Lee Sung Jin On The Spirituality Of Netflix’s ‘Beef’

Lee Sung Jin is the Emmy-winning writer, director, and showrunner of Beef, and is now co-writing Marvel's X-Men. We discuss his backstory, the Jungian shadow work underneath the show, the specificity with which he constructs these characters and the universality piece that comes out of it, the worst year of his life and the scene it produced, and the name he spent twenty-five years under. The overarching message is that change, evolution, growth are possible and always within our grasp. We just get in our own way. Lee is operating at an entirely different level. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: LMNT: Get a free 8-count Sample Pack with any purchase👉🏼https://www.drinkLMNT.com/RICHROLL iRestore: Save on customer favorites with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.irestore.com/RICHROLL BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉🏼https://www.betterhelp.com/richroll Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://stories.rivian.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:04Speaker 01

  Letting go is actually the thing. But we keep forgetting.

• 1:08Rich Roll?

  Lee Sung Jin.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Lee Sung Jin, the creator of the hit Netflix show Beef.

• 1:13Rich Roll?

  He has other television products in development with A24, FX, and Lionsgate. You've expanded your aperture and you're tackling much deeper existential questions about what it is to be human.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Danny says in season one, "Rock Bottom can be your trampoline," which was just ripped from the headlines of my life. And I just started reexamining everything, like, just intentionality. Like, what's my intention as a friend, as a son, as a writer? I'm actually sort of glad everything happened the way it did, because what a privilege it is to get to take pain and then make art out of it.

• 1:53Rich Roll?

  What would the 12-year-old version of you think if he knew that one day he was gonna be writing X-Men and getting Emmy nominations? It's not as if, like, from day one, you were thinking you were gonna be a writer and filmmaker.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  This is not really the trajectory.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Certainly was not. I mean, when I was 12, I was just studying for the PSATs. I was playing violin, hours and hours every day. That's why my neck leans this way. I constantly have to correct it that way. Yeah, I had no idea that this was in store. I do feel very, very blessed. What stays the same, though, is like, at 12, I was also thinking very similar existential questions, and those questions are still here. Haven't really been answered.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  And so it's like, yes, like, I don't think 12-year-old me would expect the hamster wheel that I'm on to look the way it does. But then, I think 12-year-old me would be like, "Oh, you're still a... some of the answers, huh?"

• 3:05Rich Roll?

  What do your folks think about what you're doing?

• 3:09Speaker 01

  They're very, very proud now. I think in the beginning, they were very confused. When I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with an economics degree, I was supposed to be investment banker, and I just said, "Sorry, I'm moving to New York with no plan." And they were rightfully concerned. And I was a mess in my 20s. I was just like a tumbleweed, just kind of being blown around. And back then, there was a lot of concern and worry. Now, like, so, so proud. But still, my parents, like, my dad watched season two and texted me, "Hey, good job, but that final scene was too long. You should have..."

• 3:52Rich Roll?

  He's giving you notes.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was like, "This shot should have been this much shorter, and then you should have cut to this, and then this, and then it would have been great."

• 4:00Rich Roll?

  Now he's an editor.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was like, "Well, that, it's like, the show's on the platform. It's aired, so I can't, like, remove it and apply those changes." But, you know, so they're still my parents, but they are extremely, extremely proud, yeah.

• 4:16Rich Roll?

  True or false, your dad designed the first supercomputer?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  For Samsung, yes.

• 4:22Rich Roll?

  For Samsung?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. He was a professor for most of, I don't know, our lives. And there was a brief period where we moved back to Korea from my elementary school because he had gotten a job at Samsung, and he was tasked with designing the first supercomputer. And he gave up that job to move us all back to the United States because of how bad this public school system was back then, where they hadn't reformed the school system so the teachers would beat you every single day. Like, actual beat. There was one teacher who made you do push-ups, and while you're doing push-ups, would punch you in the face.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  And you would stay after hours and hold a chair above your head, and if your elbows went down, they'd come with a metal ruler and just slap your wrist really hard. You'd have to straighten out. So that was every single day from 3rd, 4th, 5th grade. And I was coming home with, like, bruises and just... And so my parents decided to... that this Samsung path wasn't worth it, and they would move us back to the United States, which I'm very, very thankful for. Obviously, Korea has since greatly reformed their education system to the other extreme, where teachers are committing suicide now because the students bullied them so hard. So, overcorrected there.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  But, you know, my dad likes to lament that all the heads of Samsung were people that were under him when he was there. And what could have been?

