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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back
onto the show actor and author of From Under the Truck, Josh Brolin.
Now this is my third conversation with Josh.
So if you haven't heard episode 82 or episode 385, I highly recommend that you do so.
In those episodes we dive into his early life as an actor, his work on Only the Brave, writing
and many, many other topics.
In this conversation we talked about the recent Palisades wildland fires, the emotional journey
his latest book took him on, generational trauma, mental health, addiction, post-traumatic
growth, valuing our first responders and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.
Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of well over 1000 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
Now I don't normally talk about this in the intro, but seeing as we referred to them several
times in the conversation, Josh was incredibly generous to write the foreword of my first
book One More Light and my second one kinda came out at the end of the last year.
So you can find those both on Amazon and Audible.
So with that being said, I welcome back onto the show, Josh Brolin.
I brought two books with me.
I grabbed the UK version.
I got the UK version, which I like very much because it's more of a, you know, the US version
is a smaller version with like a bra that goes over that, which I think is kind of cool.
But the bra always kind of climbs up to there.
And then so it's Josh Brolin's forehead.
And then I started reading this randomly.
I just literally picked it up yesterday and I'm already halfway through it.
And it's kind of a woman's, along the lines of what we were talking about earlier, it's
kind of a woman's, from a woman's point of view about how to get away from, and it's
40 years old, it's 50 years old.
It's the 50th anniversary, but how to get away from certain distractions and get back
to an essential self and therefore a more honest self.
And that was 50 years ago, something that we're dealing with, obviously dealing with
the same issues, but so much grander, so much more chaotic and so much, there's so much
more to distract now.
It's interesting when you say 50 years ago, because I've made that point with this one
here.
Man's search for meaning, Victor Frank.
Whether that's backwards or not.
When I released the first book, I had like complete white belt idea of what the whole
process is going to be looking like.
And it's like immediately as it goes out, you got to push, push, push and everything.
And then you realize like, when you write a book, you've got two types of people.
People who read it and people who haven't read it.
And it's not a race.
And so now here you are buying a book that was written 50 years ago that is absolutely
captivating to you.
And it's irrelevant when that person picks it up as long as one day, hopefully they will.
It's irrelevant.
And it's something that exactly like you say, we forget because it's all about the first
two weeks or it's all about getting on the New York Times bestseller list or it's all
about doing as many shows and as many and you forget that this thing is going to be
around and that people are going to find it even if it's out of print and in a used bookstore.
Like me being at, what is it, Peter Harrington's, a rare bookstore in London and sitting there
and having a, you know, James Joyce's Ulysses in front of me and literally leafing through
it page by page.
The first edition, the original edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, which was by the way,
hated by most.
What is he doing?
Creating his own language, pompous, you know what I mean?
And you're like, wow, man, so many of these books that were banned and that were, you
know, thrown on the Montague fire and Fahrenheit 451 and like this is bad.
And then, you know, 20, 40, 60 years later, praised as being something that changed the
whole fabric of what literature is, you know.
It's like the four food groups eat this and this and this and this and that's good.
As long as you do that, that's good.
And then 30 years later, they go, yeah, that's all off.
That's all.
Okay, you know, and you had something to do with this, but we talk about health a lot
and we will talk about health and all that.
So I've been off sugar with the exception of two different times for about a month and
a half now because I went through the Dune to World Tour.
I went through my book tour, which took me, you know, domestically national book tour
and then took me to London.
And I was sick pretty much that whole time.
Like I did a podcast with Rogan and I remember about half of it and we were smoking cigars
on top of it.
But I remember at one point going, I don't know where I am.
I don't know what's being said to me and all that, which I probably shouldn't admit, but
it's just the truth.
And then I got, you know, and I've been I'm a big carb guy.
I'm a big sugar guy.
So I just get bigger and I get bigger all the way around.
You know, I wasn't I wasn't plunging, which I've been doing for 20 years.
And I know is a big trend now.
But anyway, I got pissed.
Enough of is enough is enough mentality.
I hit that, you know, that ceiling and I just went I'm fucking had it.
And I stopped sugar and I started eating.
This was my diet.
Basically, it was two eggs in the morning with avocado, a protein shake with layered
greens and Icelandic salt in the early afternoon, late afternoon, another one of those.
And then at night, a salad with about four to six ounces of chicken.
And I did that every day when I was in London and I was in England.
I was also above London.
And dude, I shrank so fast.
All the unnecessary everything that was unnecessary.
So now I'm down to the essentials.
Now I'm down to I feel better.
I move better.
I think better.
I'm sleeping better.
I'm a better person.
I'm less irritable.
There's no adolescent shame spirals happening when I stick a huge handful of jelly beans
in my mouth right before I go to sleep and hide the wrapper at the bottom of the trash
can.
It's crazy the effect and part of it came from this moment where I had heard just on
some random video that a hundred years ago, which obviously no access to or less way less
access to it and not everything was processed with sugar, which everything is now that on
the average a human being would consume two kilograms of sugar a year.
And now on the average they consume a hundred kilograms of sugar a year.
That's insane.
Yeah.
Did you ever see Jamie Oliver?
He did I think it was a Ted talk and he was talking and he's been big on the school food,
which I think is such an important conversation.
He demonstrated that with a wheelbarrow on stage and I forget it was like several wheelbarrows
and they had this massive mountain of sugar and he's like, that's how much we a year.
And when you see it per person per year on the average, when you see it, when there's
evidence, when there's physical evidence, you think that possibly they can't possibly
be true, but then you realize, oh, every time you dip your fries in ketchup, that the majority
of that ketchup is made out of sugar.
Anyway, it's not like an ex-smoker where I go around and I'm going sugar is horrible.
And every time somebody eats sugar, I go gets bad and don't do it.
But the conversation that you and I were having earlier and not that I necessarily, you know,
it's up to you, but obesity, which I know is, you know, it's almost like it's not, you
become part of the kind of system and you can't, it's very hard.
You have to, you have to be very resilient and you, I think you have to be kind of used
to the misfit mentality in order to live outside of a system.
So if somebody's saying here, we're giving this to you, we're giving you access to it.
We're giving you easy access to it and go ahead and consume it because it's good.
I've heard so many people say, I go, you know, that's super bad for you.
And they go, yeah, but it tastes good.
How many doctors and nurses smoke, you know, if it was just as easy as making good decisions
or even in that case, watching people die from the very thing that it does to kill you,
all our hospital personnel and first responders would be in incredible shape.
But if the environment is designed to make it extremely hard to have that healthy mental
and physical, you know, outcome, then you get what you get, which is the, you know,
the out of shape police officer and the smoking ER nurse, because you can't just tell someone
make good decisions and you'll be fine.
Get up at 5 a.m. have your liquid death and do your plunge or whatever the thing is.
Yes, those are all tools.
There we go.
Shameless plug.
But, you know, it's also the environment, you know, and I always tell people I grew
up on a farm in England.
We literally had food growing in the fields and in the orchard.
How am I going to look down my nose at someone who grew up in Brooklyn and maybe the bodega
was the only place they knew that food came from two totally different environments.
So change the environment.
You will change the masses.
That's right.
Change the environment and you'll change the masses.
And the environment is almost impossible to change because greed is such a strong motivation.
Why would I want less when I could have more?
You know, what did you what did you give?
We talked about this earlier, you know, when you give away your money, you know, I know,
like even me, I'll go, how do I figure out how to get a tax incentive in order to give
away money so it's not as much money as it is?
And this whole idea, I just dealt with somebody recently where they were asking a lot because
the perception is and it's a correct perception.
You have more than I do.
So therefore you should give to me.
And you go and then that person who doesn't have as much gets some and then they buy a
lot of stuff for themselves.
When you go, you're missing the concept of giving away is getting you missing the concept.
And when you see people who are truly altruistic and people who truly give away and find a
great happiness and solace in giving something away, then like that's the win.
And it's very, very rare and becoming more and more rare.
And I try to make myself do it because even me, I get sucked in by the greed monster.
And I go, no, no, this is hard.
I earn this.
I earned this.
I was on a set for 12 hours pretending to be somebody else.
That was hard.
Well, speaking of that, that's a good segue to one of the things I wanted to make sure
that we did discuss.
Obviously we're going to dive into the book, but you have been a diehard Californian for
a long time now.
You've also spent several seasons as a wildland firefighter volunteering in Arizona.
Talk to me about your experience and the family's experience with these most recent fires because
unlike some of the other ones, they clearly made a massive impact on the Hollywood world
and some of the men and women that you adore and work alongside.
I think, again, I try to be honest, especially in this day and age, about how I dealt with
certain things.
And the Woolsey fire that happened in 2018, Westland, our six-year-old, was six days old.
