Joe Rogan Experience #1158 - Chuck Palahniuk

1. 0:03 – 2:22

   Cold open: Meeting Chuck, dark humor, and a Cape Cod mix-up

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:03

      Four, three, two, one. (claps) And we're live. How are you, Chuck?

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk0:09

      I am great. Look at this place.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      Thanks for being here, man. Appreciate it.

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk0:13

      Ha. Thank you.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      I've read your books, I've, I've watched movies based on your books, so it's very cool to meet you in real life.

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk0:19

      It's always a disappointment, it is always so heartbreaking, because people expect somebody, uh, somebody so not me. And I am constantly breaking their heart when they meet me.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:31

      Well, I expect you, so you're not breaking my heart at all. I'm very pleased to meet you. So I didn't have any weirdo expectations or any delusions of who you are.

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk0:41

      And don't, just, just, just, don't, don't-

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:43

      (laughs)

   10. CPChuck Palahniuk0:43

       ... kill yourself, okay?

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:45

       (laughs)

   12. CPChuck Palahniuk0:46

       I meet Anthony Bourdain and he kills himself.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:49

       Well, I think there was a lot of other factors involved there.

   14. CPChuck Palahniuk0:52

       I, no, I don't know. I, I see this-

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:54

       (laughs)

   16. CPChuck Palahniuk0:55

       ... so many of my peers, it's like the, the moment I meet them, boom, they're gone.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:59

       Um, yeah, I'm, I'm not gonna do that, okay? So don't worry, everything's fine. Um, listen, I wanna talk to you about a bunch of things. First of all, uh, I, I would love to talk to you about your writing process, 'cause one of the, one of the things that I read once is, uh, I believe you were writing down ... It was on the cape, it was in Massachusetts? Were you ever writing down there?

   18. CPChuck Palahniuk1:20

       That-

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:20

       Were you, were you ever writing somewhere-

   20. CPChuck Palahniuk1:22

       (laughs)

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:22

       ... where you made a deal with yourself where you wouldn't turn the heat on unless you were writing?

   22. CPChuck Palahniuk1:26

       Oh my gosh, you think I'm a white person, don't you?

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:29

       A white person?

   24. CPChuck Palahniuk1:29

       That is so weird. The cape? The cape?

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:31

       You never been to the Cape Cod?

   26. CPChuck Palahniuk1:33

       That's like in England.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:34

       Is that all white people?

   28. CPChuck Palahniuk1:34

       That's in England, right?

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:36

       New England.

   30. CPChuck Palahniuk1:36

       New England.
2. 2:22 – 4:15

   Ambien stories and altered-state behavior as creative fuel

   1. CPChuck Palahniuk2:22

      Ambien much lately?

   2. JRJoe Rogan2:23

      No, I don't. Any. At all. I just sleep. I'm fortunate in that regard.

   3. CPChuck Palahniuk2:29

      All right.

   4. JRJoe Rogan2:29

      You don't take that shit, do you?

   5. CPChuck Palahniuk2:31

      Of course I do.

   6. JRJoe Rogan2:32

      Do you?

   7. CPChuck Palahniuk2:32

      Yeah, three times a day.

   8. JRJoe Rogan2:34

      Oh, you're fucking with me.

   9. CPChuck Palahniuk2:35

      No.

   10. JRJoe Rogan2:36

       We got, we got started off poorly, now you're-

   11. CPChuck Palahniuk2:38

       Once a day.

   12. JRJoe Rogan2:38

       ... fucking with me. (laughs)

   13. CPChuck Palahniuk2:40

       (wheezes) Once a day.

   14. JRJoe Rogan2:41

       Do you really take Ambien?

   15. CPChuck Palahniuk2:42

       Yeah, you know, to tell the truth, just before I wanna t- do anything I don't wanna do, it's like a sh- elves and the shoemaker thing, it's I don't wanna do my taxes so I take Ambien. And then I wake up and my taxes are done.

   16. JRJoe Rogan2:55

       Oh.

   17. CPChuck Palahniuk2:55

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan2:55

       And do you have plausible deniability too? If you can get videotape of you taking Ambien.

   19. CPChuck Palahniuk3:00

       People have committed murder on Ambien and gotten off-

   20. JRJoe Rogan3:03

       Yeah.

   21. CPChuck Palahniuk3:03

       ... because they had no memory.

   22. JRJoe Rogan3:05

       That is true. Yeah, it's, uh, hypnotic. We actually did a, a pretty in-depth discussion about that after the Roseanne Barr thing came out.

   23. CPChuck Palahniuk3:14

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan3:14

       'Cause my own mom, uh, has taken it, and she stopped taking it, but one of the reasons why she stopped taking it is 'cause she woke up in the middle of the night and, uh, she had a white bathroom mat, and she painted it with lipstick and makeup. She had no recollection of it whatsoever, but she painted it like a two-year-old would if they got a hold of their mom's lipstick. And she just woke up going, "What the fuck is, am I doing? Like, what is this?"

   25. CPChuck Palahniuk3:38

       Hey, she got off easy. I've heard, uh, war stories-

   26. JRJoe Rogan3:41

       Yeah.

   27. CPChuck Palahniuk3:41

       ... a hundred war stories.

   28. JRJoe Rogan3:41

       Oh, yeah, no, I, I, I have heard about murder, I've heard about people driving their car to someone's house, killing them, driving home-

   29. CPChuck Palahniuk3:47

       Mm-hmm.

   30. JRJoe Rogan3:47

       ... and having no recollection of it.
3. 4:15 – 4:58

   Palahniuk’s “field study” method: journalism instincts and harvesting real stories

   1. JRJoe Rogan4:15

      You, i- if it's fair to say, you, uh, it seems like your writing, like, one of the, your s- one of the ways you collect data is almost like you're reporting on these people. Like, you're, you're collecting real-life interactions between people and real-life characteristics, and then you incorporate them into fiction.

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk4:36

      Exactly.

   3. JRJoe Rogan4:37

      That's fair to say?

