You’re probably sleepwalking through life (here's how to wake up) - Robert Greene

Shaan Puri 0:00 Have you ever taken psychedelics?

Robert Greene 0:02 Have I?

Shaan Puri 0:03 Yeah.

Robert Greene 0:03 Oh, yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:05 [laughs]

Robert Greene 0:06 Oh, yeah.

Shaan Puri 0:06 [laughs] [upbeat music] You wrote this new book, Sublime, and it's interesting because if I look at the books you're popular for, you're famous for, you've got 48 Laws of Power. Power, I mean, self-explanatory. It's like a, a very m-masculine, very f- sort of forceful, grab it by the neck sort of word. You have-

Robert Greene 0:31 A bald

Shaan Puri 0:31 ... Seduction. Another one.

Robert Greene 0:32 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:32 Control. Mastery, another one about control, and it seems like Sublime is saying the, almost the exact opposite. It's about letting go and, um, being small rather than being larger than life. I, I... Can you explain what the book is and how it relates to the other books?

Robert Greene 0:47 It comes out of personal experience, I have to say. You know, I, as, as you probably know, I, I nearly died eight years ago. People are suffering from the narrowness of their experience, a lot of it coming from technology. There's something incredible about just simply being alive, and so many things about, that science is uncovering about the world that we live in is so awesome and so amazing and, and we have such hunger for something larger than just the daily struggle. And I felt it very deeply in, in coming so close to death and how the world looks and feels differently after that experience, and I want people to feel something like that in their own lives. It's a book where you don't have to nearly die in order to have it. I'm trying to show you how you can bring these kind of experiences into your day to, day-to-day life. It's a very practical book on that level. But I feel like there's something people are really, really, really missing, a sense of not being connected to other people, connected to their environment, to the world that we live in, and to themselves, a se- a disconnect from themselves. And so that's what

Robert Greene 2:00 this book is about.

Sam Parr 2:01 It's, there's, uh, this funny Lou- Louis C.K. bit. It's called, uh, Everything Is Amazing and Nobody Is Happy. And, uh, he's on Conan, I think, and he's, like, talking about how, like, everything's g- great, but we're all miserable. Uh, and I think it was 48 Laws of Power, I forget which book it was, but you... Uh, there was one story that I might be butchering, but I think you said that, um, like some of the first bits of writing ever discovered was about one generation complaining about the next generation, saying, "They're lazy. They're, they don't ca-

Robert Greene 2:30 [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:31 They, they're, they care about all this new technology, like their music sucks."

Shaan Puri 2:34 Is that real? That's like one of the first writings ever? Is that, is that true?

Robert Greene 2:36 Yeah, it was like on a, on a, on a stone tablet. I think it's like ancient Babylonian or something like that-

Shaan Puri 2:41 [laughs]

Robert Greene 2:41 ... and it is like one of the oldest pieces of writing, and it's complaining about the young generation.

Shaan Puri 2:46 [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:46 And w- well, my takeaway when I read that was like, it was this really important feature which like everyone thinks something is different with their generation, you know. We are either better or you'll hear people say all the time, they go, "In this economy? What are you talking about?" It's like, well, the economy could be booming, and everyone will always say, "In this economy? It sucks." Or they'll always say like, "Well, crime these days, it's so high." It's like, no, it's actually way lower than ever before. But there's something where you wanna like say, this period is the worst. And my question to you is, is that actually true? Um, is this time tr- i- is this time actually different? And h- how do I be happy? [laughs]

Robert Greene 3:23 Well, it's a very legitimate question. Um, and I don't think you can quantify is the problem, um, because, you know, you look in movies from the '20s and '30s, and everybody is smoking and drinking like you can't believe.

Sam Parr 3:40 [laughs]

Robert Greene 3:41 They're like four, five whiskeys at dinner, you know. They're having martinis left, right, and center, right? That is the equivalent in the past of antidepressants, right? So people were feeling that then most definitely, and cigarettes, they needed all of these stimulants continuously. It's kind of shocking. And then in the past, you know, in England for instance, people didn't drink water. They drank ale, right? And to, to quench their thirst. And so people were continually drunk and on all sorts of things throughout history. So it's a very good point. How can you compare that to now? We have technology on this new level, social media on this new level, and in some ways it's altering people, it's altering our minds, it's rewiring our brains in ways that aren't necessarily healthy, and this is a new phenomenon. So if your experience is coming so much from your phone, if you're interacting so many hours of the day with your phone, a lot of that is stuff that is, if it's on Instagram or, or X or, or TikTok, it's being programmed by other people, algorithms, et cetera. It's not your own experience. People are telling you what your life should be like. They're, they're programming what you see, what you feel, what you hear. This isn't like a human quality. We, we are animals that, that want agency. We want to be able to control something about our own lives. I feel like people have a sense of powerlessness, that they're on this ride that technology is taking them on. And particularly with AI, the fears that, you know, we're creating something that we're not gonna have any control over. That is the only element that I think is different now that would make me say that there's a level of crisis that maybe didn't exist in the past.

Shaan Puri 5:38 Right.

Robert Greene 5:38 But as I said, I don't have data to back that up, and I could be wrong.

Shaan Puri 5:43 Well, we do have first-hand kind of experience with the way the world, uh, around us feels and how it operates. You know, if we just kind of as a thought experiment-

Robert Greene 5:52 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 5:52 ... I think of, [laughs] of, of Americans, uh, who are like, you know, uh, of adult age, 90-plus percent have a smartphone. Of people who have a smartphone, how many would you say are addicted to their phone? Meaning- They are using it more than they want to, and it is, um, in some ways kind of like become the main source of, of pleasure in their life. It's taking a larger and larger chunk of their life. I would say-

Sam Parr 6:14 I mean-

Shaan Puri 6:14 ... that number's probably also like-

Sam Parr 6:16 Everyone I know, myself included

Shaan Puri 6:18 ... 80, 90%. So you have this thing that exists in the world where if, if, you know, somebody came from the past and you're like, "Yeah, there's this thing now, um, it's affecting 90-plus percent of people, and, um, of the people who have it, 90-plus percent of them are addicted to it. And then how often they, they, they take the dosage? Uh, like seven hours a day." You know, it's like, whoa, what is, what is that? That is a w- like a wild state of the union, you know, just to walk into.

Robert Greene 6:46 No, y- y- your point is very valid. I know, um, I've told this before in another podcast, but I have a, a special bicycle because I can't hike or anything. It's a recumbent bike, and I got, like, the lightest weight one I can 'cause we have these incredible hills here. And I go way up where there are no cars, way up into these hills, and it's incredibly beautiful, and I'm just like, "Whoa, this is so therapeutic." And then people are walking by me, and they're like this.

Shaan Puri 7:13 [laughs]

Robert Greene 7:14 You know? They're walking in the most spectacular... They're in Los Angeles in this beautiful, you know, bucolic part nature, part park, and they're like this, right? They're talking to someone or they're, like, reading something off the Instagram while they're walking outside. That, to me, is like mental illness to me because being healthy, you have to be observant. You have to be connected to your environment. You have to be connected to what's around you. You know? You have to have situational awareness, to use a military term. You know? And that, that level of disconnect is very troubling. The other thing is, and I talk about this in my Sublime book, we're gifted with this brain that is one of the most incredible, amazing things in the universe, this insane product of evolution, the human brain. And in a, in a very l- short period of time at, on the scale of evolution, 40,000 years, we've taken this brain that we evolved with language, and look at the world that we've created. And that brain operates with certain laws and certain... has certain tendencies. It's extremely restless. It's consumes a lot of our energy, physically a lot of our energy, right? And it wants to learn. It wants to conquer things. It wants to develop skills. And when you have, uh, generations of people that everything is fast and easy and quick, you can get things at, at the tip of your fingertips without any effort, it's rewiring the brain. It's rewiring human nature. It's creating people who are spoiled, who expect everything to be fast and easy, who have no patience to write an essay, who have no patience to read a 400-page book because, wow, I can just get AI to give me the paragraph on it, you know? That, to me, is what scares me, and it's, it's very dangerous.

Sam Parr 9:07 Well, I think everyone agrees with you, but what's the... how do I fix that? I mean, I'm, I'm an addict as well. Like, and you said something cool, and, and so like-

Shaan Puri 9:16 [laughs] Hi, I'm Sam, and-

Sam Parr 9:17 Yeah

Shaan Puri 9:17 ... I too have a problem. [laughs]

Robert Greene 9:19 Okay. Yeah, right. It's like smartphones anonymous here.

