelligent if we kind of zoom out at a different time scale, a different... Just look at stuff from a bigger perspective that's outside of being so human-centric. It's a great quote that someone told me, this astrophysicist told me this, how accurate it is or not.

Someone else can argue the validity of what I'm about to say or not, but I thought it really was a perspective grabber for me. Like, look, see, the universe was created at midnight. Humans came around at 11.59 and 36 seconds. I love the little analogies that frame, like that make, "Oh, yeah, the pale blue dot, there it is." That perspective, something so relaxing and empowering about that at the same time and humbling, but confidence boosting, allows forgiveness, allows ambition.

I just love the perspective of that, that picture, to picture it that way in our timeline. Do you hope humans become a multi-planetary species as we're trying to do, as SpaceX is pushing forward, traveling out to Mars, potentially colonizing Mars, colonizing other planets? Yeah. I'm, yeah, go explore. I love the ambition of it.

I love the pioneering nature of it. I love the extension of what we consider as our backyard becoming more four-dimensional like that. Not at the expense of, "We still got stuff to take care of. We got gardens to tend right here." And sure as hell not to go, not to quit on us, to go, "Oh, let's get out of here 'cause this isn't really working." No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We got a tithe we're still supposed to pay here. That's part of this pressure testing us as a civilization and a species. Whether you call that restoration order or whether you call that, "Let's figure out how to adapt best we can." No, not at the expense of quitting here on Earth.

But let a few select folks explore. Yeah. 'Cause that's like... God said, "Go for it, please." One of the coolest things that we humans do is kind of embodies the human spirit, reach out into the unknown. But it's hard. I mean, as interstellar shows and so on. Yeah. It's painful.

Well, and Elon talks about it. This is not gonna be a weekend daisy trip. And he's just speculating how hard it could be. It'd be much harder in different ways that he doesn't understand yet. Well, that dance between the impossible and the inevitable, that's definitely there with what SpaceX is doing, what all the folks who are trying to become a multi-planetary species are doing.

It's really hard. It's like, to build rockets that fight off gravity at a cost-effective way is really hard. SpaceX is close to being bankrupt several times. It's just hard. But it's also inspiring that some people are just crazy enough, bold enough to keep trying. Yeah. What advice would you give to young folks?

What advice would I give? In high school and college that are thinking of how to make their way in this world? If you haven't already, can you define what you have an innate ability for and match that with what you're willing to hustle to get? Yeah. Sometimes we have an innate ability, but we don't wanna work for it.

We take it for granted. And we end up doing something that may work, may pay the bills, may get us by day to day. But we don't really like it. We have trouble finding a way to enjoy it. Definitely don't love it. And then sometimes we don't know what our innate ability is and we're hustling and working our tail off and breaking a sweat to do something that we really aren't that good at on an innate level.

And that's a good challenge. And you can work and become good at something that you don't have an innate ability for, but if you can match those two, what do you have an innate ability to do? 'Cause we have an innate ability to do, when we do that well, we do enjoy it.

Yeah. And one of the things that requires is to be really honest with yourself at what your innate ability is. 'Cause oftentimes there's a lot of noise when you're growing up, people telling you what you're good at and not good at. Really, you have to look at yourself, listen to yourself, that inner, like a deep, rigorous self-analysis of what am I actually good at?

Not what I hope to be good at, but what I'm actually good at. Right. And then if you look at that and you can define those two, hopefully, you can activate it in a way where there's a demand for what you supply. You found love with Camila Elvis McConaughey.

What advice would you give to people on how to do just that? How to find love? This wonderful subject's been discussed since the beginning of time, hadn't it? Love it. So, I can tell you what things I've kind of learned and I'm still learning. You know, love is one of those mystical successes.

It doesn't make sense. You know, when I was, before I met Camila, I had had, I was coming on to my late 30s. As much as I'm not a person that is guided by timelines, I was, my life had not really added up to what I thought it was gonna be relationship-wise.

I thought by that time I would have met the woman I loved, got married and started family. And that hadn't happened. And I did find myself doing that thing I was doing at the Amazon, looking around the corner. Any prospective possible female I met that I was attracted to, I was like, "Maybe this is the one." I make the joke, but it's true.

It's like at every red light, I'm like checking out who's next to me in the produce section at the supermarket. I'm like, "Who's down in the produce section?" You know, it's like looking. When you're in that zone, you can also be a little intrusive. You can trespass on people's, you can get outside of yourself.

You can be overly impressed and not as involved and have your own constitution and sit back. And therefore, if you're outside of yourself, you're less attractive to your possible mate. I've got a series of dreams that are written about, but I had one then that was very spiritual. That was me as a 88-year-old bachelor who never got married.

And it was a beautiful dream. Where on paper, I thought that should be a nightmare. It wasn't. What that dream did for me was allowed me to go, "You may not find the woman for you and get married and have a life with her. That may not be." And for the first time in life, I was okay with that.

