#625 - Matthew McConaughey

Speaker 1 Don't miss Sebastian Maniscalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, premiering on Hulu, November 21st. Filmed live at the sold-out United Center Arena in Chicago.

Speaker 1 Sebastian goes all in on family chaos, aging, non-existent manners, and life's most relatable and frustratingly funny moments as only he can.

Speaker 1 Watch Sebastian Maniscalco, It Ain't Right, on November 21st, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.
Today's guest is a legendary actor, author, thought leader,

Speaker 1 just a real vibe curator. He has a new book out called Poems and Prayers.
We had a great time down here in Austin getting to know each other. Today's guest is Mr.
Matthew McConaughey.

Speaker 2 Glad to be here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, thank you so much, Matthew. Nice to meet you, man.

Speaker 2 Me too, bud. Where are you from?

Speaker 1 I'm from Louisiana.

Speaker 2 Which part?

Speaker 1 I'm from Covington, Louisiana, down there, about 40 miles north of New Orleans.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I love Louisiana, where the weeds grow a little taller and the chassis just a touch looser.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 my family, my dad's mother, the Maitlands, had a school in Morgan City. So we would go to Morgan City every year for the shrimp festival.

Speaker 2 My dad grew up later, lived in City Park outside of New Orleans. And my best friend who's since passed away was from Zachary, Louisiana.
And

Speaker 2 I've always, I was raised in East Texas, so that Louisiana humidity bleeds over a little bit over the border there, you know?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, it's like somebody just exhaling a big hit of cigarette smoke.

Speaker 2 You used used to hit Hears Coliseum, man, because you could, you could drink at 18 and get over there for my first concert was Rat. Yeah.
Remember that?

Speaker 1 R-A-T-T?

Speaker 2 R-A-T-T, man. Yeah.
Lay it down, round and round. Yeah.
And I go to WWE matches over there.

Speaker 1 Bro, you were in the best place for wrestling. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I got kicked out of Hearst Coliseum twice.

Speaker 1 You got kicked out of it two times?

Speaker 2 Two times, which is tough to do. Yeah.
But

Speaker 2 if you spit a Loogie on King Kong Bundy

Speaker 2 when he's coming to the ring, yes, they will try to kick you out. But then

Speaker 2 you get kicked out. And there is a window on the exterior of Hirsch here that goes to one of the bathrooms from which I snuck back in.

Speaker 2 And then I had a hidden a bag of

Speaker 2 rotten tomatoes. And I pelted Skandar Akbar.

Speaker 2 from the stands and got kicked out of

Speaker 1 bro they should have paid you for being there that's bro you're helping from the crowd bring up skandar agbard there he is yeah

Speaker 1 god remember he was that that was the bad guy at that time always dude they always had that little kind of chicy bad guy you know

Speaker 1 um we had uh kevin von erich on here oh there you go and that was pretty special man

Speaker 2 i loved wrestling at that time it was so fun man hacksaw jim duggan was my guy yeah

Speaker 2 what they come out with the two two by four? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Dude, I saw him. I went to

Speaker 1 Terry, I went to Hulk Hogan's funeral, and Hacksaw was there. Yeah, there we go.
It was pretty cool, man. All of my heroes were there.

Speaker 1 Like, I had figurines of them at home, and the figurines are taller these days, and half of them are a lot of guys, like in wheelchairs.

Speaker 1 It was kind of tough to see because you see, like, just the remnants of these heroes, kind of like the stained statues in a way, you know? It was pretty,

Speaker 1 it was magnificent and weird, you know? It's like, it was beautiful and and sad. It's like you almost want to pretend that things are just in a certain place and time, you know.

Speaker 1 Your book kind of goes into some stuff like that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Were you an evil Knievel fan?

Speaker 1 I didn't get into him much. We'd see him like every, I think I saw him do one jump, but that might have been just a touch before I was like kind of awake to the world.

Speaker 2 I got into it because my brother turned me on to my older brother, Pat.

Speaker 2 Anyway, he was just thinking about, you know, fallen heroes and icons that, you know, I got to know him later in his life when evil? Yeah.

Speaker 2 got to know him pretty good doggone well man i was trying to you know there's still a story out there to be told on him a movie to be made and i was around it and developing it for 25 years and uh yeah there we are spoke at his

Speaker 2 at his uh funeral no way that's so cool yeah what kind of guy was he oh man you know he did not people the misconception are like he had a death he didn't have a death wish he had a life wish dude he was as he said he needed to jump because he needed to sweat in his boots.

Speaker 2 It was almost like

Speaker 2 I think his, when he got on the bike and put his hands on the annual bar, I think his pulse went down.

Speaker 2 Meaning, you know, you know, you know, there's certain boxers that, that, that get the shit beat out of them, and they're like, dude, you're taking four fights here. It's too many.

Speaker 2 And they like, tell you, no, I have to. My life outside when I don't have to train or get ready for fights tougher on me.
It's too scary.

Speaker 1 A lot of guys say that.

Speaker 2 You know, and I think

Speaker 2 he would always say, like, hey, he wouldn't postpone any jump, even if it was impractical. Even if his engineer is like, dude, you're not going to make it.

Speaker 2 He was like, well, the American people want and they paid their tickets and they're going to show up on time. We're going to do this.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think part of that for him, my opinion, is that he was like, no, I got to, I have to jump. Right.

Speaker 2 I can't postpone these things.

Speaker 1 Well, also to have that level of integrity with time itself, with the clock of life, right? To be like, because I'll postpone things. I'll feed you.
I'll be 10 minutes late. I'm going to be 15, 20.

Speaker 1 But to say, to tell time, to tell like existence, I'm going to be there and meet existence right there. That's pretty ballsy.

Speaker 1 I mean, these days, it's super ballsy, but yeah, I mean, it's just, I think it's a ballsy thing for anybody to do. But he was like Red Bull before they made a damn liquid.
Remember, I mean, he was

Speaker 2 people with

Speaker 2 all the extreme sports.

Speaker 1 I remember people just in the yard, if he was going to jump one night, there'd have people out in the yard fucking drinking Dr. Pepper and fucking just massaging each other's shoulders.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. And the thing, you know what happened? What got kind of

Speaker 2 sad, but it's just true towards the end of his career. And I saw this with this, it happened with his son at a jump too, is

Speaker 2 people started, first came, wow, he made the jump. Wow.

Speaker 2 Then it became like, I'm coming for the wreck.

Speaker 2 I'm coming for the crash. And I've been to jumps where, you know, because he always came out first, right? There's the ramp.
Here we go.

Speaker 2 He's just bypassing. Yeah.
You got a little tease. Yeah.
You got to do a couple runars, get it one going. Get the brawl off a little.

Speaker 2 And then he's getting the crowd going up and they're all just, you know, pulling down. Here we go.
And then he does it. Boom.

Speaker 2 And soon as it lands and makes it, it's almost like I saw so many people like,

Speaker 2 oh, shit. Yeah.
Stomp the cigarette out, throw that Dr. Pepper in the trash can and leave.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 God dang it.

Speaker 2 You know? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Good for him, but yeah. No, but he made a, he, he, he, he was, he was a legendary cowboy, man.

Speaker 1 Let's look at one of these. This is Caesar's Palace.

Speaker 2 Oh, he, and he created this. He called, he was in a motel

Speaker 2 and called the head of Caesars, all right, and said, hey, my name's, you know, Bobby Bernstein. I'm with ABC Wide World of Sports.
I hear this guy, Evil Neville, is going to jump your fountain.

Speaker 2 And they're like, what are you talking about? I don't remember Evil Neville. I don't know what you're talking about.
Hung up the phone. Call back.
Another voice impersonated.

Speaker 2 I'm with the wide world of sports. Name is Bob Notta.
Here, this evil Neville is going to. He did it like three times.
And finally,

Speaker 2 the guy on the other end of Caesars was like, who the hell is this Evil Neville Evil Neville guy? Find him. Right.

Speaker 2 And they ended up calling back.

Speaker 2 Evil answers his own as evil and goes,

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I'll do it.

Speaker 1 And worked out the door.

Speaker 2 But he created that jump. And this jump is look at the violence after it.
I mean, he jumps the fountain and look at the crash, man.

Speaker 2 Boom! Here we go. Oh, shit.

Speaker 1 Oh, can we talk impact?

Speaker 1 Bro, that's yeah.

Speaker 2 There ain't no smoking mirrors with that, man.

Speaker 1 There ain't no mattress that's going to fit. No, sir.
That ain't no posture.

Speaker 2 That ain't AI.

Speaker 2 You didn't fix that in post to make it look worse. Oh, evil.

Speaker 2 Oh, dude.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there was just something like, there was something special about that time where it was like,

Speaker 1 I don't know, the moment meant so much more.

Speaker 1 You know, there was something, there used to be something about the past that the moment you couldn't copy to, you couldn't record it.

Speaker 1 Like, I think that's why those times, you talk about some of this in your book, man, and it's like about time and like, God, like the moments of when I was a kid or sitting there laughing with my friends, like the moment was so much more real because you were never going to get it again.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 And you didn't, you couldn't necessarily record it and you sure as hell couldn't share it. There's a study on this, man, I don't know, I'm going to say it's like 20 years ago or 25.

Speaker 2 The moment was the biggest dopamine rush. The jump, the cresting of the mountain, the pulling off whatever you tried to pull off.
Yeah. Scientifically measured, the biggest dopamine hit.

Speaker 2 Cameras and

Speaker 2 mobile devices and stuff come out.

Speaker 2 It slowly turned to the recording of the moment, the snapshot.

Speaker 2 Okay? Not the cresting of the hill, but we just recorded it. The ownership of the moment.
The ownership of the moment, right?

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 what has happened now and has been around for 25 years. The biggest scientific dopamine hit that we get as humans is not the doing of the deed, is not the recording of the deed.

Speaker 2 It is when we press share.

Speaker 2 Really? Now that's a little bit like living in third person. Like we're all running around going, my rush is not when I run for a touchdown.

Speaker 2 My rush is when I see myself on the jumbotron running for the touchdown.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that's a slippery slope, man. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Well, it's slippery, but it also seems hard to even conceptualize who I am then, you know? Yeah. Am I myself? Am I just a viewer of myself now? That's it.

Speaker 2 We're much more, much more voyeurs now. Right.
And our identity comes from being objective, trying to look at ourself from outside. And now comes from, well, what did you think of what I did? And how?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's the worst. What do you think of what I did?

Speaker 2 Because that will be who that'll be my definition of who I am. I am.

Speaker 2 We got to watch that.

Speaker 1 Dude, my sponsor tells me he's like, you're not who they think you are. You're not who you are.
And you're not who you think they think you are.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think I might have, I don't know if I messed it up or not.

