Robert Greene: How To Get Rich, Master Power & Stay Irreplaceable In The New Era Of AI (The Truth!)

It's absolutely insane. In your company, that used to be 100, now there's only 10 because of AI. What is the law that you're like, if most people implemented this, it would cause the biggest shift for them immediately?

Well, you could see like almost every law in that way, but um, there is one law. So, the technology alters the game, no doubt, but the game is still the game of power. You're going to have politics. You're going to have egos. You're going to have bosses. You had a few like nasty bosses that you worked with.

Yeah. >> Were any of them narcissists? >> I can't even tell you. The reason I can talk so much about this is cuz I've had so much experience dealing with these people. Is it really possible to defeat the narcissist? You're defeating them.

Is August 17th of 2018. You suffer a stroke. There was this weird taste in my mouth and this feeling in my bones that I can't even describe, a visceral sense of of the by death being inside my body. It's there. It's alive. And so you start realizing what matters in life. So many times people go around, they have no priorities. They're worried about the stupidest things that don't matter. What really matters? You're going to die, damn it. How are you going to deal with that?

Before we get into the episode, I have to say that it's pretty surreal to me that I get to do this and record this show for you guys and so many of you tune in and leave comments and likes on the content. The reason why I do this show and I record every single week is that I want to show that anything is possible. Any dream, any delusion that you have in your mind right now, you can bring it to reality. One of my goals at the moment is that I have this crazy delusional dream that this time next year we'll reach a million subscribers on this channel. And so if you click that subscribe button, the promise that I'll make to you is that we're going to improve this show every single week. And so I want to take you on that journey with me. So hit that subscribe button and let's get into the show.

Robert, in many ways, I think we're speaking at the perfect time because there are so many people right now that when it comes to their work and their life, they feel powerless. And so where I wanted to begin, if someone is listening to this conversation with that feeling, that feeling of powerlessness and anxiety, >> what is the value that they will take from this conversation and from your work?

Well, um, from my work, um, essentially I'm trying to get you to think of making yourself self-reliant where it all depends on you. So, you know, you have two ways you can go in life. In my loss of human nature, I talk about your attitude. Your attitude towards the world, whether it's negative and closed and kind of retreating or whether it's open and excited and advancing. And so the point I'm trying to get everyone to understand is stop complaining. Stop blaming the world. Stop blaming this person or that person or that force or that thing going on in society and look at yourself and look at how you are responsible to some degree for what happens to you.

Now, of course, there are things we cannot control. We can't control that our industry is completely wiped out because of progress, technological progress such as happening in AI. So, you're going to be suffering. There's going to be inevitable pain. As you pointed out, some of that pain comes from people. People can be can be pretty awful sometimes. There are difficult people all around you, manipulative people, people who are very egotistical or out for on their for their own agenda. Okay, that's one element. Then it's painful all the changes that are going on in the world and keeping up with it and it's extremely difficult to be successful in this world. There's so many forces against you. It is so competitive. You know, I look at the world that my father grew up in or or I grew up with him 70 years ago and um, you know, he had one job that he had throughout his whole life and he had kind of a secure world that he lived in. He was we I came from the middle class. He was able to buy a home. You know, we had a I had a decent childhood because of that. And that world is completely gone now. There's so much more insecurity. There's so much more competition. Nobody stays at one job for that long. Your boss no longer takes care of you as they used to take care of people, right? You're on your own, right? And you can either get all upset and turn inward and complain and worry and get insecure. And what happens when you do that is you're just making life more difficult. Right? So if your attitude is I'm born, I'm only live once. Life is like a kind of adventure. I have to be I have to go out and be excited and make the best of everything that happens. And I have to be opportunistic. So opportunities will be coming your way. If you have that attitude where you're excited, you're open and you're looking, things will happen to you. So I guess the main thing in my books is you have some power, but you have to it has to come from within. It's no one's going to give you anything in this world. And I'm trying to train you all seven or eight now eight of my books to always look at yourself to look at the role that you play in your failures and the bad things that happen to you so you can develop this inner strength and this resilience. That is the number one skill that you're going to need in this world today.

>> You know what you you mentioned resilience and and I'm glad that you did. You also mentioned the fact that uh to anyone that's listening at home, it's like you have some power. But I think when we look at the the media and even when I have like conversations with people, the feeling that I get is that people feel very powerless. And so given your work and the people that you talk to and all the people that reach out to you and the studying and the research that you do, what in your mind are the reasons why people feel so powerless right now in their lives?

Well, you know, it it depends on your situation, on where you grew up, and and how old you are. So people who were older from my generation I don't think we feel so much that that kind of sense of powerlessness but people more I don't know your age but more of your generation some of you grew up are old enough you grew up with the crash of '08 then you had the pandemic and all the economic troubles that ensued from that and how that made the job market incredibly insecure and now you're having to deal with AI. So I think people that I see, young people are so much more anxious and worried than when I was growing up because the there doesn't seem to be much future much hope right now. The world looks like everything's sort of against them, you know. So everything sort of looks like I don't have much hope. I don't know what to grab on to. I I go and I learn some solid career like coding or whatever software, you know, making that and now all of a sudden that that job is evaporated and positions are now going to be evaporating in in in finance, in real estate all throughout because of AI. So you're looking at a landscape that is chaotic, that is difficult, that that makes you feel like you have no power and no control. And I can understand that very well. You know, part of if there's anything that makes me different, it's because I didn't have success until my late 30s and even my early 40s. I went through a long period of 20 years where I couldn't figure out my career and I and I felt that anxiety and I felt that powerlessness. I couldn't figure out what I was meant to do. and I tried this job, that job and and other jobs. I never had one job for more than 11 months in my entire life, right? I just moved here and there. I couldn't find my niche. I had depression. I even felt suicidal. So, I understand very very deeply from within that sense of not having power or control over your fate. I also had very some really really terrible bosses. And so I know the pain of having to work for others. So that is kind of where the 48 laws of power came out of my own powerlessness. Looking at people in the world that I saw who were kind of controlling the game. What are the laws that they were using? And so I want I want to empower I want to give you the feeling that so much you cannot control but what you can control is your own psychology, your own mindset. You have to go into battle. This world is like battle. There's conflict everywhere. There's so much competition. You have to have a tough warrior type mindset and resilience about you. And that's what I'm trying to inculcate in my books. But I understand very deeply why people are so anxious and insecure because I have felt that for many years myself.

>> Yeah. I heard you say this in um an interview that you did. You said, "Unfortunately, I worked in Hollywood for 10 years." >> Yes. Yes. >> You said it inspired the 48 Lords of Power. And I say unfortunately intentionally because I hated Hollywood. >> I really did. >> When When you say that because I think hating, it's such a strong word. It's like a visceral feeling that comes with it. And so when you think back, can you share with people in your mind what is that that timing like the the epitome of that point in your life of working in Hollywood where you're like I actually hate this experience like it's that strong.

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Well, I had many different positions in Hollywood. As I said, I was constantly moving around, so I was very restless. And um, there were moments where that hatred that that distaste for it kind of became very evident. But it was almost sort of an init an allergic reaction. Some of it is I'm just not suited for that world. I'm a control freak. I like to have power. I write a book. It's all of my own. Nobody's sitting there over my shoulder saying, "Change this, change that, do this, do that instead, etc." I love that. That's what I live for. In Hollywood, you have no power. You're a cog in a giant bureaucratic machine, right? If you're a writer, 10 other writers are coming over and they're changing everything that you that you do, right? Everybody's trying to Everyone has their egos, you know? It's all about they they pretend that it's about culture and making movies and they're so full of themselves, but it's really about money and power, right? So, you can kind of hear the disdain that I have for it because I saw it from the inside. People who seemed that they were so into like the aura of Hollywood, but they were such bastards. They were such [ __ ] They didn't treat people well. It's a place where a lot of people are not treated well, particularly on the lower levels. a lot of the time where I was. And so like I had a job, this goes back to your first question, I had a job at a television show whose name I will not mention because it's almost like I'm too embarrassed, but um, it was a a a a kind of a slight quasi reality show at the beginning of that whole genre. And I was a researcher and my job was to find the stories that they would shoot for this show. And I was by far the best researcher there. And you could measure it. There were metrics. My research turned into stories at a higher percentage than anybody else. Okay? And I ended up getting fired, right? And why did I get fired? I mean, I was producing. I was doing a great job. It was because I wasn't getting along with my superior. I wasn't playing the ego game. I had a bit of an attitude myself. And the idea to that struck me was that in this realm where you know it's so important to like make a lot of money and have success and have a show or a film that does really well, wouldn't you reward somebody like myself who actually had brought results? No. It was about ego. And in Hollywood, it's the same in the music business. It's the same in in a lot of creative ventures in the art world where the what show what what makes you famous and successful isn't just numbers. You can't really measure it. It's the your appearance and your ego and how you present yourself, right? And there were so many like delicate little egos in that in that film world. If you just said the wrong thing, you did the wrong thing. You know, you you you weren't popular. you weren't you weren't able to get success and I remember one time I wrote a screenplay uh which I thought was quite good and I thought could be an interesting film and I had an agent and I would go to places and they would say things like you know Robert you should really go into theater and it was kind of an insult it was a way to say you don't have that popular touch you you're too literary you're too intellectual for it. And so I had that experience a lot. It's just I can't really say it's the film world is awful as hell. It just was a very very bad fit for someone who likes control, who doesn't like gameplay, who doesn't like all the politics, who hates the ego games. It just rubbed me the wrong way. Other people, they they're they're fine in that kind of realm. So it was it was a bad mix.