Shaan Puri 9:23 By the way, everybody listening to this is listening to this on their phone instead of, you know, enjoying wherever they're at in the moment. [laughs]

Sam Parr 9:29 But, like, uh, you have this thing in the book where you talk about, like, the circle. You're like, "Life's a circle," and, like, a lot of technology being on your phone, it, like, shrinks that circle, so you're only looking through this small thing. And I noticed that. We actually did a podcast on, like, this, the feeling of awe, and in my opinion, I, my circle is tiny right now, and the only way I'm ever able to, like, expand it is through travel. Like, being in places or experiencing the emotion of awe, which you-

Shaan Puri 9:53 Or your kids. Getting your kids to experience awe, then you, you start to notice it too. Like, you know, "Wow, look at this."

Sam Parr 9:59 Yeah, and what I wanna know is, like, what can I do to, to get out of this?

Robert Greene 10:04 So, uh, I, I normally tell people, like-

Sam Parr 10:07 You only have to listen to a few minutes of Robert Greene to realize that all the information that he's getting for his books, which are amazing, by the way, is from reading tons and tons and tons of other books. Well, I try to do the same as well. I read about a book a week. I devour books, and they've changed my life. And so what I did with the HubSpot team was they asked me which nine books shaped my year, shaped 2026. So I put together a list, and I also added a whole bunch of information on how I read so much. Hint, I'm not actually a fast reader. I just have a methodology for consuming a lot of information and I think also retaining it. And so if you wanna see which books have changed my life this year and how I read so, uh, much information, how I retain

Sam Parr 10:45 it all, then click the link below, and you can get the guide right now

Robert Greene 10:48 ... get outside your house, go out into nature, go out into Central Park, or go out into Connecticut somewhere, and leave your goddamn phone behind. Lock it in a drawer. You can't possibly, uh, access it now, and you're hopefully with a friend who doesn't, who didn't bring their phone along with you. So you're forced, cold turkey, to go out there, and what it'll do for you, just on that one level, is you're gonna have, like, that addiction sense of, "Wow, I, I, I need to know what's going on with sports. I need to know who won the election. I need to know..." But you can't do it, and so your mind is now gonna be focused outwardly. It's gonna be focused on what is around you, on the sounds, on just the sense of your body moving, right? Like climbing a mountain is an incredibly... It can bring you that sense of awe as you get higher and higher up in the sky. And you're forced to interact with things that aren't human, right, that take you out of your daily little, that little small circle and will give you that sense of awe. I had planned originally to write the book. I was gonna go travel all over the world and have all these sublime experiences. This was before my stroke. And then obviously with my stroke, I can't do any of that. I'm, like, trapped in this room that you now see me in where I spent Practically seven years writing the book. I, I had no outlets for doing the things. I couldn't travel, so I was forced to find it in everything around me, in just looking up at the sky and just interacting with my pets, my animals, with my wife, just watching people, just looking-- just the sense of being alive. And in the book, I try and make it clear the things that science is uncovering about the strangeness of the world that we have been born into. You're, you're born-- you're kind of thrown into this world, and when you're a child, you're three or four years old, you don't understand it. It looks str-- everything looks strange, and you've got that sense of awe and wonder, like, c-constantly. Like, a two-year-old is like, "Whoa, what is that? What is this? What is that color?" They're just looking at everything. You once had that feeling, and you've lost it, but you can get it back by slowing things down, by putting your phone away, by doing simple things like taking a walk, by just giving yourself some time to be alone and withdrawn to yourself and just reconnect to your body. It's-- a lot of it is putting a lot of that technology away and opening your senses up to the world. And each of the chapters in the book, I have exercises at the end of the chapter for kind of realizing what I've just talked about. So I have a chapter in the book about childhood because, as I said, when you were a child, the world was naturally sublime, was n-- I mean, unless you had a very troubled childhood, don't get me wrong. But for most children, the world is naturally weird, strange, and wondrous, right? And I have exercises for how you can recapture the feeling of time that you had when you were a child, where it wasn't all schedules and past, present, and future. I gotta get this done and blah, blah, blah. But to feel the, the flow of time within you. It's not gonna make you more successful in your job, but if you have moments like that where you can spend an hour doing some of these exercises, slowing things down,

Robert Greene 14:20 feeling just the sense of actually being alive inside your body, you will naturally return to something that is more human and that will connect you in some way to the sublime.

Shaan Puri 14:32 You had this amazing, uh, line in your, in your book where you're talking about how-- why chasing things, why, why we-- you know, adults feel flat inside, and there's something about us that feels flat, so we chase things. But then even when you get them, you still feel that sense of flatness. What-- why is that?

Robert Greene 14:51 Because, you know, it, it becomes like an addiction, so you're, you're constantly looking for external stimulation. As I said, you're born into this world with this restless mind, and if you ever tried to meditate and, and just sit on it, on some cushions and kind of empty your brain, empty your mind, you will realize how it's impossible. The mind is just going li-like mile a minute. Thoughts are just coming left, right, and center. It's in a very, very restless organ. So we humans need continual stimulation, and you can get that stimulation in one of two ways. You can get it externally, and nowadays, that is the source of possibly our problems. Uh, you know, if you're bored, you want entertainment, two seconds flat, you get something on Netflix, you get something streaming, you watch it on your phone. You know, you don't have to, you don't have to do anything to get this kind of external stimulation that you, that you crave, right? A-and you get it, and then it leaves you kind of empty because now you want more. You want something else, right? And so you have to find another source of external stimulation. Even travel can get like that if, you know, you just bring your own problems to Bali, for instance, and you're sitting on the beach, and you're just thinking about your schedules and about-

Shaan Puri 16:16 [chuckles]

Robert Greene 16:16 ... your social media and your, your, your Instagram feed. You're just bringing your problems with you, and then you come back to, to your job wherever, and you're back to your nervous self, you know? So it can't come from without. I mean, I'm, I'm saying, like, when you take your hike, you're, you're absorbed in the world, but that is a sense of something coming from within you that is your own experience. And when you're doing it through your own experience, and it could be love of another human being, 'cause I have a chapter on love, or it could be coming with your connection to an animal, or it could come through some physical adventure. The experience is your own. Nobody is programming you. Nobody is telling you what to feel, what to think. It is yourself. And as you go through that, the feeling is very exciting and fulfilling, and you want more of it. It's not like this addiction where I need somebody, like this baby that needs constant stimulation from somebody else. You can climb a mountain, and you can feel not only spiritually uplifted but physically uplifted. Your body and your mind are, are responding to these things, and you can't get that from your goddamn [censored] phone. You can't get that feeling of climbing a mountain. I did something difficult, arduous, but I feel, wow, look at this, right? There's no, there's no experience that could be programmed on your, your stupid phone that can ever give you that kind of sensation.

Sam Parr 17:46 The best part about your, your writing is you find the, the best stories which do an even better job of teaching this stuff versus just the theory, which is also good. Can you give some examples of what you're talking about with some cool stories?

