Power Expert: How to Read EVERY Person in a Room, Instantly | Robert Greene

1. 0:00 – 0:53

   Introduction: The 48 Laws of Power and Reading Human Nature

   1. RGRobert Greene0:00

      Never put trust in friends and learn how to use enemies. The best clue for picking out people who are liars and deceivers is to look at their past.

   2. CSCodie Sanchez0:08

      Yeah.

   3. RGRobert Greene0:08

      If you act like you believe in yourself and you feel confident, other people will believe that in you.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez0:13

      My guest is Robert Greene, the legendary author of The 48 Laws of Power. Today, you're gonna get the playbook on how to see sabotage coming at you and the sabotage you're running on yourself. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to walk into any room and read every person in it.

   5. RGRobert Greene0:26

      The ability to have self-belief, but also to get outside of yourself and realize that there are things in the world that maybe are, are gonna stop you is very important. You think what other people accomplished is so great, but it's something you could have done as well. So if somebody says, "You can't write that book," I just, like, give them the finger, and I just go ahead and write it.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez0:46

      Do you think knowledge can make people dangerous?

   7. RGRobert Greene0:49

      Well, um...

2. 0:53 – 3:43

   The Domestication Problem: How We're Losing Our Edge

   1. CSCodie Sanchez0:53

      You have this line from your new book-

   2. RGRobert Greene0:55

      Yeah

   3. CSCodie Sanchez0:55

      ... that I love. "Humans are becoming domesticated like animals-

   4. RGRobert Greene0:59

      Yes

   5. CSCodie Sanchez0:59

      ... in some ways. We live in enclosed spaces. We work jobs instead of hunting. Our skeletons became slighter and more delicate. Our physical strength diminished. Our faces grew smaller, as did the size of our brains."

   6. RGRobert Greene1:11

      Well, that process of what you just described occurred 10,000 years ago when we moved more or less from being hunter-gatherers, free-roaming, hunting for our game, and gathering food, to agriculture. That's when we became domesticated, and all those things started happening. The human brain has pretty much, and the size of our bodies, have pretty much stayed the same. We're actually getting taller because we eat better and things like that. But when it comes to the human brain, it's not shrinking in size. I don't think that's happening, and there's no evidence for that. But things are deteriorating because... And I write about a lot of this in Mastery. We're losing touch with what makes us human, with what made us a very powerful creature, what developed our brains themselves, which was pressure.

   7. CSCodie Sanchez2:01

      Mm.

   8. RGRobert Greene2:01

      Right? So the pressure to survive in a very hostile, harsh environment prior to being in agriculture made us very creative, made us very inventive, forced us to learn how to hunt, hunt big game in groups, how to be social animals, led to the invention of language. When you take away the pressure from the human being, all of those powers seem to dissipate, right? There's no reason to do anything anymore, and if technology does everything for us, all the less reason to put any effort into anything. And it's effort that develops your brain, that gives it its, its beautiful, rich landscape. Think of the brain as a landscape. That landscape can be like the Amazon jungle, just full of diversity and all these things growing inside, or it can be like a desert, right? You create the landscape of your brain, and if AI is giving you all the answers, if you're spending all of your time on social media and you're not thinking for yourself, all that landscape gets very barren, and it's, it's very frightening to me.

   9. CSCodie Sanchez3:09

      Yeah. Me too. I see it actually all the time in people who work in our companies 'cause I have this unique lens of having 100 employees, which is great some days and tough others. And-

   10. RGRobert Greene3:20

       100 employees.

   11. CSCodie Sanchez3:20

       I know.

   12. RGRobert Greene3:21

       Wow.

   13. CSCodie Sanchez3:22

       Well, it's, you know, compared to other people, not that many, but for me, a lot. And-

   14. RGRobert Greene3:26

       To me, that's a lot.

   15. CSCodie Sanchez3:26

       [laughs]

   16. RGRobert Greene3:26

       I have one employee. [laughs]

   17. CSCodie Sanchez3:28

       Yeah, that sometimes is sufficient.

   18. RGRobert Greene3:30

       Yes.

   19. CSCodie Sanchez3:30

       But you can see... You can almost see people coming to, like, this average, you know, in the way they write because-

   20. RGRobert Greene3:39

       Oof

   21. CSCodie Sanchez3:39

       ... you know, you go to, to AI first and write a draft,

3. 3:43 – 6:20

   AI and the Death of Original Thinking

   1. CSCodie Sanchez3:43

      and then AI gives you the same draft that everybody has, and then you see it. Now, I can see it in design 'cause we have a tech product, and now the tech design just looks like everybody else's tech design.

   2. RGRobert Greene3:53

      Yeah.

   3. CSCodie Sanchez3:53

      It's kind of horrifying. I mean, what, what do you think is the... How do you push back in a world of people who are all m- moving towards being exactly the same?

   4. RGRobert Greene4:03

      Well, you know, it depends on, on you as an individual. Do you want, do you wanna have power in life? Do you wanna be successful? Do you wanna stand out? Do you wanna create something original and get the kind of attention that people who are truly original get, not those who kind of are flash in the pans, know how to manipulate social media to get attention? Do you wanna actually create something? Do you have the drive, that hunger inside of you? Well, if you do, then you have to learn how to use AI as just simply a little tool that occasionally you rely upon, like I rely upon to answer some question I can't find anything else out about. Or are you gonna be... Is it gonna own you? Is it gonna be your... Are you its puppet, you know? And so if you have that drive, that hunger to stand out, to be original, to be unique, to have your own voice in this world, then you've gotta get off that crap. You gotta get... You got... It's like being a junkie, you know? You have to go cold turkey. You have to get off of it. It's an addiction, right? So there's no answer. I can't force people to be like that. I could rant, and I don't like preaching to people. You have to be... You... It has to be up to you. Do you wanna make something of your life, or do you just wanna be lazy and kind of skim through things? And we're seeing, you know, I saw a article recently, I think it was in The New York Times, about AI in colleges, you know, and how professors are just like, more and more, they're just seeing that nobody knows how to write anymore, right? That's, that's, that's very scary. And so you have to... You know, when you, when you work out, you have... It's resistance that you're pushing against, like lifting weights or swimming when you're going against the water, and that's what makes you strong. Our culture is like a 300-pound weight. You have to resist it. To the degree that you resist it, you will be strong mentally. Right?

   5. CSCodie Sanchez6:02

      It's a good way to think about it, because today I think you do have to sort of fight back against the norm. I love this idea of pushing against the 300-pound weight. What else, what other through lines have you found through your work if somebody wants to become exceptional?

4. 6:20 – 8:11

   The Child Within: How Successful People Stay Impudent

   1. RGRobert Greene6:20

      Well, when you were very, very young, you weren't, like, immersed in all of these, in, in s- in the social world yet. You were this rambunctious child who was willful, who was impudent, who kind of knew his or her, what she or he liked or loved and what wanted to do, and maybe even the s- things they liked to study, right? And then you get older, and that voice gets drowned out by other people, right? So truly successful people still hold onto that childhood. They've grown up, they've obviously grown up, but the child is still very powerful within them, that impudence, that I... So if you wanna be successful, you're gonna have to go- all these people are gonna try and standardize you-

   2. CSCodie Sanchez7:09

      Mm

   3. RGRobert Greene7:09

      ... make you like everybody else. "Oh, you should do this, you should do that," you know, waste your time. You know, I get this all the time. You know, "You could, Robert, do your own podcast," "Robert, here's a television show." I wanna write books. It's the only thing I'm good at, right? So you're gonna get all these pressures. If you hear that voice, if you're still that child, "I don't wanna do that," and you're a- and you still feel strong enough to say, "Get the hell out of my life," right?

   4. CSCodie Sanchez7:34

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RGRobert Greene7:34

      "I know what I want. I can concentrate on that. I have focus. I have drive. I have ambition," right? And so it's this weird thing, so you look at people, like in science, like an Albert Einstein, or in any creative endeavor, I don't know about politics, probably in business as well, someone like a Steve Jobs, you can see that child in them. You can still see that like, "I just want to do this one thing. Get away from me," you know, "Close my door. I don't wanna listen to you, Mom," kind of energy. I think that's one thing I've really noticed before, and I wrote a lot about that in Mastery.

5. 8:11 – 11:34

   The Three Most Powerful Laws: Irreplaceability, Boldness, and Formlessness

   1. CSCodie Sanchez8:11

      I was talking about this with my producer, 48 Laws of Power.

   2. RGRobert Greene8:14

      Yeah.

   3. CSCodie Sanchez8:14

      Like, have you found that there's one law that is more powerful than any other?

   4. RGRobert Greene8:20

      Well, it's hard to say. I would, I would pick out three laws. I would say learn to keep people dependent on you. I think it's 13 or somewhere around there. And the gist of that law is, um, you g- you're replaceable, right? You have a skill, but as you get older, younger people are rising up who can do the same thing. They're, more or less, and they're less expensive, and they're younger, and they look better probably, and they've got all this youthful energy. You're gonna be replaced, and being replaced is the weakest, talking about power, is the most helpless position to be in.

   5. CSCodie Sanchez9:00

      Hmm.