>> Yeah. You know what? you you you speak with uh you speak about Hollywood and I'm you haven't worked there for for decades but even when you speak about it I can still >> you can feel overwhelmed there's this uh this glamour and like this allure >> of of Hollywood at least from the outside there's like a reputation you know even even the sunny weather in California and in LA like I think feeds into that as well to you did that feel like a lie >> well I I like the glamour I I mean, I I grew up in LA and I was around it a lot and my grandfather was sort of, you know, he was attached to Hollywood in a sort of indirect way. He grew up in vaudeville and he was a a great piano player and he was in sort of that world. He would he was Judy Garland's accompanist for instance. So I knew that kind of glamour and it is exciting and it is real and I can remember the first day I was on the set of a film that we were shooting and I was working with the director and there was it was exciting and the actress was beautiful. Right? So there is something to the myth. Okay. But the closer you get to it the more that myth kind of crumbles and falls apart. You know um you know they have the expression no man is a hero to his valad right you're to the person you know a valid right the person who's like your butler you get too close to something and you see through it and you see that a lot of it is just kind of fake and then the weird thing was I remember that first day on that set that on that first film and I thought god this is really boring actually the the dialogue what what she saying the the scene they were shooting. It's really bananal. It's not that interesting. And then they the director goes cut and everyone goes, "Oh, that was fantastic. That was terrific. You're so wonderful. That was beautiful." All the fakeness, all the fake flattery, you know, uh you know, that kind of I don't know. I just thought that was so there is the aura. There is some glamour and there's some very beautiful people and all of that, but the closer you get to it, the kind of you see through it, you see kind of the ugliness behind it. You see the fakeness >> and you see that it's it is tinsel town. It is as substantial as tinsel. >> Yeah. You know, I actually think it's such a a relatable thing is uh a lot of the times these industries, they start with like actually a pure intention. you know, maybe it's like creativity or like creating value and then as more and more business interest gets into it, the nature of it shifts. Yeah. >> And I think that the people that are involved, they can feel it. You have that feeling of, oh, I'm a cog. I'm a cog in the wheel. We've all had that working a job where it's like it doesn't feel like it matters if it's me here or someone else. Like I am simply a piece in this system, but I do not matter within it. >> Right.

You know, you mentioned in the beginning you mentioned uh bosses and you had a few like nasty bosses that you worked with. In your mind, are any were any of them narcissists?

Well, I make the point in the laws of human nature that all of us are to some degree narcissists. that we should stop judging and thinking, well, that person is a narcissist, but I'm not. I'm so noble. I'm so saintly. The person who says that, who says, I'm not a narcissist. I'm so noble. I'm not like that, is actually a great narcissist because they think so highly of themsel, they think they're so different from anybody else. But they're not different. We are all self-absorbed to some degree or or other, right? You know, we're we're interested. If we hear our name in a crowd, our eyes light up. Oh, they're talking about me. We all have that reaction. Get over your high-minded thinking that you're different. We all have that reaction, right? We want attention. We want recognition. Okay? But some people are what I call deep narcissists, right? Most of us are self-absorbed, but at moments in life, we can get out of it and we can show genuine interest in other people, in their story, in their lives, and what's happening to them. But there is a lot of people who can never get out to that point. They are so insecure. There's a reason why there are deep narcissists, and I explain why in in that book, but so it's understandable. They had probably a very tough childhood in some ways, but they can't get out of their own self. They're so deeply imshed. They're so insecure that everything is about themsel. Every little thing that happens triggers their insecurities, right? And they're very dangerous people to be around. So yeah, the almost inevitably um the difficult boss will be a narcissist because if they had empathy, they would treat people better. They would treat people differently. And often times people who rise to the top in this world today get there through their narcissism because they're they're so, you know, they they're they're so ambitious. They're so out to get something for themsel. They'll screw anybody around. They don't care, right? They have no compunctions. So, you're going to in most leaders in life are to a higher degree narcissist. I believe most bosses. Some are healthy narcissists. They can they can make things. They can do things. And others are not healthy. Our narcissists, they're all about trauma and turmoil and getting uh you know, having the everything for themselves. And so I remember I worked in New York in magazines back in the 80s. You can't believe I'm that old. Okay. So um and uh I had a job. I I quit this other job that I hated and I moved to this new magazine which is this glossy very expensive magazine produced in New York. And um I wrote this article that I thought was really good. But it was a it was a stupid travel magazine, but it was very glossy. And so it was kind of a good position. And I wrote this article about a trip in Italy. And so I thought it was really good. And the editor invites me to lunch, right? I've told this story before, but he invites me to lunch and I'm expecting him to praise me. And b in a sense, he was in essence what he was saying was, "Robert, you are not a writer. You're not a good writer. You should quit this business. you're you're you're not disciplined. You're not communicating to the reader. And he was he was drinking. I remember drinking rather heavily. He had like one martini, second martini. And I had this feeling like the image came into my head of somebody who kind of looks normal on the outside, but on the inside it's like a house that is rotting. The foundation is rotting. I could sense something really wrong about him. And to do something to somebody who's like 23, 24, who's got all this hope in life, and and to say something like that, you'd have to be like a a deep narcissist in order to be you're like punishing people. And I know for myself how difficult it is for anybody out there to write anything, to make anything, how hard it is. I never like criticizing people in that sense. If they send me their story, their book, their idea, I always try and make them feel good about it because what's the point? You know, you can be constructive and criticize, but it has to be in a context of support and help because life is so difficult now for people. So, anybody who like is older who does that to somebody younger, I think that's criminal in a way. It's almost like a a form of of violence. >> Cruel. >> Yeah. >> Yeah.

You know what? There's um there's an irony, you know, in in that story because sitting here today, you're like one of the most successful authors. Like you've sold millions and millions of books. And not even just the sales numbers, it's also like who's read and been influenced by your work. So there's an irony that at an early point in your career, someone told you straight up, you're not meant to do this. >> Yeah. And he he meant it. He he was the point of it was Robert go to business school, go to law school, make a living. This isn't for you, right? >> You know, so yeah, it was it was very pointed. And I remember uh I was quite hurt by it. I was surprised. And then which is something that happens to me a lot when when bad things happen because I've had bad things happen to me. um is initially I'm upset. So getting back to the idea we talked about earlier of resilience because it's my failures and my difficult moments in life that have given me a very thick tough skin. And I remember a month after h getting this blow from him I going you know what maybe he's right. Maybe I'm not meant to be writing in the world of magazines and journalism in New York. Maybe I need I I'm for something else. There's another purpose in my life. I meant to write something else. And so I didn't get upset and I decid and soon thereafter I moved to Europe and I wandered around Europe for several years and I tried to write novels which I didn't succeed at. But I took the blow and I went hm I'm going to move past it. that I'm going to learn from this. And I've tried to do that with all of the the difficult moments that I've had.

>> Yeah. You know what? You you have this uh mindset and this mentality of resilience which has been built over like decades and these experience experiences and these knocks. And I think about how many people are like listening to this conversation with that feeling or maybe even that indication. Maybe there's certain signs that the boss that they're working with, their manager, their superior could be a narcissist or at least have these qualities. >> Yeah. >> And for many people like it can break them in their career. And so if someone right now is having that feeling, how do you even navigate? How do you even handle a narcissist which because of the way that you're working in your work situation, you actually have to be in close proximity to them, you're frequently interacting with them?