And I walked outside and I felt those winds.
I go outside with Catherine, we're holding hands and we're looking, we're in Santa Barbara
now and we're looking around and she goes, wow, look at those winds.
It's so amazing.
And there's a completely different face that I'm holding.
And I go, this is not good.
It's a warm wind.
It's set up for fire.
And so the two very different reactions.
So when I walked outside in 2018 in the Woolsey fire and I saw that smoke and the type of
smoke and the winds and all that, I knew we were in a really bad situation with a six-day
old.
And I had my daughter Eden with me and I had her mother with it.
So we all went out, we threw some things in the car, we left right away.
We went to go right and it was already backed up all the way to Point Doom, from Venice
to Point Doom.
So it would probably be a seven to eight hour drive to Venice.
And you're still in LA and you're in the smoke and thinking about residual smoke and thinking
about all that.
So I don't know why I had the instinct to turn around and head north.
And it was basically heading into the fire.
And it went from daytime, I think it was 930 in the morning, went from fairly light daytime
with smoke around it in the distance.
And I know the smoke was, the fire was traveling at like 40 miles an hour at that point with
the winds and what people don't understand about fires, it's drying out things miles
ahead of itself.
So once it hit it, it's almost explosive.
And that's why it can travel at those kinds of speeds.
And so we went into the smoke and to the point where it was total night, black and around
every, and my wife's screaming and she's saying RSV for the kid and this and inhaling the
smoke, which she's absolutely right.
And around every corner, we're praying, please, please, please don't be a roadblock or stop.
And I heard that we were one of the last cars, if not the last car to be allowed to go north
before they, you know, before Zuma got, you know, completely consumed with fire.
So that being said, I would have loved to have been like Laird Hamilton and stayed and
fought my own fires and helped everybody out.
And I didn't and I and there's some guilt around that because it's it's my I think it's
my go to to try and help as much as possible.
And when you have a six day old, that's all you can think about.
So during these fires, when people say, well, do you think we're in danger?
Do you think we're in danger?
I said, do you have children?
And they go, yes.
And I go leave.
This is all material shit.
This is all stuff that we've built up and we've created and it's meaningful, obviously.
But we've created a big romance around about how valuable it is to us.
And I know that there's valuable things into it, but ultimately, it's not more valuable
than your life.
So to answer your question, yes, I've known a lot of people that have lost houses in both
fires, both of the major fires.
To put it in perspective, the the Palisades fire was basically housewise and urban.
The urban area was three full Manhattans is what was burned.
When I think of it like that, I go.
I mean, that's a lot of space.
I think it's something like 13000 houses or 11000 houses or something like that.
We know about 30, 35 people who lost their directly who lost their homes.
And about 250 indirectly.
And what do you do?
You live in California, by the way, after the fires, there were the mudslides.
And after the mudslides, there was an earthquake.
That's California.
I think it's a little more concentrated in Malibu and the Palisades and all that.
But we did we did give some money.
And I told you earlier that we I wanted to create incentive with that money.
So we had basically like, what do you call it?
Like a one day fundraiser.
We ended up raising about one point five million dollars.
So along with my money, it was about two million dollars.
And that's great.
But you're still not dealing with people face to face, you know, which is always an interesting
thing to me.
It's like a very rich thing to not deal with.
So here, I hope this helps.
I hope this helps you, which I know it's needed.
But at the same time, you know, going back to the to the fire stuff, when you're really
in a in a there were a couple of structural fires that I did.
And when people are there, when people are afraid and when they're screaming, all the
stuff that you know very well and all the stuff that your first book was about.
It's different, man.
It's just different.
It hits your heart and your mind and your soul in a very different way.
And it becomes very personal.
Which is why I think that I've stayed close with a lot of firemen in my life because there's
something broken about them, but broken for all the right reasons.
Do you know what I mean?
Absolutely.
So.
Well, speaking of that, let's segue to the book then when I mean, for several years now,
we've known each other.
You've been talking about this writing that you were working on.
I know you did some writing that was attached to the June project and the June book.
But I'd love to kind of start at the beginning.
What was the the absolute nucleus of you deciding to write that you the book that you ended
up writing?
Like how helping you out.
Oh, you're welcome.
People know.
But honestly, it's like it's like the guy who's walking around with a briefcase with
30 pages of a script written for 10 years.
And they go, hey, what are you doing?
You go, right in the script, write a script.
But they're not actually writing a script.
They're not actually laboring through what it is to be a writer, which you know, and
I know.
And you know, I became this guy that was like writing a lot of speeches.
I wrote my own speech.
I gave a, you know, award to the Coens or whatever.
And somebody was, oh, who knew who knew he could write?
And then, you know, and then people are asking me to write their speeches.
And then I'm doing that.
And I'm the go to guy writing speeches for somebody else.
And then you start writing shit on Instagram.
People go, you're amazing.
You're amazing what you wrote, which it's really a paragraph or a half a paragraph.
And all that's really nice.
And I appreciate that.
And for somebody who is held writing, you know, such high esteem in such a, you know,
it's been my first love always.
And it's been my mode of expression always from as early as I can remember, eight years
old, six years old.
My mom was finding poems at eight years old, circular poems.
And then they went on to this thing.
But it was always it was always my go to it was always things that I couldn't express
in other ways, whether it was creative or otherwise, or personally, it always came out
on a memo pad or whatever, you know, spiral notebook.
And so when enough people are saying, well, you can write or enough people are asking
you, can you help me write my book or whatever?
You're like, am I full of shit?
And and then you just sit down.
I just sat down and started writing in the book, interestingly, started to dictate.
I had kind of compiled some journal writings.
And these aren't based on a lot of journal writings, maybe a few that I rewrote.
But I sat down and I started to compile these journal writings and I sent it out.
And I look back now on what I sent out to different agents.
It was horrible, man.
It was horrible.
I mean, it was really bad.
You know, and even even if I have any perceptive powers at all, people like, you know, they
go up an octave.
They were like, hey, man, I read your stuff.
That's really good.
Really good.
You know, like, oh, I'm far.
And then and then there was one lady, Kimberly Witherspoon in New York with Inkwell Management,
and she said, yeah, you can write.
I think we need to work on this and let's see where it goes.
And I was like, oh, and and she was who I had a deep appreciation for.
Anthony Bourdain was her first client ever.
And and she was like, you have there's a danger in your writing that reminds me of him.
And I want to see if you can really do this or not.
And it was a challenge more than a you're so great.
And let's go make money off what you've done in the movie industry and put your name on
a book.
And let's see.
So I really responded to that.
And and the book just lastly, the book started to really dictate itself as I started to put
the book together.
It wasn't supposed to be a book about my mother.
And I think it's very, you know, the through line, I think, is my mother.
And the through line is also can you grow up in, you know, chaotic vortex and actually
grow up as opposed to blame that chaotic vortex on the rest of your life and say, well, I
can't do it because that's what they did or the system I have to live within the system
because that's the system that's been creative, that's been created.
So what am I supposed to do?
And that's what I meant earlier about that misfit mentality.
I think I got the misfit mentality from my mother, you know, willing to be uncomfortable
in order to do the right thing.
But I think I, you know, I also inherited a lot of insanity that I have to, you know,
I have to navigate with grace and tools.
As you were writing, I mean, we talked and we were basically recording audio books at
pretty much the same time.
So I want to get into that.
But when you were still going through the writing and then submitting it to someone
who was then critiquing it, or probably I'm assuming numerous people, what was the level
of imposter syndrome that was working at that point?
I told you this.
I said that I never felt that during writing.
I mean, during writing, there was never a moment of I'm a shit writer.
And it wasn't I'm a great writer.
But I was really honed in on trying to be trying to clarify, be more specific, get rid
of things that were unnecessary.
And then if I went on some, you know, pinch on creative jag, I owned it.
I was like, OK, this is what I'm doing.
This is who I am, and this is honest.
This is honest.
And one of the greatest responses, many responses that I got from people who knew me, they go
if nothing else, this book is 100 percent you.
And I go, great.
So if somebody says your book is a piece of shit, I don't really take it personally, but
I get what they mean.
I don't say, oh, you're saying that I'm a piece of shit.
I go, no.
But this is a manifestation of myself.
It's that's brutally honest, especially with myself.
But I think it was day two of doing the audio that I spiraled and I didn't expect it.
I stuttered through the you know, I've had people call and say, God, you read it so well
and all that.
And I was like, yeah, that's not how it went down.
I stuttered through this thing.
Every line.
I mean, there were times where I'd find a decent rhythm, but there were, you know, a
lot of times where I would I would go, what is the matter with me?
Like I read I'm OK with reading other people's books.
I'm OK with reading your book.