   6. RGRobert Greene9:01

      So if you're in a position in a career of any sort where you can't be replaced, where people are dependent on you and you are not dependent on them, you hold all the cards. You can't be replaced 'cause you have the unique set of skills, right? I would say that law is incredibly important. I'd say, um, acting, interaction with boldness would be my second choice. So, um, people are far too timid in this world, right? They're so worried about what everyone else is doing, what everyone else thinks of them. "Did I say the right thing? Am I dressed the right way?" You know? And power is like this action that causes surprise in other people. Power is a lot about playing appearances. When you do something bold, it makes people eyes went, "Wow, that's interesting. That person is interesting." Even if you're faking it, it gets that kind of attention, and it creates this kind of momentum, like, "What is this person gonna do next?" I did a book with 50 Cent, and that's a law that he uses to great effect in social media, but also in negotiating and in business. You just wanna show boldness, that you have a vision of some place you wanna go to. You're willing to go there, damn the torpedoes, I'm getting to that point. And, you know, everyone gets out of your way because confidence has this kind of infecting power.

   7. CSCodie Sanchez10:24

      Hmm.

   8. RGRobert Greene10:25

      The third one would be the last law about assume formlessness.

   9. CSCodie Sanchez10:29

      Hmm.

   10. RGRobert Greene10:30

       So it's like people look at The 48 Laws of Power and they go, "Hmm, I'll do this law, I'll do that law," you know. You know, "When should I apply this law?" And they're not thinking in the moment, and I'm trying to tell you in that law to just drop my whole book. Don't listen to anybody else, but be in the moment, be alive to what's happening. Each circumstance in your life is different, right? So if you're trapped in the past and you're thinking, "You know, this strategy worked a year ago. Robert Greene said it's good in this law. I'm gonna just apply that," you're not paying attention to what's going on in the culture right now in the moment.

   11. CSCodie Sanchez11:09

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RGRobert Greene11:10

       Think of our culture as this stream. It's in continual motion, right? What was cool a month ago is no longer cool, right? You're not paying attention because you're living in the past. You're thinking about what worked before. Be f- be fluid and formless like water, and just flow with everything, and be alive to what's, what's new and different in the circumstances that

6. 11:34 – 15:50

   Law Four: Say Less Than Necessary and the Power of Silence

   1. RGRobert Greene11:34

      you face.

   2. CSCodie Sanchez11:34

      You have, like, another law that I love and aspire to, although I'm not quite very good at it, which is Law Four: Always Say Less Than Necessary.

   3. RGRobert Greene11:42

      As a podcaster, that wouldn't be very good. [laughs]

   4. CSCodie Sanchez11:44

      [laughs] I'm a professional yapper in many ways. Um, but we do have a, we have sort of 13 mission statements at my company, and one of them is less words, more meaning. And I do feel like 50 Cent is actually incredibly good at this. He is, in especially in interviews, does not speak very many words but seems to have a high signal-to-noise.

   5. RGRobert Greene12:04

      Yeah, yeah.

   6. CSCodie Sanchez12:05

      I guess I'm curious, I've never thought to ask you- Did you learn anything about power from 50 Cent?

   7. RGRobert Greene12:11

      Well, first of all, I ha- I, I can't take credit for much, but I really do think he got that from The 48 Laws of Power. Yes, I got many-- I learned many things from him. When we would be talking and, and I'd be interviewing, he'd go, "Robert, you're nodding your head too much." And I go, "What do you mean, 50?" He goes, "You nod your head too much, and that means, you know, I think it's, it, it's kinda looks a little bit weak."

   8. CSCodie Sanchez12:35

      Wow.

   9. RGRobert Greene12:35

      You know? Um, and so maybe just be a little more still and, and that's a more... And I go, "Well, okay, that's good. Thank you, 50." I like criticism like that. Always stuck with me, so I still nod my head probably too much, but I think about it at least.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez12:50

       Fantastic.

   11. RGRobert Greene12:50

       Um, he also had a confidence and a fearlessness that I didn't really ha- I always thought of myself as being slightly fearless, but around him, I could realize that I'm not. I've-- I'm full of, of fears and anxieties, and his kind of... He doesn't have those things.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez13:11

       Hmm.

   13. RGRobert Greene13:11

       Um, I think a lot of it came from his near-death experience, right? So after you're shot, like, nine times and you nearly died, certain things don't matter to you anymore, and it gave him that kind of edge. So he always told me, um, in negotiations, this is something I believed before I met him, but I think even more so now. When you're in a negotiation of any kind, he's in a lot of them, your ability to walk away gives you all of the power, right? And if you're in a meeting, and there's negotiation going on, and you're just thinking, "I don't need to be here. I can walk away. Even though they're offering me good money, I want more. I don't care. This isn't good enough," just thinking that is gonna change the dynamic, he believed. You know, I watched him in meetings, and he would hardly ever say anything. And all the other people, it made them talk a lot because, well, 50's not talking. We better fill in the space. But it gave him so much power because all these other people were saying stupid things. They were, you know, s- you know, committing themselves to certain numbers. He just sat there like a king, and then, you know, it just drew attention to him and drew power. So I learned a lot from him. There are many other things, but those were a few of them.

   14. CSCodie Sanchez14:29

       It's fascinating. You know, I don't know if it is a, a, a thing for rappers, but we had a, a rapper on the podcast called 2 Chainz.

   15. RGRobert Greene14:38

       2 Chainz?

   16. CSCodie Sanchez14:38

       Yes.

   17. RGRobert Greene14:39

       Sorry, I don't know who that is.

   18. CSCodie Sanchez14:40

       [laughs] Yeah. He's quite-- He's been around a long time. He's a big name rapper. But, um, I, oddly enough, I don't interview a lot of rappers. You know, that's not my normal sphere. But there was something about the way that he carried himself, and now we've become friends to the s- tune where I get to call him Chainz instead of 2 Chainz.

   19. RGRobert Greene14:59

       Ooh, Chainz.

   20. CSCodie Sanchez15:00

       So that seems like an upgrade. [laughs]

   21. RGRobert Greene15:02

       Okay.

   22. CSCodie Sanchez15:02

       But, uh, it's interesting how you talk about 50 because he had this same presence. I sometimes, if I like somebody, I want them to like me, so I'll be more engaging or, you know, I don't wanna say performative, but maybe. He was none of that. He almost... It was a blank canvas. There was really nothing I was engaging with at first, which was really quite hard and off-putting.

   23. RGRobert Greene15:27

       Yeah.

   24. CSCodie Sanchez15:27

       But as the interview progressed, um, obviously, he started to relax a little bit, but I realized how powerful that was.

   25. RGRobert Greene15:34

       Yeah.

   26. CSCodie Sanchez15:34

       Because he wasn't trying to entertain me at all.

   27. RGRobert Greene15:36

       Right.

   28. CSCodie Sanchez15:37

       For a normal person, are there, are there body language, are there communication signals that you've learned that are a signal of, "I actually am more powerful"?

7. 15:50 – 19:21

   Nonverbal Communication: The Body Language of Power

   1. RGRobert Greene15:50

      In The Laws of Human Nature, I go through that in a chapter on nonverbal communication. I haven't invented this. There's people who study that for a lot, for a living, and they've kind of come up with what are the cues that indicate power. But the most important thing in this game, it is, let's call it a game, is to be self-aware, to realize that your nonverbal communication is something that's signaling things to other people, that you can be a little more conscious of it. Because if it's unconscious, it's, you have no control. Like he was saying, "You're nodding too much." I wasn't aware of that because you don't think about these things. So you wanna be able to observe yourself and notice these things. And yes, um, body language-wise, a powerful person is able, um, to look at everybody in, in the office, in the room. So people who are, who are weak, who are afraid, who are timid, their eyes are down. They're, they don't wanna look around because they're a little bit afraid. A powerful person has complete control of the surroundings, of the whole area. They're able to look at everybody in the eye. They have a kind of a stillness. So actors who act in theater on the stage have known this for a long time, that the stiller you are on the stage, the more attention you command. If you're nervous and you're moving around, your hands are gesticulating, people are a little bit irritated, and they're gonna look elsewhere. But if you're on that stage, and you're still, and you're quiet, the attention comes to you. It's a very powerful thing, you know, very powerful. You know, a lot of these things you can control. Your voice is hard to control, but a kind of a, a, a weak, high-pitched voice, this is for a man, I'm afraid, 'cause a little bit different for women in all of these things. Because in, in the world of nonverbal communication, women are at a disadvantage 'cause people judge a lot of these things that might seem powerful in a man, they'll seem as kind of bitchy in a woman-

   2. CSCodie Sanchez17:56

      Yeah

   3. RGRobert Greene17:56

      ... or ugly or hard. So I'm afraid I'd have to rewrite a lot of this, uh, for, for women. People have written about the whole nonverbal world for a woman who's in a powerful position. But being aware of your voice and the fact that you pause a lot, you're hemming and hawing, and you're going, "Uh, uh, uh," you, you know. So if you know what you wanna say and you're not, like, improvising in the moment and you have a goal in there, you can control your voice and the tenor of your, of what you're saying a lot better than if you're just in the moment just spouting nonsense. There's, there are other things. There, there's how your, your, your posture and whether you've... So a, a weak person is kinda closed and timid, and they have this thing, I forget what the word is, but they're always touching their hair or their face and their body, signs of incredible nervousness.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez18:51

      Hmm.

   5. RGRobert Greene18:52

      A powerful person, they can have their legs... Well, for a man, [laughs]

   6. CSCodie Sanchez18:55

      [laughs]

   7. RGRobert Greene18:55

      Could have their legs a little more out like this. They can s- be in this kind of position. They're not... They're open. They're not like that, right?

   8. CSCodie Sanchez19:03

      Mm.

   9. RGRobert Greene19:03

      This is a position of very royal, you know, very kingly, like those would be some of them.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez19:09

       Yeah. Is there any correlation between those same behaviors, and can you tell somebody's going to to mani- manipulate you or lie to you more because they have those same behaviors?