Robert Greene 17:59 One of the st-- I have a

Robert Greene 18:00 chapter in there, uh, I think people are gonna relate to most because it's similar to my other chapters. It's called Measure Yourself Against the Immense and the Impossible. And the idea in-- it's called the dynamical sublime, and the idea is we humans have powers that we don't even realize that we have. If I plucked you right now onto a, an island in the Pacific that's uninhabited and you're alone, suddenly you would discover, because you had to, all of these skills, hopefully, or either you're gonna die, that you have for, like, finding food sources, for making things, for building a shelter, right? We have-- we're in- incredibly inventive, persistent, willful creatures. That's who we are. And when we face something that's impossible, so difficult, something almost superhuman can happen. And I tell the story in there. It's a famous story of this plane that crashed in the Andes in Argentina in 1971, '72 with a rugby team from Uruguay going to Chile, and there were, like, 45 people on the plane, and a lot of them died in this crash. They crashed at the foot of this incredible 14,000-foot high mountain, so they were trapped. They had only, like, their spring clothing because they didn't expect to be trapped in the Andes. They were just tr- traveling to another city. So they had spring clothing. They had no equipment. They were these young kids that had never climbed a mountain before or got in such a situation, and they were facing death every single day. It was horrifying. They ran out of food, and so they ended up having to, like, eat the corpses of some of the people who had died already just to stay alive. And one of the young men, Nando Parrado, he lost his mother and sister in the crash, and he was thinking of his father and his father back in Uruguay. If he died, Nando died, and the mother and the sister died, the father would die because he was a family man. It was his whole life. And so he goes, "I've gotta get out of here. I've gotta get out of-- I've gotta find a way out of this trap," right? People had tried to climb it in their, in their group, and they couldn't get halfway up this hill because the altitude would kill them, the cold. They had no equipment. To climb a 14,000-foot high mountain in the, in the winter in the Andes, you need, you need all these kind of ropes and, and, and pylons and all sorts of equipment. They had nothing. He decides, "I'm gonna get over this mountain. I don't care what happens. I'm gonna g- I gotta get back to my father." And so he chooses two people, and they start this climb. The two other people are, like, ready to give up. He keeps climbing and climbing. The altitude's making his heart beat like crazy, but he keeps climbing, climbing. He reaches what is close to the summit, and it's like the side of a skyscraper. It's just pure rock and ice. How the [beep] am I gonna get up that, right? He just takes-- h- he's got, like, the equivalent of a pick that was built from the, uh, cr- the detritus of the airplane, and he kind of cuts a little bit of a, a hole in the ice rock. He puts his hand in there. He's able to put his foot in there. He climbs, like, for two hours that way 'cause he's so determined. He gets to the top, and he realizes that he-- that there's more mountains ar- surrounding them. So now they're gonna have to somehow get over an- another set of mountains. There's no way they could do it. They don't have food. So-- but then he sees that maybe there's this, like, gap between the two mountains that could possibly be a way out toward the green fields of Chile outside all these mountains, and he convinces one other person to go with him on this. And first of all, then, o- on top of this mountain, they spend a night. They're probably the first humans who've ever seen this, the stars and, and, and at night in this particular location, and he's like, "Amid all this suffering and death, this world is so beautiful. Uh, it's such a strange thing." Anyway, climbing down the mountain on the other side is harder than going up because it's the s- the, the steepness of it. The long story short, they finally get to the bottom. They finally find people. They finally get rescued, and about 18 of the 50 people on the plane survived. And they get a helicopter to go back and rescue the people that they had left behind w- with the original crash. They're going, "How the hell did you ever get up this mountain? Experienced climbers can never get up this mountain. How did you do it? It's impossible. I don't even believe that you did it." And so the story to me is about having a sense of purpose, like my father, the love of my father. I have to help get back for him. And facing an impossible situation, we put limits on what we think we can do, but there are actually no limits. You put people in difficult situations that either crushes them or they rise to a new le- they discover new resources in themselves, and that kind of power and that determination to me is what makes the human animal incredibly, incredibly sublime. So that's one of the stories.

Sam Parr 23:17 That's a great story.

Robert Greene 23:18 [chuckles]

Sam Parr 23:20 I am kinda messed up. I like reading a lot of ho- like, uh, World War II and Holocaust books, and it's-

Robert Greene 23:25 Me too

Sam Parr 23:25 ... it's crazy. Like, there's this one called, um, The Escape Artist, and it's one of the only guys to escape from, uh, Auschwitz, uh, one of the only Jews.

Robert Greene 23:34 Really? I never heard of this.

Sam Parr 23:36 It's fantast-- I mean, it's, you know, I don't know fantastic as you describe it, but it's definitely riveting. And he tells the story about how he basically, um, hid under a bunch of dead bodies for many hours and for the, uh, three days actually, and then he eventually walks across Poland. And it's like, when I read these stories, s- my instinct, the, uh-- I started reading some of these crazy stories because if I ever feel down and depressed, I'm like, "I gotta read this so I know that, like, life is perfect." But it's actually cool to have a different takeaway now reading a bunch of these books where it's more so like, "I can do anything. If these guys can do this, surely I can have a difficult conversation."

Robert Greene 24:15 Well, there was a man, uh, Viktor Frankl, who wrote a book, Man's Search for Meaning, very famous book. He was in Auschwitz, he was in a concentration camp, and his-- he later became a th- a, a psychotherapist, and his discovery was that the people who survived that kind of the most awful circumstances were the ones who had some kind of purpose for their life. They, they had something to get to live for once they got out, if they ever got out, right? They had a book they had to write, they had a, a family member they had to save. They had some reason for trying to, to stay alive, and that's what kept them alive.

Shaan Puri 24:54 I'm curious, Robert, do you have a definition for yourself, what your purpose is?

Robert Greene 25:00 Well, um, it tends to make me seem kind of arrogant and grandiose, but what the hell-

Shaan Puri 25:05 We'll allow it

Robert Greene 25:05 ... I'll throw it out there anyway.

Shaan Puri 25:06 [chuckles]

Robert Greene 25:08 I felt like all of the miserable jobs that I had, I had 60 different jobs back in the '80s and '90s, 'cause I'm an old guy, and I was very depressed and very miserable in my mid-thirties and no success. But I, in the back of my mind, I'm living for writing because I've always wanted to be a writer. I hadn't quite given up my dream. And then I got a chance, I met a man who was the book packager who asked me at one point in Italy if I had any ideas for a book, and I kind of improvised what turned into The 48 Laws of Power. And he ended up paying me to live while I wrote the book, and we became partners on the project. It felt like, to me, that all that misery, all those bad jobs, all that stuff in Hollywood that I'd gone through, there was a purpose for it, and the purpose was for me to be able to write that book that I think, call me, as I said, grandiose, has helped a lot of people deal with very difficult power situations. And then I had my near-death experience. I was driving a car in Los Angeles. My girlfriend, now my wife, was sitting next to me, and she basically saw something going on that was very wrong. She called 91... She didn't panic, she called 911. And it was a matter of seconds. If they had arrived 30 seconds later or a minute later, I'd either be dead or I'd have intense brain damage. And so I survived that. I'm alive. There must be a reason for that. There must be a reason, a purpose behind it, and the purpose was for me to write one more large book, The Sublime, despite all the physical limitations that I had, and that I, I was stay-- I was kept alive for a reason to write this particular book. So-- And quite honestly, without that sense of mission or purpose, I would never have made it because it was such a difficult thing to do when you can't type and you have to handwrite an entire book. So I definitely have had that, that, those feelings of, of something larger pushing me forward.

Sam Parr 27:18 I, uh, I think... I, I, I read a lot, I, and I've noticed that, um, reading should fall into one of two categories. The first one is just entertainment, and the second one is education. And when I really wanna learn something, it's-- most people tend to get 10 books on the same topic, and they think that's gonna master it. And what I have found, it's probably better to get one, uh, cornerstone piece and reread it multiple times and truly master it. And I have felt this way-- You're gonna think that, uh, this is too grandiose and ridiculous. I have felt that with 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, Art of Seduction, Art of, uh, maybe, maybe Art of War, but for sure, um, it sounds like Sublime and 48 Laws of Power as well, where I was like, "Man, I wish I would have dedicated two years to mastering these, like, four texts," Um, because, like, human nature, I'm like, uh, "This is applicable to everyone." Why, why wouldn't-- This is the number one thing I should ever learn, actually. Is there a world where this should just be, like, a two-year or one-year y- ma- like, course, like a, like a college thing where, where I'm just going to, like, master some of your texts? I mean, that exists for, I would imagine, for Machiavelli. That probably ig- that exists for, um, some of the great, um, philosophers and psychologists.

Shaan Puri 28:32 Yeah, you could take a course on Shakespeare and go through all his works, right?

Sam Parr 28:36 Yeah. Like, has anyone ever proposed doing that for Robert Greene books?

Robert Greene 28:39 Uh, yeah. I mean, um, I would have to probably get involved in that because there's a, there's a, uh, a gap, a gulf between the knowledge that's in a book and putting it into practical effect. I've consulted with individuals before. The problem with a course is if you're-- I think it would have great value for The 48 Laws of Power, for instance, if in college somebody were to teach that. But I don't know-

Sam Parr 29:10 Yeah

Robert Greene 29:10 ... where because college isn't supposed to be practice. It's supposed to be teaching you about power. It's supposed to be teaching you about things that are useless that you're never gonna do in your life.

Shaan Puri 29:19 [chuckles]

Robert Greene 29:20 But I could see a course, uh, you know. It, it would probably have to be, like, in a business school, to be honest with you. This is the work world you're going to enter, and here are some laws that you're gonna learn that are gonna help you deal with the e- egos and the politics

Robert Greene 29:35 of people in power.

Shaan Puri 29:36 If we were sitting there and it's lesson one, or there's, like, you know, a, a 15-minute thing that actually stuck with people, what do you think that thing would be from the power course? What would it be?