Speaker 2 No, no, but I hear what you're saying.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He's like, but yeah, it's just interesting how that.

Speaker 2 Especially for these kids these days, man. It's hard enough as adults.

Speaker 1 But I think as adults, we put

Speaker 1 our thought process onto them. And I think they live in a different world and realm that we kind of can't conceptualize because they don't seem as affected as, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 And it's hard to even know.

Speaker 2 No, I hear you.

Speaker 1 I hear you. But I hear what you're saying, too.
It's like.

Speaker 2 I'm not trying to be a dinosaur either. I don't want to be a dinosaur dad.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 I don't want to be one of those when my kids are going, oh, geez, yeah, it sounds like, you know, give it another TED talk from back in the 8, you know,

Speaker 2 but I hear you. Because there's some things that they're just with, it's just part of their vernacular.

Speaker 2 This thing's an extension of their arm, that kind of sharing and socializing. What do you mean? That's like having a conversation.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And we're going, I could say what I was, you and I were just talking about because they could understand it. They would go,

Speaker 2 okay,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 that's not how it is. Yeah.
You know? Right.

Speaker 1 It's, I mean, it's all kind of, I mean, it's all fascinating. I mean, even we were talking about like, I just got back from the old miss game.
I know you were at.

Speaker 2 It was fun. You guys are rolling, man.
And Lane's doing a great job of keeping y'all mentally in the right spot with all this noise about him going to Florida or elsewhere. Yeah.
He big boyed it.

Speaker 2 He big boyed it. Look, what do you mean? Meaning he didn't go the traditional, no, it's not true.
We want to keep it, keep the noise out. He went, we got this.
I got this noise.

Speaker 2 Y'all got this noise because we're winning. This is the noise that's out there.

Speaker 2 He's talking to those young men like an adult who's up with the times. He's He's going, this is part of it, man.

Speaker 2 This is part of it. And doing it because we're doing good.
So let's do as well as we can right now and keep winning. It's a great message because your players are going, they get it now.

Speaker 2 I think these players get the portals, the, the, the, the, the, the, you're probably not going to be playing with the same guys for three years straight. Yeah.
Four years straight.

Speaker 2 There's, you can transfer in season. You can go here.

Speaker 1 I mean, yeah, there's two portals now, I think, aren't there? Aren't there two portals during the season?

Speaker 1 And I'm actually a van, I'm a a Vanderbilt fan, but my, but I'm friends with Lane. And I grew up as an LSU fan, right?

Speaker 1 And, and, and sometimes people are like, sometimes they'll be like, well, you're a fair weather fan or something.

Speaker 1 I'm like, but now, like you're saying, there's kind of like, it's like, there's kind of like fair weather franchises in a way. It's like they're changing players so much and things and that.

Speaker 1 And they expect you to lock in like my dad did or like I did when we were kids.

Speaker 2 It's like

Speaker 1 you, if you buy a jersey, the guy's gone. And you know, things change so much.
So I think it's interesting some of the expectations sometimes out of fans, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, it's harder to create as an organization, as a team, as a school,

Speaker 2 as that, oh, this is our brand of football. Last one to do it in the pros was what? New England.
No matter who came and went, it was Belichick, his way of football. It was Tom Brady, a quarterback.

Speaker 2 Robert Kraft is on it. There was a certain way.
Remember, people would come to, studs would come to, big names would come to New England, and there wasn't a lot of press about them.

Speaker 2 And all of a sudden, next week, you're like, oh, they got dropped. And it wasn't a big, no big fanfare.
It was like, you didn't play our way? That's, you're kind of gone. Right.

Speaker 1 We're good if you're not our way. Our way is our way.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So now when you're plugging in so many players, and we're going through this with Austin FC, our soccer club, do we have a brand of what they call fuchsball soccer that you, this is how we play?

Speaker 2 Coaches and players can be plugged into our system. It's harder to do because players are moving around.
You get a, we got a chance to get this stud player.

Speaker 2 Well, if he's a running option quarterback and we've been been running traditional offense which is drop back it'd be dumb not to update the way we play offense yeah you know what i mean or whatever that is but you you have x yeah how much are the expectations for the brand of how people play football at certain schools yeah you know i don't know what's the brand who has a brand of this is how you play it's a great question i mean in college football this is how we play the expectations of how maybe the brand maybe the ex maybe the cultures are similar and you have this is this is an understood, whether it's aggressive, violent, or, or, or finesse, or whatever, whatever that is, or we're going to have a great defense.

Speaker 2 Right. No matter what.

Speaker 1 Well, Sabin had one, kind of. Sabin felt like he had it.
He did. I feel like Sarkeesian is a guy that is very much, he is the boss there.

Speaker 1 You know, there's an energy there with him that is very cut and dried.

Speaker 1 You know, but yeah, when I was growing up, it was like Pittsburgh kind of had the defense. You know, Baltimore had a defense.
There was a toughness about those places.

Speaker 1 You had San Francisco that was always a great passing attack. Yeah, I don't know.
I guess, like.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you have Earl Campbell back there for Houston, or you have, what's the guy for Big Boy out of Alabama for Baltimore?

Speaker 1 Oh, Derrick Henry.

Speaker 2 If you have them, you've gone, okay, we're going to be a running team. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay. You know what I mean? You ever hear that Bum Phillips quote

Speaker 2 on Earl Campbell? I don't know what listeners, y'all remember Earl Campbell out of the Tyler Rose. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 He played for Dallas two denier ear now. No, Houston.

Speaker 2 He played for Houston. Yeah, the Oilers at that time.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 The Oilers ended up in Tennessee. That's where I live now.
They ended up in Nashville.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 they would give Bum Phillips a coach, and he would give Earl the ball like 35 times a game. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And reports started coming out going, man, are you worried about the wear and tear on Earl giving him the ball that often? Bum says, no, not really.

Speaker 2 That ball ain't that heavy.

Speaker 2 That's awesome, dude.

Speaker 1 Well, you used to have just so many good personalities.

Speaker 1 There's a Jim Mora talking to reporters. Will you look it up? Saints, Jim Mora.

Speaker 2 Playoffs.

Speaker 1 This is even before that.

Speaker 2 Oh, it is?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, bro. Wait till you see this.
He's talking about his team.

Speaker 2 But yeah, playoffs.

Speaker 1 He was great, man. Watch this.
Listen to this. This is crazy.

Speaker 3 Jim, obviously, you're not happy. Oh, we got our ass kicked.
We got our ass kicked.

Speaker 3 It was sickening.

Speaker 3 First three,

Speaker 3 we have 18 plays on offense. First 18 plays.
We turn the ball over, one for a touchdown. The other one's going to set up a touchdown.
We can't, you know, we got backs that can't hang on to the ball.

Speaker 3 They out-hit us. They out-tuffed us.

Speaker 3 We stunk today.

Speaker 3 Not even close between that football team and our football team. Not even close.

Speaker 3 Ridiculous. We run two screens.
We don't block anybody. We get a back, gets his knee blown out on one of them.
He can block anybody.

Speaker 2 We stunk. Just stunk.

Speaker 3 injuries uh you think it oh i dean told me he blew his knee out

Speaker 3 you know you got to block people on a screen shit he gets the ball out there and two guys big old animals nail his ass

Speaker 3 it's ridiculous we run a screen before that we get our ass nailed

Speaker 3 what about scales coaches

Speaker 3 i don't know i don't know you know dean said he couldn't put any weight on his leg that doesn't sound too good to me

Speaker 3 we're down you know we're down and back we're down at everything we you know shit we don't have enough people right now

Speaker 2 It'll be hard to practice next week. There you go.
There's not many of them out there. I mean, you know,

Speaker 2 I missed my friend Mike Leach watching that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, that guy could be a great guy. Oh, that guy was great.
Oh, what a, what a.

Speaker 1 What was he at Oklahoma State?

Speaker 2 Texas Tech.

Speaker 1 Oh, Texas Tech, Cliff Kingsbury Country.

Speaker 2 Have you heard the one

Speaker 2 after they went? He goes, yeah,

Speaker 2 there are

Speaker 2 players sitting out there

Speaker 2 in the river on a blanket. Fat little girlfriends.
Oh, bring up Mike Leach, fat little girlfriends. Listen to this.

Speaker 2 Telling them how great they are.

Speaker 2 This guy's classic.

Speaker 4 As coaches, we failed to get through to them. As coaches, we failed to make our coaching points and our points more compelling than their fat little girlfriends.

Speaker 4 Now, their fat little girlfriends have some obvious advantages. For one thing, their fat little girlfriends are telling them what they want to hear, which is how great you are and

Speaker 4 how easy it's going to be. And how, you know,

Speaker 4 we had a whole bunch of people, everybody wanted to win the football game, but nobody wanted to play the football game.

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, that defies every level of work ethic that exists with regard to football. And as coaches, we have to solve our failure on reaching them.
And the players have to listen.

Speaker 4 And I'm willing to go to

Speaker 4 fairly amazing lengths to try to make that happen. I don't know if I'll be successful this week or not,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 I am going to try. And there will be some people inconvenienced.
And if it happens to be their fat little girlfriends, too bad.

Speaker 2 That's awesome.

Speaker 1 That's what we need. I'll just, just people to be brave enough to have a personality these days.
It's kind of interesting, you know?

Speaker 2 But check this out

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 I'm with you. That's entertaining.
It's smart. It's an inside look.
It's frank. It's open.
You know, people call it

Speaker 2 politically incorrect, whatever. Forget all that.

Speaker 2 It's in the moment. It's great hearing somebody be honest in the moment with some color.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I also look at people like

Speaker 2 a great franchise, Bill Bilichek, says nothing. Do your job.
Do your job. That's it.

Speaker 2 Great coach of the Spurs. Oh,

Speaker 1 Popovich. Yeah, Pop.

Speaker 2 Cuts off interviews. Uh-uh.

Speaker 2 Yep. Nope.
You saw it. Thank you.

Speaker 2 Bam.

Speaker 2 So there is

Speaker 2 something that they keep noise out because they don't give any color commentation. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And is there something about that that is a stability within a franchise that your head coach is going to handle all that color behind closed doors? Or just stay on that line. Keep it super simple.

Speaker 2 Do your job. Do your job.
You didn't do your job. You're out.
Yeah. Got to get someone in and can do your job.

Speaker 2 I know it's much more complicated than that. They're running X's and O's and everything.

Speaker 2 But this is another question. And look in college football, which is why I like college more than pro so much.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 our great legendary Texas coach,

Speaker 2 Daryl K. Royal, told me one time, he goes, Matthew, you can get the maximum potential out of your team three Saturdays a season.
I believe it was the number three Saturdays out of a season.

Speaker 2 So at that time, you had 10, so you got 12 now.

Speaker 2 So now maybe you say you can get four.