8. 19:21 – 23:15

   Detecting Liars: Past Behavior and Forcefulness as Red Flags

   1. RGRobert Greene19:21

      It would be difficult just based on those, on those, uh, cues-

   2. CSCodie Sanchez19:26

      Mm

   3. RGRobert Greene19:26

      ... to tell whether someone is deceiving you or not. In that same chapter, I do talk about things that kind of reveal somebody might be trying to deceive you. But to be honest, because I've written a lot about deception, uh, as you know, the best clue for f- picking up people who are liars and deceivers is to look at their past. People have a history, right? You've, you've caught them before saying a lie, or they have a record y- you know, in previous c- jobs or on social media and such, exaggerating, lying. Seeing their past and seeing their patterns of behavior is a lot better cue. But one thing that indicates somebody is lying is the forcefulness of their argument. The more forceful they are and insecure in trying to assert themselves about something that they believe, the more that they're trying to cover up something. So I often say, when people seem hyper-aggressive about trying to sell you something, about trying to convince you about an idea, they are probably lying or they're covering up something. So that would be one cue.

   4. CSCodie Sanchez20:36

      Hmm. That's really good. Yeah, I, I had a, a funny situation happen-

   5. RGRobert Greene20:40

      Yeah, tell me

   6. CSCodie Sanchez20:41

      ... uh, lately to me, where I had a, a colleague, a friend for many, many years, probably 10 years, and we weren't super close, but close enough. We had done a few things together. And anyway, this individual kind of came at me and said, "Hey, I think you copied some of my work."

   7. RGRobert Greene21:02

      It's a man or a woman?

   8. CSCodie Sanchez21:03

      Man.

   9. RGRobert Greene21:03

      Okay.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez21:04

       What was interesting is my first reaction was, "Fuck." You know, do I have some sort of unconscious bias? Because if you've been around somebody for a long time, I don't know, I could've done that. So I go and look at the thing that he's talking about. I'm like, "What are we talking about here?" And, and thankfully, with AI, you can also run it a bunch of places and see, like, is anything in here something that could be from somewhere else?

   11. RGRobert Greene21:24

       Uh-huh.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez21:25

       So I go and run it, and I find other stuff. Like, oh, actually, this was influenced by a 1964 marketing, you know, term-

   13. RGRobert Greene21:32

       Yeah

   14. CSCodie Sanchez21:32

       ... that XYZ.

   15. RGRobert Greene21:33

       Uh-huh.

   16. CSCodie Sanchez21:34

       And this has actually been done by a friend of mine, Marcus Lemonis, but a different way, right?

   17. RGRobert Greene21:38

       Yeah.

   18. CSCodie Sanchez21:39

       I thought, "Oh, that's interesting." And lo and behold, what I found in, like, pursuing this little thing we were going back and forth on is he had a history. There were, like, 22 instances-

   19. RGRobert Greene21:52

       Oh

   20. CSCodie Sanchez21:54

       ... of imitation, duplication, and I thought, "Huh. Maybe this is, like, a thing of human nature, where it's not just past history what people have done, but often this projection." Like, if I've done it to somebody-

   21. RGRobert Greene22:07

       Uh-huh

   22. CSCodie Sanchez22:07

       ... then I always am going to assume you have. So I was curious-

   23. RGRobert Greene22:12

       Yeah

   24. CSCodie Sanchez22:12

       ... your thoughts. Like, is that also... What i- what is happening in the human's mind when they push on another person something that they've done themselves, and does this fall within the laws?

   25. RGRobert Greene22:25

       Something I've been thinking about and might write about is the need for us to deceive ourselves, self-deception, right? So you don't wanna believe that you are somebody who's evil or bad or rotten or that you have a pattern of projecting or getting other... you know, accusing other people of things. So if, you know, if I back up a little bit with this particular gentleman, if I call him that, um, I imagine at the root of it is probably some envy.

   26. CSCodie Sanchez22:58

       Yeah, for sure.

   27. RGRobert Greene22:59

       Okay? Okay, so envy is an extremely common emotion. It's... You're, you're encountering it every day of your life, but you're not aware of it because it's very secret. Nobody wants to talk about it. It's like this insidious gas that is just everywhere, but it's invisible.

9. 23:15 – 37:23

   Envy: The Invisible Gas Poisoning Your Relationships

   1. RGRobert Greene23:15

      Because the human mind operates by comparing ourselves to other people. We're constantly comparing. Is she making more money than me? Is he better liked than me? Do I look as good as that person? Your mind is always doing that because we're social animals. So this particular person, for some reason, is feeling envy. But because you don't want to admit that to yourself, do you think that was going on?

   2. CSCodie Sanchez23:40

      Yeah.

   3. RGRobert Greene23:41

      Okay. So perhaps you're doing better in your career now than, than he is, and for a man, that's s- a hard thing to swallow sometimes, right?

   4. CSCodie Sanchez23:49

      Yeah.

   5. RGRobert Greene23:50

      So you don't want to admit that you feel envy, so you project onto the other people that they're the ones doing something wrong. They're the ones doing something evil, right?

   6. CSCodie Sanchez24:00

      Mm.

   7. RGRobert Greene24:01

      That way, you can justify, because you don't wanna go through life thinking- God, I'm so, I'm so much worse than that other person. They're so much better than I am. I really wish I could have their ... We don't want to admit that. It's too painful.

   8. CSCodie Sanchez24:14

      Right.

   9. RGRobert Greene24:14

      Instead, we make them the evil one. They're doing these things that are wrong, and that's why I feel this way. That's why I'm angry, and that's why I'm gonna accuse Cody of stealing these things from me, when actually at the root of it is that he's envious of you. And that might be, if I could analyze it, because I'm afraid this is my life study, is that this guy has a pattern of envy.

   10. CSCodie Sanchez24:40

       Yeah.

   11. RGRobert Greene24:40

       That he's cont- he's an insecure man. He's always been envying other people, and because of that, he's accusing them of stealing from him or copying him. So it's actually the reverse of what's going on, of what he, he won't admit to himself.

   12. CSCodie Sanchez24:54

       So interesting. Well, it's a really good point, because it goes back to your point on the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and you're really, you're not looking for cues, you're looking for, if someone's going to deceive me, it's likely because they've done it before, to themselves and to others, maybe.

   13. RGRobert Greene25:09

       Well, I, you know, one of my basic laws is people never do anything once.

   14. CSCodie Sanchez25:13

       Oh, yeah.

   15. RGRobert Greene25:14

       Right?

   16. CSCodie Sanchez25:15

       Oh.

   17. RGRobert Greene25:15

       They've done it once, they're gonna do it again, right? If they've lied to you once, they're gonna lie to you again. If they were late for this meeting and they said, "Oh, I'm sorry, it was the traffic," blah, blah, blah, blah, they'll be late again, you know? So yeah.

   18. CSCodie Sanchez25:28

       Why is it that we do not believe somebody the first time that they show us who they are? You know, the person lies to you before, they've cheated before, they've done whatever before, and it seems like we should realize that's likely a reason they're gonna do it again. But we ignore that for some reason, at our peril, I guess.

   19. RGRobert Greene25:48

       Well, uh, a lot of it, I'm afraid, is a function of just simply being distracted and self-absorbed and not paying attention, right? So, and that's, that's a problem that's getting worse and worse and worse.

   20. CSCodie Sanchez26:01

       Yeah.

   21. RGRobert Greene26:01

       So if you were a, in, in the moment, and you were paying attention ... I often get this from women who talk to me l- in relation to the Law Art of Seduction. "You know, Robert, when I first met that guy, I just felt he was a bit of a creep. But then I forgot about it, and I th- started dating him, and then all hell broke loose, and I'm miserable, and he abused me," blah, blah, blah. So these women, at their first instinct, they got that feeling, that creepy feeling that something is wrong with a person. Where do you get that from? You get that from their body language. You get... It's nothing you can verbalize exactly, but you can sense-

   22. CSCodie Sanchez26:42

       Mm-hmm

   23. RGRobert Greene26:42

       ... that something is wrong with a person, right?

   24. CSCodie Sanchez26:45

       Mm-hmm.

   25. RGRobert Greene26:45

       In some, in, in so many ways. And I often say, like, if you look at narcissists, uh, talking about body language, there's a kind of deadness in the eyes.

   26. CSCodie Sanchez26:56

       Yeah.

   27. RGRobert Greene26:56

       So the eyes are very revelatory. The eyes reveal that you're engaged. There's a depth to the eyes. When we're looking at someone, we're interested, it's almost like you, there's something going on deeper inside, and we're, we're engaging with you. But when we're a narcissist, when we're so self-absorbed, our eyes are turned inward, and there's a deadness there. So when you first meet someone, there are cues as to what's wrong with them or what's good about them, right?

   28. CSCodie Sanchez27:24

       Yeah.

   29. RGRobert Greene27:25

       You can control everything about what you say, but you can't control these body language things, a lot of it. And so these women would pick up these signals, but then they would forget them. And why do they forget them? Well, they get distracted. He starts talking, and he says very sweet things, you know. He love bombs them. He gives them all this attention, which is always a bad sign when somebody love bombs you, gives you all that attention. It's too n- uh, they're in too much of a hurry because they're covering up something. They lose connection to th- with their initial intuition, which was the accurate one, and they're paying attention to all his sweet, loving words and to the flowers he buys and to the money he g- the things he buys for them. So you're not paying attention. You're not trusting your intuition. You're not letting your gut tell you something about somebody. You're not observing people. And I l- r- read a lot about history, and I r- read, like, a lot of novels from the 19th century. One of my favorite writers is Jane Austen.