• 6:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, two insights. First, the fact that your dad would make that sacrifice for his family, for you and your sibling, your one sister. When he was in such a prestigious situation, speaks to his character and what he values as important. And secondarily, for you to then go your own way, like, you're on this track. Like, I'm sure it was heavy to have a dad who was that accomplished, and I don't know what the environment was like in your home, but you strike me as a striver. I mean, you got into Penn, and it's not unusual that you would be considering investment banking and all of that.

• 6:40Rich Roll?

  But to say, "No, I'm not gonna do that," takes a degree of self-confidence and self-knowledge, to believe in yourself, to think, like, "I'm gonna step off this path. I've been given the privilege to attend this university, and I can see how my life is gonna play out if I go this traditional route, and I'm gonna take the road less traveled."

• 7:02Speaker 01

  I think in hindsight, it can look like that, but in the moment, it certainly didn't feel like it. You know, it was weird. Like, I was never making those decisions out of self-confidence. It felt very, like, insecure and sad in the moment. You know, I was just... I just remember, like, being in college and just feeling such heavy melancholy, because this was not... I didn't feel like myself, you know? And I think this whole journey for me has been like... I think also part of it is being a Korean-American immigrant. I was born in Korea, moved over here, moved back and forth. And there's just...

• 7:46Speaker 01

  You really become from minute one accustomed to looking around, copying and mimicking, and never really feeling like yourself. And that becomes the norm. And in college, as I'm about to do investment banking, I'm starting to feel like, "This isn't me." And so I was just kind of chasing this sadness that was also the driving force, which in hindsight feels very confident, but in the moment, it was just like stumbling. I had no idea what direction I was going. I just knew that I didn't feel good. And I think even as I found writing, it's same thing happened, where the early part of my career, I was just mimicking what was in.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Like, my first job was on Always Sunny in Philadelphia in 2008. And at the time, like, comedy was so in, like, hard comedy, like, very UCB, like, you know, a joke every piece of dialogue. And so I would try to mimic that. And I ended up on a network multicam for three seasons that just completely destroyed my mental health, because I was... It just felt like I'm here, and the person walking around in life is over here, and it's just getting stretched more and more and more. And I could tell the rubber band was gonna snap, but I just didn't know when. And then, I think in 20... December 13th, 2013 is when it, like, snap, snapped.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  And that was like my, like, you know, big brush with suicide, and ended up in the hospital. And... But, you know, like Danny says in season one, "Rock Bottom can be your trampoline." And he says it sort of jokingly, but... Or we wrote it jokingly, he's saying it seriously. But it is very true, like, that I'm so glad it finally snapped. I feel very grateful that I am still here. But that really became a needed clean slate of, okay, like, if I'm gonna participate in this reality, then like, why am I here?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  And I just started reexamining everything, like, just intentionality, like you were saying, how we started this conversation. So what's my intention as a friend, as a son, as a writer? And I started therapy, started really looking into self-help, and yeah, it all started from that moment.

• 10:19Rich Roll?

  It really is the hero's journey of Lee Sung Jin. I mean, you, you were living progressively more and more out of alignment with your true self, adorning this mask, trying to fit in and figure out your way and how you could operate in this world that you were attracted to, but not confident or integrated enough to actually express your authentic self.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  Like thinking the only way to survive is to kind of costume myself like all these other people around me, but do that long enough and you're gonna, you're gonna reach a crisis point. And in your case, this bottom really is this incredible lever for, for transformation and, and growth. And this is something I think about a lot, too. Like these painful moments, like you don't wish them on anybody, but they really, it's like the universe, the seize part or the universe puts you in a place and you suddenly have a degree of willingness to make these changes and do the scary thing. And as a result of doing that work, and clearly you've done a lot, like it's reflected in, you know, in your work. It's like you couldn't write what you wrote without like being this deeply introspective

• 11:28Rich Roll?