Speaker 2 Boy, there's an awesome

Speaker 2 black hole there to fill for the psychology. That's all psychology.
Because you hope you have,

Speaker 2 you coach to have your team at peak

Speaker 2 for one of those peak three weekends against the best teams.

Speaker 2 And then you hope they're just play kind of all right against the all right competition and then have their worst days against competition they should beat anyway. Yeah, they should just roll.

Speaker 2 But boy, if three,

Speaker 2 I'm still curious. I think the advantage, what if you got a coach right now, if you could get six

Speaker 2 top peak performance Saturdays,

Speaker 2 seven? I mean, because I'm asking for three hours.

Speaker 2 I'm asking for 36 hours a season for you to be mentally and physically and spiritually

Speaker 2 on the edge and locked in.

Speaker 2 There's an opportunity there. Is that what I'm saying? Oh, 100%.
No one saw.

Speaker 1 And for somebody to even see that there is an opportunity there, right? Because sometimes you might as look at life and be like, well, there's going to be highs and lows, right?

Speaker 1 Like you can have a great team, but yeah, you're only getting, you're not going to win every single time.

Speaker 1 So it's like those moments where you've had two great weeks in a row and like now the spread is 17, but it's like, no, you,

Speaker 2 that's not the laws of life, right?

Speaker 1 So how do you,

Speaker 1 how do you adjust what's realistically possible? to weather that storm of that third weekend where it's just just the laws of the universe are not going to allow it to be as perfect.

Speaker 2 And balance how much, look, because sometimes

Speaker 2 you need, your team needs confidence. You know, I remember talking to Mac Brown at practice after we, I don't know, 20-something years ago, we had just come off like, I don't know, 45-0 route to UCLA.

Speaker 1 Beat them?

Speaker 2 No, they routed us. We were not good.
And that Tuesday practice or that Monday practice,

Speaker 2 It was like

Speaker 2 a completion for two yards, a clean handoff that went for two yards.

Speaker 2 We got to applaud that. I was like, oh, applaud that.
It was like, man, I've got the teams.

Speaker 2 We need good clean handoffs and a reception and a clean pass that wasn't intercepted. We have to build the confidence back up.
So sometimes you're there.

Speaker 2 Other times you have such talent and they're so confident. How do you keep them playing? No.

Speaker 2 I'm not worried about your confidence. I need to make sure you feel like an underdog against yourself, against the ability that you can play to.

Speaker 2 Because great teams are essentially playing against themselves and how great they think they can be. And that opponent is nothing but in my way

Speaker 2 to me being as great as I can be. And that's, well, if you got that working, if you can flick that switch in you,

Speaker 2 howdy,

Speaker 2 howdy.

Speaker 1 Well, in your own life, because this is something I think about a lot. I think about confidence and ego, right?

Speaker 1 And I've always had a tough time kind of, I've always had a tough time knowing what my feelings are. Like when I was growing up, I didn't have a lot of feelings, I think.

Speaker 1 And so I didn't know what a lot of them were. Yeah.
And then as I've gotten older, it's like...

Speaker 2 You didn't have feelings or when you had feelings, you just didn't know what the hell were they?

Speaker 1 I didn't know what they were. So I couldn't tell if I was like, um, have like instincts or uncertain, like, like what was like, uh,

Speaker 1 like when it was making decisions, I couldn't tell what was instinctual or what was me making a choice. Just, yeah, I just had a, like, I just didn't have a lot of feelings when I was young.

Speaker 1 And so it was kind of like a late bloomer in some of those worlds. But one of the things I struggle with sometimes still is just like ego and confidence, you know.

Speaker 1 How do you know, you know what I'm saying? Because one can be super dangerous, one is healthy. Well,

Speaker 2 look, man, I think ego's gotten a bad rap. This, you know,

Speaker 2 elimination of the ego.

Speaker 2 You know, there's a difference to believe to

Speaker 2 going,

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 have confidence. I have confidence.
Then there is, oh, look look at me.

Speaker 2 The difference between I and me, me's the objective one, right? Me's that jumbotron, the lawyer one, where you're going like, oh, yeah, how do I look? I look good.

Speaker 2 There's where I get my confidence from something I saw myself outside of myself. Confidence with the I, which I think is true ego, when we handle it right, is, I think, extremely healthy.

Speaker 2 I mean, man, it's like, it's like

Speaker 2 judgment. You got to have judgment or you have no identity.
And where do you get judgment from?

Speaker 2 Well, part of that, I believe, is part of the ego of i am discerning because i prefer this over that i expect this more than i expect that experiences you know uh for myself or from others um now ego can get out of check when it gets into the look at me yeah it but when it's coming from the subjective place of like no i i i'm prepared for this This is what I'm fashioned to do.

Speaker 2 I have the ability. I'm capable and I'm willing.
I'm going to go do that. And no one's going to judge myself harder than I'm going to judge myself because I believe what I am capable of doing.

Speaker 2 I mean, look, I wrote about this in Green Lights a little bit in Poems and Prayers. These men, these roofs, these limitations we put on ourselves, we make those up.

Speaker 2 And that's a cocky ass thing to do. Who do we think we are?

Speaker 1 To put limitations on ourselves.

Speaker 2 To put these roofs

Speaker 2 on our ability if we have that ability. Now, now we get into what's humility.

Speaker 2 Humility, which is a word I had trouble with because growing up, especially in religion, humility, I always always kind of coward.

Speaker 2 My shoulders came forward. My head kind of got down.

Speaker 2 And I didn't know how to have confidence with humility. How do you have confidence and be humble? And then I heard a new definition.
of humility or being humble, admitting that we have more to learn.

Speaker 2 Now that definition, all of a sudden, my shoulders backed up. My head went high.
I said, oh, I can dig that. I'm in.
I have more to learn.

Speaker 1 Because that's an act of humility.

Speaker 2 Now I'm going forward. It's affirmative.
I can still be graceful, still be empathetic, and listen,

Speaker 2 but I'm not.

Speaker 1 And it's retreating.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm not, you know. Yes.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not being passive necessarily.

Speaker 2 I think we've got to have a health.

Speaker 1 taking on of knowledge and admitting you have more to learn. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was a freeing, you know, sometimes a definition of a word for me like, oh, I never thought of it that way. Now I'm, now, now I understand it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Sometimes it takes 40, I didn't learn that one until I was 45. Yeah.
So for 45 years,

Speaker 2 hey, hey, hey, get off your toes. You better be better be humble.
I was like, yeah. I'd cow down and miss opportunities.

Speaker 2 You know, and not be the first to speak up if I knew the answer or something or pass the buck too often. And that's a false, that's like a false modesty.
Oh, shoot. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 It's really pretending to, it's like, oh, let me let you see me be modest. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's bull, it's bullshit. It's, it's, it, it's, it's,

Speaker 2 you're, you're lying. It's kind of cocky in reverse.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 You know?

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Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it's all like, having some awareness about yourself, but trying not to be too crazy where you're sitting there just thinking about yourself all the time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's all like, it's all pretty fascinating, man. I mean, and there's a lot of good stuff in this book.
I'm trying to think of some of the parts that I really liked.

Speaker 1 You write that courage is often one more step.

Speaker 2 In the right direction.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you talk about that in marriage, faith,

Speaker 1 and character.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah, I thought that that was pretty interesting because,

Speaker 1 yeah, there's times where I stall.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's where I stall sometimes. I stall with that, like, I don't know what this is going to be like.
I don't know what this is going to feel like. I already don't like the feeling of this, right?

Speaker 1 It happens to me a lot with like commitment and relationships and stuff. It happens to me a lot and like trying not to control the outcome

Speaker 1 of like even a moment, right? Like, God, I just,

Speaker 1 you know, to have a little bit of courage there to be like, well, let's see what this, right?

Speaker 2 What would one step more take me deeper into debt? Or am I going to, or is it going to, am I going to power through and get to the other side and go, oh, okay, I stuck with it. Now I see it.

Speaker 2 Now I see the light. I like this.

Speaker 2 It's a really interesting measurement. I think we always got to do, man.
I mean,

Speaker 2 I try to measure like there's

Speaker 2 like, remember the

Speaker 2 no fear? I was always like, what do you mean, no fear? Oh, yeah. There's a lot of stuff I fear.
There's a lot of stuff I think we all should fear. It's what things do we go?

Speaker 2 No, but I'm going to have the courage to go. I'm overcoming that fear.
But there's good and there's bad fears. Meaning, like, if I'm reading the script and I kind of like the script,

Speaker 2 but man, I'm not sure about the director and this financing doesn't have enough money behind it. Can we really make this a good movie? And I'm not going to be making it.
I'm kind of scared of that.

Speaker 2 I think maybe, okay, maybe that's a healthy fear you got there, McConney, because the pedigree around it may not be as excellent as you want it to be.

Speaker 2 There's other times, I'll say where you script, see a character, and man, oh, everything, I like the directors on it, man. We got good financing behind us.
Production value is going to be good.

Speaker 2 The script's damn good. And I'm looking at this character going, I am scared shitless about

Speaker 2 how am I going to pull this off? Well, okay.

Speaker 2 I would subscribe that maybe that's a good fear that I need to dive in and go, well, let's go find out. But don't back off of that one because that one, and then I'll see the movie two years later.

Speaker 2 I'm like, oh, it was great. And look at that part that that other guy got to play.

Speaker 2 And then I'm kicking myself going, you didn't have the wavos and the will to go sit there and go find out mccana come on man you know what i mean so it's measuring the good ones and the bad one you say you got a bad feeling if you already have a bad feeling look

Speaker 2 i do think this man my brother rooster says this he goes man if everybody only did what they love to do there'd be a whole lot of unemployment yeah you know what i mean i mean it it's it's it's sometimes it does suck and you got to do some hard things that you're like man i'm not i'm not this doesn't feel right.

Speaker 2 Now, does it not feel right or do we just not like it?

Speaker 2 A lot of things I got to do that we got to do that we don't like to do to get to the other side and go, well, you know, especially as we get older and we've got things that we've invested in, family and friends and relationships, our own self.

Speaker 2 Those are some fires that we've been putting logs on for a while. And it can be hard sometimes to sit there and keep tending those fires or keep tending those gardens we're talking about, right?

Speaker 2 On our own soul.

Speaker 2 But you sit there and you go, I believe that if I do the hard work now and break break this sweat and draw some blood to make this work, which sucks, I'm going to get to the other side.

Speaker 2 It's a sacrifice I'm willing to take to get to the other side and go, oh, there we go. All right, there we go.
Now I can sleep better.

Speaker 2 Now I can wake up going, yep, I'm still connected to what I was, what I created in the past for myself. I did the next right thing for myself.
And it sucked.

Speaker 2 But damn it, that's right there where I could have backed off and retreated.