More than intellectually, spiritually, I was grounded. I was like, "Okay." Then I'm moving through the world and on this particular night as myself, not intruding. I was inviting. I did see her move across the room and did not say, "Who is that?" I said, "What is that?" And then did move to call her across the room.

So I did invite, but I was not outside of myself. And I was able to be myself with her. What my eyes saw, everything that she turned out to be when the lens got zoomed in, more details got known, and we began to talk and got more intimate and closer together and spend more time, became true and then some.

But not every single thing that I imagined when I saw her move across the room turned out to be true and then some. In just the image. We found a similar moral bottom line about life, each other, how we treat ourselves, what we respect, what our own constitutions were.

We had similar perspectives on raising children, which was very important to me and her. And then we just enjoyed each other's company. Yeah. And we laughed together and we support each other and we promoted more of each other and we lit each other's fire. And if one was rolling, we kept dishing, "Go, go, go again.

Take the next shot. More, more, more, more." This was a biggie too. Getting excited for each other's success. Yes. Yes. To be able... I think it's very important. We all have jealousy. I get it. But it's very important to be able, if you can, be happy for your lover when they succeed or are succeeding or are across the room at the party laughing with a stranger, to be happy for them when it has nothing to do with you.

She was... I would be away, she would... The questions and the talks we would have, she was happy for me about how excited I was about my day and my day had nothing to do with her. Yeah. She wasn't there. And I found myself not telling myself to be happy for her, but being really, really happy for her when she would tell me about something that happened that day with her.

And as much as I went through my head, "Oh, it would have been great if I would have been there," I was like, "No, I'd only trespass on that. You had that independent of me. Bravo." That's a choice you make not to give any time to the jealousy, to the very natural jealousy that we humans have.

It sure doesn't have any... I don't see the residuals in it. True. I've got it. I've had it. And I have it. I just don't... I haven't seen where it has any payback. I gotta ask you the biggest possible question. What's the meaning of this whole thing? Ugh. What's the meaning of life?

Right? Matthew McConaughey, why? Why are we here? I don't know why we're here. I prescribe to, in a religious sense, the Restoration Order. We're here to restore order. And in a religious sense, I really, I purchased that and love that incentive and love that view. But I don't really know why we're here.

But I do know, to go back to the front, we are here. That part's inevitable. So now let's flip the script and go to the why not. Just keep living. What are we doing? The base of everything, Eric, and we can argue it all, at the base of it, all I can come up with is, well, just keep living, man.

I mean, what else are we supposed to do when we don't have any idea what to do? When we know exactly what we wanna do? Make it matter. Even when it doesn't matter, that matters. Not for what? I don't know. For the fun of it, that matters. Yeah, our ability to create meaning and beauty in the mundane, in the absurd, it's kinda cool.

Yeah. And we share it with each other. Yeah. We get excited. Yeah. And we create some pretty cool stuff along the way. I mean, I say I'm confident enough, and I might be arrogant of me to say, but I do believe that we're here to, each generation, have a small ascension.

Yeah. Or else, what's it for? And we're not really sure what the ascension is towards. Just kinda-- No? No? I just think it's up. I do think it's up. I do think that it is definitely arrogant to think that we as a species or generation or people or humanity are going to reach the top of the ascended staircase and go, "Ta-da!" I think that is not only false, but I think it's full-hearted, and I think it's a recipe for having more angst and even cynicism we talked about, and unrest and lack of seeing beauty and joy in this life while we're in it.

I think life's a verb. Live it as best we can. Hopefully. I mean, I don't know. Sometimes I'm just--I don't have a grand plan, man. I'm just trying to connect the damn dot. I'm confused, frustrated. I don't know what--I don't feel any gravity or building or lineage towards what I'm doing, and I'm just going-- What's that Peterson line?

"If you don't believe in heaven, do what you can to get as far away from hell as possible." Sometimes-- Yeah. It's a great line. Sometimes I'm just trying to like, "Man, just don't sink the ship right now. Just keep your head above water. Maintain. Just try and hold on." And hopefully give yourself a chance to notice the magic, the mystical.

I try to do that-- Yeah. --when it gets rough. 'Cause it's there. I do believe it's all around us all the time. Yeah. Just are we on a frequency, and do we allow ourselves to receive it and see it? We gotta tune the radio. Yeah. Because if we look for it too hard, we see false idols, and if we don't look at all, we become callous and miss it all.

Yeah. It's a fun little life we got. Yeah. Matthew, I'm a huge fan. I think you're an incredible person. Thank you for all the-- everything you've created in this world. Thank you for being a unique human that inspires millions, and thank you for talking today. I was nervous, but you made me feel at home.

That was beautiful. Well, I felt at home talking with you as well. Thanks for sharing that with me. I could go on and on. Just two Texans. That's right. Having a good old chat. Newly moved to Austin, Texas. Here we go. All right. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Matthew McConaughey.

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Matthew McConaughey himself. "Don't walk into a place like you want to buy it. Walk in like you own it." Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time.