   30. CSCodie Sanchez28:28

       Hmm.
10. 37:23 – 40:30

    Law Two: Never Hire Friends—Why Friendship Destroys Business

    1. RGRobert Greene37:23

       Oddly enough, one of the most common ones, particularly with people in business, is law number two, never put too much trust in friends and learn how to use enemies. And what I mean by that is so many people in business in positions of power tend to hire a friend, tend to hire somebody that they know-

    2. CSCodie Sanchez37:47

       Mm

    3. RGRobert Greene37:47

       ... that they feel that there's trust there, somebody they went to school with. You know, well, that's gonna be the best partner for me, right? We had a friendship. We go back 20 years together. You know, we've done this and that and the other. Our wives are friends, blah, blah, blah, our husbands. It's the worst thing you can possibly do. I could write 100 books of detailing of anecdotes of all the disaster that accrues from that kind of thinking because when you work with a friend, there's all these emotions involved, right?

    4. CSCodie Sanchez38:19

       Mm.

    5. RGRobert Greene38:20

       So you hire your friend, and the h- friend is secretly going, "Well, he or she just hired me because I'm a friend." They're not really, they're not conscious of this, but the in- unconsciously they're thinking, you know, "They didn't really hire me because I deserved it," so there's always a little bit of insecurity going on.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez38:37

       Yeah.

    7. RGRobert Greene38:37

       And then the slightest thing that you do that seems a little bit unfriendly, because in business you need to ask people to do things, a little bit of resentment is there, and it slowly, slowly, slowly kind of poisons them inside. It'll take months or years, and they're not even aware of the poison. It, it's inside of them: envy, shame, insecurity. And then it'll burst out, and they'll rebel, and they'll do something nasty, or they'll steal your company from you. They'll steal your husband or wife. They'll sabotage you. They'll steal money. Where did that come from? They were my friend. I've had that scenario you came up many, many, many times, and I served on the board of directors of a publicly traded company, and I saw that firsthand because this was American Apparel. The CEO, Dov Charney, he had lots of issues, but he was constantly hiring people that he knew that he was f- friendly with, and they were just disasters. And he also hired people that he could bully-

    8. CSCodie Sanchez39:41

       Mm

    9. RGRobert Greene39:41

       ... because he was also insecure. So the lesson is, that from there, is don't hire friends. Don't hire people you can bully. Hire people who are efficient, who get the job done. They may not be someone you wanna go have a drink with afterwards, but they are good at their job. That's much more important than hiring a friend.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez40:00

        It's really good. There was actually... I should find it by the time we're done with this. I might give this to you, Colton, for you to help me find it. But there was a tweet I saw that reminded me of this about how, you know, none of the scars that I've been given were ever from someone outside my circle, that it was always-

    11. RGRobert Greene40:18

        That's funny. [laughs]

    12. CSCodie Sanchez40:18

        ... from the inside-

    13. RGRobert Greene40:19

        Yeah, yeah, yeah

    14. CSCodie Sanchez40:20

        ... that they gave it to me.

    15. RGRobert Greene40:21

        Yeah, yeah.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez40:21

        And I thought that was so true, and you s- ah, you know who it was? It's from, it's The Joker from Bat- Batman said-

    17. RGRobert Greene40:28

        [laughs]

    18. CSCodie Sanchez40:28

        [laughs]

11. 40:30 – 41:06

    The Joker Was Right: Your Scars Come From Those You Love

    1. CSCodie Sanchez40:30

       He said, "Not a single scar on my heart came from my enemies. They all came from people I thought loved me."

    2. RGRobert Greene40:35

       Is this from the, the movie The Joker or from the... Okay, yeah.

    3. CSCodie Sanchez40:39

       And it kinda hits hard-

    4. RGRobert Greene40:41

       Yeah, yeah

    5. CSCodie Sanchez40:41

       ... 'cause when you hear it, it's true. It kinda goes back to our original point, which is, you know, so many of the things you write, it punches you a bit because you go, "Ah, it's so true, and yet I didn't see it," or-

    6. RGRobert Greene40:51

       Right

    7. CSCodie Sanchez40:51

       ... "It's so true, and I knew it, and then I forgot it, and I did it again."

    8. RGRobert Greene40:54

       Yeah, yeah.

    9. CSCodie Sanchez40:55

       And that one is, is quite hard. H- has anything really surprised you about human nature after all these years? Like, does anything scare you about human nature, surprise you,

12. 41:06 – 44:26

    Human Nature's Dark Side: Short-Sightedness and Emotional Immaturity

    1. CSCodie Sanchez41:06

       thrill you?

    2. RGRobert Greene41:06

       Oh, it scares me, the hell out of me because the idea about human nature, as written in that book, The Laws of Human Nature, is that our brains were developed 30,000 years ago in a particular environment, right? And you think 30,000 years, that's a lot of time, but actually in, in, in the course of evolution, it's an incredibly, incredibly s- small slice of time. And so what I mean by that is our brains are cognitively very developed, but emotionally we are still that animal from 30,000, 10,000 years ago. We have not grown up emotionally. And so you look at the world today, and you see all the reactiveness, all the anger, all the partisanship, all the hatred, and you go, "God, we're like six-year-olds."

    3. CSCodie Sanchez42:00

       Yeah.

    4. RGRobert Greene42:01

       We're like six-year-olds with these immensely powerful tools in our hand, like a six-year-old that you're giving a, a machine gun, an Uzi to, you know? What are you gonna expect from that? You're gonna expect a lot of mayhem. And that's who we are, and so it, it's very frightening to me. I can't remember what your original question was. [laughs]

    5. CSCodie Sanchez42:18

       No, that was it.

    6. RGRobert Greene42:19

       Um-

    7. CSCodie Sanchez42:19

       It was what scares you about human nature?

    8. RGRobert Greene42:21

       It's not surprising. I mean, I, I must admit I have a slightly negative bias towards human nature. It's just who I am. I've always been a little bit that bent, and there are people who are the opposite, like, uh, Dan, uh, what's his name? Daniel, um... The... God, I'm having such a problem today. [laughs]

    9. CSCodie Sanchez42:41

       It's okay.

    10. RGRobert Greene42:42

        Um-

    11. CSCodie Sanchez42:42

        I'm pregnant, so I forget everything right now.

    12. RGRobert Greene42:43

        [laughs]

    13. CSCodie Sanchez42:44

        So it's just, you can blame my pregnancy for it.

    14. RGRobert Greene42:45

        Uh, Steven Pinker.

    15. CSCodie Sanchez42:46

        Oh, sure.

    16. RGRobert Greene42:47

        Very optimistic about, we live in, you know, things are so much better now. There's so much less violence, so much less war, so much less crime. Oh, really? Well, um, you wrote that 12 years ago. Look at the world now. Maybe you wanna rewrite that book, you know? I mean, there are things, statistics that show things have gotten a little bit better, but overall, you know... One of the things in, in, in the book that is one of the scariest things about human nature is our shortsightedness, and that's a chapter in the book about how we are kind of incapable of s- thinking consequentially-

    17. CSCodie Sanchez43:23

        Hmm

    18. RGRobert Greene43:23

        ... about our actions, about what's going to happen a year from now. We're just caught up in the immediacy. So we were talking about picking up s- people's cues, women in intuitiveness. We're locked in the moment. We can't get outside of our, of the appearances. And so, you know, we're facing things like global warming. I'm sorry, I, I, I, I believe in it. I don't think it's, it's a myth, you know? And it's gonna destroy our planet. We're in the process of destroying our planet, but we can't think about it in those terms, right? Because all we can think about is our immediate needs, what, what's most important in the present. That's gonna doom us if we're not careful. There's a lot that's gonna doom us. It could be AI, I don't know. But you're talking to someone who's a, born a little bit on the, on the, uh, negative spectrum when it comes to human nature, so.

    19. CSCodie Sanchez44:17

        But I think there's a lot of use for that because-

    20. RGRobert Greene44:20

        Okay, good. [laughs]

    21. CSCodie Sanchez44:21

        You know, I, I think optimists make a lot of money, but pessimists are usually

13. 44:26 – 50:23

    Optimism vs. Critical Thinking: The Balance Every Leader Needs

    1. CSCodie Sanchez44:26

       smart. And so-

    2. RGRobert Greene44:27

       [laughs]

    3. CSCodie Sanchez44:27

       ... I think, you know, in business you have to be irrationally optimistic to win usually.

    4. RGRobert Greene44:34

       Sure. There's, there's great value in that.

    5. CSCodie Sanchez44:35

       Uh-huh. But I think often if you were at all thoughtful on the real likelihood percentage, um, you know, data set, you would think differently. And so I think it's useful having both.

    6. RGRobert Greene44:49

       It is useful having both. I don't mean to have a s- Of course thinking, acting with boldness and feeling confident about yourself and having a project that excites you, yes, of course, it's extremely important. But I consult with a lot of people in business and I try and tell them, "There is some kind of disaster possibly looming in the next year or two in your business and you're not seeing it."

    7. CSCodie Sanchez45:13

       Yeah.

    8. RGRobert Greene45:14

       "And there are little signs."

    9. CSCodie Sanchez45:16

       Hmm.

    10. RGRobert Greene45:16

        Little drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, and that drip, drip, drip is creating a tiny little puddle that you're not even aware of. Okay, what are they? And we go through a process and we try to... And maybe there's nothing, but thinking that way is very, very powerful because our brains are not trained to think like that. Our brains are not trained to think of what could be happening that's invisible right now because we can only see what's visible, and there's signs that are so subtle you can't even pick them up, but you could, and then you would avoid these terrible things that will probably happen in a year or two to your business.