  person who's gone through hard times and come out the other side and has a understanding of what it feels like to live outside of your, your own body and your own life and, and what it means to like come home. We're all just trying to come home to ourselves, right?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  And when you do, it's like lightning strikes and this beautiful work of art emerges from this. That's a reflection of the journey that you went on to be the kind of person who could carry that resonance in that message.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. I, I try to, I try to remind myself of, of, of what you just said often, cause sometimes it gets easy to like lament, like the negative things that have happened, you know? But then, like you're saying, I'm like, oh wait, like I'm actually sort of glad everything happened the way it did, cause you know, what a privilege it is to get to take pain and then, you know, make art out of it. But then it does get sad too, cause like, you know, I have a 16 month old daughter and I look at her and she's so perfect and her personality and essence is just there intact from minute one.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  And then I'm like, oh my gosh, like I wanna, all I wanna do in life is to do everything in my power to protect that essence. So it never gets chipped away at, so that she never has to feel like I did. And like, I so wanna protect that. And then, then, then like in therapy, you get angry because then you're like, how, my instinct is so strong to, to protect that. Like, how did, how did so many people not, you know? And for me, but then like you're saying, like that I just have to shift my, my prism of which I'm looking at that, which was, okay, that's, that's great that I feel that for my daughter, but then for me, for whatever reason, everything happened in, in a certain sequence and it's allowed me to do what I do.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  And that's, that's my path. And, and, you know, trying to find acceptance and gratefulness for it. But yeah, it's tough. It's, it, it does ebb and flow between those two points on a, a daily basis.

• 13:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, these, these people who created challenges for you are actually your teachers. You know, they were giving you the lessons you needed to learn in order to become the person you are today. And on some level, you could choose to see it through the lens of you having chosen this experience in this lifetime of the kind of difficulties that you had to go through so that you could transcend, become the person that you've, that you've become more fully embodied, more self-actualized, so that you can parent your child and spare them whatever generational trauma you inherited and you get to interrupt that pattern.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 14:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the whole game.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:25Rich Roll?

  You know, I think.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. It has been, I mean, one of the most rewarding parts of, of being a parent has been that feeling of, oh wait, like we're breaking the cycle here. That's really, really cool, you know? And yeah, I, I, and maybe that is why like life is the way it is where it's just designed to continually rebirth and we, you know, like, we certainly aren't gonna figure it out in our one lifetime.

• 14:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The key for you is making sure the pendulum doesn't swing too far in the other direction. And then she inherits all kinds of other issues out of your neuroses of like not wanting to be your parent.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Oh, totally. I'm like.

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  And it's inevitable, it's all, it's also like in the samsara of it all. Like it's rigged, like it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, what you do. Like there will be some reason why she's gonna go to a therapist in 20 years and complain about how this didn't happen right, or that was wrong and you made, you made the mistake that, you know, harmed her.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it almost feels like, I'm, I'm curious what you think, having spoken to so many people with different opinions. At the end of the day, do you think that we actually have free will?

• 15:44Rich Roll?

  Well, the neuroscientists will, will tell you that we don't.

• 15:50Rich Roll?

  I think it's very difficult for our small brains to accept that, that there's a good chance that we don't have free will. Like it's just an intolerable concept.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  You know, that makes life very difficult. But the scientific studies seem to say that this is the case and I try not to think about that too much. Or maybe I think that, like if you think of it in the broadest context, I heard you tell a story, like I think somebody was asking you about death or identity and you told the story of this octopus that had its arm severed off.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:30Rich Roll?

  And, you know, the octopus's limbs each having mini brains.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:35Rich Roll?

  And that limb just goes off and is having its experience, not realizing that there's a larger brain that it was attached to.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:43Rich Roll?

  And I think consciousness operates the same way. You know, I think that, that we have this sense of individuation, but in truth, I think consciousness, I'm becoming increasingly convinced is fundamental to the universe. And we're like these kind of extruded biological forms that are, are like inhabiting a means to have an experience for a short period of time before being absorbed into the oneness of consciousness. And so if you think of free will or the lack of free will in that context, it, it doesn't really seem as relevant.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it almost doesn't matter.

• 17:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause technically that arm doesn't have free will, but then it does.

• 17:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:26Rich Roll?

  So it's a, it's a Zen Cohen, right? Like we have to live as if we have free will.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:31Rich Roll?

  Even if we don't.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:33Rich Roll?

  It doesn't matter.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:34Rich Roll?

  We still have to behave accordingly, I guess. Do you have a theory on why Beef touched this cultural nerve and, and why it's become so successful and popular?