Robert Greene 29:44 I'll always say less than necessary. People talk way too much. They're always talking, talking, talking, talking, particularly in the era of social media. They're just revealing way too much about themselves. Learn to withdraw. Power is about absence and presence. If you're always present, people take you for granted and they grow

Robert Greene 30:05 bored with you. If you're always absent, you have-- there's nothing to talk about. But if you know the dialectic between presence, to disappear sometimes, to not talk, to not be there, to not be there for, like, a week or so, and then people are starting to talk about you again. So I would teach them that. That would be my first course. The second course, the second week, would be about egos. Never outshine the master. Know who you're dealing with. Play the perfect courtier. These are the dangers of, of people's egos out there, and you've gotta be careful, and you've gotta not inadvertently offend the wrong person. So that would be, like, the second week or so.

Sam Parr 30:45 But how do you apply that to, uh, like Shaan and I or yourself as well? I'm looking at your Instagram page. It's awesome. You have, you have five videos that you posted yesterday. They're amazing. I follow you. How does that apply to people who are trying to, like, promote shit?

Robert Greene 30:59 Well, I'm out there now a lot because of the Sublime book, but I, I disappear for quite a long time, and I never, ever post about, um, what I had for breakfast or photographs from, you know, where I've traveled to or, you know, my cats in the house. I only post interviews from podcasts that have information that are practical, that are gonna help people. You don't know my private life, so there's a level of mystery there. If I was completely, uh, transparent about my private life, then I'd be violating a lot of the 48 laws of power. But I know certain things that I've gotta, like, withhold from the public.

Sam Parr 31:44 Do you guys-- Uh, so you're a Lakers fan, so you, you, y- I was gonna ask you about this guy, but I was like, "I don't know if he knows about this," but if you're a Lakers fan, you do. Do you know who Josh Kushner is?

Robert Greene 31:54 He's the new owner of the Lakers?

Sam Parr 31:57 Yeah, man. Josh Kushner's interesting. He's a brother of Jared. So Josh Kushner is someone who would fit in your book in a variety of ways. So basically, Josh grew up in a very wealthy, prominent New York real estate family.

Robert Greene 32:08 Yeah.

Sam Parr 32:09 His father had a fall of grace because he did some messed up stuff and went to prison for it, and then Jared married Ivanka Trump and became Trump's right-hand man, very polarizing. But Josh is, um... He, he-- I believe he's liberal. Uh, he's, uh, like, speaks about it occasionally. And he, um, became an investor, where at the age of 21, he was one of Instagram's first investors, and he now is probably the-- He's probably had the best probably 10-year run as a venture capitalist, and he is so wealthy now. He's probably worth $15 billion. He's 41 years old. He so, is so wealthy, he just bought the Lakers. And Josh is interesting because he is a textbook case study on implementing a handful of the laws of power. He really doesn't have social media. He, um, he, uh, is quite silent. You know that he dates this beautiful woman, but you don't really see him ever take photos. He enters with boldness into dir- certain situations. I mean, he bought the Lakers when he's 41 years old. It's a very interesting case study. Would you agree, Shaan, on, like, how this guy has risen? Because money, when you're investing, money's a commodity, so a company, whoever's taking your money, has to choose you, uh, based off a variety of weird, um, characteristics, and the characteristic that he has is this mystique about him. And I think that it's been, um, pl- I think he knows exactly what he's doing, and it's like he's just, like, playing the game perfectly.

Robert Greene 33:35 Yeah, it, it could be a combination of he might be somebody who's not comfortable in the limelight, and then he leans into that, and he creates a kind of a weird sort of power out of it. I get a lot of, um, not a lot, but I get some celebrities who come to me, whose name I will not mention, who say, "You know, Robert, I've got to be out there all the time. How do I create an air of mystery when social media depends on always having something that people can see?" And I tell them, "You know, um, you can disappear for a week. It's not gonna kill you, and in fact, it's gonna make people wonder, 'Why have you-- Where have you gone during that week?'" So I say, like, Beyoncé would disappear for, like, a year and a half without posting anything at all and then would suddenly emerge with a new record, and now she would be out there. In that time that she wasn't out there, people were going crazy speculating about what's going on in her life. So knowing that you have to, some point, even if you're a celebrity, even if you depend on people's views and likes, disappearing for a while and creating some air of mystery is absolutely critical because people are, are gonna grow tired of you. There's an attention economy, and if you're flooding them with your image, at some point, they go, "Oh God, I'm so sick of that." And then somebody else will come along who's, like, younger and fresher and different, and they'll be looking at them. So you have to, you have to learn how to withdraw sometimes and create that mystery that makes people want to, to hear you when you come back.

Sam Parr 35:17 Given that you've read thousands of history books and you have seen cycles, do you have any, um, predictions on what will happen with AI in the next 10 years or so? It's the same thing as, um, this

Sam Parr 35:30 time is different, that energy is, is happening right now, and people are saying crazy stuff like, "This is the last machine that will ever need to be built, uh, 'cause this will build everything else." Is-- Do you have any, um, do you have an outlook?

Robert Greene 35:43 Well, um, I'm, I'm a born, uh, pessimist. Uh, I, I have a, a negative bias to my brain, and I'm always the one that will raise my hand and say, "I, I don't really buy that hype." So first of all, I think there's deep, deep wells of resentment and fear among the public about AI, and th- you have that on the bottom, uh, the huge numbers of people, and then you have the people at the top who are kind of dominating the field and are kind of controlling this new technology. And the people from the bottom can eventually have a very, very powerful effect on the evolution of AI in, in the sense of politically, people are so upset that they demand that there are laws in place that are gonna regulate AI, that are gonna put-- they're gonna limit cap these data centers that people are, are getting tired of. And so there's an energy, and that level of fear among the public can actually translate into something very real. But On the other hand, I mean, I know the scenarios of the singularity and it takes over. What drives me crazy with these technol- these new technologies is that I wrote a whole book, Laws of Human Nature, about how humans have a dark side: irrationality, grandiosity, envy, short-sightedness, you know, on and on and on. There are 18 of them. I only listed four. Self-absorption. Okay? When you create a new piece of technology like this, it's not like something that's, that just comes out of nowhere. It's humans that created it, and now that dark side of human nature is gonna be able to use this new technology for very, very dangerous purposes. The levels of phishing and scams that we're now receiving on our phones is mounting every day, and just imagine what it's gonna be like in a couple of years, you know? How criminals are gonna be able to use this for all kinds of nefarious purposes. How the information to build a, a dirty bomb, a biological weapon, is at the hands of some crazy person somewhere, I don't know where, right? Yes, it could cure cancer. Yes, it could cure climate, global warming. I don't know. But it could also lead to an apocalypse just as easily. So I'm very fearful of that scenario, and I'm very afraid of what it's gonna do to the human brain among young people. Being able to write an essay and read a 400-page book is absolutely an essential skill in the 21st century, right? But you're not developing any mental skills. You're not developing any discipline. You're not developing the ability to put something on paper and then edit it and then change it with your own thoughts. And eventually that's gonna catch up to you because you're not gonna be able to ever think on your own. You're gonna always be depending on technology to answer every single one of your questions. I have fears, you know, and those are my fears is the dark side of human nature takes it over. People aren't gonna be having the patience to learn anything anymore, and that it's going to create massive amounts of resentment among the masses of people who feel like they have no control over the future of their career. Why did I study this field? Why did I become a lawyer? The profession of lawyers is gonna be decimated by AI.

Shaan Puri 39:20 Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Greene 39:20 Absolutely decimated, right? Why have a lawyer? I mean, it's actually, this is one possible good thing about AI, don't deny. But you can get any answer you want about some lawyer, a legal problem, so you'll never need a lawyer anymore.

Shaan Puri 39:35 Were, were, were you using it for Sublime, for research?

Robert Greene 39:39 Never.

Shaan Puri 39:40 Not once?

Robert Greene 39:41 Well, nowadays if you Google something-

Shaan Puri 39:45 Of course, yeah

Robert Greene 39:46 ... a question, that, that little AI box comes up. So I should say-

Shaan Puri 39:50 Close my eyes, scroll past it. [laughs]

Robert Greene 39:52 [laughs] No, no. I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not gonna lie to you. Occasionally. But I never did any like major... No research things.

Shaan Puri 40:02 Right.