>> Yeah. Well, it's a very good question. I mean, the first thing is um the first thing and I have people come to me for this advice so I'm I'm used to talking to about this is the first thing is do you need this job? Is it worth having your self-esteem battered day in and day out? Dealing with the drama? Coming home and feeling upset, falling asleep and feeling upset, waking up with that feeling of dread. Is it worth it? Maybe you can't get out of this job. Maybe you need it. Maybe you're supporting a family. You have to have it. Okay, but maybe you don't. Maybe it's not worth it in the end. Okay, that's the first thing you have to consider. That's very important. All right. Okay. You can't get out of this job. You have to do it. You need the money, right? You've come too far. You just can't quit. The one thing you have to know is you got to develop the it's a skill you have to develop. It's a life skill you have to develop is it's not personal. You have to keep repeating yourself. It's not personal. It's not about me. It's not personal. It's not personal. It's not personal. Over and over and over and over again. And when you say it's not personal, it's not personal, it's not personal, it's not personal, you're pushing them a little bit outside of your head. You can start looking at them instead of thinking about them all the time. The next thing you have to do is manipulative people. And the reason I can talk so much about this is because I've had so much experience dealing with these people. The next thing you must go through is their whole game is drama. They are trying to play on your emotions to get you upset and that can be getting you excited and then getting you insecure and doubting yourself up and down. They're trying to constantly manipulate you. If they can push your buttons and and and control you that way, then they're the ones that have power, right? So manipulative narcissistic people are always creating drama around themselves and you're going to be caught up in it, right? And so the main thing you have to do is not react. Not react. You can say something in response but inwardly you are not reacting. You are cool. You are calm. You're saying it's not personal. It's not about me. It's about them. Right? uh going through the whole script that I've just mentioned, I am not going to react. If you can do that, you can create some distance, then you can deal with people like that, right? And the problem is they like to push your buttons, they like to make you upset and emotional and when you don't react, it can also make them even like try doubly hard to push your buttons, etc. But the power lies within you. I want to tell you, you can either give them the power to keep pushing your buttons and creating the drum or you can have the power and withdraw and be strong within yourself. And when you do that, when you tell yourself it's not about me, it's not personal. It's it's it's their issue. It's their problem. I'm not going to get caught up in the drama. It is a wonderful feeling. I say I can't remember in which book. I think it's my new book. But when you defeat a manipulative person like that in your head, what what more power can you have? It's a great feeling. You've overcome some of the worst in human nature, right? And you're able to to save yourself. It's a great feeling. And I want you to have that feeling by developing the skill of keeping some distance from these people that are trying to not create any distance between you and them.

>> Yeah. you know, you you mention um it's actually like a beautiful thing when you defeat someone who has like those those manipulative tendencies and and that's exactly where I wanted to go because you mention uh the value of not taking things personal and I felt that firsthand in my career. It's to your point, it's so difficult to do because we put so much of our um in many ways we wear like a heart on our sleeve. We put so much of ourselves and our identity into our work. >> Yeah. >> And so to to like remove that or to like separate that part of yourself to not put that personal investment into it >> is incredibly difficult. And so my question to you because even earlier in the conversation you mentioned that a lot of the most successful people they're narcissists. Is it really possible to defeat the narcissist or is simply what you do is you kind of just save yourself like you you maintain your own uh peace of mind >> to a degree but you never really defeat them. What what would you say to that?

>> Well, I don't know what defeating would be. I mean, so when you're in the business world or when you're in the work world, you have to have some control over your emotions, right? So things like revenge, things like rubbing their nose in it, feel things like humiliating them to get back at them. Get out of that space, that's a bad space to be in. That's a negative space that's going to bring you down. That's not a position of power. You are not after revenge. You are after control and power over your own life, over your own destiny. You know, h becoming successful is the best revenge of all. So that man who told me I'd never be a writer. He's probably dead by now from alcohol. But the, you know, the revenge I got was becoming successful, right? So get out of the mindset that you want to get back at this awful person cuz what that means is they're controlling you. They have the they've gotten inside you and they're playing so much in your emotions that you have to somehow [ __ ] with them in in return. That means they have power over you. If you have power, you can go, I don't give a rat's ass about this person, right? I have my own life. They're not going to get rid of my dreams and my hopes for the future. I'm still going to make something of myself. I'm not going to get caught up in trying to get back at them or get revenge or beat them or defeat them. Your defeating them is not getting imshed in their dramas, right? You know, pass there a lot of passive aggressive people out there. And a lot of these grand manipulators are very good at that game. You know what I mean, right? >> Yeah. >> They they they say something that at first appearance doesn't seem so bad, but when you go home, you go, "Well, I don't know that this makes me feel kind of bad about myself." >> Yeah. On your mind. Like somebody will say to me early on with my books, they go, "Well, Robert, you must be making a lot of money with your books." And I go, "Well, what? I never I don't write in order to make a lot of money. Why are they saying that?" Well, it's their way of getting a dig in me. Like, I'm motivated by making money, which isn't what motivates me in life. Okay. So, um, so a lot of these people are very are very skilled at making you feel bad, right? And you're not quite sure if they bent it or what's going on in life. And the ability to see through that and to see through their game and to see that they're being very subtle about it gives you power because you're not going to react. recogniz the ability to see through people to recognize that they're manipulating to recognize how they're manipulating you is victory enough, right? Because not knowing what's going on, not being aware of what they're doing to you, not knowing that you're the one being manipulated by this person makes you completely powerless. Your awareness of their game is is power in itself. It's a great power to have. No, that's really that's so valuable. You know, I wanted to to read this because you you said this. You said, "I would work for a film director who would be doing a screenplay and I would write large portions of the dialogue. Nobody ever knew that." >> Yeah. >> It was always his name on it. He got all the fame, all the glory, all the attention. And at the time, it kind of bothered me. I was resentful. And so I want to kind of contrast that and that resentment that you felt in that moment to what you did now and actually it led to well what most people know you for which is the 48 laws of power.

>> And so can you take us back to that moment of like how do you get from that resentful place and I think about like Robert Green the 39year-old man that you were at the time. How do you get from that place to writing what most people know you for, what millions of people have read, which is the 48 laws of power?

Well, um, it's a great question. I mean, first of all, I think I slightly overstate my case in in what you quoted. I mean, if I were to correct it, it it wasn't that I was responsible for his screenplays being successful. It's just that I never got credit for the dialogue that I wrote. And sometimes I I used to be pretty good at dialogue. And so it would kind of uh upset me that nobody knew that, right? Because you all you wanted people to recognize you for something that you've done. So it made me upset. But um when I got the chance to write the 48 laws of power, it was it was 1995 and I was uh in in Italy on this job. It was kind of ridiculous, stupid, stupid job for like a media school that was being launched by Beneton and that I was going to help write the book that would launch this stupid school. And I'd been out of Hollywood for for maybe a year. I I don't remember how I was managing to save money. My whole gig was I would work really hard for 6 months, save all my money, and then quit and then for 6 months kind of live and write and try and do something else. So I was in Italy and we were at it was another bad job with stupid Machavellian types who were playing all these power games. And I met this man Yoast Elfers who was there as well who's also saw how stupid it was. We bonded over that and he asked me if I had an idea for a book. My point of the story is that I had already gotten some distance. I was already sort of a few months removed from that. And when he asked for the idea of a book, I could kind of see that I could take all of these bad experiences, all of this knowledge, and you know, it's not all bad experiences. I had some good experiences. I had a lot of fun in my 20s and early 30s. So, I don't mean to say everything was bad, and I had a few good, decent, human bosses as well. But when he asked me for the idea of a book and I told him what this could be and then I went and started to work on it, I realized I can take all of that bad stuff, all of that experience and turn it into a book. What therapy, what revenge, right? I could screw all those other people by putting them in stories they never I would never mention their name, you know? That was great. I had enough distance from that experience to be able to do that. Now, if I were in my early 20s, I wouldn't have had that maturity and that emotional distance. I would have been too angry. And I wrote the book The 48 Loss of Power with a great a good deal of anger. And I think you can feel it when you read it. But it was an anger I could control and I could channel in there. And so you know that experience of him taking the credit for all my writing I turned into law number seven. Get others to do the work but always take the credit which seems like a very evil law and it is quite evil. I don't deny it. But the point of that law is other people are doing that to you. They're taking your work and they're putting their name on it. Happens every single day in every single line of work. So I was able to by some weird alchemy I was able to turn all of these bad experiences into something into into a work into into this creation this 48 laws of power. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. I had so much material to work on.