And then I get to my book and and I'm stammering through it.
And then I had the thought of I wish I could burn, you know, all evidence that this ever
existed.
I wish I'd never done this.
Why did I do this?
What am I trying to prove?
Why not just write?
Why not go back?
Why not do what everybody else has done in their own very specific and personal way?
Just write a trajectory of my life.
You know, this is where I come from.
This is what childhood was like.
This is when I realized I wanted to be an actor.
This was the development as an actor.
This was inside the acting world.
And this is what I hope for.
This is what I this is how I look back on it.
And this is what I hope for in the future.
It would have been so easy.
And maybe that will come someday.
But that's not this book.
I think what was interesting for me, you know, people always ask when you write, you know,
was it cathartic?
And I think there was an elephant elephant, excuse, not an elephant, an element of catharsis.
There was an elephant of catharsis.
It was amazing.
But more so I think in in one more light than than kinder.
But where I think I mean, you think about it when you go to mental health, you know,
retreats and that kind of thing.
Journaling is one of the things that they get you to do.
And that's effectively what you're doing.
But I think when you read it, and you allow your mind to relive these things, because,
you know, in my second one, there's a lot of his calls that are actually my calls.
And you allow yourself to go there, you allow yourself the emotions to come through.
To me, it's almost the opposite of catharsis, where you're actually diving back in and undoing
some of the healing that you got from the writing.
Yeah, no, I agree.
And I think and people ask me the same thing.
This must have been very cathartic for you.
And I go, the catharsis is happening now.
And I see it.
And it's almost not it's not even like a catharsis of wow, I feel purged.
I feel cleaner now.
You know, some of this play some of this book takes place in Santa Barbara.
And the book was started long before I knew what we were moving back to Santa Barbara.
And Santa Barbara was a place that I said, that's a place I will never move back to the
place I spent, you know, jail time in.
And I look at the I look at City Hall.
And I go, Oh, I remember when I got off that bus on a chain gang with nine other guys,
and I was released in front of my court, you know what I mean?
So it's like not things that you necessarily want to relive, you can write in a book and
kind of romanticize it and all that.
But the idea of going back to a place like that, and having lost so many friends and
all it was not attractive to me.
Then whatever happened, and then we saw a house and then I got frustrated.
And I put Santa Barbara on Zillow.
And then suddenly, my wife is like, this would be amazing.
And I mean, I've said this before, I ended up contracting a mild case of Bell's palsy,
because I think it lived so deeply in me, my idea of what a life on not worth living.
And that's how I saw it.
And then I got back here.
And I think part of the books, workings on me were were once I got back here, within
a week, I started seeing things.
I'm looking at my window now, started seeing things like, I remember when my girlfriend
and I walked down that street, it was an amazing moment.
I was 13.
And I, you know, I kissed maybe one girl and I was trying to figure out like when I should
try to plant one on whether it was appropriate or not.
And all of these happier memories started to come back.
So I think for me, the catharsis was exactly what the book was meant to be generally, which
is life is messy, man.
Life is really messy.
You can be living in massive self destruction.
And with whoever comes into your life and however lucky you are and whatever opportunities
may come.
And if you take responsibility and actually grow the fuck up and be an adult and start
cultivating tools in order to live your life in a way that has, that's not so chaotic and
not so self destructive.
This book has shown me because I was so honest that, okay, that's happened.
And that happened at that moment.
This is not a definition of you.
Your definition of you happens at every moment with every choice that you're confronted with.
And don't forget that.
So I'm sure that there was something in me that says I need to write this out because
I need to grow the fuck up a little bit more.
It's interesting.
It's kind of came out in my writing a little bit was we have these things that are locked
away, especially in my profession, you know, where we're constantly on these shifts are
constantly in this high stress environment.
It's a very good environment to just lock things that you don't want to address with.
And I think this is why first responders tend to start struggling a little bit deeper in
their career when the calls are less exciting and you've kind of normalized this, this kind
of lifestyle.
But what I realized is when you start unpacking these bad things, just like you alluded to
attached to them are good things.
I think when the body or the mind is like, we need to fucking lock this shit away.
This is not good to think about right now.
All the good stuff that happened around that gets kind of stuck in that trunk as well.
And when, you know, when you start allowing yourself to work through, and I would argue
turn those into strengths, I really believe that.
When you start recalling all these good things exactly like you just said about being 13.
And by the way, and I talked to you about this earlier, not that we prepped this whole
thing, we were talking about something very different, but that I spent some time with
somebody recently who is in such abject denial that there is there to me, my perception of
it, there's no sense of self.
You've denied all sense of self, and out of that can come this like smile, this perpetual
smile, but you don't believe it.
It's almost like serial killer smile.
It's like, you know, happy.
I'm happy.
See, and that scares me.
Like that.
That's something that's always really scared me because when you confront yourself, it's
especially if you've been living in a massive denial and you've developed a denial system
that's really, you know, mechanistically, you know, attuned, you know, that you go,
I'm okay with living with this as long as I stay away from any reality of myself or
any opinion that I may have because I'll get shot down for it, or it'll be perceived as
dumb or bad or all that kind of stuff.
And then when you get to a place where you say, you know what, I'm tired of this denial.
I'm tired of not this gift that I've been given to live and whatever I've seen in my
life, whether you're a firefighter and have seen the greatest horrors imaginable or me
created the greatest horrors imaginable, whatever that is for me, and just say, you know what,
what if what if you just allow whatever was intended from the beginning, whether you see
it as God, whether you see it as this, you know, what was I intended from the beginning
before all this stuff hit me?
And can we get back to some kind of essence of we're really grateful to be here.
We can rely on each other.
We have people that will be honest with us and actually say, hey, man, I'm noticing something
in you right now and you're a little off.
You seem a little manic or you seem a little down.
Can I come over?
You want to spend a couple of hours together?
There's a great video that my wife saw and she told me about it was some scientific and
I'm going to say it crudely paraphrasing, obviously, but they put a rat in a cage and
the experiment was they put a rat in a cage and then they put a small dish of potable
water and then they put a small dish of like opium infested water.
Right.
And the rat went over and he tried both and then he got into the opium water and he started
drinking it.
He drank so much of it eventually OD right.
And then they go, okay, so we as a whatever they, you know, whatever they concluded from
that and then and then they go, well, what if you put a bunch of rats in a cage?
They're going to be fighting.
They're going to be fighting for the water.
It's probably going to be even more chaotic and more destructive and that the want to
go to the heroin water because they can't fucking deal with all these people.
And they put all the rats in a cage and none of them ever even tasted the opium infested
water.
And that Malcolm Gladwell has a book called Outliers and in the beginning of Outliers,
he talks about a priest.
He talks about this one area.
I think it was called Rosetta that when the big migration happened from Italy to New York,
that there was this one all these other communities.
I mean, they were mostly Italian, but there were also German and this all these other
communities.
People started dying on the average in their sixties instead of their eighties and nineties.
But there was one community Rosetta in upstate New York where they were still dying in their
eighties and nineties and they were doing they were testing the water.
They were they were saying it was a going from olive oil to butter.
What was it?
And then finally they came down to it and they figured it out and it was this priest
that had come over.
It was an Irish priest actually, but he had come over from Italy to Rosetta and made them
start re I can't think of the word, but re implementing what they had done in Italy originally.
So all celebrations that they were living on top of each other.
There were three generations per house and a small house and all this kind of stuff.
So literally recreating what they had had in Italy, which looked from from from an objective
point of view, which looked so chaotic and wrong and unattractive.
And yet those people were living 20 to 25 years longer because it's about community.
It's about sharing.
It's about relying on each other.
This idea of being able to rely on each other.
And I can't think of a time, at least how I perceive it, where we feel less able to
rely on our neighbor than ever.
That experiment you were referring to, they called Rat Park.
I had Johan Hari on who wrote Chasing the Scream and he talks all about it in his book
and that was exactly it.
He's got a phrase, the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety.
The opposite of addiction is connection.
So what they did, you had the rats and like you said, they were on their own and it was
isolation.
And then they actually expanded the cage.
So they had other rats, they had things that they kind of interact with.
And just like you said, they didn't touch it anymore.
And I think if you look at what happened in COVID, there was a massive global experiment
of the same thing.
We know the impact of all that isolation on relationships, on mental health, on physical
health.
And so community is the answer.
And when you see the divisiveness, even the lack of empathy from some people with, you
know, members of Hollywood losing their homes, oh, they're just a bunch of rich people.
No, they were human beings whose children's drawings were on the fridge that are lost
and the grandparents jewelry and the photos you can never get back.
And so the more we lean back into that community, the more we fix all things health.
And what is that?
The idea of that is that money, that money disintegrates art.