    11. CSCodie Sanchez45:51

        So actually, that's an interesting question. What do you think about, like, positive affirmations and manifestation as opposed to maybe critical thinking and worst case scenar- scenario analysis?

    12. RGRobert Greene46:04

        Well, I think there's value f- for both. I mean, if you're totally critical, you'll never get anything done. Damn it. If I start that business, all these terrible things are gonna happen, you know, and Robert Greene told me to bu- I'll never even start the business. So to start something, you have to have a little bit of, like, blind optimism and just go ahead and do it. And, you know, if you... So the affirmation thing, I have a chapter in Power called Act Like a King to Be Treated Like One.

    13. CSCodie Sanchez46:34

        Mm.

    14. RGRobert Greene46:34

        If you act like you've, you, you believe in yourself and you feel confident, other people will believe that in you, and it's kind of a sort of a manifestation type thing.

    15. CSCodie Sanchez46:43

        Yeah.

    16. RGRobert Greene46:44

        So, but one without the other is a recipe for disaster. So always being critical, you'll never get anything done in life. Always being the, you know, the p- you know, the, the optimist, the whatever the word is, um, you know, is also a recipe for disaster because you're not gonna be, you're not gonna have that critical thinking that's essential for f- You're not gonna see bad things when they happen, even when they're right in your face because you're so rosy-hued and you're so certain of yourself, right? So the ability to have self-belief, but also to get outside of yourself and realize that there are things in the world that maybe are, are gonna stop you, that there are malevolent forces, is, is very important.

    17. CSCodie Sanchez47:30

        Yeah. I actually think that the over-optimism is really problematic because r- I think you see it a lot of time. Live... I live in Austin. I told you this, and there's a lot of crystal-loving, you know-

    18. RGRobert Greene47:42

        Oh, yeah

    19. CSCodie Sanchez47:42

        ... sage-carrying people there.

    20. RGRobert Greene47:44

        Mm-hmm.

    21. CSCodie Sanchez47:44

        And okay, I like a crystal, I like a sage, fine.

    22. RGRobert Greene47:47

        [laughs]

    23. CSCodie Sanchez47:48

        But, but I think, um, you know, when the, the trouble comes knocking in the dead of the night and the big scary thing looms, you have to be able to have sort of the anti-manifestation of, like, if everything crumbles, if, you know, this person does lie, cheat, and steal from me, when this tragedy befalls me or my business or whatever-

    24. RGRobert Greene48:08

        Yeah

    25. CSCodie Sanchez48:08

        ... what will I do then?

    26. RGRobert Greene48:10

        Yeah.

    27. CSCodie Sanchez48:10

        And if you can think about it that way, to your point on the water dripping on rock, then when it happens You're not so concerned about it.

    28. RGRobert Greene48:18

        Right.

    29. CSCodie Sanchez48:18

        And so I think a lot of times people get this visualization wrong. They think that Michael Jordan always visualized hitting a, a, a three-point shot every time. No, he, he visualized the bad, too, don't they?

    30. RGRobert Greene48:28

        What this reminds me of is a story I have in, I think it's Mastery, no, in The War Book, of Alfred Hitchcock, the great film director. If you've ever been in film, and I used to work in film, and my wife works in fi- she's a director, it's like a war scene. It is really scary 'cause there's a lot of money involved. You've got all the actors' egos. The director has his ego. People are fighting. There's a lot of yelling going on. Alfred Hitchcock would sit in the director's chair, and he'd be falling asleep. [snores] He was so bored, and people nicknamed him The Buddha. What gave him his calmness? He had prepared every single detail. He had foreseen every problem that could come up. The actress would not like this particular costume because she doesn't look good in green. I thought of that beforehand, and so I've created a costume that I'm sure she's gonna like, so that, that won't happen. On and on and on down the line, every single element of the production he had thought of. If this goes wrong, what am I gonna do, right? And he, and he had every detail planned so that he said he shot the film in the camera. He didn't really even need an editor. He shot everything he wanted right there, right? And he didn't leave anything to chance. When you're like that, you can be completely calm-
14. 50:23 – 52:19

    Abraham Lincoln's Strategy: The Power of Vision and Staying the Course

    1. CSCodie Sanchez50:23

       You've written about Abraham Lincoln a few times. What stands out for you from him? Is there a story you'd like to tell?

    2. RGRobert Greene50:28

       It's a very similar thing. So he knew in the Civil War that, uh, th- all these terrible things were gonna go wrong, and that in the beginning, the North, because it was very divided within itself, uh, was gonna not work out very well, and he had generals that he hated and that weren't fighting enough for him. They would never do exact, fight as hard as he wanted them to fight. He had a vision. The vision was, "We're gonna win this war, but we're not gonna destroy and decimate the South because in the end, there has to be a reconciliation. And in the end, we have to be one nation, so we have to p- win this war in a way that leaves them space for, for peace afterwards that will really last," right? So he had a vision of how the war would go, of how he would free the slaves. He thought it all in advance. And if you don't, if you follow the Civil War, things were going terribly for a while, right? The North lost battle after battle. It looked really bad. And people were h- he- thinking, "There's no way Lincoln's ever gonna get reelected." People turned against him, all these voices saying, "You need to change your strategies." He didn't listen to them. He, he compared it to a ship that he was navigating in a direction, and he wasn't gonna change course 'cause he knew how to get to that port, and that's what made him a great leader, and it's made him calm because he didn't listen to all the naysayers and all the people who were, who were, you know, picking at him. If he lived in the era of social media, I don't think he would've survived, right?

    3. CSCodie Sanchez51:57

       [laughs]

    4. RGRobert Greene51:57

       But he had the power of not listening to people and staying true to his vision, and his vision was very true and very real and very correct.

    5. CSCodie Sanchez52:05

       What do you think are the best ways to combat all the noise in social media when you're struggling, when you're going through it, when everybody seems like they're against you? What do you say to yourself in those moments?

15. 52:19 – 56:35

    Know Your Soul: Protecting Your Uniqueness in a World That Wants You Average

    1. RGRobert Greene52:19

       Well, first of all, you, you have to know yourself. You have to know your own voice. You have to feel comfortable with yourself, so you're not susceptible to listening to all the people. But I talk a little bit about this in my new book, and I've talked about it in, in Human Nature, is you have a soul. Now, I know that that's not a word that we like to think about right now, and it might even be on the level of your crystals and your af- manifestation. But I believe very much that we have a soul, and the soul is our character, what makes us unique, who we are at our core, and that is the actual original Greek concept of the soul, right? And so when you're s- true to yourself, when you're true to who you are and what you believe in and your vision, not to say you don't listen to other people 'cause you need advice from time to time. But when you know who you are, you know what makes you an individual, what makes you unique, what your source of power is, you don't have to listen to people. You feel strong, and you feel like, "I have something to protect, which is who I am." And by listening to other people and by being constantly buffeted by the winds of social media, you're gonna lose your soul. And when you lose your soul, you've lost everything.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez53:36

       Mm.

    3. RGRobert Greene53:36

       You just become one with the crowd, and I'm sorry, that's the saddest thing that can ever happen to you, right? Because you have something precious, which is your voice, what makes you unique, your vision, what makes you different from other people. That is your source of power. That is your soul. And to lose that... So if you feel like that, if you understand that concept, it's, it's not just an intellectual concept because I, I've always believed in all of my books, and particularly in the last one, the one I just finished, we're emotional creatures. We're emotional animals, right? We're not just these h- heads with a brain. Emotions dominate us. And the feeling of a soul is an emotional thing. It's like who I am. It's like what makes me, me, and I don't wanna lose that. And I get people, and I get tempted, who say, "Robert, here's a great project for you. You should be doing this." I told you in the beginning, I don't know, before we were rolling, that everyone wants me to chop my content up into 30-second soundbites. And, you know, I'm tempted. Yeah, okay, I've got to appeal ... I can't be such a stick in the mud, I can't be such a dinosaur. Young people like these things. But the other part is, that's not who I am. I'm not a 30-second guy. You hear me, I, I, I'm very long-winded. I talk and I talk and I talk because I have to develop my ideas. If I start doing these little 30-second soundbites with all flashy graphics, et cetera, it's not me and I don't feel comfortable.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez55:11

       Yes.

    5. RGRobert Greene55:11

       I will lose my soul, and I wanna be comfortable with myself. I want to feel like I am me. And so, I don't know if I'm answering your original question. I've gone off here on the-

    6. CSCodie Sanchez55:21

       I think you did.

    7. RGRobert Greene55:22

       Okay. [laughs] Thank you.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez55:23

       No, it's, you know, it, it, it's, it's very interesting because, um, I always go back to, like, the Oracle of Delphi, "Know thyself," right?

    9. RGRobert Greene55:32

       Yes. Yeah.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez55:32

        And, you know, it, it's one of the quotes that I think about often because any advice that you get in life, well, it can't be very useful if you don't know what you want-

    11. RGRobert Greene55:42

        Right

    12. CSCodie Sanchez55:43

        ... or if you don't know who you are-

    13. RGRobert Greene55:44

        Right

    14. CSCodie Sanchez55:44

        ... or you don't know what you're skilled at.