>> You know what? It's so it's uh it's so interesting just hearing like the context and the story and even just like how it came about. I'm curious for you even in um your journey of writing it and like coming up with the 48. Are there is there one of the laws that you look at and when we take that person that I mentioned right in the beginning that has this feeling of like powerlessness that if they were to like fully embody and internalize one of the laws in this book, you think it would lead to the most kind of profound impact. It would give the most value in their life. Like what is the law from this book that you're like if most people implemented this it would cause the biggest shift for them immediately?

Well, you could see like almost every law in that way, but um, there is one law I can't remember the number it's like around 11 10 11 or 12. It's about create dependence. It's like making people dependent on you. And so what's happening in the world today is particularly now with AI but was happening before AI is you are replaceable. Don't ever think you are not you are replaceable in this world. Right? At some point in your career, maybe as you approach the age of 30, there's now somebody coming up 23, 24, 25, who can do your job for less money, who won't complain as much, who doesn't feel entitled to anything, you're gone. They're going to replace you, right? Okay? So, you have to have the skill set, the position somewhere where you cannot be replaced. If there is only one you, if you're the only one that can really do this, if you're so original, if you're unique, you can't be replaced. You are. People depend on you. You don't depend on them for your job. They depend on you. Because if they fire you, if they get rid of you, who else are they going to get? They might be able to get somebody who can learn what you do, but it will take years to do that. You've made it so that you cannot be fired or replaced. That is the ultimate position of power. And now you're facing a landscape and environment where it's going to be very hard to be un irreplaceable. Whatever the word is, >> irreplaceable. >> Irreplaceable. Okay, I guess that's a word. >> It's going to be harder, right? you know, um, you read some of the scenarios with AI where it can do, you know, in in one hour what takes you 5 months to accomplish and it's much cheaper. It will not yet, but it will reach a point where it's cost effective. Okay, you're gone, right? I was talking the other day to a high-powered lawyer and he was saying that the legal profession is going to be decimated by AI. This he's he's calling it AI justice where anybody in any corner of the world can get valuable advice, legal advice online that is better than what even a good experienced lawyer can give you for free. And you can take that advice and you can write a contract. You can go to court with it. You can do you it's it's you know operational. You can work with it. Forget it. You know law schools are going to be decimated by this. Right. So you he said you're going to have to be the one the the kind of lawyer that can now help people navigate that AI world and and make them and and exploit it and use it to great effect. In other words, you have to ride the wave. if you can't try and and and stop it. Okay? And so he was painting a a a scenario where he as a lawyer can be kind of replaceable. I'm not explaining it perfectly because I don't remember everything he said, but he I could see him painting a scenario where he would be in a position to still maintain his career within this vast shift that's going on. It's going to get harder for people, but there are things that AI cannot do and you have to incorporate that into your skill set. There's certain human empathic skills, skills of psychology, of understanding people that's not virtual and and and being human or certain things that are creative in the arts or what in any field that AI can't reach. And in any field, you have to go find what those are and you have to lean into it and you have to develop those skills. But making yourself irreplaceable, creating dependence for 2026, 2027, that's the most important law by far.

>> Yeah. You know, it's so interesting you mentioned that creating dependence and that's something I haven't actually I haven't thought about in the context of AI specifically what you mentioned which is throughout human history like we've always been replaceable to a degree right the the nuance is we were replaceable by other human beings you know that young the young author that's coming up that's like you know hungry for you see it in sports all the time right the threat is really from like this machine or this software. I think about how timeless your work is. Does the fact that it's like this machinery and this software does that fundamentally even threaten does that change the board? Does that change the game where it's like, okay, yes, create dependence, but is that even possible anymore in this world that we're getting in that we're moving into?

Well, if it's not possible, then we all just have to give up. I mean, we all have to just resign ourselves to these machines are going to be running our life. That's what I get back to what I said in the beginning. It's up to you. It's up to your attitude. Are you Are you somebody who takes action, who's active, or are you someone who's whiny and passive? So, the technology alters the game, no doubt. But the game is still the game of power. It makes it more difficult. It makes it a little

bit this way or a little bit that way, but the game is still power and and you have to be tough and the laws won't change. So, you're going to be working most in most of your jobs with other people. There'll be AI there, but AI doesn't have an ego, okay? But in your company that used to be 100, now there's only 10 because of AI, you're going to have politics, you're going to have egos, you're going to have bosses. Never outshine the master will be um will will be an essential law now and it'll be essential law a thousand years from now as long as you have to work with other people and other people have egos and they will have egos for as long as we humans are alive on this planet.

>> Yeah. You know what? Because you you mentioned um speaking with your friend that was a was a lawyer and like law is directly kind of like lawyers are directly in the crosshairs of what could be replaced by AI. But it but it's not just that. No, >> it's also uh doctors, it's also consultants, software engineers, >> state agent, all agents of all types. Like we've never seen a technology which is so like professionals like white collar professional service work. And so if someone is listening because people feel so much anxiety around this at the moment. If someone is listening and they are deeply aware that what they do is directly in the crosshairs of AI and these AI agents. And we're even seeing it this week. I think Coinbase just laid off 14% of their workforce. Yeah. because of mainly because of automation and AI. I'm curious because you're such a student of like history and you mention these different revolutions when it comes to if someone is listening right now when they're like I'm directly in the crosshairs of this. What would you tell them is like the step one? Like the thing that they should do or even think about immediately after hearing this that would start to put them on that trajectory to your point of like law 11 create dependence or be irreplaceable? Like where does that even begin?

>> Well, it depends on where the tsunami is coming from. So, you know, some professions are going to be wiped out and they're going to be completely useless and redundant, you know. So, are you young enough where you can recover? You're going to have to find another career, right? And you're going to have to find another skill set. Well, that's good. The earlier you realize that, the better. And if you're younger, then you have to go, there's no more jobs here in this field, right? I'm going to have to find something else. What are the fields that I'm suited for that fit into my character, my personality where I can take some of the things I've learned and apply them and go on to a higher level. That's where my book mastery I think can be very important for some people to find out how you can make a career shift with with what you are with the experience that you already have. But if it's a position where AI is not destroying your career, but is making it more difficult, then you have to figure out, as I said before, and we're talking in abstraction, so it's it's a little difficult. What are the things AI can't do? What are the skills and and possibilities that a human being can do that a machine simply cannot do? And in service industries, you know, they talk now about I forget the word. I think it's the annoyance industry, but so many things now for customers of businesses are just filled with layers of annoyance and frustration. Phone trees, nobody ever talking to you, you know, having to go do these things on online that lead nowhere, you know, where or you're put on hold or whatever. So much of our experience has been dehumanized where we're not dealing with people and it's frustrating. And I always advise people in businesses, people out there are yearning for human interaction because they're sick of it. They're tired of it. It's wearing on them, right? It's great to go online and get information from AI, but talking to some automated bot in, you know, wherever trying to help you is so [ __ ] frustrating. You want to kill yourself, right? Businesses in the service industry, it's all going to be about interaction, human interaction with other people. Can you somehow in your career path with what AI is doing, can you be the one that that can master that? I know this is a generality, but you have to look for these little gaps in in in the power structure that are not being exploited that you can exploit. And you have to see what people are missing in the world. They're missing human interaction. Can you figure out a way to do that? They're also missing experience. Everything is so virtual. You're spending so much time on your screen. People are hungry for real real experiences, which is a lot of what my new book is about. Can you take this thing happening in your industry and can you give that to people in a way that AI can't organize because AI doesn't think that way. You have to adapt and you have to think on a different level and be creative and fluid and not be rigid and stuck in the past in order to succeed in this very harsh climate we're entering.

>> Yeah, it's so good. I I I like where you start which is um you have to begin by assessing where you're at, you know, and it's like there's from what you described there's kind of like two groups. You know what? For that first group, cuz I mention it, Lord 25, recreate yourself. I said it to you when you walked in. I said, "The 50th law was one of my favorite books that I read last year."

>> Yeah.

>> And obviously you you wrote that with 50 Cent.

>> One of the things that jumped out to me reading that book and even just, you know, observing 50, he is a master at reinventing himself.

>> You know, he was a drug dealer, then a rapper, then a businessman, then he's doing media now. Now he's doing documentaries. The diddy thing. people that are incredibly I think most people struggle to reinvent themselves successfully being around him like what made him so good at that?