Speaker 2 I could have said, oh, I smell smoke. Gonna be fire.
Well, sometimes it's like, no, it's smoke. Maybe go put out the damn fire before it turns into one.
Yeah. That's what I I mean.

Speaker 1 Or let's procure this fire a little bit, make a little bit of barbecue for the future. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, I do.
Well, I think also it's like it creates linchpins in your life.

Speaker 1 Like some of those things you're saying, like

Speaker 1 even like with family and stuff, and being willing to do that, right? And be like, okay, this is a

Speaker 1 project that my wife and I, my partner, and I are going to create together.

Speaker 1 You know, did you have fears about like that at certain points in your life of like starting a family and committing to that and doing that? Was that kind of tough?

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 look, the one thing I always knew I wanted to be was a dad eight years old tell you good good story so you know dad had introduced me to a lot of his male friends through life and you know it's i'm shake their hand look them in the eye and nice to meet you sir sir sir sir was a big thing in our in our family and i remember i was eight years old we were in oak forest country club parking lot hella longview texas and i was met these uh

Speaker 2 these two men they were both in

Speaker 2 black slacks, white shirts and black jackets. And one of them had shades on.
And as I was shaking their hands, I remember the sunlight was behind me. It's kind of in my eyes.

Speaker 2 I was like, nice to meet you, sir. Nice to meet you, sir.
It hit me in my eight-year-old mind at that time that, oh,

Speaker 2 and they, and they were talking about their, they started talking about their own children.

Speaker 2 And it hit me in my eight-year-old mind that, oh, all the people I've shaken, all that my dad's introduced to that I shook their hands and said, sir, to, were fathers.

Speaker 2 And in my eight-year-old mind, I went, oh,

Speaker 2 that's how you succeed in life.

Speaker 2 And it, you know, whether I malaproped or that was the meaning I gave it, it was, it stuck with me.

Speaker 2 And it was, it was always been my measurement of what successful life would be as a man to become a father and to then help raise kids. So I knew I always wanted to be a father.
Now, then you get to,

Speaker 2 can you, you know, meet a woman that you're in love with and that, you know, is going to be a great mother.

Speaker 2 you know, to them. I fortunately met that woman in Camilla.
So, but, but we didn't get married right off the bat.

Speaker 2 We were, and maybe this is because my mom and dad were married three times, divorced twice, and her mom and dad were married two times and divorced three times. Thank God.

Speaker 2 So we had a track record for a reason to go like

Speaker 1 jewelry.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. A whole lot.
Yeah. So we're rolling along, man.

Speaker 2 And saying it's going great. And we don't want to get married because that's just what you're supposed to do.
I don't want to back into it because someone goes legally. It's all what you're saying.

Speaker 2 No, bullshit. I want to want to.
And I didn't really want to. I wasn't against it, but her and I were like, we're doing good.
We have our first child.

Speaker 2 Or let me go back to nine months before we have a first child. I come home and there's cheeseburgers she's cooking on the grill.
I smell them. She pours me a double of my favorite tequila.

Speaker 2 I sit down, she and she gives me a gift. I open it up.
It's the, what do you call it? The sonogram or whatever gram that is where you see in the belly, you got a baby and a fetus. She's pregnant.

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh. Cry tears.
We hug it out. Oh Oh my god, this is this is so awesome, et cetera, et cetera.
Let's call my mom. Tell her the good news.
I get my phone out, call mom.

Speaker 2 Camilla's sitting next to me. Mom, you there? We got some great news to tell you.
Got you on speakerphone. Can you hear?

Speaker 2 Camilla is here. Hi, Camilla.
Hi, Miss McConaughey. Hey, how are mom? You there? You got to meet.
Yeah, yeah, I'm listening. I can't wait.
Tell me, tell me, tell me. Mom,

Speaker 2 Camilla's pregnant.

Speaker 2 Crickets.

Speaker 2 Oh, next thing you hear is

Speaker 2 no,

Speaker 2 no, no, no,

Speaker 2 no,

Speaker 2 Matthew, this is out of order. I didn't raise you to do this.
No,

Speaker 2 Matthew, you're supposed to be married and went on and on and on in a five-minute monologue and then hung up.

Speaker 2 And I stop, I look over at Camille, and she looks at me, and we're like, oh, shit, that didn't go the way it was. Yeah, I hoped it would.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, let's top this drink.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Woo, okay.

Speaker 2 10 minutes later, the phone rings. It's my mom.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Hi, mom.
She goes, hi, Matthew.

Speaker 2 Am I on the speakerphone? I go, I can put you on the speakerphone. Okay.
Is Camilla there? Yeah, she's right. Hey, Ms.
Wakani. Okay.
Can y'all both hear me? Yeah, we hear you, mom. We hear you, Ms.

Speaker 2 WCAN. Okay.

Speaker 2 I would like to put some white out over that last.

Speaker 2 I was being selfish thinking about myself. If you two are happy about it, I should be happy for you.
It was not my place to be unhappy.

Speaker 2 So we had two children before we got married. But yeah, I mean, look, the big project,

Speaker 2 you know, as far as I can tell, the one that's non-negotiable, that's the thing.

Speaker 2 Can we find non-negotiable projects that we go, nope, when I'm lost and don't know what the hell I'm doing, or I'm looking for my North Star, what are some things in our life that we can look at and go, if I concentrate on that, I can't go wrong.

Speaker 2 Sometimes that's just it. Like I still have it now.
Maybe I don't know what new things I want to do. And when I'm kind of lost and wobbly, I'll try to look at the things that I go

Speaker 2 like family, like fatherhood, like the marriage, and go, if you work on that, McConaughey, you can't bogey.

Speaker 2 You may not eagle the hole, but you're not going to bogey. And you definitely ain't going to hit one out of bounds.
You can't spend too much time on that in your spare time.

Speaker 2 And then that'll help you spiritually, heart and head. And so I try to go to the non-negotiables when I'm a little, when I'm like, and then when things are going well, that's another thing.

Speaker 2 I love to to accomplish it, man. I love to go work and I'm going, all of a sudden, I'm hitting the road.
I'm all over the place. How do I keep my marriage and my fatherhood out of the debit section?

Speaker 2 Yeah. How do I, you know, because I don't have the

Speaker 2 time, as much time. That's another challenge when things are going well, personally, you know, to take care of those non-negotiables.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think a lot, like, if I don't know what to do, I try and, yeah, like, it's always like help others, you know, like that's the thing, like, that's probably been the thing that's been most helpful in my life.

Speaker 1 If I don't know what to do whenever, you know,

Speaker 1 it's try and help others. Think of somebody else.
Call somebody else, see what they're doing, get out of myself.

Speaker 1 There's like that prayer. It's like,

Speaker 2 God, I

Speaker 1 offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self and take away my difficulties so that

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 2 I don't remember the anniversary. Relieve me of the bondage to myself.
Leave me of it, off it.

Speaker 1 Third step prayer it is. Yeah, offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. That's it.
There we go.

Speaker 1 So it's just like, yeah, God, my problem is me right now. I'm just so, I'm sitting here.
I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm breaking myself up and putting myself into a joint and smoking myself.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm saying? I'm just getting high on my, you know, something here. Yeah.
And it can be a low point or a high point, though. Yeah.
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 Sometimes I think it's like, you know, I've thought it's just

Speaker 1 the lows, but it's like, even if I get too high on myself, it's like, that's not good either, you know?

Speaker 2 Well, it keeps our pursuit not about the,

Speaker 2 it's talking to the God, godliness within us, the more godlikeness in us that we can be, that a lot of us are striving to be. That pursuit is such a valuable pursuit, you know,

Speaker 2 religious or not,

Speaker 1 you know, to have a connection to a creator, to not feel higher

Speaker 2 that you're not going to reach, but you're going.

Speaker 1 I mean, otherwise I would feel so homeless if I don't want my soul to feel homeless, you know?

Speaker 2 There's a lot of people that feel very homeless.

Speaker 1 Well, you talk about just like your own like times of faith and like how hard it is. You know, it's tough to

Speaker 1 keep that connection going, you know, and to work on it more.

Speaker 2 It takes maintenance, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it takes a lot of maintenance, man. That's probably my biggest.

Speaker 2 That's where my ego will get out of control, where all of a sudden I start, I take for granted that

Speaker 2 I didn't just pull it all off of my own. And I start thinking I did.
And I do the mouth. I go, I mean, I did.
And all of a sudden it's like, ooh, here comes humble pie pretty soon.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. I mean, that's a tough thing.
I mean, having a relationship with

Speaker 1 having a relationship with our creator and giving ourselves, like saying, God, you know, giving thanks, getting a good perspective for ourselves.

Speaker 1 Has there been practices that you've used realistically over the years? I'm sure once you have a family and stuff like that, some of that starts to maybe get more built into you.

Speaker 1 But just because it's, there's a vision, there's a, there's an actual component that's right there alive.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But have have you noticed for yourself?

Speaker 2 Having kiddos

Speaker 2 is,

Speaker 2 in some ways,

Speaker 2 are

Speaker 2 how we

Speaker 2 become immortal. If we're fortunate enough for them to outlive us.
Yeah. And if we're fortunate enough for them to have kids and pass on a lineage.
It's like you first have a kid, you're like,

Speaker 2 I have helped create a being that is outside of myself, but my blood is in them.

Speaker 2 It's a certain way to immortality.

Speaker 2 And I don't mean in the religious sense of, oh, if you live this way, you live forever because you get to the gates and the kingdom of heaven.

Speaker 2 But it is a mortal way of going, no, just kind of signed to evolutionary-wise. It's a way to become immortal.

Speaker 2 And I find there's a great power in that and a great freedom and responsibility that comes with that because you're shepherding your

Speaker 2 future self through your child or what you're what you're, you know, for 18 years, so to speak, generally in the household before they go off into the world um

Speaker 2 so you're taking care of yourself right in a weird way by taking like a chunk of yourself by taking care of your it's our greatest children it's the greatest export and it is the most closest thing piece of art in the world that we'll ever put out yeah

Speaker 2 you know um

Speaker 1 yeah that's pretty fascinating yeah um do you and your family do you have any traditions that really mean a lot to you guys that you have felt like um

Speaker 1 have helped you establish more of a sense like a familial sense like a team sense kind of

Speaker 2 yeah I mean

Speaker 2 my wife's better than my family ever was on the actual rituals I mean my family's like everyone come over Thanksgiving we're going and it's like swing by the pit and get some food while you're doing it and we're going to sit down.

Speaker 2 Well, not unless everybody wants to sit down.

Speaker 2 My wife's more like, no, we are, I'm setting the table. Right.
And we're sitting down and doing this.