    15. RGRobert Greene55:45

        Right.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez55:46

        Um, and so I always kind of chuckle when even I give advice or if I took Elon Musk's advice, you know, who's, you know, very, very wealthy, most wealthy, you know, man in the world, or Jeff Bezos, take your pick. I'm neither of them, so I probably could not apply that-

    17. RGRobert Greene56:01

        Thank God [laughs]

    18. CSCodie Sanchez56:01

        ... apply that playbook well. You know? And so I think this idea of spending time to know oneself is so important-

    19. RGRobert Greene56:08

        Yeah. Yeah

    20. CSCodie Sanchez56:09

        ... um, and underrepresented. And maybe this kind of goes a, a good way into this next question I was curious about, your new book, talking about sublime. You have multiple types of sublime, true sublime, false sublime, anti-sublime, and I was curious, what is false sublime, maybe in America right now, and what do you think some of the most dangerous false sublimes are that we tell ourselves?

16. 56:35 – 59:05

    The Sublime: What It Means to Be Fully Alive

    1. RGRobert Greene56:35

       Well, to understand the false sublime, you have to understand a little bit about the true sublime. So the true sublime is going back to deep in our history, um, we are this creature that became aware of our mortality, of our death. Now, other animals have an instinct for death, but they don't think about it, which makes them die with great ease. If you've ever had a pet, they don't die like a human dies.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez57:04

       Yeah.

    3. RGRobert Greene57:04

       They just relax into it. It's the end. They're not crying, they're not suffering, they're not trying to escape. We know about death, we think about it, and it weighs on us and has a very powerful effect. And because of that, we are always in search of something that can transcend our mortality, which is what is the origin of all our spiritual impulses, our belief in God, and our desire to be more than just this creature that lives for several decades and then disappears completely into the eternity of time. We want something more. It's a deep hunger. Every single human being has it, okay? And in the 21st century, we s- we have it as much as people had it 20,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic, okay? So to get this, to sublime, you have to, like, open yourself up. It takes a kind of openness to, to experience and to being active. You can't be passive. You have to go out, and you have to have sublime experiences. You have to open yourself up to, to your own mortality, to the death that is stalking you, right, and to the absolute insanity, the beauty, the awesomeness of the world that we have all been born into. Okay? It's not given to you. You have to go out and appreciate it. You have to go m- make it happen. All right? So we live in a culture where people expect everything to be given to them, right? Okay, so I'm not gonna go out and, and, and have these sublime experiences, Robert, when I can get it from a video game, when I can get it from online pornography, when I can get addicted to this or that, when I can go watch this movie with superheroes or whatever, or I can take a drug that'll get rid of my depression, on and on and on. I don't need to go out and have these experiences. It can be given to me, right?

    4. CSCodie Sanchez58:59

       Mm-hmm.

    5. RGRobert Greene58:59

       And so the false sublime is kind of a hunger for something

17. 59:05 – 1:00:46

    False Sublime: Cheap Transcendence and the Addiction Economy

    1. RGRobert Greene59:05

       transcendent, but trying to get it on the cheap, right? Get it, you know, for a dime instead of for $1,000, right? So I look at movies and advertisements on television, and it's, like, all these, like, superheroes and these people with these immense forces. Technology is almost a kind of false sublime because the powers that it has are immense, right? And I can get it in my phone. I can look up anything I want. I can see images of anything I desire, things that are very entertaining, very addicting, right? And it gives me a sense of something larger, but it's false 'cause it doesn't come from within. It's not anything that's devel- it doesn't lead to any change inside of you. When you confront the sublime, you're never the same again. The great psychologist A- Abraham Maslow called it a peak experience. When you have a peak experience in life, it changes you. You may go back to who you were, and you may be neurotic again, but down the line, you're always in your mind thinking about it and wanting to return to it, right? And so it changes you. But these other things, these addictions, 'cause we live in a culture of addiction, they don't change you in any way that's ever gonna lead to anything lasting. That's what the false sublime is.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:00:26

       It's so true. I, I guess, I think a lot of the new book kind of lends itself maybe to this idea that stress and pressure are actually good. And I'd be curious your take on that. Like, should you go out and try to apply pressure upon yourself as a human?

18. 1:00:46 – 1:05:35

    The Dynamical Sublime: Human Willpower Against the Impossible

    1. RGRobert Greene1:00:46

       Well, one of the forms of the sublime, and this goes back to a concept in the 18th century when people were f- first writing about the sublime, is called the dynamical sublime. And the dynamical sublime is the sense of we're these weak little creatures that walk on two legs. We're very fragile, right? Emotionally, physically, we're very vulnerable. And as an individual, there's eight billion people in the world, there's this immense cos- you know, universe, et cetera. I'm very small, I'm very insignificant, okay? Um, but look at what we've accomplished. This little weak little creature that couldn't fend off a leopard if we tried, right? They're much more powerful than we are. They should be running the world, not us. But yet look at us, okay? And what made us s- s- supreme animal is our willpower, our determination. When those pressures came, when that resistance from the environment came, we didn't wilt and, and, and, and become all whiny and stuff. We figured out how to hunt big game, how to work together as a team, how to go gather to do h- be hunter-gatherers, et cetera, and, and carve out a, a very powerful niche in, in an incredibly tumultuous period in, in the Earth's history. We're talking about the Ice Age. Um, okay, that's who we are, right? And so I had... The chapter is called Against the Immense and the Impossible, okay? So I tell a story in there of these, these young men who crashed in the Andes in, in southern Argentina on the border with Chile. And it's a famous story, and you-- there've been films made of it, very good films. It was one of the most horrifying survival stories you can ever read about. But it was a group effort that got them out, but there was this one man, Nando Parrado, who was the main person that kind of helped them get out of this absolutely impossible situation. And the idea is what we can cr-- what we are capable of is incredibly sublime when we're arrayed against these forces. He was having to climb a mountain fourteen thousand feet high without any equipment, without anything in, in this intensely, uh, you know, high altitude situation, nothing on his feet, the cold weather, nothing that anybody would ever, ever attempt if they had to. But he had to to survive because he was-- he knew that his father was gonna be devastated by the loss of his mother and daughter in the crash of this airplane that Nando and a few others survived. And if you read the story, it's like what he did was absolutely impossible, and afterwards, when they, when they rescued him, nobody could believe that he and the others were able to do this. This is a power that we have, our willpower, our determination. And so I want you to feel like there's something sublime in yourself. So normally, the sublime is associated with the universe, with all the strange animals on our planet, with nature, with things like that. But you yourself are sublime when you tap into this willpower, this determination, this idea that I am equal to all the forces in the universe, right? And if you look at, at who we are, I mean, what science is accomplishing as far as figuring out the Big Bang, as far as, as far as figuring out the origins of our universe, the most insane facts that they're able to, to uncover, to me, the collective work of scientists is utterly sublime and is part of this dynamical thing that I'm talking about, that human willpower, when you're m- in-- pushing against all the pressures, when things seem impossible to you, and you're able to accomplish it. I don't wanna toot my own horn, but let me do that for one minute, okay? Um, 'cause [laughs] -

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:05:01

       I would love it

    3. RGRobert Greene1:05:02

       ... I normally, um, uh, um, tend to be very negative about myself. But one thing was after my stroke, right, I had decided I was gonna write this book, okay? It's something that's been in my mind for many years, but now I had to write it, okay? But my brain had been damaged, right? My hand is like a claw. I can't type, right? And I can't go out and take a hike. I can't do anything. I'm just trapped in a chair, all right?

19. 1:05:35 – 1:10:17

    Writing Sublime by Hand: Robert Greene's Post-Stroke Journey

    1. RGRobert Greene1:05:35

       This book was an insane amount of labor. I cannot tell you the amount of research that went into it, the degree of thinking. I never thought I was gonna get to the end. It seemed impossible, right? I'm sorry, it did, because I had to hand write the entire book. I wrote my-- a chapter in- on one p- notebook. I would edit it in the other notebook. I would take sticky pads and edit on this one. It was... It probably added two years to the work of it. When I finished it, I felt like I had climbed that mountain.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:06:12

       And it's not a short book. I was looking. I wrote down how many pages.

    3. RGRobert Greene1:06:15

       Four hundred and fifty pages.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:06:15

       I was gonna say, I thought it was five hundred pages-

    5. RGRobert Greene1:06:17

       Almost

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:06:17

       ... handwritten.

    7. RGRobert Greene1:06:19

       Yeah.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:06:19

       Ay.

    9. RGRobert Greene1:06:20

       So I felt like I had done that. I mean, it's not the same as what this guy accomplished physically, but for me, I had to push against so many things that I wanted to give up, and I just didn't think I was gonna make it. And when I made it, I was like, I was-- I still to this day, I almost wanna cry. It was so, "Wow, you did it." And so I personally, in writing the book, lived That sense of measuring I, myself against the impossible, 'cause it really seemed like an impossible task, 'cause it was very ambitious. It was the story of everything I believe in, everything that means so much to me, and I wanted to create something lasting and large and big, but I had so many limitations that I had to work with and work through and past.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:07:09

        When you have moments like that, many moments like that for years probably, when you're struggling, where you say something to yourself, do you have, like, quotes you live by? For instance, like, one of mine that I always go back to when I'm really struggling is, um, this woman Emma Bombeck, who, like, writ large-

    11. RGRobert Greene1:07:28

        Yeah

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:07:28

        ... I don't agree with a l- a lot of things with her, but she has this one quote, which is, um, "When I stand before God at the end of my days, I hope that I can say I'm wrung dry. I have not one drop left. I've used everything that you've given me."

    13. RGRobert Greene1:07:41

        Uh-huh, uh-huh.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:07:42

        And I like that one because I wanna try to live my life that way.

    15. RGRobert Greene1:07:45

        Yeah.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:07:45

        I wanna do all the- I wanna see, like, what is this corpse, what's possible, you know?

    17. RGRobert Greene1:07:50

        Yeah.

    18. CSCodie Sanchez1:07:51

        Do you have quotes that ring in your head like that?