Do you know what I mean?
You go, oh, well, you have money.
Oh, you're, you're a successful actor.
So all you're doing with your life is walking down a perpetual red carpet waving at people.
What?
And that's that thing that I talked about earlier about once if you're not, if you're
not Abe Lincoln and going in the field, you know what I mean?
How do you really know?
It's easy to send people to war when you're on the ninth floor or you're in the White
House or you're in the this and that.
Because what does it mean?
But but you know, have a bomb.
Have your buddy blow up next to you and then see how you feel.
You know, put yourself in the soup.
And then are we are we still on?
Yeah, I think so.
Yep.
Okay, good.
And that's you know, even as an actor, you go, listen, if you're if you become successful
and you're sitting there representing the human condition, how are you able to do that?
If you don't understand how to do laundry and wash the dishes and wash your floor and
take care of your kids while I have a nanny and I have a desk and I have a dad, not that
housekeeper and have that like I get it.
But at a certain point where you're no longer able to represent humanity, you might as well
just play Kings and you know, it doesn't make sense.
And that's why I go back to stoic readings a lot.
You know, Ryan Holiday.
I mean, I praise the guy for accessibilizing the stoic readings and you go back and you
go, oh, yeah, the guy's excited.
He's making a ton of money.
He's got his own podcast.
He's got whatever.
If it's helping people out and I'm able to look at that having read Marcus Raylis, having
read Epictetus and all that, and then going back and seeing this accessible version of
it and waking up and really reading Daily Dad or waking up and really reading, you know,
the Stoic or whatever is part of my ritual and saying, look, I need this to remind myself
that comfort is death, man.
It's OK to be comfortable.
It's like you say about community community.
I say it to community is everything community.
I find extremely essential to growth.
Community is son to a plant.
Do you know what I mean?
But being alone is good, too.
Sometimes not isolated, not, you know, but alone to challenge yourself.
Go out there like go stay in a play, go stay in a tent.
Don't have electricity.
Don't have a fucking toilet close by.
You know, don't have batteries.
Don't have music.
See what happens when you just listen.
See what happens when you're left with yourself.
And I like that idea.
I like that idea a lot, you know, and I think that I'm good.
I've always been good at challenging myself that way.
It's just a little more refined now.
I think if anyone reads from under the truck, they will see like, for example, I mean, you
obviously grew up in a Hollywood connected household initially.
So they are well, you know, Josh obviously had it all handed to him on the silver platter
and had this amazing, you know, probably money filled childhood.
And then, you know, you actually listen, you read the book and you understand, you know,
just like so many people, the reason why some people are great writers, great actors, great
firefighters, is because of things that happened early on.
What's interesting to me, so I want to go back even further before we kind of, you know,
explore your early life, is the most recent book I wrote, it really hits the multi-generational
trauma story hard because I think that this is a piece of the puzzle that a lot of people
just aren't discussing.
We look at our childhood, but what created our parents?
What created our grandparents?
So when you look back past your mother and or your father, what are some of the things
that you identify as their upbringing that contributed to the kind of environment that
you therefore were raised in?
My mother, it's interesting because both my parents I look at, I come from a line of builders.
So my dad was a builder.
He built some houses.
It was in his, you know, interest and his dad was a builder.
My grandmother's father built a lot of Orange County down there.
So literally comes from a line of builders.
But my grandmother, my dad's mother was so kind and so incredibly gracious.
And I said, and I've told the story and I won't tell the whole story, but one of the
reasons I got sober is was Halloween night.
I didn't intend to go out, didn't intend to drink.
I did drink.
I was late to see my grandmother on her deathbed.
The next day I walked in, I stank.
I had woken up on woken up on the sidewalk that morning, went in.
I didn't pick my brother up like I was supposed to.
He took a public bus down from Ojai to to Thousand Oaks or wherever my grandmother was.
And then I ended up there.
Everybody could sense immediately when I walked in, I smelled the way I looked and scratches
all over my face.
They all looked down and my grandmother lifted up her head at 99 years old and she looked
at me and she smiled the biggest smile I've ever seen.
And the first thought I said or I thought was how dare me, how dare me treat a life
given a gift given and shit all over it like I'm shitting all over it.
And this woman has gone through life on life's terms for 99 years and she lifts up her 99
year old head with all those experiences and she looks at me and she's just happy to see
me.
And that was it.
I was it.
You know, I did what I needed to do in order to assure that it would last.
But so I look at it so I look at my dad and his reactions in response to your question
and I don't understand.
I know his dad was a pretty severe guy, pretty stoic guy.
And I don't mean stoic in the way we just talked about it, but you know, proud.
And I think there was a lot of envy in their household.
My dad became an actor, became fairly successful.
The siblings tried to become actors.
Nobody really made it.
So there was that weird kind of ambiance that's that's created.
But again, you go back and there's like my grandmother's father, Alan Mansour, you know,
really like I hear stories about him and whether they're all true or not, whether they're all
romanticized, which we all have a tendency to do.
I look back at those stories and I go, I love that I'm made of that fabric.
You know what I mean?
And I rely on whatever that is.
I'll go back and I'll go.
Yeah, but I'm I'm the same blood as that person.
The other side of that, kind of like what you're talking about, is there's people in
my family where I go back and have that blood.
Yet.
What am I going to do with that?
And in all the trauma.
That trauma or chaos, I prefer to call it chaos in my past.
All the all the.
You know, my father, for whatever reasons, always went inside.
My mother, for whatever reasons, always went outside.
And what I heard about my mother's parents were also amazing things like great teachers,
both of them teachers, you know, small town, Texas, Corpus Christi, small house, humble.
But I never heard anything horrible.
So I don't know where the insanity is, the specific insanity is of my parents and where
it came from.
But or whether it had to do with their surroundings and being in Hollywood and, you know, all
that expectation and you've got to be a certain way and you have to be a certain level of
success and all that.
But the point is, is that when you get to a certain point.
And I said this before is what point do you start taking ownership of your own life?
So you go, OK, so I have this past.
I could blame this past on everything that my present and whatever comes up in the future
is.
Or I can say every choice from here on out, which is what I've done, is mine.
I can't blame it on my dad.
I can't blame it on my mother.
I can't blame it on how I was raised.
I can't blame it on that.
And then how do you start again, cultivating the tools, garnering and cultivating the tools
that support that?
You know, in your life, you're talking about firefighters that have gone through massive,
massive traumas that have been privy to awful visuals and emotional content and seeing a
decapitated child in the back of a car and like or a mother or whatever.
And you just go like nobody, nobody should have those experiences.
But these people are putting themselves out there to try and save who's savable to try.
And it's a it's a massive thing.
But what do you do with that?
What do you do with that?
Do you have people you can rely on?
Do you have people that are going to take care of you?
You have people that are going to call you out and say, you need to talk about this or
we need to go through this.
We need to we need to digest this in a certain way.
You have it in a little folder in your body.
And you go you go.
That to me is the most important evidenced by what I just told you about coming back
up to Santa Barbara and having a mild case of Bell's palsy.
The last time I had Bell's palsy was 17 years before when my wife at that time and I were
talking about moving to Santa Barbara.
It's a theme.
It's right there.
Mm hmm.
I didn't I didn't I didn't will it to happen and will my face to be hanging off my skull.
But that's evidence right there.
It's locked away.
And if it's not dealt with, then you're really you have no control of how it's going to manifest.
And that's a scary thought.
I always use the phrase reasons, not excuses.
So you look back and you know, realize that you had this kind of childhood that, you know,
if one or both parents had left, then there's that feeling of, you know, I wasn't good enough.
Or if you were abused in whatever way, you know, that you've you felt like you were one
of the reasons why it happened.
And then people reflect and they forgive themselves.
But then I think then you that's when you discard it.
If you don't allow yourself to have some grace on what happened to you that you were a victim,
you weren't just a child when this happened, you had no choice in the matter.
That's got to be acknowledged.
But then I think that allows you to shed that skin and then move forward.
Yeah, Howard Stern mentioned that he was you know, he took my book very personally, as
did you.
And and and he you know, we were on that we did that podcast for two and a half hours
or whatever.
And I got back to my hotel and he called me at my hotel and we talked for another hour
about it.
So and he kept saying when I was on his show, he kept saying, yeah, but it was it was wrong.
There has to be some acknowledgement that that this was not OK.
And I go, of course, there is.
And not even of course, because I realize that people say, yeah, but you didn't know
what they went through.
And there's a lot of like justification and all that.
And you do.
I think you're right.
You have to sit there and go, listen, this was not OK.
You know, there's a reason why I have when I'm with my kids, it's much better now because
I've really focused on it and tried to not lessen it, but tried to.
My relationship with it is different.