Robert Greene 40:02 Just like little itty bitty things like when did that person die or facts like that. But, um-

Shaan Puri 40:09 He's like, "Besides the apocalypse, mass resentment [laughs] and the loss of human mental cognition, it's great. Love AI." [laughs]

Robert Greene 40:16 I think it'll be great. It'll be great. Yeah. Uh, I have, uh... I had to write in notebooks for the, the Sublime book, and I had two notebooks. I'd write in one and then I would rewrite it in another notebook. Uh, literally rewrite word for word and edit as I'm rewriting it, right? In the end, I probably have 120 of those notebooks.

Shaan Puri 40:36 Have you seen that guy who bear crawled a marathon? That's like you. [laughs] He's like doing it in jeans. [laughs]

Robert Greene 40:42 That is, that is like me.

Shaan Puri 40:42 Well, like I, I think you and Ron Chernow are the two authors that I like to read most, and whenever I, and whenever I get into either one of your books, every sentence is, is important. Who had to type that out? What did you guys do?

Robert Greene 40:55 Well, um, so I wrote it in one notebook. I edited it in another book. Then I'd go back and, and rewrite it that way. Then I'd go back probably four or five times. Then when it finally seemed decent and not suckable, 'cause a lot of my first drafts are absolutely awful, I would dictate it and then I would print it out and hand edit on the paper, right? And then eventually that's, was good enough I'd dictate it again,

Robert Greene 41:25 and then with one hand I would edit it on the computer, 'cause I only had one hand that was available.

Shaan Puri 41:32 Holy shit. No wonder it took seven years.

41:34 Ro- Robert, can I, uh, a-ask you a question? You, you had a near-death experience. You hung out and wrote a book with 50 Cent, who had this kind of near-death experience. There was a guy who came on the podcast that was t- he had studied a lot of people who had near-death experiences. I think there's books written where, you know, somebody dies for 15 minutes and they come back and you wanna know, "What'd you see? What was it?" Um, have you kind of looked into that? And w- w- I haven't. What would I find if I go talk to people or go read about people who've had near-death experiences? What do, what do, what do you find?

Robert Greene 42:02 I have... The last chapter of the Sublime book is about the, uh, death sublime, and I go into near-death experiences and I describe four of them, because the literature literally since the 1960s and, and, and advances in medicine, millions of people have had near-death experiences, so we have all of this data on them. It runs a gamut. So 85%, more or less, of near-death experiences are actually quite positive. You feel uplifted. You feel like not just that you're grateful to be alive, but that death isn't something horrible. There's something peaceful and, and beautiful about the experience. Your eyes were opened to a different way of perceiving the world. 15% or so, uh, don't quote me on the exact number, are hellish experiences of near-death experiences where it's absolutely a nightmare and you're so grateful that you got out of it. So there's, there's a gamut. You can't o- completely generalize. Some people have, like, religious experiences where they see angels, where the presence of God is there, where they go through their whole life's history is recounted in a matter of, of seconds, you know, things like that. And in among that group is very interesting, there'll be people who are hardcore atheists and rationalists like Richard Dawkins type, who suddenly come out of it, and now they believe in God, and now they believe that there is an afterlife. It is very strange literature to read a lot of this. Some people don't go that direction. They still remain kind of skeptical, but something strange has happened to them, and they'll never be the same. There's a very great book I enjoyed a lot, but by a skeptic, and I'm not a skeptic, but I like reading all the different aspects. This book called Dying to Live by this woman, I think it's Susan Blackmore is her name. She's a neuroscientist, and she tries to explain why all of these things happen, like you have visions of a tunnel and light coming through, and you, you relive your whole life's past. She explains it as something strange happening to the human brain as it's dying, right? And it's scrambling how you normally perceive the world, how you normally experience time and all these other things. And so the brain dying has a very powerful effect on you, and that, I think, is ex- is the most, the most I can generalize about it 'cause it happened to me, that strange things are going on neurologically and physiologically as the brain is beginning to die, as it's preparing you for it. And you have... You can have visions, you can have sensations. They're impossible to describe, but they make you aware of the fact that your brain constructs the world that you see. You don't realize that is... it isn't reality what you're experiencing right now. Your brain is constructing what you consider to be reality, and when the brain is dying, that reality that it's been constructing for you throughout your whole life breaks down, and now you're actually seeing things as they a- as they are without the brain i- meddling in this. That's, to me, the most fascinating aspect of the near-death experience.

Sam Parr 45:17 Has it worn off?

Robert Greene 45:19 Definitely worn off, um, but it comes back. It keeps coming back. So I had sensations of my bones dissolving and a weird taste in my mouth and kind of strange things with light. Uh, upon times that it comes back in, in a sensation like, wow, it's there, and I can access it. When I first woke up from my coma, the sky looked different to me, and in California, Los Angeles, we have, like, insanely blue sky. It's just... That's one of the most beautiful things about here, but the sky was even more bluer than I've ever seen it before. It was like, it was like incandescent. It was, like, on fire, and I can still get-- I can still see that because it's, it's, it's, it's b- it's, like, w- very deep in my, in my unconscious, and I still feel it, and I can still see it. So these sensations come back to me in waves. Sometimes it can be, uh, months that I don't, and it gets a little depressing, but then it-

Sam Parr 46:20 I mean, it sounds like taking psychedelics a little bit.

Robert Greene 46:23 Yeah. Yeah. A little bit.

Shaan Puri 46:25 H- have you ever taken psychedelics?

Robert Greene 46:28 Have I?

Shaan Puri 46:28 Yeah.

Robert Greene 46:29 Oh, yeah. [laughs] Oh, yeah.

Shaan Puri 46:32 [laughs] Is it similar?

Robert Greene 46:35 It is in w- some way, but, you know, when you have, uh, like, a very powerful, like, LSD or something, you kind of... I think you're, like, almost hallucinating things. You're seeing things that aren't really there. You're seeing colors and waves of light that I don't n- I can't necessarily say are actually there when I'm not on LSD.

Shaan Puri 46:56 Right.

Robert Greene 46:56 But when I'm seeing the sky this way, I believe that I'm actually seeing what it looks like when you actually stare at it and look at it and without the brain and without the familiar film that the brain puts over everything you see.

Shaan Puri 47:12 Mm.

Robert Greene 47:12 I believe it's actually... I'm actually seeing what things are. But there are some similarities. There is... So, like, you know, they have demonstrated the effect of psychedelics on the brain, and it kind of removes that filter that makes everything look so familiar to you.

Sam Parr 47:29 Well, did it make you fearful? Are you afraid to die now?

Robert Greene 47:33 I mean, I think it's impossible for a human being not to have that fear because it's, it's part of, of, of our life instinct. But no, I, I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of not really afraid of it, but sometimes I almost, like, yearn for the, for the peace that it, that it represented.

Sam Parr 47:55 Because of your experience or because you were-

Robert Greene 47:57 Yeah.

Sam Parr 47:58 Wow.

Robert Greene 47:59 Yeah. Of course, I, I go back and forth, but, um, I had a f- a feeling of, like, deep, deep connection to something. Um, and when you feel like you're connected to something greater than yourself, then it takes a little bit of the sting out of the fear of dying. I don't think I'll ever lose that fear because it's, it's inherent to every living creature, but it, it- it's been, it's been kind of softened, the blow softened by what I experienced. I don't fear it nearly as much.

Sam Parr 48:34 That's crazy. You, you almost make-

Shaan Puri 48:36 You know-

Sam Parr 48:37 ... like having a stroke sound, uh, envy. Like [laughs]

Robert Greene 48:40 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't go there-

Sam Parr 48:43 Yeah

Robert Greene 48:43 ... because it's... You know, like, you have cancer, like I had a friend who had cancer. He completely recovered, and now he's, like, walking and doing all those other things. Like, Jesus Christ, I wish I had cancer. Um, and then you have people-

Sam Parr 48:56 [laughs]

Robert Greene 48:56 ... with heart attacks, and they recover, and then they're... With a stroke, you don't recover. You don't get back your leg. You can't hike. You can't walk. You can't swim. I would not wish this on my worst enemy. I'm sorry. But I mean, it has its positive elements, as I've mentioned in my book. But, uh, please, please, Sam, don't have a stroke.

Shaan Puri 49:18 [laughs]

Sam Parr 49:19 [laughs]

Sam Parr 49:20 Noted.

Shaan Puri 49:21 Take it back.