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk4:38

      My degree is journalism. I have no idea how to be with people, so I need to introduce a topic and see if it resonates, and then get everybody's take on these common experiences, and then pick the very best one. So in a way, basically what I'm doing is kind of a, an ongoing field study, uh, that becomes whatever my next book is.

4. 4:58 – 11:58

   Why Fight Club hit: men’s narratives, rough play, and the ‘secondary father’

   1. JRJoe Rogan4:58

      When you wrote Fight Club, you tapped into something that wa- it was really fascinating for me, uh, as someone who's been involved in martial arts my whole life and I, I, I, I'm ki- I've understood the cathartic release of violence, but I never saw it articulated the way you did. And you made it enticing for a thinking person. You made it, like ... You, what you did, you, you sort of opened up these, uh, these doors of understanding for someone who maybe, maybe had frustration or had some pent-up rage or had some, some angst that just was not going to get out any other way. And then you wrote about it. And then when you wrote, you're r- reading what you wrote, it ma- made you go, "Yeah, okay. Oh, all right." No, it's like you, you added an element to it that really didn't exist before in pop culture. It was really fascinating for me as, uh, uh, as someone who's wa- watching that whole thing unfurl and watching people get, like, really resonating with people, watching people really getting excited about your work. It's like, oh, he, he hit some nerve that n- nobody really hit before.

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk6:12

      Uh, and it's not a nerve that gets hit very much. You know, and it, it ... There's so many different aspects to it and one is just my classic thing is that there are so few social model novels or stories for men. For, for women there are a s- you know, every season there's a new Joy Luck Club, a new How to Make an American Quilt, a new Traveling Sisterhood of the Ya-Ya-Ha Pants-

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:37

      (laughs)

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk6:37

      ... whatever. Just all these different models in which women can come together and talk about their lives. And if you're a man, you've got either Fight Club or you have The Dead Poets Society. And that is really it. So we don't have a lot of narratives that, that depict to men a role or a kind of script, uh, you know, uh, in which to come together and talk about their sh- their shit. Uh, another thing is, uh, Jordan Peterson, back to Jordan Peterson. He talks about that need for really rough play, and he talks about it a lot. And a lot of my friends, they, they, they brag about how badly their kids hurt them. "Oh my gosh, my daughter came at me the other day. I had no idea how strong she was. She pulled my arm out of the socket." And they're proud. They're proud that their kid can play that rough and is growing up that strong. But, you know, we've kind of fallen away from this idea of consensual rough play, and I think Fight Club resonated with that a lot. And also the idea of Joseph Campbell's idea, that there needs to be a secondary father in men's lives, that you're born, if you're lucky, with a biological father that you do not choose, and that is the nurturing, loving father that you eventually kind of have to reject. But in doing so, you have to choose a new father, and that, that father by choice typically is a, a minister or a teacher or a drill sergeant or a coach, one of those fathers, and you kind of put yourself in apprenticeship to the secondary father, and you have to sort of consign your life to the secondary father and agree to learn what they're gonna teach you. Uh, just like in Karate Kid.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:25

      Mm.

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk8:26

      And that is getting harder and harder and harder to find. So Fight Club was also depicting a new form of the secondary father with all these, these kids that were showing up on the doorstep of this ramshackle old house. So there were just so many aspects of men's lives that were not being addressed when Fight Club came out, and it sort of reinvented so many of those things that had fallen by the wayside.

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:51

      That's a huge part of martial arts. A huge part of martial arts is your relationship with the master, with the coach, with, uh, finding someone who can guide you through the, the most dangerous waters, uh, of competition. That it's, it's absolutely imperative. The bad relationships with coaches are absolutely disastrous, and it, it's, it's imperative that someone find the right coach, find someone who they, they really can trust and appreciate, and you do develop ... It's a c- so- such a common theme. They talk about this person being like a son, or this person being like a father, you know? I mean, it's, um, it's, uh, uh, uh, I never thought about it that way. I, I forgot about that part of Joseph Campbell. But, yeah, that i- that is a huge, huge issue with, with young men, and, um, young men getting into martial arts is something that I- I've talked about so many times. I, I don't discuss it as the need for rough play. I, I say there's human reward systems that are just not being, uh, they're, they're not being met, and that systems that have been in place for thousands and thousands of years that are designed to reward us for fighting off the enemy, running away from danger, d- d- developing physical skills and having a body that's capable of, of, of not just, uh, physical activity but violence.

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk10:06

      Well, and, and beyond just that, you know, it's also just the whole, uh, idea of apprenticeship, you know? Whether you're apprenticing yourself to a fighting coach or to a metallurgist or to a welder or to a bricklayer or to a mason, you are apprenticing yourself to somebody that you're gonna do all this grunt work for, but in, in exchange you're gonna, you're gonna learn a kind of really master skill at something.

   9. JRJoe Rogan10:31

      Mm.

   10. CPChuck Palahniuk10:31

       And so it's a way of mastering yourself as you master this other thing. So, you know, it, it's not just always a, a physical, you know, fighting thing. It doesn't have to be in that form.

   11. JRJoe Rogan10:45

       Just difficult. Something that's a struggle. Something that's hard to, to learn.

   12. CPChuck Palahniuk10:50

       Right.

   13. JRJoe Rogan10:50

       Yeah. And that relationship that you have with that secondary father too, th- it's almost in, in some ways more intense. The, the, the pride of someone teaching you something and then you eventually developing those skills, and then this person who is teaching you this being proud of your work is extremely satisfactory.

   14. CPChuck Palahniuk11:10

       Well, and do you remember Officer and Gentlemen?

   15. JRJoe Rogan11:13

       Yeah.

   16. CPChuck Palahniuk11:13

       You know, uh, Richard Gere really has this drunken, this not there dad, and then he has this drill sergeant who's constantly trying to wash him out, and then finally he reaches uh, the existential crisis of saying, "You can't throw me out of the service because I have no- nothing else. I have nowhere else to go in the world. My life will amount to nothing unless I can master this thing." And he's a relatively young man, but it is that existentialistic moment where you, you realize that you have to sacrifice your youth for something. You're not gonna live forever. It's a very Martin Heidegger moment where you realize you have to become a being living towards death. You're not gonna live forever, and you've got to give your life to something.