When my older kids were young, I would have flashes of the worst images imaginable of
what could happen to my children.
And it happened randomly.
And it would just go, OK, so we're driving in a car right now.
And then suddenly I'd see this whole scenario in a nanosecond.
And it would be so bloody and awful, but I know it was me telling me, stay on point.
Because if anything happens, you just want to be slightly ahead of it so you can actually
be productive in in the assisting of it.
But I also know it comes back from, you know, being raised by two people that were like,
where are they?
You know what I mean?
They're a little clueless when it came down to the idea of true care.
And I've seen parents like that even now.
You know, the kid will go up to crawl up to a second floor.
They're only a year and a half old.
There's no railing on the second floor.
And you and you and the mother's talking to somebody.
And I'm like, what the fuck?
Are you kidding?
You don't have that sixth sense, whether it's a mother or father, by the way, but you don't
have that sixth sense that's constantly living in your periphery now, knowing that that that
kid's more than five feet, 10 feet away from you.
That it could result in death.
So I live in that in a big way.
And I know that there is a historic reason for it.
Partially.
And now I just try to the relationship with it is different, but it still happens.
It just happened yesterday in a big way.
It used to happen like six, seven times a day.
Now it happens once in a while.
And then I start to think, oh, if it doesn't happen more, that means I'm getting lazy.
I'm getting older.
I'm getting something like that.
But no, I just have a different relationship with that guy.
Oh, there it is.
Or maybe I'll say a little prayer.
Maybe I'll say something just like, let me help me deal with this in a way that's sensible
and has grace instead of just tweaking and then taking it out on my kids.
Don't go over there.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
You know, which I try not to do because that can create more people like me.
You don't want more people like me in the world.
Well, I think the people listening, a lot of us, I know me, the moment someone hasn't
come home and they were supposed to, or my son hasn't checked him when he was younger,
he would check in a lot.
We were kind of slowly loosening those apron strings.
I'm not freaking out, but the first thought isn't, oh, he must just be a little late.
It's like, oh, well, obviously he's been killed by a gang or driven off the side of a bridge.
And it seems irrational, but then you think, well, what do you do at work?
You see all those things in real life.
So of course this is the tapestry that your brain is kind of pulling from.
And it's hard, I think, for a first responder parent, just like you're talking about, to
temper that and not be that helicopter parent that's paranoid about everything.
Because if ever there's a profession that's justifiable to do so, it's the first responders
and ER staff.
And how badly do you need first responders?
And how do we perceive first responders as we sit on the sidewalk walking down with our
kids and you see a fire truck go by or whatever, and you stop and you wave, and you're so proud
that they exist.
And yet, if I'm the base, if I'm the least base, the story that I just told you, and
whatever issues I have in these random visualizations, if that's the least of what those guys probably
go through, those men and women go through, and we don't support that in some way, it's
absolutely...
Talk about lack of community.
Talk about lack of care.
Talk about selfishness.
Where we're saying, thank you for helping us, then go away.
Go be spastic somewhere else.
Go have your mental issues somewhere else.
We want to keep it happy.
We want to keep it proud.
We want to keep it patriotic.
And that's such a lame thing to do, but to bring it back to this is like, it's messy.
It's all messy.
It's okay that it's messy.
And then we die in the end.
I wrote a gratitude list.
It's so weird, man.
I'm going to read this to you right now.
I probably shouldn't, but there's a lot of things I probably shouldn't do that I end
up doing anyway.
I don't care.
I don't know where this came from.
I write a gratitude list every day and we just put together the gratitude list.
My assistant and I just put together all the gratitude lists and that's 1300 pages of gratitude
list.
Wow.
So today, what don't I want to read?
Okay.
Gratitude.
People die and they don't come back.
That's the first line.
Sometimes they die right in front of us and other times we hear of it after the fact.
How's John?
Oh, he died last year.
What?
And that's that.
They're gone forever.
And the memory, they live, but even that changes and it all becomes a little more translucent
over time.
We were here, then we weren't.
Almost as if we were never here with the exception of us knowing that we were here, our experiences
today and now.
Yesterday and tomorrow.
Worry, anxiety, resentment, simple love, a few things, contentment.
How for so long did I care so much about being valid, stout, praised, and if not, fuck you.
This morning was the sun, seven and a half hours of sleep, rare, rushing out to meet
the contractor of the house, intimate conversation, run back to the family and cook myself breakfast.
Go back to the house with family, climb dangerously up to the now roofless second floor.
We look out, see the whole property, smiles.
We go to a kid's birthday, play, make things, no yearning, no envy, ease, chapel eats shit.
My daughter, scraped up, hold her, ice, it's okay.
Beach, the Rincon classic, I surfed it in 1980, old and new schoolers on the beach.
We take our shoes off, feet wet, watch 13 year old surf heats in their iridescent jerseys.
Walk back up to the truck, sit on beach overlooking the sea, dinner with Zerby, my oldest friend,
87 years old, his wife Arnett.
Plan on Christmas performance next Christmas on stage here in Santa Barbara, drive home
and all take a shower together, blow dry their hair, laugh, mama reads to them, sweet.
I kiss them good night, now fire, reading, list, funny text, plan tomorrow, but it's
vapor until we get there.
I have soft clothes on, I hear music in my head, classical, I want to read more than
go to sleep early.
Look up at paperweight whales I got from kids on my birthday, I love them.
I love this life, it's not always easy, but there's more solace now than ever.
I don't worry as much about tomorrow and I know that some people will simply not like
me and that's okay.
My drum, my drumsticks, God's band, amen.
I love that.
Not a mention of Oscars, Rolex, Ferraris.
No, no, maybe I should go back and redo it.
I love the way my leather interior feels.
Which by the way, I haven't seen lists like that because I'm sent lists from a lot of
different people and all that and once in a while I'll read a list like that and I go,
all right, that's what you're into today.
But I think things like that and I think why your book, being a very honest book, I think
this book being a very honest book and moral Lindberg, A Gift from the Sea, your book,
my book, is you put it out there in that we go what matters, what's essential, what's
my experience?
How can I be 100% authentic without apology?
You know what I mean?
And do I care?
That's the biggest thing when it comes down to it.
Do I care?
Why do I write a book like this when I know I'm going to get shit for it?
Like what about your second marriage?
What about that?
What'd you guys do?
And you go, yeah, that's not what the book is about.
The book is about seeing through a human being's lens go through the process of life on life's
terms and all the other shit that was put on top of it and having to kind of navigate
through that shit and find the pony at the end.
When I read it, it's hard not to think about that scared little boy and I think when your
brother is attacked, is it the bobcat?
Is that right?
Wolf.
Wolf, okay.
And you know, so as a small child and the helplessness that must have been felt and
the instability of the kind of tornado that was your mother and the life around her, I
think again about that kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and that need for security and safety
and the opposite obviously is that fear.
And I had that fear when I reflect on my early life, I was a very anxious child.
Where did the healing begin for that?
Where did you start to shift from this kind of chaos that had you been raised in a lot
of the early times and obviously the unhealthy coping mechanisms to actually start to find
out who you were and kind of hold that little boy's hand in your psyche and bring him up
to modern day, present day.
I think it was a twofold.
I mean, the process never ends, first of all, but one was I had kids very early on.
You know, I had kids 19 when she was pregnant and 20 when Trevor was born.
Trevor's 36 now.
I have a 36 year old, a 31 year old, a six year old and a four year old.
So I will be raising children my entire life.
I think I had a couple of years in there where I could wake up later.
But I think that being in my life brought a value that I wouldn't have had in my life
had my child not been born.
And I mean the value, not the child.
It was a value that I had to look outside of myself.
I was forced to look outside of myself, but that still didn't do it.
You know, I was sober for three and a half years and then I went back out and then I
was sober for five years and then I went back out because I saw sobriety as some kind of,
you know, ball and chain.
It was keeping me from something, keeping me from being myself when the truth of the
matter, it was keeping me from manifesting that angst that you're talking about feeling,
that pain.
And the only way I felt like I could manifest it was through drinking and the chaos that
would ensue.
And you know, I would turn around.
I mean, it was so reactive.
I was so reactive.
And it was super fun sometimes.
I was a fun drunk until I wasn't, you know, and then I turn around and, you know, I'd
see a group of guys talking, a bunch of preppy guys.
I remember this one time and I just turned around and I ran as fast as I could and I
jumped on top of all of them.
Just a big fight broke out and it's just what I needed to do.
Everything in me was like, it's time.
And I don't think there's no thought.
And it was so great that there was no thought.
Get out of your head.
Get out of the fear.
Like what can you do to just not feel fear for a second?
You know, I'd get up in public speak and my trachea would close up and I'd be shaking
that much.