Sam Parr 49:21 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:25 I'm curious, as a guy who studied... Y- you know, have spent decades of your life studying both people who have executed the ideas as well as the core ideas themselves of power, of seduction, of mastery, of all these things, and then you get a chance to work with, uh, this guy Tim Ryan, and, you know, obviously he didn't become president. Um, so, you know, did you go in and believe that, hey, these tools, these ideas, if executed, could actually do this? And were you humbled in some way? I'm just curious what, what you make of that.

Robert Greene 49:59 Well, um, first of all, I didn't work for his presidential campaign. We co- we'd been, uh, contacted through texting, and then we've met several times, and it was more after he, he lost that. And, uh, he ran for Senate in Ohio and lost to JD Vance of all people. And so, you know, we were kind of... In, in that period, I was talking to him a lot, and we were, we were despondent about the return of Trump and what it would mean and the corruption and the cruelty and what was happening to the American soul. We were deeply, deeply upset about it. And so, um, I didn't really think that it was an attempt at a particular election 'cause he wasn't running for office anymore. He was trying to create some kind of committee or group, and he had, he had Republicans in that group like Steve Schmidt. Um, and so it was kind of across... You know, it, it, it crossed, uh, uh, party boundaries, and it was a look at, at, you know, how can we rebuild this country? And, um, you know, it didn't amount to anything. I can't say we had any effect, although we started a conversation that maybe in some way rippled out and spread somewhere. But when I hear, uh, what Talia Rico was saying last night and Ossoff and Roy Cooper in North Carolina, and so many, so many... I was really amazed at how many women are now gonna be in the Senate and the House of Representative, which I think is a very, very positive thing. Uh, but there's so many people who are articulating ideas that we were discussing. So I can't say I had any effect. I, I, I really don't think I did. But we were trying to widen the conversation, widen the, the vision beyond just... 'Cause Democrats, what's the undoing of Democrats is they just give a laundry list of policies. We're gonna do this with healthcare. We're gonna do this with gasoline prices. Yeah, it's important. Affordability is a very important issue. But there's gotta be something else. There's gotta be something a little more kind of mythic, I'd have to say, that kind of, uh, crosses, uh, party boundaries, and that's sort of what we were discussing.

Sam Parr 52:10 Can you actually elaborate on the mythic thing? 'Cause I actually totally agree with you, where there's this, like, je ne sais quoi. There's this, like, thing with certain leaders where half the time I'm like, "You know, I don't actually know what they stood for, but there's something about that guy that I wanna, like, get behind you," and Shaan was actually talking about that. And, um, a little... JFK to me was a little bit like that. When it comes to great leadership, what are the qualities necessary to have that mythic l- that mythic ability where people are willing to follow you because you have this special thing that most people can't verbalize?

Robert Greene 52:42 Well, we haven't had a leader like that in a long time, so it's almost hard to visualize. I... It comes from a different, um, ideological, uh, angle than I do, but Reagan had a little bit of that. Um, he had the kind of folksiness, and he was trying to appeal to a larger vision of America. A lot of it was looking back towards the '50s, but not completely. The thing about JFK is you're, you're right to talk about charisma. I heard you earlier. Um, it is an extremely important, uh, component in the, in the, in the media age with social media, with television. You have to have that kind of presence before the camera. And Kennedy was the very first president who actually used the medium of the television in a very, very powerful way. He was obsessed with Hollywood, and he decided that he was gonna be like that actor Montgomery Clift in one of those John Wayne, John Ford movies. He kind of modeled himself on that, the kind of coolness, the kind of cool charisma. He was like the new sheriff in town, and he wanted to see how he could kind of, uh, exude charisma for the t- for the c- television camera. And he had that very famous debate with Nixon in which people who heard it on the radio thought Nixon crushed him, but people who watched it on television thought Kennedy crushed him because he was-

Sam Parr 54:06 Yeah, and, like, Nixon was all sweaty and, like, he looked-

Robert Greene 54:09 Was all sweaty. His makeup was bleh. He has, like, is like a Halloween figure. That kind of element where you, you kind of create something a little bit larger than life, where you're, you're something s- something mythic, as I say, appearing. And what is the myth of America? Well, to me, what made America great was, uh, how we're, we're builders. We create things. We're practical people. We're not ideological. We're practical. We like to build things. We like to make things. And that's always been our genius. And to go back to that kind of vision of, of individuals who are rugged, who aren't just so weak and are always complaining, but know-- who, who have that kind of, I guess, pioneer spirit. To me, that is the American myth, and we've completely lost it in the age nowadays where everything is so easy and fast and people have no patience for making anything. And so a lot of people are rebelling against that, and I think that kind of Sense of... And, and I'll-- I talk a lot about it actually in my new book, The Sublime, is, is going back to things of the past, and going back to who we actually are, what our spirit is, is to me a way to kind of connect to what I consider the, that American myth.

Shaan Puri 55:29 You see it a lot in sports. Um, you know, you may not see the most charismatic people, uh, in politics necessarily, but, um, as a sports fan, you, you-- there's these people that just seem to rally, um, or moments or leaders that, like, emerge in different things. Sometimes it's coaches that have an aura, and aura is, like, something people say a lot. What is aura? Aura is basically non-verbal charisma. [chuckles]

Robert Greene 55:50 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 55:50 It's, it's, uh, it's-- without even having to do anything, it's just there. And, you know, every athlete eventually gets old, and, you know, it, it ends. Um, so it doesn't last forever, but there are these eras. Like, uh, Sam and I are both fans of UFC and MMA, and there was a, a window of time where Conor McGregor went from this guy who was a plumber living on welfare, but almost spoke into existence in a mythical way. In fact, he nicknamed himself Mystic Mac because he would say, "I can... You know, I predict these things." And he would... Y- you know, he carried himself with such self-belief that he st- began... You know, you didn't even have to care about fighting or Ireland or any of those things because the guy stood for a different concept, which was self-belief. Um, the guy believed in himself and bet on himself more than anyone he'd ever seen bet on themselves, and so that was really inspiring to a lot of people during that era. And there's, uh, this famous tweet that Jaylen Brown did a few years ago. Four years ago, the Celtics were struggling, and Jaylen Brown didn't go talk about X's and O's and policies and what they're gonna do to, to make changes, and he just said, "The energy is about to shift." And he tweeted that out as a very famous tweet. They're the most winningest team since [chuckles] he did that. This is, like, uh, years ago, and they just went on this run. They went to the finals, and they won the championship, and, like, all these things happened over the next era. But it-- But people who almost can simplify it in a way... I think one of your laws of power is speak less, and one of the things that you do is, like, you don't overexplain how it's all gonna happen. You just simply, with certainty, assert that the energy is about to shift, and that's kind of mythical in a way.

Robert Greene 57:17 Yeah. Well, you're talking to a diehard Laker fan here, so, uh-

Shaan Puri 57:21 [chuckles] Me too. Me too.

Robert Greene 57:22 Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's all right.

Shaan Puri 57:23 So I hated it. I hated that the energy shifted.

Robert Greene 57:25 That's all right. [chuckles] No, I can appreciate what the Celtics did. Yeah, uh, sports has that definitely for sure. But the, the great thing about sports, 'cause I'm a f- I'm a sports fanatic, is, you know, a- as they used to say, scoreboard. It's like you win and you... You know, there's no denying, there's no crying, there's no saying y- you know, "You, you shouldn't, you cheated," or whatever, and so there's clear-cut winners and losers. The problem in, in American business and politics is a lot of people rise to the top who don't really deserve to be there. There are no metrics for determining why they are where they are, as opposed to sports, where you can pretty much look at statistics. I, you know... I thought Phil Jackson kind of embodied that. So in, uh, in, in The Art of Seduction, I tried to literally kind of define c- charisma, because as you say, it's kind of an, this intangible thing, and how do you actually describe or where does it come from? And in the research that I did, you will find a very interesting phenomenon about a huge percentage of people that we would consider charismatic come from very troubled backgrounds. They had very difficult childhoods. They were either abused or abandoned, were orphans, had very, very difficult childhoods. And so their whole life, their whole sense of getting power and love was through the camera, was through the public. They emanated this need to appeal to the public to get the kind of attention they never got from their family or their parents, and so they're very outer-directed. And the other thing is a quality that's very charismatic is to have this kind of inner intensity. A lot of it is,

Robert Greene 59:10 can be anger-

Shaan Puri 59:11 Mm.