    19. RGRobert Greene1:07:54

        Okay, I love this Emerson quote, probably one of my favorites of all times. It's, it's from Self-Reliance. "In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts. They come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." Okay? And then another quote that means, is, uh, very important to me c- it's a quote I use in Mastery. It's from Leonardo da Vinci. He said, "As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death," meaning that if you pursue your life's task and you've accomplished something, when you die, it's like dying after you've had a good day of working really hard. You just go into this blissful sleep.

    20. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:39

        You actually-

    21. RGRobert Greene1:08:40

        Yeah

    22. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:40

        ... although you say you don't like to talk in, um, short, uh, video segments, you're quite prolific on-

    23. RGRobert Greene1:08:48

        TikTok

    24. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:48

        ... X.

    25. RGRobert Greene1:08:49

        Oh, oh, X.

    26. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:50

        Um, I was not expecting you to say TikTok. Uh-

    27. RGRobert Greene1:08:52

        Oh [laughs]

    28. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:53

        ... are you dancing on TikTok and I'm not aware of it? [laughs]

    29. RGRobert Greene1:08:55

        Uh, I, we, we do TikTok.

    30. CSCodie Sanchez1:08:57

        I like that.
20. 1:10:17 – 1:14:49

    Emerson's Truth: You're Capable of More Than You Think

    1. RGRobert Greene1:10:17

       Well, you know, you're capable of more than you think.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:10:20

       Hmm.

    3. RGRobert Greene1:10:20

       Right? So everyone's trying to tell you, "Oh, come on, man," you know. "That's, you know, just relax. Don't worry about so much, but don't be so ambitious. Just, just settle down. Just be, you know, just be mellow." I don't know. Um, and you internalize all this, this stuff in our culture, and, um, what I was trying to express earlier about the dynamical sublime is you're a human being like anybody else, and what somebody could accomplish, you can accomplish. One of my favorite quotes is from Ralph Waldo Emerson. If you could read one essay in your life and never read anything else and never even read any of my books, I would say his essay on self-reliance. When I was 16, I read it, and I memorized it. Now, I can hardly remember the quotes from it that I'm trying to quote. It's kinda sad.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:11:19

       [laughs]

    5. RGRobert Greene1:11:19

       But the quote was, "When you read something great from Shakespeare, it comes back to you in all your alienated majesty." I'm butchering it again. The idea is you think peop- what other people accomplished is so great, but it's something you could have done as well, and it's just we're all human. It's all part of us. It's all part of one great human consciousness.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:11:45

       Hmm.

    7. RGRobert Greene1:11:45

       So you're capable of doing something great. You're capable of creating great artwork. You're capable of starting a- an amazing business, even at whatever age you're at, but it's the stories that you tell yourself, and it's the stories that other people have told you. And it's, it's a sublime feeling to kind of go beyond your own limits.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:12:08

       Mm-hmm.

    9. RGRobert Greene1:12:09

       Right? Because the book is based on the fact that we're all told that there are these limits to our life. These are thoughts we're all supposed to think. These are feelings we're all supposed to feel. This is what reality is. And to go beyond those limits is to touch upon the sublime, and one of those limits is what people tell you what you're capable of. You're capable of more, and when you do that, it's an immensely powerful feeling, right?

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:12:35

        What do you do when someone tells you you can't do something, or it's not possible for you?

    11. RGRobert Greene1:12:43

        Well, sometimes it's true. If s- if, if they said, "Robert, you're never gonna, you're never gonna be a shooting guard on the Los Angeles Lakers," yeah, you're right. It's true. I'm not gonna worry. It's not gonna bother me. I mean, I wanted to be a, a, a basketball player when I was a kid, but I've grown up, and I know there are many things I can't do, right? I have limits, and I'm aware of those limits, but I know of what I can do, right? And I'm very proud of that. So if somebody says, "You can't write that book," I just, like, give them the finger, and I just go ahead and write it. Now, one thing that happened was early on in my physical therapy, people said, "Robert, you're never gonna be able to walk again. You're gonna be walking like this the rest of your life." To some degree, they were being realistic because I still have tremendous problems walking, but it made me so angry to hear that, and I had this feeling that I was gonna go turn myself into Usain Bolt, and I was gonna run by their office at Kaiser Permanente and show them that I did, I did the opposite of what they said. I haven't reached that point yet. I probably never will. But I don't like being told what I can't do when I know that I could possibly do it. But some things I can't possibly do.

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:14:01

        Yeah. It's... Well, I think it's, you know... It's almost like, um, these days I think people want to keep you small for a myriad of reasons, sometimes because they love you, sometimes 'cause they don't want you too far, sometimes because they're scared about what it might do to you if you fail, all the things.

    13. RGRobert Greene1:14:20

        Yeah.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:14:20

        They wanna be realistic. These all sound really reasonable. It doesn't mean they're necessarily bad people. And yet, you know, isn't part of resilience trying to do a thing and failing but trying and trying again?

    15. RGRobert Greene1:14:31

        Yeah. Yeah.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:14:32

        If we have to think about sublime, what is the one takeaway you want someone to get today? If they aren't living the life they want, if they aren't applying pressure to themselves, what is the one thing you want to give them that you spent years crafting?

21. 1:14:49 – 1:20:55

    The Near-Death Awakening: Life Is Insane and We Take It for Granted

    1. RGRobert Greene1:14:49

       You know, uh, I, I nearly died. I had a, a, a stroke that nearly killed me, okay? I came this close to dying and this close to having s- such brain damage that I w- wouldn't wanna live. Okay, so, um... And when I woke up from that and I started being alive again, the world looked so strange and different and weird to me. Like, wow, this is an interesting world that we live in. I started paying attention just to the environment, even in, even in city streets and even in, like, ugly weeds sprouting out of the ground and even in homeless tents and stuff. This is a weird world. It struck me that something is strange about being alive. The things that you think are familiar suddenly didn't seem familiar to me because the shadow of death had come over me, and it made life appear what it should be for everybody, which this is, is insane to be alive. It's the most intense experience. I mean, it's the only experience we have. But to actually be in the moment, to actually think about it, to actually be aware of what it means to be alive, to be aware of your heart beating and to be aware of, of your physiology, you'll never think the same. I never thought the same after I had my stroke and after I came back to life. The world looks different. I want you to be aware that there's so much you take for granted, and you shouldn't.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:16:24

       Mm.

    3. RGRobert Greene1:16:24

       And you should be incredibly grateful for this insanely marvelous, weird, magical world you've been born into, right? Everything is. Everything is like that. The sun is like the star in the sky that is exactly at the right distance so that we can have life here. If you read my book and read about evolution and a- and about the origin of the universe, you realize that just the fact that you are alive now who you are is almost mathematically impossible. The string of co- of circumstances that had to happen for humans to evolve, for us to be conscious, it... So my book, I want you to change how you look at the world from the roots down, from the ground up. Nothing will look the same, I'm hoping, once you read my book, and I've had some people who've read it early on who've, who've had that kind of experience.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:17:22

       Well, it really helped me, as all of your books have. I think, I think the only one that I haven't finished fully is Seduction for some reason, but that might be-

    5. RGRobert Greene1:17:33

       You don't need it. You've got your husband.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:17:34

       I think that might be why. I might not-

    7. RGRobert Greene1:17:35

       But it's, um-

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:17:36

       I might not-

    9. RGRobert Greene1:17:37

       It's a very good book for marketing.

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:17:39

        I should really read it again. I think I read it back in the day, and I probably need to read it again because marketing is hard. And so-

    11. RGRobert Greene1:17:48

        Hm. So is seduction.

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:17:49

        Yeah. I did like... There's a part, Seduction, where you say, "Seducers are completely amoral."

    13. RGRobert Greene1:17:56

        Yes.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:17:56

        "Moralists secretly envy them."

    15. RGRobert Greene1:17:59

        Yes.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:18:00

        "And that seduction is deception that people want anyway."

    17. RGRobert Greene1:18:04

        You know, people think of seduction as kind of evil, all right? Now, I use the word amoral, but I don't mean amoral as immoral. I mean, it's, you know, the, the famous expression, "All's fair in love and war," right? Okay. So seduction is this realm where you're taken outside yourself 'cause we're trapped in our bodies, we're trapped in our egos, we're trapped in our tiny little selves, our little world, and along comes this person, and they draw us out of that world, and they draw us into something else, into their reality, into a world that's theatrical. It's a little bit heightened in which there's possibly love involved, there's possibly sex involved, there's drama, there's theater, and we all wanna be taken outside of ourselves, right? When you were a child, one of the greatest pleasures you had was getting on the shoulders of your father, and he would walk you all around, and you never knew where you were going. You were laughing hysterically. Where is he taking you? The idea of somebody taking you to some place you don't know is the art of seduction, right? We all want it. And the moralists who crow, "Oh God, it's so evil, I don't want it," are secretly dying to be seduced. There's the legend of, of the prudish woman who like, "God, I, I, I don't want seduction. No way, man. That's not my world. Forget it." They're the most easily seduced by the, by the rebel, by the rake, by the rock star, right? Because everybody secretly wants to be taken outside of themselves, and the more who those who are so closed say, "No, I don't want anything of that," are actually trying to deceive themselves because they want it all the more. And so there's a quote in there, I think it's Natalie Barney, that when somebody resists seduction, that means you must seduce them even harder. Seduction requires even more seducing, or something to that effect. I am butchering every quote today. [laughs]

    18. CSCodie Sanchez1:20:07

        It sounded great to me. [laughs]

    19. RGRobert Greene1:20:09

        [laughs]

    20. CSCodie Sanchez1:20:09

        I was, I was getting-

    21. RGRobert Greene1:20:11

        Yeah

    22. CSCodie Sanchez1:20:11

        ... seduced by the story.