>> Well, um, you know, it's it's uh the point of that book that we did together is about the power you have when you're not when you're fearless, right? Um, and so many of our fears get in the way of these different things. So, early on when I was with 50, the internet, social media didn't really exist yet. Um, I mean, there was MySpace and, you know, the beginnings of Facebook, but it really wasn't existing, right? and to market a a record to market a single. It was at this transition point. We're talking about 06 07. This transition point where things were shifting massively against the traditional form of marketing um that record industry would go through with this new landscape. And so what made 50 so great was he was so fluid. He wasn't afraid of the new things that were coming, which is what we're talking about with AI in a way. He wasn't going to get upset. He wasn't going to try and and hold on to the past. Uh, basically what was happening was you couldn't make money anymore selling records because there was Napster and all these other things going on, you know, and so you had to make money selling merchandise and concerts. That's where the money was. So, you had to be fluid. You had to adapt. And a lot of rappers couldn't do that because they were so caught up in the glitz and the glamour in making a hit in having all that hype and that attention and they couldn't think of of of having to do this in a different way that that could disappear on them that they weren't the one really in control. And so I remember I tell the story in the 50th law I was in 50's office one day. I believe it was August of 07 or 06, I can't remember anymore. And they had a single that was about to drop that he did with Robin Thick, I think that's the name.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Dick. Yeah. Okay.

>> The singer. Yeah. And um and you know Chris Lighty and Violator, which was the marketing company, had this whole marketing campaign laid out with they were going to slowly drop the single here on this radio station and give little tastes of it and billboards. So he had a whole campaign, right? And a week before the the single was to drop, the somehow the um the the the music the single itself got pirated on the internet and was you know open to the public now. So the whole marketing campaign was gone because it had gotten it had been released, you know, illegally on the internet and there were people who were freaking out about this and they were like lawsuit. Let's get the lawyers and we're going to find who did this. We're going to charge them, you know, get get the law the lawyers after them. We're going to fry those that their their ass somehow. And I was there that day with everyone was like freaking out. 50 was there and he goes very calmly goes, "Uh-uh. This is what we're going to do. Listen to me. Okay. We're going to create a story, right? We're going to say that when 50 heard that they had u that the song had been pirated on the internet, he got so angry that he took the flat screen TV on the wall. He picked it up and he smashed it on the ground in anger. And then he took his cell phone and he threw it against the wall and smashed it. And he yelled and he yelled and he yelled on and on and on. We're going to create a story. We're going, "What the hell? What's 50 thinking?" Well, I realized that this was a master. This is a masterful move on his part cuz he understood that what social media was about was creating stories. Right. Right. It's not just getting publicity, but you want to create a story. You want to create drama. You want to create theater. You want to create a beginning and an end and and the whole, you know, three acts or whatever. He was thinking like that. He was thinking, if I create this story, then people aren't going to be starting. They're not going to be talking anymore about the pirated version of it. The tension will be on him. And now the tension's on him. Now they're interested in this song. And he's he like took control over it by changing the narrative. He wasn't going to If you go the legal route, you get angry. You're caught in the past. You look weak. you don't you're not going to get anything from it. But by manipulating social media and in and the internet that way and creating a story, you were the one in control. So to get to my point here is he saw that he saw where the power was in in in in in online at that moment and he was fluid and adaptable enough to change him ways and to move with it. And he's been doing that ever since. every time a new industry is going to be doing that with AI. I can't remember back in the day. I can't remember what it was on online, but he was he was one of the first people to exploit um to create a website that became incred I forget what it was 50 I don't know he had one of the first websites of artists that was huge, right? He wasn't afraid of change. He was fearless. In fact, he thrived off of it. Why is he like that way? It's hard to say. I mean, I I saw where he grew up on the street, Southside, Queens. I was there. I was with his childhood friends. I toured the area. 99% of his friends were either dead in prison or or or were were in horrible jobs, etc. You know, they couldn't get their way out. They couldn't adapt. There was something in him that was driving him that, you know, how can we analyze it? What makes him different? I think the turning point in his life was getting shot nine times and surviving. He had a near-death experience. And from my study of near-death experiences, because I sort of had one myself, is it changes you. It changes you in a very, very powerful way. And that was the moment that turned everything around in his life. It didn't become the moment of defeat. It became the the spur for his great rise to power. So I I think that's sort of what although maybe there's a genetic component as well.

>> Yeah. You know, when when I listened to you speak about it, especially from uh 50s story, it's being fluid and adaptable to change became like a matter of survival. and and you mention he got shot nine times. You mentioned obviously that you've even had like a near-death experience. Can you explain when you say that changes you? What do you mean?

>> Well, for him, cuz my experience wasn't as powerful as his. I simply had a stroke and I was in I was in a coma. I came this close to dying. But that's not as nine bullets shot this close to you, right? That's that's a little more extreme. And I think um it gives you like this calmness when you're around 50. You're kind of surprised by how calm he is. You don't think that he would be like that. You'd think of his image of this thug who's kind of angry all the time, who's just, you know, on the edge. He's incredibly calm and in control of himself and surviving uh something like that. What do I have to fear in life? What are you going to do to me, music executive? That's worse than being shot nine times in my mouth. Right? I can take any of the [ __ ] that you throw my way cuz I survived nine bullets. I even have a bullet still lodged in my mouth. I don't care. Throw whatever you want at me. I've been through the worst. I can withstand it. It creates this kind of Buddha-like calmness that he has. Okay. So, um that that sort of separates him. And in that moment that I described in his office where everyone was freaking out, I could see him. He was like like Buddha. He was totally calm. He wasn't freaking out at all. That freaking out thing is pure spectacle for the public. He's playing a role for you. That's not really what he's like. He's a very calm, centered individual, right? He knows what he's doing. And so, you know, prior to being shot, he had a record deal and things were going pretty well for him. He had this record about to be dropped called Power of the Dollar. Really good uh record. And um he he was somebody who's full of anger and all the stuff he'd seen on the streets. And then he gets shot and his the the record label Colombia drops him. We're not releasing your record. There's too much violence around you. Concerts that had been prepared. We're dropping him. There's too much violence around 50. Everybody abandons him. And now he's left to himself. He's sitting in his grandmother's house trying to to uh recover from the from the wounds. And it's like he's now going to rise up from that incredibly low moment in his life because he has nothing to lose. He's lost his record deal. He's lost everything. All right. I don't give a damn about anything anymore. I have nothing to lose. So he launched his mixtape campaign on the streets of Queens and in Manhattan in Brooklyn where he's selling his own mixtapz. They're very raw. They're very edgy. They're very violent. They're be incredible music. Very powerful, right? And he doesn't care. He doesn't need a record label. He doesn't care about a [ __ ] about all these other people who who who dissed him, who threw him overboard, right? What do I have to lose? I have nothing. You tried to kill me and I'm still around like a cockroach. You can't kill me. Right? And with that attitude, you can go. Do you know how far you can go in life when you don't feel like you have anything to lose? It's a very powerful feeling. And then, you know, his mixtapz become so great that Eminem hears one and then the rest is history. But getting shot was like a turning point for him, I believe.

>> Yeah. You know what? There's a there's um as you were speaking I thought to myself uh there's a calmness that comes from confronting death you know and and in many ways you would think that maybe it would be the opposite that you'd be like deeply fearful but I guess when you've gotten to such an extreme place that like uh there's a certain level of poise and like calmness that you've kind of faced what what how can it get worse than that uh go ahead

>> well some people I think it would affect that way where they would become very fearful and skittish they wouldn't want to take risks. Um, it depends on at what point you are that it happens in life, whether you're in your 70s or whether you're in your 20s and whether you are kind of a risktaker in life. So, I think it is possible for some for a near-death experience to make people skittish. But for my new book, I researched it quite heavily because it's the last chapter of the book is about death. It's the last chapter of three of my books. it happens to be um and for most people that calmness is is the most predominant emotional response to that experience, >> right? Because you you realize something about life. You know, we go around trying to push away the thought of death, right? We don't think about it. We go through most days. It's in the back of our minds always, but we try not to think about it. And it kind of makes it so you're not really living. You're not really alive because life and death are the same. That it's two sides of the same coin. To try and repress the thought of it is to be kind of half alive. And when you are there and you experience it, you can't do that anymore. You can't push it away. It's there. I had this feeling um when I had my stroke was like there was this weird taste in my mouth and this feeling in my bones that I can't even describe. It was stayed with me for months afterwards. I don't really have it anymore, but it stayed with me. A visceral sense of of the my death being inside my body. It's there. It's alive. You can't avoid it anymore. And so you start realizing what matters in life. So many times people go around, they have no priorities. They're worried about the stupidest [ __ ] things that are don't matter. You know, they're so imshed in social media, they lose a sense of priority. What really matters? You're going to die, damn it. That's important, right? Everything that you've tried to build is someday going to end. How are you going to deal with that? It's real. People who've gone through that, it's like a wakeup and it creates this kind of calmness because you're no longer filled with all this nervous anxiety where you're trying to repress the one the one reality we cannot ignore. The one thing we all have to agree upon. We all die. Republican, Democrat, poor, rich, you know, wherever you live, it's the reality for all of us. You can't deny it. And when you've faced with it right there, you know, it's it's much different than than how it is for most people.