5. 11:58 – 13:47

   Idea selection & beta-testing at parties: when anecdotes trigger competing stories

   1. JRJoe Rogan11:58

      Now when you approach a novel like that, when you have a story like that that's brewing in your head, how do you decide w- what to pull the trigger on? Like do you just go on instinct? Do, do you just have a, a concept in your head and it just seems more and more attractive and you just say, "Okay, this is it"?

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk12:16

      You know, one really good test is if you can take it to a party and you can tell a very small part of it, as much of it as you know at that point, and people will vie for a chance to relate some aspect of their life that is very much like that, but an even more extreme example of that. So in a way, they're, they're, they're fleshing out your theme with parts of their own lives, and so you find yourself drawing from the experience of dozens or hundreds or thousands of people, and at the same time, you're beta testing it. You're kind of taking it on the road and you're seeing that it's an idea that reso- resonates with a, a huge number of people, that everyone can relate to it.

   3. JRJoe Rogan13:00

      Hmm. That's interesting. So do you purposely, like, go to parties with, like, uh, a, a couple, like, bullets in the chamber?

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk13:08

      Sometimes. Or sometimes I just go to the party and I listen to hear somebody tell that, that personal anecdote that does evoke all those other anecdotes. Because a great anecdote doesn't leave people speechless, it leaves them competing-

   5. JRJoe Rogan13:24

      Ah.

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk13:24

      ... to tell a better version of the same thing. And that's when a real writer just starts realizing, "Okay, there's a pattern, and that can be turned into something really big."

   7. JRJoe Rogan13:34

      That's really interesting. There's a parallel there with comedy, for sure. That s- if you ... in good material, oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes you'll see the audience going, "Oh my God, you do that," or ...

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk13:46

      Yeah.

6. 13:47 – 20:28

   Censorship and self-censorship in writing circles: words, taboos, and marketability

   1. JRJoe Rogan13:47

      That's fascinating. Now, um, another thing I really wanted to talk to you about is something that you brought up, uh, when you sent the notes to Matt, uh, was, um, censorship, and that ... and, and, and self-censorship, which is going on, apparently, in writer groups, and, and groups of people that are deciding that certain words should be eliminated from a vocabulary and from vernacular, and that you shouldn't discuss certain things anymore, that these things are, uh, uh ... It's harming fiction and harming literature, that you can't explore the darker ideas.

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk14:20

      You know, oh ... You wanna see me crucify myself right now?

   3. JRJoe Rogan14:25

      Yeah.

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk14:25

      Okay. (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan14:27

      (laughs)

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk14:27

      This is kind of the, uh, career-ending moment. For, um, for several years, I was in a writer's workshop and, uh, the core group of us had been meeting since 1990, so this is a workshop that was almost 30 years old. And gradually, people were asking each other not to use certain words. Uh, first, you know, uh, nobody really used the N-word, but it was definitely a word you could not bring to workshop. And then I, in a story, I used the word faggot, and a very good friend of mine said, "You're not bringing that word into workshop. You're not writing anything with the F-word." And, and it just became more and more tightly strictured that way. And so eventually I realized we were kind of writing to em- make each other happy instead of to kind of confront each other. And, uh, one of the writers in our workshop is a writer named Cheryl Strayed, who wr- who had written a book called Wild, which was a hugely successful book. It was chosen as an Oprah book and it will be on book store shelves for the rest of history, Cheryl's book, Wild. But while she was writing it, she had written a segment about how as a child she would be sat on the sofa with her grandfather and her f- grandfather taught her how to masturbate him. And so as a child she would masturbate her grandfather until he achieved orgasm. And then later she would find these featherless, featherless birds that had fallen out of a nest and she picked one up and she knew it would die, so she crushed it between her bare hands. This is a very small child. And she wrote how as that bird died crushed between her hands, it, its death throes, its spasms of death felt exactly like her grandfather's penis ejaculating in her little hand.

   7. JRJoe Rogan16:34

      Whoa.

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk16:35

      That was the best thing she ever wrote. And her editor at Knopf said, "That is not going in this book because we want this book to be a big book, and if we see you jerking off your grandfather and then killing baby birds, that is not gonna make Oprah Winfrey happy." So it was a magnificent piece of writing and a magnificent kind of parallel and awareness for a child to have. And this juxtaposition of sexual abuse and death was magnificent. Oh my God, it worked on every level. But the publisher said, "This is not gonna be in the book."

   9. JRJoe Rogan17:18

      Did she send it to you or did she show it to you?

   10. CPChuck Palahniuk17:20

       She brought it to workshop and she read it. And there was even a newspaper reporter pre- uh, present there. And we all realized it was fantastically powerful. But then she said, "Uh, they won't take this. This can't go in."

   11. JRJoe Rogan17:37

       Wow. Did she do anything with it? Did she publish it online or ...

   12. CPChuck Palahniuk17:41

       No, and, and there were so many parts of that book that were so much better than what they actually did publish.

   13. JRJoe Rogan17:47

       Really?

   14. CPChuck Palahniuk17:48

       And, and so it's that kind of censorship where you're trying to reach a reader standing in line at Starbucks, and this has got to go in that, uh, point of purchase stand and it's gotta be a face out. And I understand for a long time if you wanted a face out at, uh, Barnes & Noble, especially on the Discover New Writers face out stack, you could not have the word fuck on the first page because they did not want people picking up that book and opening it and seeing the F-word, that that just did not fit their corporate culture.And so, you know, so much of the censorship is, is because people really wanna reach the largest audience, uh, without offending people.

   15. JRJoe Rogan18:35

       Whew. But there's giant problems with that, right? I mean, one of the more fascinating things about books is that the story plays out in your mind.

   16. CPChuck Palahniuk18:48

       Exactly. The nature of consumption makes it about the only medium which, in which you can go to those places.