    23. RGRobert Greene1:20:12

        Oh, okay, okay.

    24. CSCodie Sanchez1:20:13

        Which actually is, is interesting because, and maybe I wanna end somewhere on this, because it, it sums back to things that we've said a few different ways, but, like, it seems like seduction, if it is just marketing, storytelling, listening, um, you know, presenting a different side, showing adventure, all the things you talk about with the different archetypes of The Art of Seduction, um, you also talk about The Art of Seduction is about choosing the right person to seduce.

    25. RGRobert Greene1:20:45

        Victim.

    26. CSCodie Sanchez1:20:46

        Yeah, [laughs] exactly.

    27. RGRobert Greene1:20:47

        I use the word victim.

    28. CSCodie Sanchez1:20:48

        And how do you choose who the easiest to seduce is, or who has the weakest mind?

22. 1:20:55 – 1:24:19

    The Art of Seduction: Choosing the Hardest Target and Loving the Hunt

    1. RGRobert Greene1:20:55

       You don't wanna choose the easiest person. You wanna choose the hardest because that's where the fun is, i- is, right? So in, in the famous novel Dangerous Liaisons, probably the greatest novel of seduction, which is told in letters, the, uh, seducer, Valmont, is one of the greatest seducers, I mean, it's fiction, uh, you know, in, in this book. He's a, a master seducer, and he meets this woman who's a complete prude, the Presidente Tourvel, who is so Christian, so pious, so religious. She sees Valmont. She knows of his reputation. She hates him. She won't have anything to do with him, even though they're, they're vacationing in the same, like, chateau, because they're, they have this common relative. She's trying to avoid him, and he goes, "That is precisely who I must seduce. I've been seducing all these women my, my life, and they're so easy, and I'm so bored. I'm gonna take this woman who's the most prudish of them all, whose reputation for piety is the most glorious, is as, her reputation is as sterling as mine is for being bad. I'm gonna be the one to seduce her." And in the course of seducing her, which he does, it's in a marvelous story, he becomes seduced by her. He literally falls in love with her, as it happens, and he never wanted to, though, 'cause a great seducer has to be in control of himself, although I think that's a myth. Um, b- because once he starts falling in love with her, she now realizes that maybe he's weaker than he pretended to be, and she lets down her guard, and so this kind of back-and-forth dynamic occurs. But oftentimes, you gotta choose someone that's, that excites you in some elemental way because it has to be fun, and it has to be... You want the end result to be something very satisfying. So it can't be just somebody you're not attracted to. But a great seducer loves the challenge, loves the hunt, to use a male metaphor to speak more of the male side of seduction. Yeah.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:23:10

       Yeah. Although these days, all the tables are flipping.

    3. RGRobert Greene1:23:13

       They certainly are.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:23:14

       You know? I'm married, so I'm out of the game, but I hear, I hear of it all from my, uh-

    5. RGRobert Greene1:23:18

       Okay

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:23:18

       ... from my-

    7. RGRobert Greene1:23:19

       Well, you know, being married doesn't mean you stop seducing.

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:23:22

       That's a good point. That's a very good point.

    9. RGRobert Greene1:23:25

       You know?

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:23:25

        No, actually, that would be bad. My husband-

    11. RGRobert Greene1:23:27

        Well-

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:23:27

        ... would not like me to stop.

    13. RGRobert Greene1:23:28

        Well, and you wouldn't want him to stop.

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:23:30

        No, that's true. And, like, what a... Yeah, that's very true. And I guess in anything, even the seduction of we're trying to hire a new person that I really want on the team right now, and so the second I leave you, I have to go call her, and I was telling my husband, I was like, "Well, if she has doubts, that means we haven't sold her the dream well enough. We haven't explained to her how this ecosystem that we live in, she would be even more powerful than-"

    15. RGRobert Greene1:23:57

        Well, is she excited about the job?

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:23:58

        I think she's excited, but she's, she's very good. So as anybody who's very good-

    17. RGRobert Greene1:24:04

        Oh, I see

    18. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:04

        ... she should be careful about leaving something that's quite good-

    19. RGRobert Greene1:24:07

        I see. I see

    20. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:08

        ... to go to something that's newer.

    21. RGRobert Greene1:24:09

        Okay.

    22. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:10

        And so we have to seduce her to take more risk.

    23. RGRobert Greene1:24:13

        Okay. Okay.

    24. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:14

        Do you have any tips? [laughs]

    25. RGRobert Greene1:24:15

        [laughs]

    26. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:16

        How should I seduce her? [laughs]

23. 1:24:19 – 1:30:39

    Business Seduction: How to Recruit Top Talent by Selling Adventure

    1. RGRobert Greene1:24:19

       Well, um, it would depend on her history and where she is right now-

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:24

       Hmm

    3. RGRobert Greene1:24:24

       ... and what she's lacking. So one of the main tenets in The Art of Seduction is you can't seduce someone who's completely happy.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:34

       Yeah, that's good.

    5. RGRobert Greene1:24:35

       Right? They have no needs. They have no desires. They're just so happy with what they've got that you have no opening to start seducing them. So they have to have something that's missing, something that they're not getting at their current job.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:49

       Yeah.

    7. RGRobert Greene1:24:49

       I don't know what that is 'cause I don't know the details of it, but it could be-

    8. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:53

       I think she's bored, and I think it's-

    9. RGRobert Greene1:24:55

       Okay, you're-

    10. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:55

        ... not enough risk.

    11. RGRobert Greene1:24:56

        Ok- not enough risk?

    12. CSCodie Sanchez1:24:58

        Yeah, like there's not enough upside. There's not enough adventure. There's not enough skin in the game.

    13. RGRobert Greene1:25:03

        Well, you're gonna be... That's what you have to offer. There's, there, right there, you've just told me exactly where, where you need to apply it. You need to create a sense of this is gonna be exciting, pleasurable, adventurous. There's gonna be risk involved. You're gonna be learning more. You're gonna be going to a whole other level that you- Maybe you're not making as much money. I don't know what the, that part is. But man, you're gonna be learning so much more, and we're gonna be having so much fun together. It's gonna be... I don't know if she's in, like, a boring corporate job that's very secure-

    14. CSCodie Sanchez1:25:33

        Exactly

    15. RGRobert Greene1:25:33

        ... and safe.

    16. CSCodie Sanchez1:25:34

        Yeah.

    17. RGRobert Greene1:25:35

        And maybe, unfortunately, that might be part of what she likes. I don't know.

    18. CSCodie Sanchez1:25:40

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    19. RGRobert Greene1:25:40

        May be part of the resistance.

    20. CSCodie Sanchez1:25:42

        Probably. I think change is usually hard for people. Um, do you ever do the anti-sell? Like, you should not come here if... And does that play into the rules of seduction?

    21. RGRobert Greene1:25:55

        What would that be?

    22. CSCodie Sanchez1:25:56

        Like, sometimes I might say, like, "You would never wanna come work here if you don't wanna chart your own path, and you don't wanna build the business as you want to, if you wanna be sort of told what to do, and you want to fall within norms."

    23. RGRobert Greene1:26:11

        That, that's not a very seductive approach.

    24. CSCodie Sanchez1:26:13

        Oh, okay. Tell me a more s-

    25. RGRobert Greene1:26:14

        [laughs]

    26. CSCodie Sanchez1:26:14

        I love this. You're like my 50 Cent. Stop nodding, Codie.

    27. RGRobert Greene1:26:17

        [laughs]

    28. CSCodie Sanchez1:26:17

        You're nodding way too much.

    29. RGRobert Greene1:26:20

        Well, emphasizing the negative, the words might be true, but the body language and what you're saying and how you're, like, communicating it and-

    30. CSCodie Sanchez1:26:30

        Not good
24. 1:30:39 – 1:32:27

    Favorite Stories: The Chauvet Cave and Connecting to 37,000 Years of Humanity

    1. RGRobert Greene1:30:39

       Yeah, I have this one story, um, that I think people are gonna like about these people who were exploring caves in France. They're spelunkers, if you will, and there are all these incredible caves in the south of France. And they come upon by accident this insanely magnificent cave with all these wall paintings from the Upper Paleolithic period 37,000 years ago, and the environment of the cave is completely pristine. They're the first people to see it in 37,000 years. It's a very famous cave. It's called Chauvet Cave. You can go look it up on the internet now, and if you look it up, you will be aghast at how beautiful the images are, the lions, the rhinoceros, the horses, the bears, everything. It's astounding. And they came upon this, and there are these handprints on the wall from the people, and they could feel the ghosts of these people still vibrating in this space, even though these kind... They're not woo-woo type people. It was like this mystical experience of 37,000 years ago suddenly present, and, uh, I think that's one of my, my favorite stories in there.

    2. CSCodie Sanchez1:31:56

       Oh, that's beautiful. New book is out. Powerseductionandwar.com is where you get it and pre-order it. I got an advance copy, and so I know firsthand it's very worth reading. It's a beautiful book. I love how in this world it doesn't sound like anything else. All of your books are just so uniquely you.

    3. RGRobert Greene1:32:14

       Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

    4. CSCodie Sanchez1:32:15

       Well, Robert Greene, thank you so much for being here today.

    5. RGRobert Greene1:32:17

       Thank you so much, Codie. I really appreciate the opportunity. I really enjoyed it.

    6. CSCodie Sanchez1:32:20

       Me too. Such a joy. [outro music]

Episode duration: 1:32:27