Speaker 2 And we're going to say prayers before and everyone's going to go around that's one of the things we like to do call it around the horn everybody before we eat share something out loud something you're thankful for yeah share it up and at very least out there it at least makes the food taste better yeah you know at least but it also is a great conversation starter because you'll say things and a lot of people don't like to share them out loud And it'll start a conversation with somebody that you didn't know.

Speaker 2 Why'd you say you're thankful for that thing? Oh, I didn't know your grandmother just got out of the hospital. Oh, I didn't know that you did good on that test last Tuesday.

Speaker 2 And you're thankful for that. And it's a great way to get a conversation started.
We do, we practice that.

Speaker 2 We are,

Speaker 2 we, we, we, we, we have dinner each night. It's a small ritual, but in busy worlds of today, huge, to have that down and everyone comes in and you hear a little bit about the day.

Speaker 2 And we kind of, it's kind of like

Speaker 2 the team gets together. And I was talking to my kids, We were talking to kids about it the other day.
And I was like, look,

Speaker 2 talk about these bonfires we have. Our family, we're calling it a bonfire, not a campfire, bonfire, boys and girls.
Let's go, man. This is non-negotiable.
We got to, we created it. We're on our way.

Speaker 2 We think we're doing all right. Let's keep putting log wood on this fire.
But you three kiddos,

Speaker 2 you're responsible for going and chopping wood here too and bringing the log back to the fire. It's not just me and your mama.
Right.

Speaker 2 that are doing that. It takes, it's talking about back to sports.
We were in the very beginning. It's a a team effort here.
Yeah. Y'all got to start adding that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And take the, and take the, have the confidence yourself that you do have a log to add to this fire. Right.

Speaker 1 I think encouraging your, like encouraging kids to think and feel like that, it's important, you know, because kids don't know how to think and feel.

Speaker 1 I think there's like this understanding that people just know what feelings are and what's happening and like what their responsibility is as a brother or a son.

Speaker 1 It's like a lot of that stuff has to really be kind of instilled, I think.

Speaker 2 I think you're right because I've,

Speaker 2 I'm, I'm, I'm I'm guilty of giving the cliff notes version of things to my kids sometimes where they're like,

Speaker 2 I think it's like, well, duh, you understand that, you know what I mean? Like little things, man.

Speaker 2 How do you wipe your butt? You know what I mean? What's deodorant for? You know what I mean? Little things you're like, well, duh. And like, no, I don't.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you're wiping your butt with deodorant, it's going to burn. You know, how would I know? Yeah.
You know, things you've got to let them know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's that extra step a lot of times. And I think we think that kids are just adults and

Speaker 1 sometimes

Speaker 2 they saw it somewhere, they picked it up that they already know. Because that's the other thing.
You do find out a lot of things that they did pick up that you didn't know they knew.

Speaker 1 Right. And then you start to be like, oh, well, and you try to help many when they're like, I already know this.
So it's like, it's probably a little catch up.

Speaker 2 But there's a whole lot of things that, yeah, they don't know.

Speaker 2 You know, we, it's, it's, it's in our frame, one of the things is

Speaker 2 when are the kids ready for this type of movie?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Or a PG or an R or something.
And I'm just, and what content is in there? I just don't want,

Speaker 2 there's some certain things in life about

Speaker 2 love, about

Speaker 2 violence,

Speaker 2 about all the ways of the world that I don't necessarily, I want my kids to get it from an outside piece of entertainment before they have a context of understanding it from me and their mother.

Speaker 2 For sure. Like let them understand it

Speaker 2 first before seeing it for the first time. And their emotions are going all over the place for pleasure or pain, but they don't know what it all means.
Right. Or does that happen?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 so I want the context coming from their mom and dad first so they can then see it and go, I understand that was realistically, however realistically that was done and how that affected me, but I understand the context of what that scene I just saw.

Speaker 2 And that's why I try to hold back certain content, you know,

Speaker 2 from the kids to have just an understanding of the reality so you can at least appreciate it, but know that that's fiction. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you got to be a keeper. You got to be a keeper.
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Speaker 1 i was in uh

Speaker 1 I was at Old Miss, dude. Lane Kiffen's crazy.
That guy's absolutely crazy, dude. He took me to yoga class, right? He goes to his yoga class.

Speaker 1 i'm in there right and he i think he's he has the heat on his phone he's hijacked the heat system and like this so he's sitting over there pumping up the heat yeah i mean just like hot yoga like putin over there yeah he's got it way hot though and he's he's even holding a lighter in there like adding a little bit of heat to the room

Speaker 1 but at one point he's like wandering around and just like saying things to people and whispering like affirmations wait is he is he in the class or is he teaching the class he's in it he's not the teacher okay and the teacher has like the microphone thing on and she's kind of pointing at him every now and then um there's a picture that we just put up yesterday from i don't know if you can even see it it might be out there somewhere can you raise it up a little bit i can only see his head and this seems like a shot you got to see out okay that's lame but find the other photo too if you can nick uh but he's dude he comes in he puts a peppermint in my mouth dude and he has his hand kind of even touched my lips a little bit and i don't even i mean we're both straight males you know me and he has a family i hope to have a family but i he just like i'm like and i'm in there sweating and dying, basically trying to look okay, you know.

Speaker 1 And sorry, I wear a towel like that.

Speaker 2 I was raised by a single mom. Oh, this is you over on you over on the right? Yeah.
It is post-peppermint. It is post-peppermint.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I mean, Lane is crazy, though, dude. He does these weird rituals and stuff in there, and he'll like bounce a golf ball.

Speaker 1 And it's like people, it's like dead, and he'll bounce a golf ball across the, he's just doing bizarre stuff in there.

Speaker 2 Does he have a method to it? Is he doing it for it?

Speaker 1 It It's this week. I can't, it's like he's

Speaker 1 some sweat Moliere or something, you know? I don't know what he's doing, but it's, it's just amazing over there.

Speaker 1 But he just always likes to be involved and causing, having an effect. Okay.

Speaker 1 So that's what I noticed about him. And it's interesting and it's fascinating.
And the same way.

Speaker 2 Is he a trickster or is he a sort of, as you said, he's just going to throw in some color commentary on the situation. He's going to give it a different color.

Speaker 1 He's very colorful. Okay.
And so, but he's got a big heart. He like, he'll make sure that everything's taken care of.
He's on top of everything. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 1 But I think he likes to be very colorful and stuff. But we had a great time over there.

Speaker 1 Anyway, this was just an experience that we had where he goes to these yoga class every single day and he never misses. And it was just,

Speaker 1 yeah, it was a great experience. I mean, I had to lay down for a little while and some girl was like, do you need CPR? And I'm like, no, I don't fucking need CPR.

Speaker 2 Okay. I'm just taking a rest.
Yeah, I'm just taking a rest with my eyes closed.

Speaker 2 You thought you went through it, man. You look like.

Speaker 1 Well, I was laying there like this for a little while because I wasn't doing really good.

Speaker 1 And yeah,

Speaker 1 I didn't black out, but I like light browned out or whatever. But it was like, I'm fine.
But anyway, yeah, but it was just fascinating over there, man, just to be over there.

Speaker 1 And we got to walk through the, like the, the, the walk that they do up to the stadium. And that was pretty crazy.
I mean, yeah, they're just. That fan base is pretty rabid.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize how special it was over there in Oxford.

Speaker 2 I didn't realize. They got it going on right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they got it going on. I think they're going to make the CFP.
I'm hoping Vanderbilt makes it in. I don't think that they're going to.

Speaker 2 Well, what did y'all lost two?

Speaker 1 We lost two, yeah.

Speaker 2 To us and to Alabama. Alabama.
All right. That ain't.
That's.

Speaker 1 But they need a big win. You know, we need a big win.

Speaker 2 Who do you got left?

Speaker 1 We still have Tennessee. We have Kentucky next weekend, and then we have Tennessee.
All right.

Speaker 2 You clear those two with the two-lost season, you're

Speaker 2 most likely in.

Speaker 2 Maybe. Well, look, like, we just came, we just have Sanford Stadium down in Georgia.
Got it handed to us.

Speaker 1 You were down there at the UGA. What's that like over there at that actions?

Speaker 1 I've never been

Speaker 1 between the hedges. It was?

Speaker 2 I had never heard Sanford Stadium between the hedges as being like one of the plates. Whoa, it's really hard.
Oh, yeah, man. Was it 90,000? And those fans are in unison, man.

Speaker 2 And they had... I tell you what, I get to measure stadiums, right? When I go to them,

Speaker 2 like, what's the fan base?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 How happy are they that I'm there compared to how much do they like, F you, McConaughey? Hey, we're going to get it. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 And this crowd was loud from the beginning, especially that first half. And then the second half when they started to boat roll,

Speaker 2 they were still really loud. But they were one of the higher decibels that I've heard.
But they were continuous is the thing, especially anytime

Speaker 2 that we were on offense. But

Speaker 2 you get crowds that are in unison. They know the chance.

Speaker 1 Auburn does a good job of that, being in unison.

Speaker 2 It's a big thing. You can have 30,000 more people, but if the rituals and the cheers aren't in unison,

Speaker 2 it's not as intimidating. At all.

Speaker 2 And yeah, they were happy I was there, but they were also giving me straight horns down and going, we're going to whip your

Speaker 2 tonight.

Speaker 2 So it was a good, it was a good, it was a

Speaker 2 healthy hate there. I love that.
You know what I mean? Because I've been to some,

Speaker 2 some visiting.

Speaker 2 And they get a little edgy. Oh, no, I got some, and I won't say their names on that.
I got some that, dude, I'm dodging, I'm dodging Lugies.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, you're dodging those tomatoes you were throwing at them.

Speaker 2 And they're like,

Speaker 2 and I was like, here we go. Okay.
And I've been to others. They're like, time to kill us now, but whatever, you know, and then I've been to some where it's like, they're too happy to see.

Speaker 2 They're too nice to me. I'm like, uh-oh, y'all in trouble.

Speaker 1 Dude, how great is it, though? Is there anything better than being a college football fan? I don't know if there is.

Speaker 2 It's great. And the SEC is

Speaker 2 one of the best forms of tribalism in the world. I love hearing that.

Speaker 1 I think I agree with you. I didn't know.
I toured so much, I'd never gotten to have the fall off. So the past, I've been in nine games this year, I think, from

Speaker 1 different stadiums. Probably five of them were at Vanderbilt Stadium.

Speaker 1 But it's just been amazing, dude. Like to go to Alabama, to go to Virginia Tech, to go.

Speaker 1 We're going to go to Nealon in a week or two, to be at Ole Miss yesterday.

Speaker 1 You had to just see some of it and just that, like,

Speaker 1 what it's about for them in those places. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, and, you know, Athens, that's basically just college town. And they were just, the fans were great and they were loud and they were rabid.