   17. JRJoe Rogan18:55

       Yeah, literally. You, you couldn't ... There's no way you would be able to find the, I mean, to put that in a book, her story about her grandfather and the bird. Maybe you could put the bird in, but the grandfather part, there's just no way.

   18. CPChuck Palahniuk19:13

       Yeah. You know, and I, I, I, I, I feel like I'm telling stories out of school, but it's such a perfect example of that kind of self-censorship. Uh, and it's also something so magnificent that I feel it should come out. It should sort of be stated. Uh, I don't wanna steal her thunder. I, I, I wanna honor the story. But it's like so many stories that people tell me. Uh, I'm kind of seen as a safe person, you know, kind of a degraded monster maybe. But as a degraded monster with no self-esteem whatsoever, they feel (laughs) safe telling me these things because in a way, they, they probably feel a little morally superior to me.

   19. JRJoe Rogan19:52

       (laughs)

   20. CPChuck Palahniuk19:53

       Um-

   21. JRJoe Rogan19:54

       Why do you think people would consider you a degraded monster?

   22. CPChuck Palahniuk19:57

       Because I can read a story like Guts that is so completely humiliating, because as I read it, it's in the first person, so people more or less assume that it's my story even though-

   23. JRJoe Rogan20:10

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CPChuck Palahniuk20:11

       ... the story's garnered from many different people. But the fact that I'm presenting it means that I'm the person that is, that is losing face. And afterwards, people feel like they can risk losing face by telling me their story that's very much like, uh, the Guts story.

7. 20:28 – 22:09

   Writing as a trap: ‘Guts,’ shock pacing, and the ethics of upsetting readers

   1. JRJoe Rogan20:28

      So, when someone is writing something that's deeply disturbing like that, when you, when you, when you hit those parts of your mind and you come to this pathway, do, do you consider, do you say, "Well, no one's ever gonna allow this to be in a book. No one's ever ..." Uh, uh, do you consider those thoughts or do you just go through with it first and then review it, or do you d- not do that at all?

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk20:52

      You know, I, my formative years were the punk years, the '70s into the '80s, and we always used to have a saying. People would say, "Uh, don't hit the brake until you hear a glass break," or, "Don't stop until you hear a glass break." And so, I always think the point of writing is to coach yourself to that point that you would never have gone voluntarily, and also to coach your reader to the point where the reader would never have gone voluntarily. In a story like Guts, you know, it's very funny on the front end and if you told people on the front end where it was gonna go, they'd never read that story. But it's very funny and charming and well-paced on the front. And then once people realize where it's gonna go, they're already trapped. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan21:40

      (laughs)

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk21:40

      And so in a way, it's, it's a way-

   5. JRJoe Rogan21:42

      You seem to enjoy that, though. Your, like, the way you said they're already trapped, you seem to take some satisfaction in that.

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk21:48

      But in writing it, I'm also sort of springing the trap on myself.

   7. JRJoe Rogan21:53

      Hm.

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk21:54

      Starting down a path that I have no idea is gonna be so humiliating or so, uh, emotionally upsetting or so dark. Because if, if I did, I would never go d- go down that path.

8. 22:09 – 26:01

   How Palahniuk actually writes: gym plotting, notebooks, planes, and ‘typing vs writing’

   1. JRJoe Rogan22:09

      When you write a story like that, how much of it do you plan out in advance?

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk22:14

      I might plan out up to the, the end of the second act. You know, at the moment of greatest crisis, this will happen. You know, in Fight Club, the moment of greatest crisis is gonna be when everyone in the support groups figures out that this guy is lying to them and they're all given the choice of either accepting him for his transgressions or rejecting him. Same thing in Choke. There's gonna be that moment in, uh, when people realize that he has faked choking and that he's made them into a fake hero and they're gonna either kill him or accept him. And so, I typically know that the second act is gonna end with the transgression being revealed. But beyond that, I don't wanna know because I want the story-

   3. JRJoe Rogan23:05

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk23:05

      ... to complete itself with its own momentum at that point. And if it doesn't surprise me beyond the second act, then it's not gonna surprise the reader.

   5. JRJoe Rogan23:14

      Do you write, do you have like a storyboard laid out and do you, do you use like index cards or anything to figure out where things are going or do you just kinda ... No?

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk23:23

      Uh, no. You know, that's part of the glory is that whenever I get stuck, I go to the gym and I say, "Okay, this, I'm working on this scene where this happens and this happens and this happens." And my friends will say, there'll always be somebody there with a really fresh take and life experience who can say, "Well, have you thought about this happening?" And it will take the story in a direction that is so unexpected because it's not from my experience and that, that's the glory. And they feel like they've contributed. They're, they're so happy and, uh, and I'm happy to spend time among people and I'm happy to have the story complete in a way that I never ever could have anticipated.

   7. JRJoe Rogan24:05

      That's fascinating. So, you do it at the gym?

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk24:07

      Yeah, the gym is really great because you're around people and you have these recoveries between sets, so you have a little time to talk and at the same time you have, uh, during the exercise itself you have time to think.

   9. JRJoe Rogan24:20

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CPChuck Palahniuk24:21

       And so it paces the talking versus the thinking.... and it's also kind of highly oxygenated and it's physically active. And your mind is kind of, you know, y- your mind is not engaged with something else. Your mind is kind of disengaged like it is while you're taking a shower.

   11. JRJoe Rogan24:39

       Yeah, a lot of people like to walk. They like to read, uh, write, read a little bit of it, and then walk and, uh, bring a recorder or their phone to record on. I think probably along the same lines.

   12. CPChuck Palahniuk24:49

       Charles Dickens walked somewhere between 12 and 20 miles a day as he wrote.

   13. JRJoe Rogan24:56

       Whoa.

   14. CPChuck Palahniuk24:56

       And the, uh, the Lakeland poets walked constantly. I mean, walking is a big part of writing.

   15. JRJoe Rogan25:02

       Anything physical, right? Like, anything where you're forcing your body to move, forcing the blood to flow.