>> Yeah. You know, I I want to talk about the I want to get to the the new book. Um, but before we do cuz I want to I want to it wouldn't feel right if I didn't ask this question because I think that when we go through these periods of like uh these extreme periods of change you know when the internet comes out or like you know AI now to your point there's always a group of people that are like very uh rigid to it the complete opposite of what you just mentioned with 50. It's like they kind of put their head in the sand. It's the I've been a lawyer for 30 years. How could I ever get replaced by AI? I've been a doctor for this amount of time. I've been working in marketing or consulting or all this. It can't there's a there's a certain complacency that success >> Yeah. >> breeds, right? And I think as humans, we we start to build an identity, >> right, >> off of like I'm this person, >> right? And so when you talk about someone like 50 who's experienced extreme success but is also open to change, it's like they've been through some extreme circumstances in their life that's made him that way. For the person that's listening, they haven't had the near-death experience that's made them like fearless. What have you found when it comes to everyday people recreating themselves, being able to have that distance and pull back and change something, go with the times? Is there anything that someone listening can practically do so that it kind of spurs that? Because it, you know, in in many ways it goes against our our nature, which is we want things to say the same. We want things to be comfortable. We want to do what's worked for us in the past. How do you start to reverse that?

>> Okay, so give me 60 seconds of your time because you're going to want to hear this. So, I've done over 200 episodes of this show. I've been doing it for 4 years. In the last 6 months, I started to notice a shift in the conversations. Things that the guests would talk about was different. The common message was that we had entered this new period of time where the rules to be successful and have a great business and a great life had fundamentally shifted and changed. And so I started to realize that we had entered a new era. And so a couple of weeks ago, we launched a secret newsletter called New Era that pulls together stories, supporting documents, step-by-step guides, even unseen footage from the show, and we send it to you in your inbox every single week. And so if you want to be involved, just go to the link in the description, plug in your email, and you will get an issue of our new era newsletter every single Monday in your inbox. Thank me later. Let's get back to the show. A lot of people think they want power and success, but they don't really. They want things to be comfortable. They want things to be easy. They want things to be given to them. They are by nature passive. Okay? There is nothing wrong with that. I'm not I'm not going to judge you by that. But you're not going to be able to adapt to the world. You're going to have more problems if that's your attitude. So, I'm not judging you for that. I'm telling you, you need to adjust your attitude or you're going to be sabotaging yourself. You're going to be making life a hard life even harder for yourself. So, there has to be this come this reckoning moment where you look at yourself and you go, "Do I really want it? Am I willing to take risks? Am I willing to open myself up? Because in the beginning, we talked about a attitude. And that is the dividing line here between someone who will figure it out without the near-death experience or someone who won't. So, life by nature is a risk. It's uncertain. You don't know what will happen tomorrow. You could have a stroke tomorrow. You could be like me or you could even die. Things happen that you cannot control. Life is chaotic. Everything is uncertain. If you can accept that, if you can accept that life is a risk, is uncertain, that you never know what's going to happen next, and not get upset about it, but embrace it and think that is the beautiful thing about being alive, right? Having certainty and having nothing ever change, you might as well be dead because that's what happens when you're dead. nothing changes. Life is beautiful because it's uncertain, because you don't know what can happen next. If you can craft the mentality that I love that element, I love the chaos. I love the change. I think the world happening now as it is is going to give me opportunities for something magnificent. It's not to ignore the difficulties. I'm not trying to be polyianish about it, but having that kind of tough, resilient sort of warrior mindset, and I'm not trying to say that it's this masculine macho thing, cuz women are are just as good at it as men are. In fact, in some ways, they're better at it. But this kind of warrior mentality where I'm going to go to battle and I'm not afraid. I'm not on my heels. I'm going to advance. I'm going to figure things out. Then that's the difference between success and failure. You're not waiting for people to give things to you. You're not waiting for someone to rescue you from your from your job that just got downsized. You're going out there and active. You're going to figure it out. And that means I'm going to do research. I'm going to make effort. I'm going to wake up and I'm going to look and see where the opportunities lie. I'm going to look at myself and go as as I talk about in mastery, this is what I was meant to accomplish in my life. this is what is truly my life's task. How can I now adapt and actually go closer to that? Maybe I need to go back to school. Maybe I need to learn new skills. Maybe in this in this world with the internet, I can learn new skills online even. You has has to be a reckoning moment where you turn active and excited about what's going on and not passive and fearful. That's the dividing line.

>> Yeah. You know what you you mentioned it that there's um there's a randomness to life like there's there's this deep uncertainty and I read um August 17th of 2018 >> you suffer a stroke but the actual like spark point like the instigating action of that or event was that you got stung by a a wasp and that caused a blood clot and it's like the I I even heard you say in an interview you said the circumstances that led to it was like a perfect storm.

>> Can you explain that?

>> Well, okay. So, it wasn't just the the the wasp who stung me, who probably died be after stinging me. Poor little thing. Um, it was this perfect storm. So, I had finished the laws of human nature, I believe in May of that year. It had been six years, five years of such intense labor. I was so burned out. I was so exhausted. I literally thought I was going to die at some points. I was so exhausted. All right, I'm starting to recover. It's June. It's July. I go to New York to to work on the publicity for the book. I left my blood pressure medication at home. So, my blood pressure is starting to rise as I'm in New York. Then I come back to Los Angeles and I have and I'm walking in Griffith Park and this wasp stings me right here. And at the time I didn't think anything of it. Okay. God, you know, if I only knew what how it would change my whole life. And um then a week later this whole area just massive inflammation turned so red. I was I was in agony because it was itching so powerfully. So I go to the hospital and they give me this thing called predinazone which uh is like a steroid that can relieve the itch but it spikes your blood pressure which was already spiking. And so then like several days later driving my car and the blood clot has formed right here where the wasp stung me. Now, some do one doctor didn't think that wasn't sure that that was the cause, but another nur neurologist who worked on me felt pretty certain because it's so odd that the blood clot occurred right where the sting was, but it created this massive inflammation. Cholesterol was just building there and then it blocked blood flowing to my brain. So, it wasn't just the wasp sting. It was the stress from the book. It was the rising blood pressure. It was the medication they gave me that created these circumstances where I had a stroke. You take something like that out. If I hadn't left my blood pressure medication when I went to New York, if I hadn't had that predinazone, I probably wouldn't have had a stroke. But the combination of all those things. So, life is really weird like that, you know? You just put you stir a little brew like that up and it can kill you.

>> Yeah. Is that not deeply unsettling to you?

>> Yes. But um you know it's you know that's that's first I don't want to downplay because it it's been such a struggle because I was somebody who loved hiking and swimming and very active and traveling. And it was deeply depressing to have all of that pretty much taken away from me. But I have a a meditation practice and things that I study. And it's it's your mind that messes with you, right? So if you look at an animal, if you have any dogs or cats in your life, when they get sick, they're not complaining. Of course, they don't have words, but they just sort of accept it. They go on with it. They deal with it. They have a grace to them. And so, my life was changed. That's now I have a new life. This is who I am. I can like be still stuck in the past of what I used to be able to do. I can complain. I can make myself miserable or I can go this is who I am now. This is my life. I can't go upstairs very easily. Okay, that's what it is. you know, it's not it's upsetting because I have to depend on other people to help me. But on the other hand, it's just who I am. And it and you know, at first I might get frustrated, but I've come to accept it. You know, it that's that's just it's going to happen to everybody in life at some point. Something bad's going to happen to you. You can't get out of it.

>> You know, your health's going to be you're going to be hit by a car. You're going to develop cancer. It's going to happen, you know, and that's just life. We weren't meant to live forever. We weren't meant to be young forever. That's just it, you know.