Speaker 2 But to go, one of the things I love about being in the SEC, I can't wait to go. You know,

Speaker 2 been in Tuscaloosa. I've been, I can't wait to go to Death Valley LSU on a night game when we go there.

Speaker 2 Because I've only been there once and they played Vanderbilt when Vanderbilt was a doormat, not the Vanderbilt now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so that was a good experience, but that wasn't a great Death Valley experience.

Speaker 2 I still, I can't wait to get over to Tennessee.

Speaker 1 That's a beautiful place. That I think might be the most beautiful place to see a game is that Needland Stadium.
But I haven't been to see a game at Austin. I want to go see that.

Speaker 1 I know that Rogan and Tony Henchcliffe went one time. You might have went to that same game that they they went to.

Speaker 2 I've been to most of them. I'm over there on the sidelines.

Speaker 1 That's so cool, man. Yeah.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 I just feel lucky to, first of all, even just get to be around some of the teams, to be that close to that energy.

Speaker 1 If you stay around young people, it just keeps you young. It's like there's something that's like,

Speaker 1 I don't know. It's just, it's energy.
That's how energy works.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I still have to remind myself how young these young men are. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know?

Speaker 2 And that,

Speaker 2 you know, it's like, because they're so damn big.

Speaker 2 You know, and then you look and you go, oh, you're 18. Yeah.
18. When was that? You know, got to go back and do the math.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can't even figure it out.

Speaker 2 Because I'm down there and I'm feeling like I was at college, UT, just a few years ago. Well, a few multiplied times are a nice size number.
Yeah. But it seems like it was the other day, you know.

Speaker 1 I know it does, man. But that's what's kind of nice about it, too, is the connectivity of that.

Speaker 1 That there's something special about when you get around certain things that it's undeniable that it's nice that it feels not that long ago in a way. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 And again, on the SEC, man, I was talking to Sanky about this the other night.

Speaker 2 They're the only conference that wants to fight, absolutely draw blood like brothers on a Saturday night when you're in the game, but after the game,

Speaker 2 we're the SEC. Yeah.
And the only conference that

Speaker 2 you go to, and if you beat an SEC team beats another team from any, that's outside of the SEC conference. Yeah, they may chant their,

Speaker 2 their, their name, Ty, LSU, or

Speaker 2 Todd, but they also chant SEC, SEC.

Speaker 2 Nobody else does that, man.

Speaker 1 I used to get upset with my friends that would cheer on other SEC teams if our team was out of it, right? Right. But now I get it.
That's it. Now I get it.
It's like this is the conference.

Speaker 2 That's why I'm kind of, look, I backhanded, you know,

Speaker 2 I got it when OU beats Alabama, like they did. I get a little, oh, there we go.

Speaker 2 Even when A ⁇ M came back from down 33 against South Carolina, I'm like, there we go. Because

Speaker 2 we're the old Southwest Conference, the old Big 12. I'm rooting for them.

Speaker 2 And I also, I'm a Texas fan who wants our two biggest rivals, those Aggies and OU traditionally.

Speaker 2 I want them to be undefeated when we play them.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 We usually play OU around the, I don't know, fifth fifth game this season fourth fifth i always want o you to be undefeated and i want us to be undefeated and then i want to beat them yeah beat them and i want a m we have we play a m the last game of the year so it's still coming up it's two weeks you know from now that's saying whatever weekend is i don't know when this comes out but that you know i want them to be undefeated

Speaker 2 when we beat them is what i wanted you know what i mean that's that's yeah Well, I always cheer for the underdog, man.

Speaker 1 I find I always cheer for the underdog. That's one thing I loved about Vanderbilt this year.
They've always been the underdog. Pavi is great.
They have so many great guys.

Speaker 1 Every guy over there is great.

Speaker 2 I met Pavby.

Speaker 2 He came up and said Howdy after the game. Oh, he did.
In Austin. Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 He's a great guy, man.

Speaker 2 He's the underdog. He's just been the underdog the whole time.
And I was like, man, congratulations on what you've done. Keep doing it, man.
Y'all got it rolling. And

Speaker 2 yeah, and what Lee's done with that. Yeah, because look, there's a lot of players on there that a lot of these teams we're talking about didn't necessarily sniff them.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Because they would have been on a different team. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But look what they've they've done. It's again, back to psychology.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's, that's a, that's a mental edge. And, and, and the power you can get from believing you're an underdog or that the world saying you're an underdog fuels you instead of

Speaker 2 right makes you cower going, oh, yeah, watch this. But to believe that

Speaker 2 is different than to say that. Like we've, we've seen plenty of teams that are cocky.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.
And you're like, not to get into the ego side of it.

Speaker 2 You ain't got anything, you know. Oh, you just laid it, you laid a big hit on that running back and there's three minutes left in the fourth and you're 17 down.
I wouldn't be doing a dance, Sarah Paz.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Did you see a scoreboard? You know what I mean? Or the want to come out is what Moore was saying, or who was it? Mike saying, well, I wanted to win the game. Didn't want to play like the win.

Speaker 2 Do you can see

Speaker 2 there's a certain swagger that you're like, are you playing the part or do you believe?

Speaker 2 Again, are you looking at the Jumbotron and acting like what you think you should act like? Or do you believe that? And is that dance you're doing coming from

Speaker 2 you? That's me. That's how I feel.
Difference.

Speaker 1 Dude, we had, there was a funny, the other night I was somewhere and there was like a, I think a Titans, one of the Titans kind of brass.

Speaker 1 And they had a, like one of their upper people was, and Pavio was there. We went to some dinner thing we were at.
And

Speaker 1 I said, oh, have you guys thought about drafting Diego? You know, and the guy goes, Well, he's a little small for us, you know. Um, we kind of, we like, like, this is one of our guys.

Speaker 1 It was a player there, and he pointed to a guy, and he's like, That guy's six, seven. Yeah, and I was like, That guy's one and seven, right?

Speaker 1 I was like, Diego Pavi is eight and two right now, I hear you, and I know it's different.

Speaker 1 No, I hear you, but for me, it's like if I'm a team in a city, I would get a player that everybody loves that played in that college. I don't understand why pro teams don't do that a little bit more.

Speaker 2 Well, they do. The Saints have been the best at it historically, drafting the local, keeping it in Louisiana.

Speaker 2 So that Superdome's full of people going,

Speaker 2 he droves my cut, you know. Oh, that's a good point.
You know,

Speaker 2 look, I don't know how much that really works in the pros because it's a new singular brand business.

Speaker 2 I'm with you. I like the sentiment of let's keep the home cooking going.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's how I, I think that's how I think. You know, I like that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 Are you still teaching? You teach, were you teaching classes at UTC?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I visit the, I guess,

Speaker 2 there's a professor that's in there daily, but then I swing in and

Speaker 2 we'll talk going for three hours at a time. And because what we do is we break down films and ads that I've done.

Speaker 2 It's called from script to screen, meaning let's see the journey that this book that turned into the first script that turned into a shooting script that turned into the movie.

Speaker 2 Let's see the journey it took to get there. Because the original screenplay is very different than the final package you see.

Speaker 2 And so let's show these students, these serious filmmakers, about how there's many ways to skin the cat. And so I'll go in and we just break down.
We broke down most of my films.

Speaker 2 And then I have the director come in and talk about certain scenes. And

Speaker 2 it's a badass class.

Speaker 1 Dude, I've loved it.

Speaker 1 I used to go perform up at

Speaker 1 Huntington, West Virginia, all the time. Where you guys shouted a Marshall movie.
Yeah. And that was awesome, man.
And one time the guy that survived, reading at the hotel

Speaker 1 that I was staying at.

Speaker 1 He was speaking.

Speaker 2 When was this? How many years ago?

Speaker 1 More or less. 16 years ago.
16. 12, 10.

Speaker 2 So we had done We Are Marshall,

Speaker 2 which is probably

Speaker 2 20 years ago? Might be.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so look, I don't want to speak on Red's behalf, but this story I heard, and I hope I'm getting this correct. If I'm not, excuse me.
But that, you know,

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 crash in 1971 with that Thundering Herd team, everyone in Huntington was somehow related to that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 All right. Whether by blood or by family or by, that was the identity of the town, the college at that time.
And a lot of people retreated.

Speaker 2 We showed up to go tell that story, and they were skeptical of Hollywood coming to tell their story for good reason. For sure.
Like, which version you,

Speaker 2 you know, you tell on the bus. Right.

Speaker 1 You're going to add some elements that are just going to make us look bad.

Speaker 2 You're going to make us look like that. Do you know? Well, our director, McGinty, McGee, did a really cool thing.
He let the whole town know in the paper, hey, anybody can come by the set.

Speaker 2 Anybody who wants a script, I'll give you the script. Slowly, people started to come around.
The script was good. They were like, okay, da, da, da, da, da.

Speaker 2 And then the movie comes out, and I think there was a bit of catharsis that can happen. Meaning

Speaker 2 I heard that, you know, Red Dawson had been very reclusive.

Speaker 2 And that the time around the film coming out and the story and for other reasons, he started to come back out, watch a game, maybe get a little, maybe, maybe it started behind the fence, then it moved into a bleacher, then it moved into talk.

Speaker 2 Anyway, you hear stories like that. And not that the film we did was responsible for that, but a part of that, that you go, ah,

Speaker 2 what a cool

Speaker 2 thing

Speaker 2 to be a part of Intigue that can happen, you know?

Speaker 1 Well, that's an interesting thing about art is that something can come out of, something that It's nice can come out of this, right?

Speaker 1 Something that still honors it, even if it didn't do the best job, something that earnestly tried to show up and honor this thing or have some, spend time with it, right? To spend time.

Speaker 2 Spend time spent on it,

Speaker 2 well-intended. Right.
Try to tell the truth on it.

Speaker 2 Ah, they get to then see a representation of some of their experiences on the proverbial Jumbotron, but also that can help us get to know ourselves better, especially if you've been locked up and covering that.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Holding those things, yeah. It's crazy some of the things that we hold.

Speaker 1 You know, I got into doing like ayahuasca experiences over the past, like, yeah, maybe five, six years, and that's helped like bring up a lot of old stuff that and process it, you know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's been pretty good for me.

Speaker 2 Now, a lot of that's talking about going back, we were talking about ego earlier, a lot of that's about getting rid of the ego in a way.

Speaker 2 When that's what's what's been your, your, what would you say has been the best thing, most healthy thing for you that those ayahuasca journeys have done for you?

Speaker 1 I would say it's helped me uh

Speaker 1 process a lot of old pain, things that were like kind of weights. Yeah.
Kind of things that were just like

Speaker 1 clumped up roots of my past. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hard mud around them. Yeah.
Just helped that stuff break up. Okay.
So it's easy for me to be up here a little bit in my own soil and have an experience to grow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 1 not be locked.