   16. CPChuck Palahniuk25:07

       And, and also mindless-

   17. JRJoe Rogan25:08

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CPChuck Palahniuk25:09

       ... so it allows your mind to wander.

   19. JRJoe Rogan25:11

       Yeah. Uh, th- So I, I love the fact that you're so open with these ideas too, that you, you bring them to people and get their take on it, and then incorporate their take. Is this something you've always done because of the w- workshopping? Is it because just that this willingness to be open with your ideas and express 'em?

   20. CPChuck Palahniuk25:32

       Yeah. Th- Uh, really, you know, workshop was the, the crucial thing, having that social expectation that you were gonna bring work every week. And it was also kind of a party, a reward for having brought the work. And it was also a, a way of testing the work, so that you knew whether it was working, you know? You weren't constantly sort of questioning yourself. Uh, th- uh, workshop just provides so many really important ways of, uh, keeping write- keeping you writing.

9. 26:01 – 40:08

   Workshops imploding: being kicked out, ‘safety’ language, and the sedative-book debate

   1. JRJoe Rogan26:01

      Now, uh, w- and you've done this always. It seems like you've done this most of your career.

   2. CPChuck Palahniuk26:06

      I have, and this is not the first workshop I've been bumped out of. The first workshop I was in was a very... a lot of very nice ladies, and I was probably 28. And I had written a scene in which, uh, a man, a young man has done up a, an inflatable sex doll so it looks exactly like the woman he's obsessed with. And during the, the seduction of this sex doll he accidentally snags the back of it with the zipper of its dress and he realizes during the fornication that it is gradually losing air. So he's got to copulate faster and faster to try to achieve orgasm before this thing completely goes flat. And at the end of the scene he's standing there with this completely deflated sex doll hanging off of his erection like this, uh, the surrender flag-

   3. JRJoe Rogan26:59

      (laughs)

   4. CPChuck Palahniuk27:00

      ... and of course his mother walks into the room. And after I wrote that scene the leader of the workshop I was in, my first workshop, she took me aside afterwards and she said, uh, "The other writers in the workshop no longer feel safe around you."

   5. JRJoe Rogan27:18

      (laughs)

   6. CPChuck Palahniuk27:19

      She really did. She-

   7. JRJoe Rogan27:21

      (laughs)

   8. CPChuck Palahniuk27:21

      She said, "You've written something that really frightens them-"

   9. JRJoe Rogan27:24

      Oh.

   10. CPChuck Palahniuk27:25

       "... and they would like you to, uh, politely, uh, leave the workshop and not come back."

   11. JRJoe Rogan27:30

       Wow.

   12. CPChuck Palahniuk27:31

       And so that's when I started with, uh, Tom Spanbauer's workshop in which almost anything went. Um, and so this kind of periodic implosion of the workshop, uh, is, is kinda part of the process.

   13. JRJoe Rogan27:45

       Well, it seems only twice, right? Or more, more times than that?

   14. CPChuck Palahniuk27:48

       You know, it's been twice, uh, but in the past-

   15. JRJoe Rogan27:51

       Twice catastrophic?

   16. CPChuck Palahniuk27:53

       Twice catastrophic, yeah, yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan27:54

       But a few other flat tires along the way?

   18. CPChuck Palahniuk27:58

       Uh, periodically we- we've kind of had to, uh, pretend that we were disbanding in order to get rid of a member who was, uh, uh, just more trouble than they were worth.

   19. JRJoe Rogan28:07

       How many people are in these workshops?

   20. CPChuck Palahniuk28:09

       Boy, lately it's been... last it was about eight, but we've been up to, like, 16, 17. And now when I teach I typically have about 25 people.

   21. JRJoe Rogan28:18

       Uh, uh, what does it feel... I mean, l- to be in a workshop for that long and then have such a, a, a disagreement and to disband like that, or to have you forced out, what does that feel like? That's gotta suck.

   22. CPChuck Palahniuk28:32

       Y- No. You know, I, I think in a way we all need a kind of a respite from each other.

   23. JRJoe Rogan28:35

       Mm-hmm.

   24. CPChuck Palahniuk28:36

       We all had kind of... knew what to expect from one another, and I think we were all less, less of a resource for one another. Uh, you know, there's always a chance we'll come back together so, uh, so it's not a big tragedy.

   25. JRJoe Rogan28:51

       So there's a chance that they might... So did they kick you out or did they just disband?

   26. CPChuck Palahniuk28:56

       I left the workshop and I understood that it disbanded ri- after that.

   27. JRJoe Rogan29:01

       That seems... I just don't understand how someone who is a creative writer can't understand the, the n- not just the, the necessity, like the need to delve into the darker possibilities of, of human reality. I mean, th- this, the, the story she wrote about her grandfather and the bird is a perfect example of that. I mean, although very few people experience that in their life, we all can appreciate that these are possible scenarios.

   28. CPChuck Palahniuk29:31

       And I think, you know, it, it really comes down to what people, uh, what purpose reading and writing serves in peoples' lives. And most people, they want reading to be a comforting activity. They want to be able to read a book and then fall asleep knowing the detective will apprehend the killer by the end of the book-

   29. JRJoe Rogan29:49

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CPChuck Palahniuk29:49

       ... that things will end very well. In a way they want to be bored or lulled by the book. Uh, not so many people really want to be kind of confronted by books.
10. 40:08 – 53:50

    Transgression as permission: the Brownies heating pad story, bidets, and escalation mechanics

    1. CPChuck Palahniuk40:08

       They'll say, "Oh my gosh, that happened to you, too." And a lot of times, there are things that people have never ever talked about. Uh, I tell a classic anecdote. After I had read the, uh, the Guts story at an event, a woman came up and, uh, and she was a middle-aged woman. She was about my age. And she said, "I really loved that you read that story about how you, uh, got your anus prolapsed while masturbating in a swimming pool," which is not my story, but I'm the one that read it, so that's the one- I'm the one that they're picturing in this horrendous situation. And she says, "Since you can tell that story, I'm gonna tell you a story." And she said how when- when she was seven years old, she was in second grade and she was in a little organization called The Brownies, which is the precursors of- to the Girl Scouts. You- you wear a brown dress, little brown hat. You get these little merit badges. And she said, "One day, I had a stomach ache and my mom kept me home from school. And we had this heating pad, it must've been in the 1960s, and this heating pad had this vibrating function. And she put me face down on this heating pad on my stomach, and I fell asleep. And while I was asleep, this vibrating, warm heating pad must've slid down between my legs," she says, "because I woke up with the most amazing feeling. A feeling like I'd never felt before. Oh my God, it felt so good." And so next time it was my turn to host The Brownies, I said, "Brownies, you've gotta try this heating pad." And she says, "All the Brownies, they turned the heating pad on, the vibrating heating pad, and they rode it like a pony all afternoon."