• 17:46Speaker 01

  You know, I think one, something that I'm realizing as I get older is like the more specific you can get about, you know, your experience or the experience of those people around you, oddly, the more specific you get, the more universal it seems to travel. And I think largely because we're sort of the same thing experiencing itself. So then like, you know, you're, you're sitting at home and you hear a thought that you only thought you had yourself, you're like, wait, that's me. So I think a little bit of it is that. And then I think with Beef, we specifically call it Jungian shadow work amongst ourselves and my collaborators and I.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  I think for whatever reason, there, there are not a lot of avenues culturally to do like Jungian shadow work at large.

• 18:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  And so maybe that's also a part of it, but, but I'm not sure, to be honest.

• 18:46Rich Roll?

  The Jungian stuff is central, like that just leaps off the screen for me, cause I spent a lot of time thinking about that. And, you know, I was reflecting on like, why, why is this like show so resonant? It's as if you're like a forensic pathologist performing an autopsy on culture, identity, ethnicity, capitalism, you know, the generational divide and the specificity with which you kind of construct these characters and their identities with respect to their, you know, cultural heritage or their socioeconomic status or their generational status is so specific. And it's like, oh, I know that person, you know? And that's the universality piece to it.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 19:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we can, we can just feel that and it draws us in and we feel connected.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, Beef, out of all the things I've ever worked on, it's so born out of collaboration. And I mean, just hours and hours of conversations with the actors, like, you know, I think my first Zoom with Oscar Isaac was, I think like three and a half hours long. And we just went there, like, you know, it was very deep and vulnerable. And, and, and I think all those conversations kind of are the textures that you can put on top of the story math, so to speak. Like as writers, we can like craft like the right narrative core progression, but in terms of the textures you put on it, that has to feel real.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  And there's, that's, that's why so many of the textures, I, I don't try to imagine myself or the writers do, like we have honest conversations with our collaborators and that's, that's really the gold.

• 20:32Rich Roll?

  The degree of intentionality is off the charts. Like I was listening to an interview with you and you were talking about shot composition and, you know, like the dirty and clean like way that you approach, like where is the camera landing in the sequence of how this kind of emotional arc is playing out? Like, why are you putting it on this person and what else is in the frame? And the level of consideration that goes into that is just like, I think beyond what the average person would ever imagine, but it's operating on the unconscious level.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you. Yeah, we. We definitely have a lot of talk about intention because I think that's that's really the key. I've always said that like, you know, I think, I think us as humans, we think we're really good at hiding our intention, but it's like pretty bald.

• 21:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  And so when it comes to filmmaking, I think it's really important to have an intention. Or else the audience is going to feel the lack of or the muddiness of it.

• 21:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  If you're not crystal clear. Something unlocked for me years ago, when in my writing, when I realized that like music and storytelling are really the same. And it was this article that I have read where some university had fed its machine learning algorithm, like hundreds of pieces of classic literature. And AI discovered that we only tell stories in six or seven ways. And it's like shapes, like rise, fall, rise, fall, rise, fall. And then I was like, wait, that is the same thing that Vonnegut used to talk about in his Man in the Hole graph, which is essentially a rise, man in the hole, fall, and then arise again. And then I started thinking, well, that's strange because the modern ear only really

• 22:22Speaker 01

  likes six to seven chord progressions. And then I was thinking about the big one that we all chase in like, you know, top 40 hits in church music. It's like, you know, different iterations of G, E minor, C, D, G. And that is G is a status quo, E minor is a fall. And then CDD, you're, CD, you're rising back up to where you started, G, which is literally like story circle, like, you know, Joseph Campbell, like hero's journey. And that got me thinking, oh, wait, like, it really is just like pressing buttons to make you feel a certain way and you're creating these energetic shapes that for some reason our brains respond to.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  And for whatever reason, I think collectively, we seem to have fallen in love with this, you know, this shape.

• 23:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse about humanity. It's sort of like, oh, we're, we're very primitive beings that respond to stimuli in a very specific way. If you push this button, we're going to react this way.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:29Rich Roll?

  Which I think speaks thematically to the show as well, because there's a lot of hand wringing around like, why are these characters behaving badly? But they're behaving badly based on early childhood traumatic experiences or systemic forces that are compelling them to behave in a certain way. Like if you were that person and had lived their life, you would be doing exactly what they're doing.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right.

• 23:54Rich Roll?