Speaker 2 We more receptive, maybe? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And not stuck in like a lot of, like kind of burned off a lot of like old like low self-worth stuff. Some of the

Speaker 1 started to kind of disappear, you know? Have you had any experiences like that?

Speaker 2 Not Not with ayahuasca.

Speaker 2 I mean, I've had,

Speaker 2 you know, my own, most of my big sort of breakthroughs spiritually have come on singular journeys that I took by myself to places where they didn't know my name.

Speaker 2 And putting myself in those places, whether it be

Speaker 2 in Africa or the Amazon and Peru.

Speaker 2 where everything that I relied on was stripped away or the year I spent in Australia as an exchange student where all of my conveniences and my talismans of identity, whether it was my name or

Speaker 2 my nation or my state or my family, they're all stripped away. And

Speaker 2 I was forced to rely on myself and forced to kind of look up and go,

Speaker 2 I'm listening.

Speaker 2 And, you know, when that truth comes on you, man,

Speaker 2 it's like a

Speaker 2 gentle as a butterfly, but strong as a lightning bolt. And you've got some things that hit you sometimes.
You go,

Speaker 2 remember this.

Speaker 2 When you go back into the world and all that onion starts to get pre-peeled again, you start to take on all these things and play these different parts and get these ideas.

Speaker 2 Remember this to be what you understand now to be a non-negotiable truth.

Speaker 2 It's like there's an Emerson line about

Speaker 2 the truth that comes to us in quiet solitude.

Speaker 2 It makes so much sense. But can we take that amongst the masses? Can we walk into the cathedral, the stadium with

Speaker 2 500 million people

Speaker 2 and still hold that truth to be ours and true for all time? Wow. You know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's something as I get older.

Speaker 1 That's the thing I admire somebody that, something the most, somebody that can have just like a quiet self-confidence, you know, an integrity, you know, that's that you can tell that

Speaker 1 that's kind of unshakable for for them, you know?

Speaker 2 Well, and it's, it's tough, man, because the world changes. And a lot of times we change by changing with it and adapting.
A lot of times we change by staying exactly the same.

Speaker 2 And all of a sudden, we look like an original. And you're like, I'm doing the same thing I was doing.
I just didn't, I didn't, I just jived when everyone else juked. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Or I just stayed the same while everyone else was juking and jiving.

Speaker 1 Do you ever feel like that? Like there was a, there was a comedy manager one time.

Speaker 1 I was on a plane with him and he said, your audience will evolve right because they'll grow up but so you have to evolve somewhat right but there's a fear i think especially with comedian stuff well this worked yeah i gotta stay i gotta be that person for you know that's what i have to be a lot you know yeah i mean i don't know that's like that for actors i guess it no no sure

Speaker 2 like this movie style worked for me that or this choices i made oh everyone likes that when i do that yeah that got memed or that got you know what i mean i'm not doesn't mean i'm gonna you know i'm not i'm not saying i'm I'm gonna, hey, I did never go, well, make sure you say, all right, all right, all right, every scene, every movie.

Speaker 2 I'm not saying that, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But I'm saying there's certain things, especially if your character's deaf or whatever, or he's like just in a comb and at the very end, he's like, all right, all right,

Speaker 2 or, or just a pessimist. So

Speaker 2 that would be the best.

Speaker 1 He's like such a Jack Nicholson. Who's that? Jack Nicholson

Speaker 1 in that movie where he's just that pessimist. Anger management is editor.
Is that it?

Speaker 2 And then at the end, you find, you just say it. Here's your bumper sticker.

Speaker 2 No, there's certain things that, you know,

Speaker 2 you know, you get to, I think we all do. Rock band knows what they're, what their encore is, you know.
Bruce knows they want to hear born the USA. Right.

Speaker 2 How do you sing that, your proverbial fastball? You know, Clemens does a hundred mile fastball. Don't mean, does he need to know curves and sinkers? Yeah.

Speaker 2 But do you forgive your fastball? No, you don't forget your fastball. Of course not.
I think you go, but how do you do it?

Speaker 2 What I try to remind myself is if I know I'm going with something that's a fastball, I go, okay, how do I do it like it's the first time each time?

Speaker 2 I've always wondered that with,

Speaker 2 well, probably with comedians. You got something you know, man, bam, it works.

Speaker 2 How do you do it? Do you, how do you do it like that's the first time?

Speaker 2 How's a band go out and play that song they played 2,000 times, man? Like, how do they get off to it that night? What I've heard is that, oh, you've got a new audience each night.

Speaker 2 so you're feeding off of them and it's their first time, so you can give it to them like it's first time.

Speaker 1 Interesting, I never even thought about it like that. Yeah, for me, it's just always tricking myself.
Um, laughing, sometimes laughing seems very present, yeah.

Speaker 1 And so, things like that, uh, some modalities I'll do before, like ice bass, Yosana, those types of things, it just gets your energy so like at a fun level of being alive and existing that no matter what you're doing seems fun.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I think a lot of it is having fun.

Speaker 2 How much of that? Let's talk about that. How much of

Speaker 2 doing that, being successful is, do you think is enjoying what you're doing when you're doing it?

Speaker 2 Oh, like how much if you laugh at a joke, and I, and I, and I, I, I think I'm agreeing with you here is that I've done things where I'm like going, I feel confident enough in it where if it makes me laugh and no one else laughs, I'm going to then think that's funny.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And that will then probably in turn be funny.

Speaker 1 Well, that might just be a good acting.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 yeah, that's probably just a really good way to, as an actor, to be able to like have that shift. Like, okay, if this didn't even land the right way, then that part of it is then funny.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think as a comedian, I don't, if I'm taking care of myself and I'm in a good way, then it's going to go good. I know.

Speaker 1 I just think it's like, they just want to see you having a good time, especially these days. People are just so, like with podcasting and stuff, people will get to know you so much.

Speaker 1 They just want to be in the room with you, right?

Speaker 1 They want the the material to be good, and you want it to be good. I don't want you to be good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you're all there wanting it to be good, right?

Speaker 1 And I wouldn't show up if I didn't think it was at least good enough to bring to you to trade for a fare.

Speaker 1 But, but a lot of it is just people want to spend time around each other.

Speaker 2 My greatest mentor, a lady named Penny Allen, who's since moved on, would always say this, you know, and you got a crew making a film, you got 120 people, you got directors, producers.

Speaker 2 Not everyone agrees on everything, right? And you can get arguments and da-da-da. And she was like, Just remember this, Matthew.
She goes, One thing everyone is there for and wants is a good show.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? Right.

Speaker 1 Like, that's a unified.

Speaker 2 There's different ways of getting it, but everyone, no one's there going, oh, I don't want this to be a good show. You all, everyone wants it to be a good show.

Speaker 1 Dude, in my head, sometimes I'll get in that thing like, oh, I know how to make this. You know, like, that's the part I get stuck sometimes.

Speaker 1 I want to talk a few minutes more about writing and stuff before you go. Thank you for your time.
Sure, man. Poems and Prayers.
That's your new book that's out.

Speaker 1 When did you start writing and who kind of got you into it? I know there's stuff in here from when you were 18, from you were in high school.

Speaker 2 That's probably when I started writing longer form poems.

Speaker 2 And that was a year in Australia where I was one of those times I was lost and wobbly and looking and trying to figure, I didn't have friends to rely on, didn't have family to rely on. So I started,

Speaker 2 you know, dude, I was losing my mind in a big way. I was writing 16-page letters to myself.
Damn. And returning them with a 17-page letter.

Speaker 2 Yeah, bro. Socratic dialogue.
I was going, hey, man, we got to entertain ourselves. I ain't got no one else to go to, so let's have this out.

Speaker 2 And so I

Speaker 1 strange. I mean, it's cool.
It's strange. It's unique.
It's strange.

Speaker 1 It's unique. Sorry.
It was hard.

Speaker 2 No, that's strange.

Speaker 1 So what were the letters? Were you saying, like,

Speaker 2 trying to work shit out? Yeah. I was losing my mind.
I didn't know what. I didn't have a.

Speaker 2 I didn't have a compass, man. Everything around me was odd, and I didn't know if I agreed with it or disagreed with it, or if it was just a cultural difference, or if it was bullshit.

Speaker 1 Just getting to know yourself.

Speaker 2 And I didn't know where to stand until I got pushed to where I had to make a stand.

Speaker 2 And boy, when I had to make a stand,

Speaker 2 you know, when this host family wanted me to call him mum and pup.

Speaker 2 And I went,

Speaker 2 no.

Speaker 2 That's that I'm not going to do that. I appreciate you thinking of me that way, but I still have my mom and dad.

Speaker 2 And I remember at the time why I said this part, I do not know, but it was like, I thought it would ease the blow a little bit. I remember saying this.
I was like, no, I have a mom and dad.

Speaker 2 And they're still alive. I gave them this little context.

Speaker 1 Like, oh, just in case.

Speaker 2 Like, what the hell does that matter? Anyway, you know, and to make that stand and go, no, and then call them, say goodnight and call them by their first names.

Speaker 2 And then wake up the next morning, my alarm clock was a screaming. woman going, he won't call me mom.

Speaker 2 Going, oh shit. And then going to her and going, no, I won't.
But putting an arm around her and going,

Speaker 1 creating some boundaries for yourself, figuring it out.

Speaker 2 I had to create a boundary. That's it.

Speaker 2 I didn't, I was trying, and so to do that is part of, I think, a big part of identity.

Speaker 2 And so I started writing, I'd always, I'd written since I was probably 12, but I started writing poems and jotting down prayers and things when I was, like I said, lost, wobbly, and looking, but also times where things were going well and I felt spiritually strong and going like, well, what are some habits I got right now?

Speaker 2 What are some ways I'm seeing the world where the world seems to be? I'm putting this out of my soul and it's music. And the world's kind of throwing back the next beat right at me.

Speaker 2 And I'm just, we got a tune going. Yeah.
You know?

Speaker 2 And then I stepped in shit. Oh, well, that's part of the tune.
Right. You know, they laughed at my joke.
Hey, that's part of the tune, too. Oh, they were crickets.
They didn't laugh.

Speaker 2 That's still part of the same song. You know?

Speaker 1 So it's all part of the same song. Yeah.
Instead of trying to get this old, this song like just the perfect song, you know, just recognize it's a long song. It's a long song, yeah.

Speaker 2 And so, poems and prayers, look, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I,

Speaker 2 I'm trying to sell Sunday morning like a Saturday night,

Speaker 2 meaning there's a lot of good stuff,

Speaker 2 whether it's you, you're bringing up stuff in the Bible that has a lot of good stuff for living, there's a lot of good things we've learned from mentors and other philosophers and great books and wisdoms of the past that

Speaker 2 we were

Speaker 2 told to do. And I know this, no one really likes to be told what to do most of the time.