    2. JRJoe Rogan42:11

       (laughs)

    3. CPChuck Palahniuk42:11

       And she said, "It was like Sex and the City for seven-year-old girls. They could not get enough of this heating pad. And they were all riding this heating pad and they had a great time." And she said, "And for the first time in my life, I was the most popular girl in my class, and I was the girl that all the girls wanted to play with. And for every Brownie troop meeting..."... it was at my house. And I was the leader, until the day that my mother came home from work early and she caught us with a heating pad. And she sent the other brownies home, and she whipped the cord out of the wall. She just ripped it out of the socket and she started to beat me with it. And she beat me with that cord and she beat me and she said, "You fucking piece of shit. You dirty whore. What kind of a fucking whore am I raising? You whore!" And she beat me and she beat me-

    4. JRJoe Rogan43:08

       (Exhales)

    5. CPChuck Palahniuk43:08

       ... and she says, this woman, who's my age now, she says, "I have not had an orgasm since I was seven years old." And then she goes, "But if you can tell that swimming pool story about how you got hurt jacking off underwater," she says, "I can tell my heating pad story. And I can tell that story until I can make it funny. And then maybe someday I can go back to my mom and I can say, 'Do you remember that heating pad we used to have?' And it'll be complete."

    6. JRJoe Rogan43:44

       Holy shit.

    7. CPChuck Palahniuk43:45

       And so see, see, see, see, that's what I'm trying to do.

    8. JRJoe Rogan43:49

       (exhales)

    9. CPChuck Palahniuk43:49

       I'm trying to create the opening for people to tell these stories that they, they never thought that they could tell, because that's the way in which they're gonna resolve these stories and they're gonna master these stories.

    10. JRJoe Rogan44:04

        We have these, um, um, bidet toilet things that have a little button on the wall. You press it, it shoots hot water up your ass. And, uh, my kids come over and, uh, they love these toilets. I have two daughters, and my youngest, when she was seven, she would sit on the toilet and she was laughing and giggling, and we didn't tell her there's anything wrong with it. So she was telling us how much she loves it, how much she loves the hot water when it shoots onto her butt. She's like, "It feels so good." And there was no shame in it. And there was this weird moment where I'm like, am I supposed to react to this? Am I supposed to say, "Yeah, I know, I like it too"?

    11. CPChuck Palahniuk44:53

        (laughs)

    12. JRJoe Rogan44:54

        Am I supposed to say, "Hey, don't do that too much"?

    13. CPChuck Palahniuk44:57

        (laughs)

    14. JRJoe Rogan44:58

        Am I supposed to say, "Don't tell anybody you like that. You can like it, but don't tell anybody you like it." Like, what am I supposed to do? And, uh, I didn't do anything. I just let her smile and she walked out of the bathroom laughing like it was great. And it was no, there was no issue, but it was this moment where I was like, wow, if I was a religious person or a suppressive person or some person with some sexual issues, this could be a real problem for this little girl. Instead, I was like, "Okay, let's get out of the bathroom now." (laughs)

    15. CPChuck Palahniuk45:32

        (laughs)

    16. JRJoe Rogan45:33

        I guess you're done, all righty. And she has no idea that this was even, like, a moment of, you know, crisis in my mind where I was like, okay, how do I handle this? I'm in the bathroom with my seven-year-old daughter just getting water shot up her ass and she's enjoying it. What-

    17. CPChuck Palahniuk45:51

        You, so you talk about it on the radio? Is that how you deal with it?

    18. JRJoe Rogan45:53

        I enjoy it too.

    19. CPChuck Palahniuk45:55

        (laughs) Sure.

    20. JRJoe Rogan45:55

        I enjoy it too. We all do. We talk about these toilets. They're amazing.

    21. CPChuck Palahniuk45:59

        (laughs)

    22. JRJoe Rogan45:59

        It's warm water. It shoots into your ear. It's great. It feels awesome. But it's not supposed to feel awesome for, like, a little girl for some reason, right?

    23. CPChuck Palahniuk46:09

        See, you tell that story and people will have so many versions of that story.

    24. JRJoe Rogan46:13

        Oh, yeah.

    25. CPChuck Palahniuk46:13

        For me, I was in Germany. I went in a bathroom in the airport. I didn't know what this button was, so I pressed it. I looked down just in time to see this little plastic arm swing out. I didn't know what that thing was gonna do. So I jumped off the head and this thing shot up with such force-

    26. JRJoe Rogan46:31

        (laughs)

    27. CPChuck Palahniuk46:31

        ... it knocked a ceiling panel out of the ceiling.

    28. JRJoe Rogan46:34

        (laughs)

    29. CPChuck Palahniuk46:34

        And all this hot toilet water came sprinkling down on me.

    30. JRJoe Rogan46:38

        Uh.
11. 53:50 – 1:09:55

    Audience backlash, banning, and ‘white-knighting’: Sedaris, boos, prisons, and cheap shots

    1. CPChuck Palahniuk53:50

       Well, uh, another aspect of that is that so often people aren't censoring it because it offends them, they're censoring it because they're afraid it will offend someone they know. They're doing it ... They're kind of white knighting on behalf of someone else. David Sedaris, uh, told me this story about, uh, telling a joke, uh, or something very funny about a girl in a wheelchair. And how he looked out in the audience and no one was laughing. They were all looking at a girl in a wheelchair. And the moment she started to laugh, the entire audience started to laugh.