Robert Greene 59:11 'Cause that's a very powerful, powerful emotion. But it could be love or something like that. But you don't have to say anything. You don't have to say a word. You don't have to say exactly how you feel, but people can read it in your face. Your whole face is lit up with this intense emotion that's inside of you that's driving your gestures, your tone of voice, all the non-verbal things, and it's read through the public as here's someone bristl- brimming over with this confidence and this inner power that they, they don't need to have to say anything, but it's, it's there. It's in that aura that you mentioned.

Shaan Puri 59:46 Mm.

Sam Parr 59:46 Could you teach someone to be more charismatic, and what would you teach them?

Robert Greene 59:53 Well, confidence is by far the most charismatic q- quality that you could have. Um, a- as you may know, I spent, um, six, seven months, uh, with 50 Cent writing The 50th Law, my fourth book, and 50 has intense charisma. Um, and his charisma comes from this incredible sense of confidence and inner strength. And where did that confidence come from? You know, so many people from his background in South Side Queens never made it. They don't have it. The difference is he had this near-death experience that kind of transformed him, and what are you gonna be afraid of after you've got shot nine times at close range through a car window? You're not gonna be afraid of anything. "Shit, man, I survived that. You know, you can't kill me." And so that sense of calmness and confidence that he had to me is very charismatic. Can you teach it? Well, you can't teach people coming from troubled backgrounds, but you can s- have a sense of your attention is outer-directed. Because as I said, it's, it's a, it's a quotient of, of confidence. You can't fake confidence. You can, but people will read through it because it comes just as bravado, and it has sort of an emptiness to it. But if you feel inwardly very secure, and you're kind of ... uh, on fire with some idea or some cause that's important to you, and you kind of exude that confidence that I'm talking about, it will communicate as charisma. It may not be on the level of a Kennedy or a Malcolm X, who I think w- exemplifies charisma, or a Marilyn Monroe, but it will have some of that power to, to it. So it's teachable to that degree, but the really, truly powerful charismatic people like a Churchill, et cetera, they're kind of creatures of certain circumstances.

Sam Parr 1:01:53 But all the people, e- except for Marilyn Monroe, all the people that you mentioned, Malcolm X, Churchill, JFK, uh, one was leading America to space, one was trying to save England from Nazi Germany, the other one was trying... was fighting for Black rights. Those are all... The, the, the... To, to play devil's advocate, those are all, like, the easiest causes ever to rally behind and say, "I'm gonna dedicate my life to this." So do you find a-

Robert Greene 1:02:17 I, I, I, I, I, I'm sorry, but I disagree with that.

Sam Parr 1:02:19 Great. That... I, I'm, I'm, I'm-

Robert Greene 1:02:21 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:02:21 ... I'm prodding here on purpose, but, like-

Robert Greene 1:02:24 Well, it's a prime example. He came from a very bad, uh, family background. He was mostly pretty much abandoned, and he was... felt completely unloved. And for years, he was in the wilderness. Um, he... During World War I, he had the Gallipoli campaign, which was a disaster, and he was a man that suffered deeply from bouts of depression, okay? And so when World War II came about and when Hitler rose to power, all the qualities that he had were, had, that had, that would make him charismatic were kind of dormant in him, and they just came to life in that particular moment because he had suffered so much politically in his life as well, that he was... he could rise to the moment. He had learned so many valuable lessons. So he wasn't just a creature of Hitler, because there were a lot of English leaders at the time, like Chamberlain, who completely failed in that role. There was something about him that was, that was different, that came from within himself.

Sam Parr 1:03:28 But, but what I'm a- what I'm saying is, are these people, were they, um... Did they become great? Like, does it... If I wanted to be more confident, would it be because I was... I, I am a confident human, or I found a cause that was worthy of me becoming that?

Robert Greene 1:03:42 Well, having a cause, it is extremely important for... to, to have that, 'cause as I said, it kind of creates this radiant, uh, uh, thing emanating from you that, that's, that's very, very powerful. But you have to be able to embody that cause, and it has to not be something that's just... that doesn't seem opportunistic. Like, so, you know, obviously Malcolm X was, was in prison. He was a, a hustler, a drug dealer, and in prison he discovers the prison library, which was his salvation. He discovers books and the power, and he researches the history of, of African American op- oppression in this country, and it comes from within, this anger. He had tremendous feelings of anger for all that he had been through in the prison system, growing up in Boston, tremendous wells of anger, and now he was able to draw on this using h- all that he had learned from history. So it wasn't like he was an opportunist that simply glommed on to the, uh, to the cause of fighting for, for African American rights. It was something deep within him. Churchill, there was something deep within him. I bring up Marilyn Monroe because it's not a cause. It doesn't necessarily have to be a cause, but... 'cause it is a quality that actors and people in the limelight can, can exude. And in her case, she was an orphan who never really knew her parents, but who had this tremendous desire, hunger for love, and the only way she could get love was from the public, was from the camera, was from kind of, um, creating this, this neediness in the camera that she wants and is drawing your attention and drawing your love. It's a quality that a lot of actors can have, and it's something that some have learned, but in her case, it... once again, it was a lot... a function of really of where she came from.

Shaan Puri 1:05:43 Can I ask you, you know, charisma, when somebody says charisma, I think that's a good thing. I want more of that. And what you're saying is two things. You said, well, the m- by far the most charismatic trait is confidence. That's an internal thing, security internally. But then you're saying that a lot of these most charismatic people that you studied, because of their upbringing, cr- they have this outer orientation. They crave the love of others, and it pulls them towards this, like, highly external, uh, validation-seeking path. And, and that way, charisma almost, and these highly charismatic people almost seem broken. It's almost like I wouldn't want that. Actually, that sounds like a, a negative thing. And, um, I shared on this podcast recently that I, I hired this coach who did this, um, personality test on me, and he... and I scored extremely high. Like, all of my things were really low, and I had this one tr- bar that was, like, over 100. And I was like, "What is that?" And it was narcissism. I was like, "Oh, no, the worst. I'm a narcissist? Ah," like there's no redeeming tr- part about a narcissist. And he said, "Well, the way that th- what it means in this, to this or- orientation was that you, um, get ver- y-you believe there's something special about you. You maybe can't put your finger on it, and you look to the world to validate that that's true about you, and you, you get that." And, you know, I'm like, "Oh, well, I guess I do have a podcast that's, you know, me basically sitting here s- showing everybody how smart and funny and interesting I am. I guess that is kind of what's going on every week, twice a week." Um, so I guess I can't really argue with this idea that, like, I guess I do seek some of that. I get high highs when it's validated and low lows when I'm not seen as special. That is true about me. So I guess in that way it's true. Can you-- I guess, is what I said, like, does that resonate with your research and what you believe?

Robert Greene 1:07:26 Of course. I mean, um, you know, when the attention leaves you, when, when, when the camera isn't following you, when you're not in power, you're not fighting a Hitler, um, you know, you, you can get very, very depressed. And obviously, Marilyn Monroe committed suicide. Churchill had these-- Well, I forget what his name is, black something or other, that he would kind of fall into, where he just was deeply, deeply depressed. Um, Kennedy, you know, he ha- he was-- he had a lot of physical ailments. I don't really know, uh, because he die- he was assassinated when he was quite young. But... So the idea is you become addicted to the attention and to the need to have a public all the time, and that can be debilitating. But, you know, a lot of very great people aren't necessarily the nicest people on the planet, and that's-- and they're maybe not necessarily the happiest, but they create great things. One of my icons in sports was Kobe Bryant, because that guy was-- had, uh, set levels of determination and persistence, channeling a lot of anger that he had from, probably from his childhood. And, you know, he was just so fierce on the court, and he was probably a difficult person in many ways to be around, although I think later in life he kind of mellowed a little bit. But I think we have to get over this notion that being great and powerful also makes you a wonderful, loving, kind person, because a lot of very creative people in the arts or in politics or in business get very far, but they're not the nicest people in the world. But so what? Why does everyone have to be these paragons of virtue? Steve Jobs was a raging asshole. He was terrible. He was the worst manager in the world. He learned some lessons later on in life, but, but he was, he was genius at what he did, and we, we need people like that, so we can't just be always looking for the most virtuous, saintly person and, and elevate them because those necessarily aren't people who are gonna get anything done in this world.

Sam Parr 1:09:31 That's awesome. Is there someone who you look up to, uh, where they've checked the bo- checks all the boxes or many of the boxes where you think that they are a great person and also ethical, and I admire them for how they treated their family, things like that? Because we have a lot of great people on here, and there are very few people who we are like, "I would trade my li- lives with that person," or, "I, I admire them as a whole person." Whereas most people, it's like, "I like that thing. I like that thing. The rest, I don't need that."