And that's there's no confidence in that.
There's zero confidence.
There's zero sense of self in that.
You know, so then when I got sober this last time, 11 and a half years ago, I realized
at a certain point, it's like, oh, you got to get rid of that thing that keeps getting
in the way.
And then the work starts.
Then it's this what I call a spiritual process.
And finally, you know, seeing everything that happens is an opportunity and a lesson.
So even when shitty things happen to me now, especially now, there's something in me that
gets a little happy because I know the slap is coming.
The wake up is coming.
And I think that goes back to that discomfort thing to what would be discomfort, what would
be uncomfortable.
And normally, you'd react in a way that would push it down or push it away or find a distraction
or go watch a movie or go to this, go watch the news and get into all the political extremism
that is fucking meaningless.
You know, just has to do with people spinning and bad, good and, you know, all that stuff
and go, how do you how do you look at yourself?
Honestly, honestly, that's the toughest part to really, to really speak to yourself about
how you feel.
Even if there's judgment.
And then go, OK, where do I take it from here?
So that's how I know myself to be right now.
And then things happen that you go, oh, why does this have to happen to me?
Whereas now I'm more in a place where I go, oh, shit's happening.
There's a humbling coming.
And with that humbling, usually comes, you know, for lack of a better phrase, a better
version of me.
And to me, like what I said before, getting closer to what I think was intended before
all this, all these additives, all these preservatives and additives were injected.
You know, I care about people.
I'm a super sensitive guy.
I love community, but I don't need to be around people all the time.
That's how I've you know, I love writing.
I like acting.
I find it to be a major pain in the ass and talk about confronting your own fears, in
which I know exactly why I'm an actor.
It's not because my dad was an actor.
It's not because of any of that.
It's because I have a fear of confronting my emotions in the rawest way that you can.
So I chose that profession in order to perpetually challenge that.
And I'm the better person for it.
I'm, you know, I've put myself in that situation and over a 40 year period, I see where it's
helped me.
One of the things that I've talked about quite a bit recently, and this is in the first responder
mental health conversation, we've kind of got stuck on the whole, we should smash the
stigma conversation, which if you think about it, apart from taking away guilt and shame
from someone who's struggling, that's all you've done.
You haven't really provided solutions.
You haven't provided a kind of path for growth.
And where I think the real kind of accelerator of this is going to be is showing the post
traumatic growth story, putting hope in the person that you will become if you actually
have just done the work.
And of course, everyone's got their own unique toolbox, which I think is another part of
this.
You can't just say, well, if you just do EMDR and take psych meds, you're going to be golden.
Everyone is different.
But talk to me about that.
You said the better version of yourself, that road that you've been on, how much value,
how exciting is it when you storytell now who you are versus that that strong, you know,
that strong, that young struggling actor that did kind of, you know, to and fro for so long?
I think when I wrote stories before as creatively viable as I think they were, they were to
be uninvisible.
They were to materialize.
So whether it be the writing or whether it be living in my life in a way where people
I'd wake up in the morning and people say, you know what you did last night?
And I go, no, what?
And then they tell me.
And I felt that I existed.
And I understand, which is ironic to me, obesity.
You know, that's another thing that I deal with in my family.
And I go, I could never understand why the person didn't didn't have the incentive that
even if I created it and said, hey, I'm going to get a trainer or we got a gym and just
go, you know, and then you'll be healthier.
And as you get older, it's going to be more of an issue.
And then this and hospital and diabetes or this or thyroid problems.
And and they didn't have the incentive.
And then it hit me.
It's the same thing with being a drunk.
It's like I can finally be who I want to be.
You're too afraid to talk to a girl when you're drunk.
But if you're drunk, you go grab her hand.
And for some reason, she comes with you readily.
And you're like, how did that happen?
That's just a change.
That's me creating or allowing the drunks think it think that it's allowing.
That's who's in me.
That super confident guy, which is inaccurate.
It's false confidence.
It's this creation.
But that you're not invisible, that suddenly you're this force, that you're this Bible
force that people are are seeing.
And I think the same thing has to do with obesity, you know, it's like, yes, you're
surrounded by, you know, a system that feeds you shit that creates obesity faster than,
I think, anywhere in the world.
But without that obesity, without people saying, hey, man, have you thought about losing some
weight?
You thought about, you know, I mean, you got to take care of yourself, man.
That's attention.
And if you lose the weight, what are they going to talk about?
Hey, man, how are you?
How are you?
You know, and I think that's a really interesting dilemma.
And it's something that came up.
But you know, how I've learned ultimately is I like the feeling of humility now.
And I see the difference between humility and humiliation.
You know, you talk about shame and guilt and spiraling and shame and guilt.
And I used to do that all the time.
And now I like being humbled.
I like learning.
I like being wrong.
You know, I go, oh, I saw it this way.
And then suddenly I see it.
It's not even perceived as I saw it as wrong.
I just saw it in that way for that amount of time.
And then somebody illuminated me to something else.
And I go, that works better in solution.
Solution doesn't exist without work.
It's just a concept.
You know, you should live.
Hey, you should get sober.
Just don't drink.
Well, you get sober and don't drink and don't do anything about it.
They're called dry drunks and they're called dry drunks for a reason.
They're still everything they were drunk.
They're just sober.
It's just not drinking.
But all the behavior is still there.
And until you get into that, until you get into that opportunity to actually grow toward
the sun, regardless of how messy it is and actually like the messiness of it.
I don't know, man.
This whole stalemate thing is just not for me.
And that's how I saw drinking.
I became, I got to the point where I go, this is redundant.
This is redundant.
And I don't like redundancy.
I don't, you know, and the fact that I'm creating it was not okay with me.
So I did something about it.
Did that answer your question?
No, it does.
It does.
It's funny.
It kind of parallels a couple of things.
Firstly, I had Ethan Souple on a couple of times.
And if you remember American History X, he was always that kind of size.
Now he's got a podcast called American Glutton and he's in great shape and trying to spread
the word on not only his journey, but getting all these other people that have been on that
kind of weight loss journey as well.
But Johan Hari, the author I mentioned earlier, there's a story in one of his books and it's
about a trial they did for obesity.
And I think they were giving people just intravenous nutrients.
That was it.
So the whole point was if we just give them all the macro and micronutrients, they should
lose weight.
So I had one test subject who was like the rock star of the study and she lost the most
weight and then one day she just stopped coming and they tracked her down and she was already
put on a bunch of weight and she was a KFC or something.
And they were trying to figure out what was going on.
And one of the scientists just asked a question.
Do you remember when you first started eating?
And she said yes.
And they said, was there any significant event during that time?
And she said, yeah, that was when my grandfather started raping me.
And she was, I forget now, seven years old.
So this is the other part with the whole obesity conversation that ties into opiates and alcohol
and porn and gambling and all these other things is, you know, what were those traumas?
Because for her, when she became slim, she started garnering attention from the opposite
sex, which had a complete startle reflex.
And so she went back to being air quotes unattractive because that was the defense mechanism.
So you start kind of peeling back these layers of whatever the struggles that someone have
and how it's manifesting through addiction or food or, you know, you name it, even exercising
too much and anorexia and bulimia.
It's hard not to be a victim.
It's hard not to be a victim and a victim.
That's why I say the messiness.
That's exactly what I mean, because when you're living in the problem and somebody says, here's
the solution, all you got to do is live in the solution.
But you don't, people don't talk about that's why self-help books are 75% of the bookstore
now because they, most of them don't work because they go, oh, this feels good reading
this.
It gives me hope, but there's no, there's no reality in the fact that even if you're
in the solution and living a good life that you can so easily go back and there's one
issue that happens that triggers you or whatever, and then you'll throw yourself back into the
initial problem and living into the initial problem or initial victimhood or whatever
it is, because that's your comfort zone.
Even if it feels like shit, even if you're an abject pain, it's what you know, that's
exactly the story you just told me.
So the people start going, oh my God, you look great.
Well all that, I mean, it does several things.
It tells you that how you've looked has been shitty and that you've been shitty this whole
time.
You know what I mean?
And then the other thing is how do I deal with this newness?
I don't understand who I am in this new body and this new attention and this new.
So if I go back to this, at least I know, at least I have the drumstick and the thing,
I can bite into it.
I know what that is.
I know what people's reaction is going to be.
It's my comfort zone.
It's my comfort zone, no matter how uncomfortable and painful it is.
And that's why I talk about it and let's say even with this book, it's like, look, it's
a messy life.
And the thing is, there's never any style.
It's like quitting sugar.
It's like, oh, I'm going to go on a diet.
I'm not going to go on a diet.
I'm going to figure out a lifestyle.
I love sugar, man.