    2. JRJoe Rogan54:27

       Oh, yeah.

    3. CPChuck Palahniuk54:27

       And so, so often people in a workshop, they might not personally feel offended by the word, but they're thinking how that word might hurt people they know.

    4. JRJoe Rogan54:38

       Yeah, that's a fact. Yeah. That's a, that's a giant issue in comedy if you... If someone's telling a joke, uh, if someone's on stage talking about someone who's fat and there's a fat person in the front row, that joke will bomb.

    5. CPChuck Palahniuk54:49

       Yeah.

    6. JRJoe Rogan54:50

       It just... Yeah. But that's 'cause people are good people overall, you know? They, they recognize that they don't wanna cause pain.

    7. CPChuck Palahniuk54:58

       Another really odd comic, David Sedaris story is that he always told me, uh, "When you're on the road, don't read from your current book. Always read from the next book, because it's a way of road testing the stories and finding out which ones work and should go into the next book." And in doing so, he was telling this story about being in this, uh, this forensic, uh, uh, laboratory as an, as an autopsy was taking place. And this autopsy table was adjacent to this, uh, this huge indoor window that separated the autopsy suite from this lunchroom. And in the lunchroom were the rest of the, uh, the forensic staff and they were all eating their lunches. They all had tuna sandwiches and, and cans of Coke and barbecued potato chips. And they were watching through the window as this absolutely perfect 12-year-old boy was being autopsied. And just hours before, this kid... Like, two hours before, this kid had been riding his bicycle. He'd fallen over, he'd hit his head on the curb, and now two hours later, he was dead. And dead without almost a scratch on him. Just this perfect, naked, dead 12-year-old boy on the autopsy table. And as he... The, the technicians eating their lunch, watching it through a window, th- they watch as the, uh, as the, uh, pathologist incises around the top of the kid's face, at the top of the forehead, the hairline, and then peels the face down like peeling an orange. Peels the entire face off of the skull of this little boy and leaves the face around the neck, like a mask, like a rubber mask.

    8. JRJoe Rogan56:46

       (laughs)

    9. CPChuck Palahniuk56:46

       And this exposes this liver-colored, dark red musculature of the child's underlying face. And this one guy watching it with a mouthful of tuna sandwich, he points this out and he says, "See that? That there? That's the color of red that I wanna paint our rec room."

    10. JRJoe Rogan57:06

        Holy shit.

    11. CPChuck Palahniuk57:07

        And when Sedaris told that story-

    12. JRJoe Rogan57:10

        (laughs)

    13. CPChuck Palahniuk57:10

        ... in front of 600 people, it was dead silent, and you could hear people weeping. People were crying, and they were hating David Sedaris in that moment. And so I had to laugh. I laughed really loud, like a donkey.

    14. JRJoe Rogan57:28

        (laughs)

    15. CPChuck Palahniuk57:29

        And it was amazing how the hatred-

    16. JRJoe Rogan57:31

        Uh.

    17. CPChuck Palahniuk57:31

        ... in that auditorium swung from hating David, who they did not want to hate, to hating this jackass over here who was actually laughing. And so I threw myself on the sword for David, and that story never went in any book.

    18. JRJoe Rogan57:49

        Wow. Did the story not go in any book just because the reaction by the audience or-

    19. CPChuck Palahniuk57:54

        Yeah.

    20. JRJoe Rogan57:54

        ... just the uncomfortable moment, he just decided?

    21. CPChuck Palahniuk57:56

        He was-

    22. JRJoe Rogan57:56

        Did you speak to him about it?

    23. CPChuck Palahniuk57:57

        No, I didn't. Not afterwards. It was just such an awkward, painful thing. I would never kind of throw it back in his face.

    24. JRJoe Rogan58:04

        Right.

    25. CPChuck Palahniuk58:04

        But to my knowledge, that was the only time the story was told.

    26. JRJoe Rogan58:07

        Do you have those, like, scattered about? Are there, there, there's... Are there scenes where you wrote and you just sat and looked at them and went, "No, I just gotta put that one somewhere else."

    27. CPChuck Palahniuk58:17

        Oh, there are-

    28. JRJoe Rogan58:17

        Set that aside.

    29. CPChuck Palahniuk58:19

        ... jokes that I told where I got hissed by 800 people.

    30. JRJoe Rogan58:22

        (laughs)
12. 1:09:55 – 1:21:46

    Financial betrayal: embezzlement, missing millions, and staying ‘hungry’

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:09:55

       Uh, it's one of the things that is interesting about your current situation and o- one of the things that I've read about your take on it. I do- I don't know how much you wanna go into this, but you got ripped off.

    2. CPChuck Palahniuk1:10:08

       I got embezzled, which is a word I can now spell. (laughs)

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:10:13

       (laughs) Um, was it someone you trusted?

    4. CPChuck Palahniuk1:10:16

       It was. It was, uh, the accountant for the agency that represented my work and this is a man I'd worked with for, uh, oh, almost 20, 21 years and one of my favorite people in my professional life. Fuck, though.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:10:31

       And what I thought was interesting was your take on it. I mean, the whole thing's horrific and everyone's worst nightmare, uh, you know, who, who trusts people with their money. But what was interesting is you'd ... you decided like there's some merit to this, there's some benefit to this, that this is gonna make you hungry again, that this is ... like you have to work now.

    6. CPChuck Palahniuk1:10:54

       And also that, uh, that I have been really poor in my life and it was never my goal to be really rich. It was never my goal to have money. It was my goal to be a writer. It was my goal to be able to write books for a living. And I can still do that, you know? I've been poor. Poor is not something I'm afraid of. Uh, as long as I can write books, I'll be a happy person.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:11:19

       Yeah, to be rich and to not be creative, like as if ... You know, you've met those people-

    8. CPChuck Palahniuk1:11:24

       It's exhausting.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:11:24

       Sure.