Speaker 2 And we also don't really like to get advice. I don't like getting advice.
I tell every director I work with, I tell them right off the bat, I'm easy to work with. Just don't tell me what to do.
Right.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Or, or, and then I tell them, even like that, you find a way to make me think it was my idea. There you go.

Speaker 2 And I'll even know you did it, but don't tell me. And I'll just go, there you go.
That's right. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 But if you can put it in a rhyme, if it can have a bit of a diddy to it, if you can dance to it,

Speaker 2 and it's a good word, it's more fun to digest it. It makes the broccoli taste like candy.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, and you go like, oh, okay, I can have a beer on the way to the temple. Thank you.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Right.

Speaker 2 I mean, I'd rather have a beer on the way to the temple and be headed to the temple than abstain, say I'm abstaining from having a beer, but

Speaker 2 headed the wrong direction to the desert. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I never liked taking suggestions. It's always been hard for me, I think.
Well, it's tough when your life when things go pretty good sometimes to like want to relinquish the wheel, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, when things are going well,

Speaker 2 you're responsible for that. Don't give up the right to believe in that you had your hands on the wheel.

Speaker 2 When things are going well, we should not be so humble to believe that, oh, it's all just fate. Yeah.
I think God wants our hands on the wheel.

Speaker 2 And I think God's, my hunch is God's going, I got too many people relying on fate. Hmm.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's a good point. Take control of things.

Speaker 2 When things are going well, there's a re give yourself the ownership of going,

Speaker 2 I did that. Wouldn't cause all me.
Right.

Speaker 2 Other things in the world happened that I'll never understand, timing and fortune and and everything but give ourselves credit when we look at the mirror and go you're partially you're you're partially responsible that bud all right here we go yeah

Speaker 2 yeah to build some sort of gravity within yourself you know and understanding yeah because there's plenty because it doesn't mean you understand that there's can the other the hard part about when we're when we're succeeding i think catching green lights got our hand on the wheel and we're we're just smoothing through the traffic and life's like this the hard part is believing oh this is how it's gonna always be oh yeah because it ain't

Speaker 2 There come, you'll

Speaker 2 blow a tire, man. Some goofball is going to run a red light and hit you.
You're going to run out of gas. Something's going to go wrong.

Speaker 2 So there'll be times you don't have your hands on the wheel or you don't know where you're going.

Speaker 2 So knowing that those times are coming, I think there's another reason to go, well, when my hands are on the wheel and it's just working out, let's look in the mirror and give myself a little bit of a wink here, Paz.

Speaker 2 There you go.

Speaker 1 Let's turn our favorite music up a little bit.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.
Drop the top. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's one point you talked about prayer, too, that I thought was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 Prayer is worship,

Speaker 2 putting our heart above our head. It's a beautiful sentiment, man.

Speaker 2 Prayer comes from worship, which means to literally bow down so we can put our heart above our head.

Speaker 2 So it's a physical

Speaker 2 engineered act

Speaker 2 to listen to our heart.

Speaker 2 compassion, kindness, forgiveness, peace, above our head. And we live in a world that is all, we're told, head above heart, man.
Make it, more, quantity, win, however you do it.

Speaker 1 Head up, look at the Jumbatron. Right.

Speaker 2 And the humility of putting your heart above your head, literally just physiologically, is such a cool image for what that's for.

Speaker 2 And I don't think a lot of people, I didn't know, that that is what prayer is actually engineered for. That's why you bow.

Speaker 2 You bend a knee and you bow. to put your head below your heart and your heart above your head so you can hear the sacred within you.
Now, the sacred is coming from the heart and the soul.

Speaker 2 I'm all for knowledge that we gain in our head, and we need knowledge to understand reason. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But there's a lot of stuff that we don't, the math doesn't add up, and that's languages of the soul, and it's not supposed to add up. And I think that's part of the pursuit of God.

Speaker 2 That's what I've always, I think God loves a scientist because that's scientists are the practical pursuit of God.

Speaker 2 Well, there's some spiritual stuff that we're not supposed to be able to make sense of. I agree.
That's what faith comes from.

Speaker 1 Everything doesn't have a balance sheet. Everything you can't figure out.
Everything, like, especially emotions, you can't, you can't, like, there's not a lot of math on them. Nope.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Nope.

Speaker 1 Like instincts, all of that kind of stuff. I think,

Speaker 1 like, that's something I want to lean even more into in my life is just like believing like there's not. I just have to know.
I have to know that what this feeling I have inside of me is real.

Speaker 1 I don't need to read an article to tell me. I don't need to read this or know this.
Even if somebody shows me some fool's gold that they believe in, I have to know that

Speaker 1 this God-created compass inside of me has some semblance of

Speaker 1 direction and factuality.

Speaker 2 And it takes a lot of trust and faith to do that, and it ain't easy. And

Speaker 2 one that I always

Speaker 2 give myself a little amnesty on is from this Benedictine monk named Thomas Martin.

Speaker 2 And he said, God, I believe

Speaker 2 that trying

Speaker 2 to please you

Speaker 2 pleases you.

Speaker 2 So sometimes when we don't know, I think it's okay to give ourselves a little pat on the back and go, at least I'm trying.

Speaker 2 And I kind of trust that that pleases God, that I'm giving an effort.

Speaker 1 Yeah, some grace, huh?

Speaker 2 Yeah, grace. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Give ourselves some grace.

Speaker 1 Well, thank you, Matthew. I'll just appreciate, yeah, thanks for taking time to even contribute this to the world, help people think.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of neat things to think about in here, like just leadership, courage, little avenues. Yeah.
I think it's something that I wrote down here. Carve and Burn was one that I wrote.

Speaker 2 Carve and Burn, the wheat from the chafe, the fat

Speaker 1 from the meat.

Speaker 2 Yeah, man. We got to.
In the name of transformation, that's that weed pulling we were talking about at the top of the show. We got to tend our own garden, man, around our soul.

Speaker 2 Make sure we're pulling the weeds. Because you can look down, you can go, where's that diamond? Yeah.
Where'd it go? Oh, it's covered in all them weeds I let grow.

Speaker 1 In the name of transformation, die a little instead of completely. I really like that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's really about like having that extra beat of courage, that extra, you know, just believing that there's

Speaker 1 that the, you know, that there's something here if you just stay in this space.

Speaker 2 Well, transformation comes with sacrifice, and that's part of dying a little bit.

Speaker 2 If you're nothing but transactional all the way through life, not transform, if you're only transactional relationships, if you're only seeking work or things that can only pay your bank account.

Speaker 1 Or things that you know that are definitely that are quantifiable, right? That you know the outcome, right? There's not a lot of faith in that definitiveness.

Speaker 2 No, and that transaction, if it's purely for transaction, if our life is purely transactional, then I think, then you die, in the end, you die all the way. You die a lot.

Speaker 2 You're dead.

Speaker 2 All right. Transformational, you will die a little because you make a sacrifice to live forever.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's cool, man. There's a lot of neat stuff to think about in here.

Speaker 1 A lot of prayer, too. Do you have a kind of a prayer practice or what's that been like in your life? Or what did you even learn when you were a kid?

Speaker 1 Do you remember the first time that you ever prayed? Yeah. We can finish on that conversation.

Speaker 2 First prayers.

Speaker 2 My mom was a big baseline gratitude, and we grew up Methodist, which is,

Speaker 2 you know, wasn't a lot of fire and brimstone. It was more be thankful for what you have and try and multiply that with yourself and others.
And I remember

Speaker 2 if we come to the breakfast table, like kind of grumpy or something, mom would be in there cooking breakfast and she'd grab us by the arm and walk us back down to her bedroom and go, you getting in bed and you get in bed.

Speaker 2 She goes, no, no, back under the cover. She already dressed, get back under the cover.

Speaker 2 She goes, don't you come to my breakfast table where I'm cooking you hot breakfast until you're ready to see the rose in the vase instead of the dust on the damn table.

Speaker 2 And you're like, oh, geez, I'm coming back. So you came back, hey, good morning, Mom.
There we go. Good morning.
She acted like it never happened.

Speaker 2 Or, you know, we arguing about, man, I got this one pair of capas shoes and they got holes in them, man. I need another pair of shoes.
You know,

Speaker 2 you better quit bitching about having no shoes. I'm going to introduce you to the kid with no feet.
Whoa, geez. So she would always, she was big on baseline gratitude.
Yeah. And going,

Speaker 2 before you get into,

Speaker 2 you know, being upset or pouty about anything today, look outside this curtain. Do you see the sun rose again? That was not a guarantee.
Amen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, before you get how you feel about it, let's look at the facts.

Speaker 2 Let's look at, let's look at what gift was given. Now we may have a hard day, we may have something we got to work with, but that's baseline gratitudes that you cannot, do not take for granted.

Speaker 1 And now I have a tool to work with it with. You show up some gratitude.
It makes everything, it certainly makes things smoother.

Speaker 1 Do you think, last question, do you think that, and this is back to football, because

Speaker 1 do you think that the

Speaker 1 Oklahoma, Texas,

Speaker 1 do you think those teams like being in the SEC now?

Speaker 2 You do. Yeah.
Well,

Speaker 2 I know Texas does. And look, I think Oklahoma does too.

Speaker 2 And I think A ⁇ M did when they got, I don't think, you know, there were rumblings that A ⁇ M didn't want us coming over there, but I think in their heart of hearts,

Speaker 2 they got enough hood spot they wanted us to come there. They wanted, let's get that rivalry going again.
I know Texas wants to be there. We want the greatest competition.

Speaker 2 We want to be in the greatest conference, and we want the greatest competition, and we want to push ourselves to, to compete at that highest level. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It is exciting. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I wondered that a little bit because you know, you just get so used to things being a certain way, you know, and then you're like, and then something else comes in, and I was like, Do they really love it, you know?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 1 so yeah, I was just curious. Um, thanks for helping me think, man.
Good to see you today, bro. Good to see you, too.
Yep, congratulations.

Speaker 1 Thanks for sharing so many creative things with us over the years and helping us have thoughts and feelings. Like, I've had a lot of emotion to your movies and been inspired and felt things and

Speaker 1 unfelt things, you know, right? By watching your art over the years. And so, thank you so much.
Thank you for green lights. Thank you for this new book.
It's out now: poems and prayers.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just a lot of good stuff to fodder to think about and feel about. So, thank you so much, man.

Speaker 2 You're welcome. Good to be here, bro.
Yes, sir. Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be

Speaker 2 cornerstone.

Speaker 2 Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share share this peace of mind. I found I can feel it

Speaker 2 in my bones.

Speaker 2 But it's gonna take

Speaker 2 a little