I have key lime pie that I was given for my birthday and I have chocolates that I was
given to my birthday because people know I love chocolate.
So they're going to give it to me.
Congratulations.
Another year.
Yay.
Now do this thing.
And I have that on just because I wanted to see and my blood, my, my, what is it?
My blood sugar levels or whatever my glucose levels were, were pretty, you know, they're
pretty even.
And then I had my birthday and I had a piece and I hadn't eaten most of the day and I had
a piece of key lime pie and I had two chocolates and the fucking thing started doing this.
So that's all elation crash elation crash.
And I know it.
And when I did it, I was like, my God, what I've been missing.
Means I know this.
I know how to be drunk and I had to wake up on a sidewalk.
I know how to do that better than most.
I know what that is and I know how to live in them.
But what if you take the less comfortable way and then you see people, like I said,
you know, it was like four or five years into my sobriety where my kids and I wasn't asking
for it.
I wasn't that dick who was like, see what I've done.
I mean, I've been sober four years.
I've been like, I mean, what else do you expect?
What do you want from me?
You know, I wasn't that guy.
I go, I saw something change in my older kids and there was they loved me.
I know they loved me.
But there was a trust and it was skewed.
It was and then it went good.
And then I started getting calls.
Hey, what do you think of this?
Or I have an issue.
What do you think of that?
What do you think I should do?
Hey, how are you?
How's your day?
Wow.
I mean, that's stuff that can make me just ball because that's everything you want to
be able to rely on.
And that's what you get work.
You know, I tell my sponsors that and I know this is not a podcast of sobriety, but we
we say it's not about you anymore.
You work on you to help others.
You become a power of example.
You show people that you can do it, that it exists.
You don't just give people hope.
You show them that the process works when you are relentless in your pursuit to be one
percent better each day.
You don't have to be perfect at the end of the thing.
You're going to die at the end of the day.
It's all going to be fucking meaningless.
You know, but what's the process of living this time that we're gifted here?
And what if it's not about you anymore?
I feel so bad.
I feel that this I feel so horrible.
I feel this.
Okay.
What are you doing about it?
You know, I want to I want on that gratitude list.
Okay.
You get on the gratitude list.
If you miss it for 10 days, we're going to kick you off.
Gratitude first day, gratitude list, the second day, gratitude list, the third day, four days
goes by.
Well, what happened?
Well, I was feeling like, you know, I read yours and yours is really well written.
And it kind of intimidated me and I didn't want it.
Okay, so we can talk about that.
Do me a favor.
Don't miss a list.
That's the requirement.
You are you are it's not just a list for yourself.
You are responsible to other people.
The list is no longer for you.
Other people's lists are for you.
You're giving.
This is an act of giving and it's and it's learning how to receive and it's learning
how to see the gem and receiving.
Yeah, I don't want on this list anymore.
It's too much work.
Leather interior.
It's too much work.
This is not fun.
And you go maybe not now, but later you'll start to thrive on the ship.
This will be so much better than any leather interior you'll ever have in any car that
you own.
I guarantee it.
And it is it's a it's a it's a spiritual treasure.
This is what I'm trying to impart on the fire service, especially at our level.
My firefighters, engineers, captain, lieutenant kind of rank that, you know, they're really
the ones that are doing a majority of the work battalion chiefs to the people that are
on shift that are there every third day or whatever the shift pattern is and being told,
you know, you can't go home, stay another day.
We're short staffed again and again and again.
We're such a selfless, you know, servant mentality, which is beautiful.
And you know, let's give pay homage to all the volunteer firefighters are out there doing
this for free.
However, that can also be taken advantage of, and we've got to the point now where our
men and women, I mean, perfect LA city, LA County woefully, woefully understaffed.
So who's holding that PT log as Navy SEALs are falling left, right and center?
Everyone else who's still holding the log, you know, it's getting heavier and heavier.
But it's a hard sell to get the firefighters to say, we do need help.
We do need more rest and recovery.
So where I'm trying to shift the focus is that, all right, take it off you for a second.
Doesn't your child deserve to have you at that dance recital at the Donuts with Dads
or whatever it is?
Don't they deserve to have you when you come home with a smile on your face, not completely
burnt out and walking on eggshells?
You know, doesn't your partner deserve to have you, you know, well rested and not thinking
about whatever God awful call and you know, now your relationship, your marriage starts
fraying more and more and more.
So I love that.
You know, what you said about the sponsors and the sponsors is that's absolutely, I think
the most important message to this community.
If you don't think that you value the rest and recovery and time and all these other
things, then look to the people that adore you.
They deserve to have you home.
They deserve for you to be healthy, to have a lifespan that you can one day be a grandfather
to their children.
But you know, we've become so beat down and they're so under, excuse me, overworked and
under slept.
You can't critically think, you can't question, well, hey, is this a great environment that
we're in?
And the answer is fuck no, it's terrible.
But we have to stand up and fight.
But going back to that, take the, take the focus off you and put it on people around
you that depend on you and that love you.
I think that mentality will hopefully help shift the focus and get the fire service as
I always say, educated and angry enough to actually band together and demand an environment
that actually provides health and performance, not disease like we've seen for so long.
Yeah.
And you don't want to, you don't, you don't want it just to be about not that it's hollow.
It's not a hollow presentation because what the first responders are doing is incredible.
But what about the whole person?
So you just want them saving lives.
You want to be able to clap.
That's hollow patriotism, another form of hollow patriotism.
And you go, what about that person?
Exactly what you just said.
And looking back and you go, who are they with their family?
Who are they with their kids?
If you see a great teacher teaching your child in elementary school, and then you found out
that they're beating their kids and their wife is this and he's fucking around and he's
doing all this, are you, are you going to think they're a great teacher any longer?
No, of course not.
You're going to try to get that guy fired.
You're going to be like, what do you mean?
He beats his kids and he does, and that he's a horrible human being.
Why, why do I want him around my kid?
You know what I mean?
Well, the presentation is good.
Well, our kids learning like crazy.
Yeah, but it's not all about me.
It's not all about my kid.
You know what I mean?
It's I mean, ultimately selfishly it is, but when it comes down to it, you go, if there's
this underlying laceration, then there has to be a place for those people to go to help
stitch it up and stop the bleeding.
You know what I mean?
And I like that as a metaphor because it's like, it's like, you can't deny the laceration.
The person going through it can't deny it.
And the person and the people around that person can't deny it.
And that's why I say they get into that, that denial of it's okay.
I'm a hero.
My hero, my hero, my hero.
And that's where you talk about the stoics and like what's heroic about who was it?
I can't remember, but he used to go out in the street for two weeks and live, live like
everybody else and live with no food and live with just one blanket and beg for bread or
whatever just to tap into the realities of what he was representing, what, you know,
which I like that stuff.
It's like creative community, you know, creatively putting yourself in a position uncomfortably
to identify, to be able to identify, you know, and, and, and I say this just as a last thing
is that, you know, you just said it of, of these firefighters.
Why would you not want to care?
Why would you not want to follow through?
Why do you just want the presentation?
You go to Europe and you see a lot more of that.
I know it's not perfect, but you feel, you see a lot more respite.
You see a lot more siesta.
You see a lot more dinners that last for two hours and I'm the worst man.
I want to eat.
I go in a restaurant.
I want to be in and out of there in 15 minutes.
I got shit to do, you know, and, and I just shut everything down professionally.
I know what jobs I'm doing in the future, but I just, the award shows and all this kind
of stuff.
And I just went like, I just, I just did a, I just did work in London.
I did the dune two tour.
I did the book tour and I did another job in London and now I'm asked every day to do
something.
And I go, so what does that make me?
Oh, it's like, oh, okay.
Okay.
I'll do this for you and I'll do that for you.
And I have to stay relevant and I have to stay relevant and have to stay relevant.
And you go, no, like now I'm starting to feel resentment.
Now I'm starting to see people on the street and they go, hi.
And I'm going, you know, you got, you know, I don't want to deal with anybody, you know?
And I go, but that's not how I want to be.
So what am I going to do?
Take action.
Yeah.
But what's the consequence?
Does it matter?
What if Hollywood doesn't want you anymore?
It's okay.
We'll, we'll get, then I'll start trading stocks again.
I don't know.
I always figure it out.
But what's important is waking up this morning and going to our property with my family and
then going with a friend and going and we'll get, you know what I mean?
It's like, there are moments that you can't take back.
And there are moments that are being represented, you know, for all of us right now that that's
the nectar, man.
This is the nectar.
And if you miss the nectar, and if you, and if you deny other people their nectar, because
of your selfish wants, not okay.
Not okay.
But I'm 57.
So it's taken me a while to get there, you know, and I'm not there yet.