Shaan Puri 1:09:58 Yeah. And who, who do you admire the whole of? Or who, who was the outlier that accomplished the greatness but was a great being as well?

Robert Greene 1:10:06 Well, I mean, it's kind of personal, but I, I, my former mentee, Ryan Holiday, uh, I, I, I, uh, very much admire him because he's incredibly successful. He's, he's built this empire. He's a, a, a very decent, good person. He i- he's has-- raising a family. He's a great father. And, um, I used-- I got him to be my researcher because I saw that he had, like, a really good character. And so you ally that character with someone who's very smart and ambitious, and you've got a really kind of great person. I've been, uh, I've been f- blessed to be friends with an NBA basketball coach, uh, I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning him, Mark Daigneault of the Oklahoma City Thunder. They won a championship and, uh, uh, two years ago. And the thing about Mark was he's very young. He was in the-- He was a G League coach for the Oklahoma City Thunder G League team. He was very successful there, and then he gets offered the head coaching job, which he wasn't really necessarily wanting because he had a really good job. And to be an NBA coach, you have no idea, because I've talked to him, how insanely stressful that is. Imagine having to lead 15 men, young men, who are making incredible amounts of money, who have their egos, who have their needs, who want all of this attention, who wanna be stars, who are thinking of their future. You have to meld them into a team. And he had like three or four or five years where the team sucked, and they were like at the bottom of the standings, and yet he had faith, and he built a system. And he's a very high character person. He's a very decent person who believes in treating his players well, not spoiling them, but treating them well. And I was so gratified to see someone like that, within a very short period of time, reach the pinnacle in sports and winning a championship for a team from Oklahoma City. You know? Like, okay, the Lakers, they can buy whoever they want, but you're not gonna buy-

Sam Parr 1:12:22 I don't know anything about Mark. Can you tell me the story? What made him special? Take it.

Robert Greene 1:12:27 Well, he, he, he started out young, um, as a G League coach. He might've been like 30 or something, or 31, I don't know. Um, and he's a strategist, so he's very, very intelligent, and he's always studying. He's a student of the game, and he pays deep attention to where the game is headed towards and what are the, what are the new kind of strategies he can devise. So he's been very-- he's very smart, and, and he, he, he's kind of an intellectual type coach in the, in, in the same stamp as, as Phil Jackson. But at the same time, he's very empathetic, and he, he, he is able-- Because he's young, which helps, he's able to identify with his players. He wasn't like a, a pro. He played, I believe, in the college level. Don't, don't quote me on that. Um, so he, he wasn't a player that could, could bond with his players that way. But he was young enough, and he had a deep, deep empathy. He understands the pressures that they have. And so you mix that quality Of someone who's social, who understands human beings, who understands human psychology, but is also a brilliant strategist. He created this new way of playing in the NBA that was unheard of, which was all about, um, going for rebounds. I, I'm not gonna get into the weeds here, but instead, he loaded all his players up there to get offensive rebounds, which was unheard of because it was like you're exposing yourself to that kind of counterattack. It was a strategy that now most teams employ. He was ahead of the game, so he's creative, he's strategic, and he's got human social skills. M- I wrote a book called Mastery, and it's about mastering your career, mastering your profession, reaching that level where you almost don't have to think, where you just have a sense, a fingertip feel for what's going on. Okay? But one of the components in mastery that people have to learn is social skills. You could be, um, brilliant at, at, at, in business or whatever, but if you're horrible with people, it's gonna neutralize everything. So you get somebody with high analytic skills, technical skills, and you ally that with good social skills, you've got a very, very powerful person. Also, as I said, with somebody with a very good character.

Sam Parr 1:14:49 Yeah. That's awesome.

Shaan Puri 1:14:51 Uh, well, I, I'm glad you came on. Uh, uh, I like having you on the podcast 'cause-

Robert Greene 1:14:57 Oh, good

Shaan Puri 1:14:57 ... yeah, you're ve- you're so different than everybody else that we have on the podcast. And, um-

Robert Greene 1:15:01 How so?

Shaan Puri 1:15:01 Well, many ways. Your pace is different.

Robert Greene 1:15:05 Oh, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:15:06 That's the, like, the first thing, 'cause, you know, people bring an energy into the podcast before they bring information, and I think you bring a different pace of, uh, presence, like a gift of presence. Like, I, yeah, I don't feel like you're anywhere else but here when you're doing this, and that's, like, something I wanna b- do more of and be more like. I think also, you know, a lot of people who come on the pod- podcast are helping you be successful, but at a certain surface level of life, right? Successful in your work, successful in your business, successful in your, your job, um, but you kind of go, you know, tap on the shoulder like, "Hey, come, come down a few levels. There's more to the game than just that." It's a different sort of... It's life wisdom. It's not just, uh, sport wisdom, and I think that the life wisdom, uh, and especially this book, this book is interesting to me because I feel like my honest thing was, like, I feel like th- nobody even says the word sublime. I don't think there's anybody out there, like, if the TAM of people who are searching for a book on sublime is zero, maybe, maybe, maybe three, uh, you know, and they all work for you. And so I think that, um, it's amaz- I, I, one thing I respect as a artist and also just as a man who just decides, like, this matters to me, and therefore that's enough. That's something I kind of wish I had more courage of in my life. I think there's always a, a voice in my head that's looking for the, well, the guarantee of some good result if I do all this work. If I hand write this book for years and transcribe it from notebook to notebook to edit it, like, I would wish that there's, like, a, a clear pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. And I just really respect that you did it because you just felt like you were called to do it. There's an artistic courage to doing what you do that I envy and I want, and I s- you know, so I admire that, that part about what you're doing.

Robert Greene 1:16:49 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, uh, a lot of, some people are gonna be disappointed because they want The 48 Laws of Power Part 2. I understand that. Uh, it's not the most sellable subject, but my strategy is you write a good book, you put all of effort into it, you have interesting ideas, you try and do something that hasn't been done before, and you will find your audience. And if you don't, then, then screw them. It's their fault. It's not my fault.

Shaan Puri 1:17:16 [laughs]

Robert Greene 1:17:17 So, uh, [laughs] it's my attitude.

Shaan Puri 1:17:22 There, there was, um... We, I did a podcast with, with the music, music artist, uh, Mike Posner, and he has this great line, which is, uh, 'cause his first songs were mega hits. It was like, "I took a pill in Ibiza" and "Cooler Than Me," and so he went, like, triple platinum. Then his second record was double platinum. Kind of a little disap- single, and then it was, like, no platinum, and then he got shelved. The, the record label was paying him and owned his life but didn't even want to pay to produce the music, so for years, he wrote songs that then would become Justin Bieber's hit or somebody else's hit, and he was just sitting there not, like, not even out there. And he tal- as he went through the whole thing and he came out the other side and he's back to having fun making music, he was like, his m- kind of guiding m- like, words that he said that stuck with me, he goes, "I just make what's cool to me, and sometimes the whole world agrees." And that was enough for him, and I just thought, I really love that. I think that's just, like, such a better attitude than I think the default mode that most people have when they wanna go make hits.

Robert Greene 1:18:19 Well, you, you, it, it, you either have one or two paths you can do. You can write for what the market says will be the most, uh, marketable and lucrative, or you can write for what will satisfy you and, and what you need to express. Now, if I believe that if you do something that you need to express and you feel very deeply, like it's something I have to communicate, and a lot of books are written nowadays that don't have that, I believe, that sense of purpose behind them. If you have a reason for writing or, or creating music, it will find an audience because the level of excitement and pleasure you feel will translate to the listeners, I believe. Maybe you won't ha- go triple platinum, but you'll go probably platinum or something like that. So that's always been my guiding philosophy, to listen to myself and w- as I'm listening to myself, to then think about my readers and how I'm gonna connect to them on using the subject of the sublime kind of thing.

Sam Parr 1:19:19 Well, thanks for coming back, man. We, um, we're big fans, so I, I agree. This is always a, a nice change of pace and, and it sort of feels like, um, we're in a good type of class whenever we talk to you. You know, uh, y- you definitely, we, we, like, almost like mentor vibes, and so we appreciate you, uh, kind of letting us learn from you for a little while.

Robert Greene 1:19:38 Well, I, I, I love it. I really enjoy it. Thank you so much for inviting me. I, I lo- um, I'm very honored.

Sam Parr 1:19:44 That's it. That's the pod. [upbeat music]