>> Yeah. See, I I I commend you. I think it's deeply admirable your your mindset, you know, before we even started this conversation, you said to me, I have nothing to complain about, you know, and I think people could hear that and see what you're experiencing. And I can like I can feel that uh the pain when you speak about it. They think, "Well, you do have something to complain about." I do. I do. But, but I don't because look, um, you know, I I was a little upset that I had to go up these stairs. But then when I have moments like that, I tell myself, which I did afterwards, it's like therapy for me. It's training me to not be afraid of doing things like this, of not being upset by them, not being upset by the little things. But um, you know, you have you have I do have reason to complain but I don't I mean I don't have to worry about money. I'm I'm I'm got that settled in my life. I never in the rest of my life I have enough funds. I'm not I'm not a billionaire but I have enough money. I don't have to worry about anything. I can write books. I can take seven years to write a book. There are very few writers that have that luxury. Right. I could and my editor is, you know, I've made so much money for Penguin that they'll do anything I want. How could I possibly complain when I have the privileges that very few people have? I mean, I have more privileges than even Elon Musk because I don't have all this worry, this pressure, these demands on me, this public attention. I can relax. I can just write my books. They're stressful, yes, but my god, what what what privilege I have compared to other people. Having been um really dirt poor and I can't say I was like impoverished because my middle class family would always be like a safety net. So in the back of my mind, I had that. So I don't want to exaggerate my who I am. But I was very poor when I lived in New York and when I lived in London. I I had, you know, pretty small apartments and jobs that didn't pay well. So, I understand um, you know, how how harsh life can be. So, I have something to compare it to. Whereas, if I had been born with wealth and money, then, you know, I I would feel entitled. But I don't feel entitled because I know how how I had to struggle and get to where I was get to where I am.

>> Yeah. I'm curious does the does the mind ever wonder and and and when I say that what I mean is you know we spoke earlier about this perfect storm that had to take place does the mind ever wonder around you know if I hadn't gone to Griffith Park that day if I if when I went to New York I had brought the high blood pressure medication

>> well you know what my my wife talks about this I would have something terrible would have happened to me some other way That's how I think about it. Because I was kind of reckless. I wasn't totally taking care of myself. Something bad would have happened eventually. Some kind of reckoning would have occurred with me in one of my when I was mountain biking or swimming or something would have happened because you're getting older, you know, and I put my my body through a lot in writing these books. Something would have happened anyway. That's how I look at it. So maybe I was lucky because I was driving here in Los Angeles. My wife was with me. Now in the course of a day, those situations don't happen very often. I'm often alone. I'm often, you know, sleeping. Uh I'm alone. I mean, she's next to me, but she, you know, I I you can have a stroke when you're sleeping and no and you never wake up. I I was hiking and swimming. I could have had a stroke then. and I'd be dead. If she hadn't called right away 911, I'd have severe brain damage, which would be like death for me. So, I'm actually flip it around. I'm incredibly fortunate that I could write another book because those things didn't happen. So, it's just all a matter of how you look at things.

>> Yeah. You know, you you said something uh really interesting. you said, um, I believe that as humans, we're all going to have like a point of reckoning, you know, like a moment of reckoning. And so, I think about the the moment that you're in right now where like you've finished your book, it's coming out in November. You suffered this stroke in in 2018. I'm curious if in any way, I'm assuming it did, did that event, was that a moment of reckoning for now writing this book? Was there even a moment of influence in you writing this book?

>> Well, the the the the book the story of the book which I explained a little bit in in in the preface to it is that um I'd been interested in the idea of the sublime which is the title of the next book is about the sublime. It's called the law of the sublime. uh beginning in the early 2000s, I read a book that interested me a lot of very kind of academic book, but I thought the idea fascinated me because I've always been fascinated by things that words can't describe. I always have this sense that the experiences that you can't verbalize are the most powerful, the most meaningful. That words are kind of like problematic and that getting outside of language and experiencing life directly and in these moments is a amazing thing. And that's what the sublime is. I intended to write the book in ' 06, I believe. I started researching it. I hired a researcher and then I got the 50 Cent thing and I put it aside because I thought that was a better move for me career-wise, bookwise and then in the 50 cent book I had a chapter that was basically the uh fruit from which mastery came out of and I thought that was the next logical step and then mastery had a chapter about social intelligence and that seemed like well that's the next step and that became the laws of human nature and Then I nearly die from the stroke and I'm in the ambulance taking me back home from the hospital to my house and it's only a 15-minute ride and all these thoughts are going in my head go now is the time to write the book on the sublime because death is sort of the ultimate sublime experience and I always knew that and this is the moment it's like the the gods are telling you write this book that you've been meaning to right for over 20 years that this that fate is giving you a signal here.

>> So it was it it played a major role in it. But I'd always been thinking about that book.

>> Yeah. In your mind, is this book like the final book that you would write? The way that you even explain the story, it sounds like it's kind of like the the last book that you would write.

>> It can be the last book that I write. So whenever I'm in the middle of writing a book, I go, "God, I hope I don't die. I hope I'm able to get to the end cuz I invest so much emotion, so much time in it. I had that feeling with this one. God, I hope I can make it to the finish line, you know, because I want to have all these ideas. I want them out there in case I do die. At least I got the whole thing out. Um, but uh I do know this. I'm I'm in I'm getting into my late 60s. I don't have the energy that I used to have. I don't think I can do another book like this. I will write other books, you know, God willing, and I'm still alive. I will write other books, but I don't think I can write these massively researched seven-year jobs. I don't think my body, my age can take it anymore. I have to transition to something a little less heavy than that. So, in that sense, it's kind of my swan song to the kinds of books that I've written before, and now I'm going to transition to something to something else. Not not that I'm going to write fluff, it's just that I have to kind of write in in a different way now, I think.

>> Yeah.

>> And adapt to my new circumstances.

>> Yeah. How did it feel to you like when the when the book finished? I you've written so many books. How did this one feel?

>> I can't even tell you, man. I can't even begin to describe it cuz words can't express what I had to overcome. I don't mean to like beat my own drum, but and I don't usually do that, but you know, I I I couldn't type because my left hand is is is is doesn't have any elasticity to it. And so I had to handr write everything. And I did a YouTube video, I don't know if you saw it, where I kind of describe what the process was to give the reader an idea, but I would initially write notes in a notebook. Then I go, "Okay, now I can write the section of the book and I would write handwrite it in one notebook." And then I had a two bookstands next to each other and on the other bookstand I would take what I'd written and I would rewrite it hand by word by word by word and change it and edit it. And then I would go back and do it to the first book in the first notebook and change what I'd written there and rewrite and handwrite rewrite the whole thing by hand again. And sometimes I would take a large sticky pad and put it over it and rewrite what I'd written there. And then when it came time to maybe dictated into the computer via, you know, whispered transcription, um, I couldn't figure out where the where it all was. It was such a mess. It was like a puzzle. A paragraph was here, a paragraph was there, a paragraph was here, a paragraph was there. My god, I go crazy. My mind was like, "Oh my god, I can't get on top of this." Then I would finally figure it out. I would dictate it into the computer. And then I would print it out on paper. And then I would handw write the edits on paper again, right? And then when it finally looked close enough, I would dictate it again. And then I would edit it with one hand. Well, you'd have no idea what the labor that involved. And then if I felt tired or exhausted or burned out, I used to be able to hike up into into into Griffith Park and it would my best thoughts would come there. I just release all my tension. I was trapped in my office, trapped in my chair. I couldn't walk anywhere. How do I get rid of my tension, my stress? It's a book about the sublime. I have to be excited. I have to be filled with awe about the world. And yet I'm trapped in my office. I can't I'm handwriting everything. My hand is exhausted. My brain is trying to get on. You had no idea. I can't explain to you how every day was a struggle. My wife knows cuz she saw me. Every day I had to talk myself into calm down. It's okay. You're the book is exciting. You're loving it. It's really fun. You're having a great time. Just calm down. If you're feeling stressed, go sit in the backyard. just relax. I bought a special bicycle. It's really a tricycle, a recumbent bike that I could sit in and ride up into the hills in the park, which I, you know, I did yesterday. I took what massive ride yesterday. Very exhausting, incredible aerobic exercise, but it gets me out of my trapped brain. So, that helped a lot. But man, I can't tell you the crap I had to overcome to write that book. A lot of it dealing with my own depression, my own anxiety, my own concern, and my own frustrations, and overcoming that every single day for 7 years. I never thought I would make it. And so, finally, I finished chapter 12, like at the end of January. Oh, man. Oh, no. You got to hurry. You got to get the preface in because you only have so you're late in delivering it. Oh Christ. All right. And now for two months I have to write the preface. I finished that. Oh man. Now you don't have any more time. You have to go through all the edits of the book. I did that. Now finally I'm at the top of the mountain. But it's it is a pretty exhilarating feeling to have gone through all of that and not been defeated.