I still resort back to selfishness sometimes and greed sometimes.
And you know, so great.
Thank you.
Namaste.
Thank you.
You know, I'm still victim to to all the little pitfalls of the ego.
But I like being slapped awake a lot.
I like and part of the process of doing this was being slapped away.
I didn't even realize it.
My life is my life selfishly is better because I wrote this book.
My life is better.
We talked about this earlier.
You know, when somebody comes and has a real emotional or personal personal response to
one of the many stories in this book, that's gratifying.
And that brings people together.
When somebody comes and says, that's the worst fucking book I've ever read in my life.
I don't know how gratifying that is.
But there's something that I like about it where I go, that's a reaction.
That's a reaction.
And there's something that you expected of me because you have put me you have pigeonholed
me as this certain thing and not as a full fledged human being.
And that's OK.
I can deal with that.
But I'm not going to I'm not going to be that half a human for you.
And this is this is proof.
This is me challenging myself again and again, making sure I haven't slid into that status
quo that adheres to everybody else's idea of what I should be given what I do.
Well, like I told you, I thought it was amazing because we've gone back and forth.
I mean, you know, early on, I was reading those Instagram posts and you were talking
about how that was kind of almost like a sounding board for some of your, you know, artistic
writing ideas and developments and how you then update it and correct things and change
things.
But the use of words really are, you know, they are said the paintbrush on your your
palate.
I mean, truly.
And some of the chapters are obviously kind of more like a traditional chapter would be
and some is more like poetry form.
And I love the way that it's all over the place in an organic way.
But also, like I said before, the the pendulum element of going from time to time, you know,
time zone to time zone, it really underlined that struggle.
So it wasn't a linear line like, yeah, this was happened.
And then I was struggling and then I got sober.
And now life is great.
You even feel yeah, this like there's there's one of the chapters and you're on a plane
and you're talking about how attractive the stewardess is and you're having these sexual
thoughts.
But let's be honest, a lot of us male, female see other people, especially if we're inebriated,
we have some of these thoughts.
And it was just so raw and visceral.
And the lack of that linear nature, I think, is what makes it so attractive.
And I think maybe some of the people who are pushing against it is because it is holding
up a mirror.
And I hope that my books hold up a mirror.
And I've had visceral, you know, responses from people with that as well.
But I think it's so refreshing, because that's how life is this frickin, you know, like tug
of war between all these different monkeys in our mind.
And I think the book that you wrote, which, as you said, you know, was the book that you
wanted to write, that is your book.
So someone can pick it up and say it's great.
Someone can pick it up and say they don't like it.
But what a beautiful reaction, because it's still the book that you wanted to write.
Yeah, it's, you know, we won't get into a hole.
I won't need some long frame, but even, you know, 1997, my son and daughter sit close
to each other.
The doors are open close by short bursts of a morning fog have crept inside and tickle
at their feet.
They eat cereal out of orange soup bowls and read on the glass table out of the encyclopedia
of the bizarre.
My daughter legs tucked under her, her hips, leans her shoulder against his keeps peeking
at him when he speaks about a family that had the last name 1792 and how they all named
their kids after months.
August 1792 eight pounds one and a half ounces born June 3rd 1963 was one.
He gives him a look of wide eyed surprise and all I see is how much she adores him worships
him almost.
Their history is protected, they look after each other stepping honorably through the
viscosity of this life parents only a hindrance.
They light candles with their eyes, they flame their youth together always together traveling
through a book of the bizarre, not realizing how absurd it is that he isn't pulling that
he isn't pulling her hair.
And that she isn't in my lap.
You know, that's what it's, you know, I think if there was ever a mistake, and I brought
it up early on and then I said, now fine, was calling it a memoir.
It's not a memoir.
It's their stories, paintings, memories, anecdotes, their personal meanderings.
So you know, if you're, you know, the four year old with the mother crying on the phone
screaming and the father comes home and she's throwing the big Mexican coffee cups through
the window at him and you know that total fucking utter chaos.
And then, and when I wrote that I wrote it in a different way.
And then I was like, I want this to be like a, like a Dr. Sue story.
Once upon a time there was a little boy named John.
I wanted to almost read like a children's story, like something that's going to be really,
really nice.
Because childhood is nice.
You pick flowers and get on your bicycle and the flag is flopping above you and all this
kind of stuff and you go, but some childhoods aren't so nice.
Most childhoods have something in them that, that justify trauma, the idea of trauma.
And that's okay.
Again, that's okay.
You know that she talks about it and I keep bringing up her book only because I'm reading
it right now, but she talks about it in that she goes there.
There is this idea of community, this idea of spending time with yourself, first of all,
to be able to come to terms with something.
But this idea of community and feeding off that community is, is so utterly important.
It's so to reveal in yourself those things that you would hide otherwise.
How can we, how can we, I don't know really how to put it, but how, you know, for me,
I feed off it more right now than I have mostly.
Before I was kind of like, I want to travel.
I want to get in boxcars.
I want to go through the Mojave Desert.
I want to do all the crazy romantic literary things that I can do.
I'm going to go to France.
I'm going to visit Rambeau's grave site.
I'm going to go drink wine at Jim Morrison's grave site.
I'm going to go, I want it.
I want to fill it.
I want to fill it, which I'm happy that I did.
I did all those things.
And then when it comes down to it, you go, who, who do I want to share it with?
I said it to my wife yesterday.
My wife said this morning, she said it this morning.
She got up before the kids and she looked at me and she goes, I'm so into you right
now.
And I was like, really?
That's cool.
I just turned 57.
That's cool.
And she goes, I said, I said to her, the difference that I feel now that I've never felt before
is you're somebody I want to go through this with.
I'm not putting an expectation on you to lift me into a different place, to get me away
from myself, to get me away from pain, to distract me.
That if we really look at this insanity of raising children, which by the way, I'm so
surprised these kids haven't come in here and just gone, hey, Papa, we just got, you
know, cause that's how it always is.
I don't know why they're not doing it now.
It's worrying me.
But that you want to go through it with somebody that you want to just share it, that you want
to, that you want to partake in that give and take and say, look, you're going to get
older.
I'm going to get older and it's all good because there is no perfect anymore.
We live in the beauty of messy imperfection and that's okay.
Yeah.
Love it.
Well I think that's the perfect place to round off this conversation.
So firstly, for people listening, the book is from under the truck.
Where are the best places to find the hard copy?
And then what about the audio book?
The audio books people are seeming to like, you know, which I was, I liked the idea of
people buying a hard cover book, but there's www website that we created that gives you
many opportunities to buy it from different places, whether mom and pop or whether it's
Barnes and Noble and, and Amazon and all that, it gives you the choice.
So that's www from under the truck.com and the audio book, you know, you get an audible
or you can get obviously Amazon, whatever.
But it's available and it's out there and there's nothing that I have found more solace
and not me walking into a bookstore.
Even though I went to the oldest bookstore and I can't wait, it's called a Hatchard's
maybe the in London, the oldest bookstore in London.
And to see my book displayed up there was special for me.
But the better version of that is people sending me videos or pictures of them in bookstores
and saying, or reading the book or them having bought the book and they go home like that.
That makes me truly happy, but it's out there right now and it's done much better than I
thought it was going to do.
So I'm happy about that.
I don't think I told you this.
I don't know.
I can't remember if I did or not, but when I came to visit you in Atlanta, we did that
kind of book signing for that charity giveaway that we're doing.
And then you also recorded the forward for my book.
And it was only after I did that, that I was like, why the fuck did I ask one of the people
with the best voices in Hollywood to narrate my audio book?
So the right after I'm like, hello, I'm James Kearing.
To this day, I'm like, what an idiot.
No, that was by the way, that was a very powerful process.
And I won't go off on a whole tangent, but that was a very powerful process.
I know for you and for me to go, I mean, the gall to read your writing and for you to put
yourself out there as vulnerably as you've put yourself out there.
And for me to go, bro, you're all surface and like go deeper.
Like I know you and I know you're more capable.
And that's what I'm talking about.
You want a friend to be able to do that.
You want somebody to say, you're more capable.
You have the capacity to go deeper.
And you did.
And it was phenomenal.
I love that book and people love that book.
So yeah, man, again, the teaching becomes the lesson.
What could come across easily is some kind of literary arrogance, which why I would have
because I hadn't written a book.
You wrote a book before I wrote a book.
And what that throws me into is, you know what?
If you're going to be like that, you know, be a power of example.
Don't just be somebody on the sidelines and saying, come on, you can do better than that.
Look at, you know, and it's put yourself out there.
So if that's the community that you and I look forward to in everybody, then let's continue
along the trajectory of care that we're on because I think we're doing a right thing
no matter how many people shit on it.