    10. CPChuck Palahniuk1:11:25

        Those ... You go to those parties, those rich people parties, and all they have to talk about is their servants.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:11:31

        Mm-hmm.

    12. CPChuck Palahniuk1:11:31

        It's like, "I hate my maid, I hate my ... the gardener. We ha- we have this new person to do the this and they're doing a lousy job." And all they have to talk about in their lives is their household help. I hate those parties.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:11:44

        Or objects.

    14. CPChuck Palahniuk1:11:46

        Or objects, yeah.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:11:47

        Yeah. There was a guy that used to live down the street from me, I used to call him Bling-Bling 'cause every conversation that I would have with him, he would eventually be like, uh, "Yeah, look at this new car I got," or, uh, "Where'd you get that watch?" Or, you know, "What, what, what kind of car are you driving?" Like, "W- what's the, what'd you do to the house? You got a new sink? You know, it's got a new TV? Which, which, which size did you get?" It was always objects, it was always things. You know, he was just this, this strange guy that was just working for things.

    16. CPChuck Palahniuk1:12:14

        Yeah, the same things that everybody else is working for-

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:12:17

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CPChuck Palahniuk1:12:17

        ... just a different combination of things.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:12:19

        Yeah, but it's a game, you know?

    20. CPChuck Palahniuk1:12:21

        Yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:12:21

        Trying to accumulate points in the game, you know? And because these things are difficult to achieve, then they become attractive and then they become the main focus because it's hard to get a Bentley. You gotta save up a lot of money to get a Bentley. "You know how much those cost? Which model was that? Is that the one with the, the le- ... Oh, look it, you got the perforated leather seats. That's extra expensive." And then this becomes the main goal.

    22. CPChuck Palahniuk1:12:43

        (snoring)

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:12:43

        Yeah. But so many people fall into that bizarre trap. This is such a strange common trap.

    24. CPChuck Palahniuk1:12:50

        Well, you know, but it's the only trap that we kind of have. We are not really trained to, again, go to that, uh, that place of, of wanting to, you know, learn something, to wanting to create something, to apprentice yourself to somebody who creates the thing-... that you dream of creating. It's much easier to kind of fall into the ready-made trap of these things are for sale, and the people who sell them will treat you really nice.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:13:19

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CPChuck Palahniuk1:13:20

        You go into their showroom and they will treat you so nice and you are always welcomed there.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:13:25

        Yeah.

    28. CPChuck Palahniuk1:13:25

        And, uh, and you have a way of kind of, you know, signaling that you've accomplished something-

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:13:30

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CPChuck Palahniuk1:13:30

        ... in a very public way.
13. 1:21:46 – 1:28:37

    Failure as a creative reset: bombing, downtime, and cognitive reframing (parents, grief, freedom)

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:21:46

       Well, the real issue that happens with successful people is they lose their hunger, right? They lose that... It's, it's a death sentence for comedians. One of the things that happens with comedians is the early specials tend to be really good and then the, the later specials tend to be really bad. And it's because these people are now super wealthy and coddled and there's no danger in their life and there's no, no real risk or challenges and there's no growing or learning. Everything is just, like, performing to people that adore you.

    2. CPChuck Palahniuk1:22:16

       Another aspect, and I talk about this more and more with writers I know, is that when you're starting out, you've got a lot of downtime, a lot of daydreaming, daydreaming time, a lot of slack, unstructured time. But the more successful you become, the more your time is really scheduled and you just don't have those "I'm really bored" times-

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:22:38

       Yeah.

    4. CPChuck Palahniuk1:22:38

       ... when you tend to come up with fantastic ideas. And so in a way, being somewhat poor again gives me those, those really slack times when the ideas occur.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:22:51

       That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, um, again, to bring it back to comedians, comedians, uh, they'll, they get movie careers.

    6. CPChuck Palahniuk1:22:59

       Mm-hmm.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:22:59

       That's another d- death sentence for their comedy. They start doing movies, they're on sets all day. They're constantly working, and then you don't have enough time to, to concentrate on your standup and you have zero fuck around time 'cause you're just doing things all day.

    8. CPChuck Palahniuk1:23:13

       You-

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:23:13

       You lose that.

    10. CPChuck Palahniuk1:23:14

        Y- and this is weird name dropy Brad Pitt advice. Brad Pitt told me, Brad Pitt said that success is actually one of the, uh, failure is actually one of the best things that can happen because only failure gives you that kind of alone, isolation downtime when you can really reinvent yourself in a significant way and create something remarkable again. That ongoing success becomes kind of a, uh, mediocrity.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:23:47

        Mm-hmm.

    12. CPChuck Palahniuk1:23:47

        You really need to fail to fall out of the limelight long enough to produce something really strong again.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:23:54

        Totally makes sense. One of the best things that can happen to a comedian is bombing. When you bomb, that feeling is so bad. I always describe it as like sucking 1,000 dicks in front of your mother.

    14. CPChuck Palahniuk1:24:06

        (laughs)

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:24:07

        But the problem, uh, the difference is that there's probably someone out there who would enjoy sucking 1,000 dicks in front of their mother, but nobody enjoys bombing, so it's probably worse than that. But that feeling, whatever it is, reignites your appreciation for people's attention span, your appreciation for tightening up your delivery, your concepts, figuring out a better way to get them through. You never wanna experience that again. And some of the greatest moments in m- my own personal journey of standup have come from eating shit. That's where they come from. You gotta eat sh- I mean, it's great to do well, wonderful, feels great, but those eating shit ones, those are the ones that, uh, get you to the notebook again. Those are the ones that reinvigorate you, have you spending hours and hours in your hotel room going over sheets of paper and ch- checking out idea, making sure these concepts connect together in some sort of a meaningful way and figuring out a way to tighten things, uh, cut out the fat. When you're in this situation right now and you're th- frantically writing now and, and, and, you know, and s- sort of forced into this, uh, element of creativity, this, like, the, you're, you're forced to be hungry again, it... I mean, I wouldn't wish it on you, but in a way, do you feel like it's kind of a gift?

Episode duration: 2:07:03