>> Yeah. That's good. That's good to hear. And you you mentioned it being like this exhilarating feeling that that picture of being like at the top of the mountain

>> and in many ways you know I just think about Robert like where we uh where we started this conversation and people that feel powerless you know and even uh if they're listening I think it's a relatable feeling of we've all had the the job or the experience or that season of life where for us to wake up and go and do what we do feels like such a toil and suffering and pain like getting through that dayto-day grind of doing that whether that's at the job whether that's your family situation that you're living in whether it's an illness or health which is typically the most difficult thing to confront and so in that journey and I'm aware of it because I felt it the mind can go to a dark place

>> definitely

>> a very dark place

>> definitely And so for you, because I think it would be so valuable for someone that's listening that's in that spot, when your mind would go to that place, what would get you out of it?

>> Well, um, a lot of it was the nature of the book is the book is about the sublime. So, I'd be reading about these insane, wonderful, awesome, marvelous things And I and I would go I would go there in my mind and go and and and absorb it deeply and go you know I have a chapter in the book. I mean I don't know if this is going to help people because it's very particular to my project but or it might help people in some way but I have

A chapter in the book, this is the second chapter. The title of it is "Awaken to the Strangeness of Being Alive." And the idea is life on planet Earth is an incredibly precarious thing. In researching the the book and in studying how the universe was formed, how our galaxy was formed, how the sun evolved, how the planets, everything had to fall into perfect, perfect alignment for the Earth to be at the perfect distance from the sun, for us to have been hit by this large, enormous other planet, for the uh core of our planet to turn a certain way. I, I'm, I'm missing all the the verbiage here, so excuse me. But all these things occurred so that we have seasons, so that we have an atmosphere. If none of them had happened, none of, there wouldn't be any planet Earth wouldn't be what it is.

And then life emerged out of nothing, from materials from star, from from exploding stars. We still to this day don't really know how life suddenly emerged out of nothing, but it did. Maybe the only planet in the universe that has it. We don't know. Okay. And then the evolution of life follows the same thing as the universe. All of these things had to fall in place perfectly for organisms to, for multicellular organisms, for life in the oceans, for amphibians to get onto land, for enough oxygen for them to breathe, for dinosaurs and reptiles to emerge, for an enormous meteor to hit planet Earth 66 million years ago to wipe out the dinosaurs so that mammals could dominate, so that primates could evolve, so that our ancestors could evolve. 80,000 years ago, Homo sapiens nearly disappeared from planet Earth. They were so few in number. One like uh epidemic, we would have been wiped out. On and on and on and on down the list. It's absolutely [ __ ] insane that you and I are alive here today talking. The odds against it are immense. And to think that from where we were 30,000 years ago to who we are now, it's like you're on a drug trip. Right?

So, I'm sitting there having to go through that in writing my book. How can I complain about the fact that I can't walk? I'm alive. I'm looking at birds. Birds are descended from dinosaurs. Dinosaurs still are around us in the form of birds. I have my cat. What a strange thing to be living with this with this feline. So, so beautiful. So amazing. I have all these animals, little insects in my garden. You know, you're alive, man. It's, it's insane. It's a journey. It's like a continual drug trip to even look at a blue sky. Do you know Mars is a dead planet? Mars could have been what planet Earth became? A completely dead planet that doesn't have volcanic activity, that doesn't have seasons. You know, I know that's not going to help you if you have this horrible job, but in some way it should because your level of excitement at being alive, your level of, man, this is, this is amazing. It's incredible to be here. Well, that can infect your whole other attitude towards life as well, right? You can, you can be grateful. You can think this is you're only alive once. It doesn't last that long. You want to make the most of it. You want to do the, you know, have some excitement and feel this enchantment. I feel like what a lot of people are missing today. I don't mean to preach, but I guess I am going to is a sense of enchantment, of a sense of there is something incredible and awesome. It's not just the banal day-to-day life of getting by, of being on Instagram and seeing what people are eating and where they're vacationing and what they're wearing, but there's something immense. There's something cosmic all around us, right? And to feel that changes your whole viewpoint of life and can shift you around from someone being passive and complaining to being grateful and active and excited and wanting to contribute something in in your short life, you know, that's, that's sort of how I look at it.

>> Yeah. No, that's wonderful. You know, um Robert, before we get out of here, because I think it's important, I think this question is important. Like, it's important that you answer it. I think about the legacy of some of your work, you know, with the 48 Laws of Power, like the millions of people that read it, but then even I was hearing stories when you were talking about uh obviously 50 Cent. It was like his bible almost, like the 48 Laws of Power. Michael Jackson had annotated copies. Like everyone's watching the Michael movie right now, right? Like he was inspired by that book.

>> Yes, he was.

>> But even just like the, the millions of people that read it and it was of value to them. And so when you think about the Law of the Sublime, Robert Greene, the human being, like looking forward, what do you hope is the impact of that book?

Well, you never know because we're living in strange times and you never know how a book will land with an audience. So, it's a crapshoot. But I'm hoping it has, it, it, it hits a core and resonates with people. Um, you know, uh, for, for thousands, hundreds of years, uh, religion played a huge role in our lives. It filled us with a sense of meaning. It anchored us. It made us aware that there's something larger than our individual existence. It opened our eyes to that. It made us contemplate our death. And since religion has kind of faded as a huge factor that kind of anchors everybody, um, I'd say probably starting in the 19th century was when the real shift occurred, but it was going on for a while. There's been an emptiness in people. There's like a, a feeling almost as if something a part of us has died. There's a hole in us. We're missing it. And, um, and we can't get it back and we're, we, we're, we're kind of trapped. We feel kind of lonely and, and we don't know, like we're so enraptured up in our own individual struggles that we know there's something bigger than that. We know there's something larger than our own individual lives. There's something greater going on around us and there's an emptiness and there's a hunger and because of that, there's a lot of depression, there's a lot of loneliness, there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of boredom and we're filling it with all kinds of things. Social media, addictions, shopping, porn, video games, Marvel movies, whatever. We're filling it because we feel this deep emptiness inside of us. It's like someone who's who's got a, a food addiction. We have to eat, eat, eat. I'm trying, I don't mean to be so ambitious that I'm solving that men's problem, but that's, I'm hoping to contribute something to resolving it where you don't have to, you don't have to be religious. I have nothing against religion, but you don't have to be that. But you can feel connected to something immense like I was describing to you. And it can give your life a sense of purpose and meaning. It can fill you with something larger than just your own individual struggle. And so in the book, each chapter kind of shows a facet of that. So just to plug one example, I have a chapter on childhood and I'm telling you when you were a child, when you were two, three, four years old, the world was much different than it is now. It's the same world, but it was experienced in a completely different way when you were that young. You, it was, it was a marvelous experience, which we can't remember because it was preverbal, but we didn't have words. Everything seemed new and fresh and exciting and strange and intimidating and fearful. But the world, our experience was so intense and that we're now adults and we remember that as a distant memory of that intensity and remembering what we've lost unconsciously makes us unhappy. And so this is a book of trying to bring you back to that time, bringing you back to that experience of the world when you were a child. It's a major theme in the book. I talk about going through a second innocence, a second naivee, where you reexperience the world like it was when you were a child. And so I'm hoping the book is like you drop a, a, a little pebble in the water and the waves are created. I'm hoping that it has a rippling effect like that and over the years enough people read it, enough people are open to what I'm trying to say and it creates a little bit of a shift. I don't know how big a shift it will be, but that's sort of why I wrote the book and what I'm hoping for.

>> Yeah. You know, um Robert, I just wanted to say uh just thank you. You know, I, I was, um, I was anticipating this conversation for a few years, you know, from reading, from reading your work.

>> Um, and so I'm glad that we got to have it.

>> And I think uh a lot of prep went into it and you delivered. So, uh, yeah, I want to say thank you.

>> Oh, no, no, it was, it was great conversation. I really enjoyed it. You, I could see your preparation as well.

>> Thank you.

>> I really, really enjoyed it.

>> Thank you.

>> Yeah. So, if you enjoyed this conversation and you want to hear even more stories like this, then just click here. And also, my team is going to put some more videos that you can watch here. Thank you.