  You know, in the same way that we respond unanimously to a certain chord progression.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's what's so hard about being born into a body is like suddenly without consent, we are in this. And then now you and I are separate. And then we are trained to believe that our like subjective lens and that voice inside is actually us. And it's so hard to see outside yourself. And, and like you're saying, those systemic forces then almost engrain you in yourself because suddenly you don't have the resources you need. You feel a lack. So then it's like, okay, I need to gather, gather to boost the self. And the more you're self-focused and the less you're able to have the empathy to think,

• 24:42Speaker 01

  wait, if I were in that person's shoes, I'd be doing the exact same thing. Which is why I think we tell stories. And I think we've been doing this since we were in the cave around a fire. We tell stories to try to break out of that rigidness of the self, you know?

• 25:00Rich Roll?

  It's a deeply spiritual work wrapped in a, a very delicious, digestible pop culture flavor, you know? Like you're, you're working on a very deep level with the themes, you know? And you signal it at the end very overtly with the samsara and the mandala and all of that. But like those themes are operating throughout the entire season. It's a much more mature, you know, kind of growth out of season one. Like you've expanded your aperture and you're tackling like much deeper existential questions about what it, what it is to be human.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, we definitely wanted to, you know, graduate, so to speak. Like season one kind of felt like an examination of a lot of stuff from my past, you know? Like Danny's character in season one, like his struggles with mental health and, you know, the season one opens with him returning hibachi girls that he had bought to kill himself, which was, you know, just ripped from the headlines of my life, something that I did at one point. And, and so I feel like season one felt like very much like old chapter. And, uh, you know, I'm so glad that you, you, you felt this shift because it did feel

• 26:14Speaker 01

  like season two, we wanted to tap into more of what's happening now for, for a lot of my peers and I of, of being 40 something and, and starting to grapple with time and, and realizing, wait, like I'm becoming the generation before me.

• 26:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I didn't even realize that that was happening. And, um, and so I think because this was more now and season one's more old, it felt like also the filmmaking and the aesthetic needed to change a little bit. Like season one intentionally felt very like grungy and messy. And, and that's why all the needle drops are like 90s grunge, because it felt like spiritually, those characters were trapped back then.

• 26:56Rich Roll?

  In that, in that time period, yeah.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Whereas season two, I wanted to go more painterly, more lush. You know, it's a season about love. So even the score is very like emotive and you have these like, you know, thick synths that Phineas composed. And, um, you know, that felt much more of, of now, which I think, I think as, you know, at least for me, as you hit middle age, you start to feel new things. And there's a lot of melancholy and sadness, I think.

• 27:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  As, as, as you lose, you know, during the making of the show, you know, I lost one of my dogs unexpectedly and, um, you know, and then I put that into the show. And, uh, and so there's a lot of sadness that we wanted to tap into.

• 27:39Rich Roll?

  What got me in the door was, I'm friends with David Cho and the fact that it was set in Calabasas, season one.

• 27:51Rich Roll?

  And I became obsessed with the locations where you were shooting. In fact, the house, Stephen Young's house, I'm like, I think I know where that house is. Like, I was like, I think I know exactly where that house is. And I was out on a bike ride one day and I, I pulled up this photo today. So here it is.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 28:09Rich Roll?

  And I took this photo on, let's see, hold on, uh, June 25th, 2023.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Oh, no way.

• 28:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Wow. So you're very early.

• 28:18Rich Roll?

  No, I was obsessed with the show.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  No, but the house is spotted. That's actually like a one minute walk from, from, from my home.

• 28:27Rich Roll?

  But just seeing the foibles of people who live in Calabasas brought to the screen. And then in season two, like I, I spent time in Ojai. Like I'm not a Montecito person, but I friends in Ojai go up there. And like, just, I was like, oh my God, you're just like operating in my world, you know, reading my mind. But it's, it's these deeper themes that have got me really invested in it. I mean, this is all, you know, deriving from Ram Dass and Alan Watts and Esther Perel. Like these are, these are like my touchstones, you know? And I spent a lot of time thinking about their work. And I know, because you've said it, that Be Here Now is your favorite, favorite book. Is that true?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  I mean, your Instagram handle is Be Here Now Later.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Be Here Later.

• 29:10Rich Roll?

  Be Here Later. Okay. Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Cause it's like, yeah, you should be here now and then.

• 29:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  On Instagram later. But yeah, no, I mean, honestly, I mean, you're, you're not to just gas you up because I'm here, but, um, I mean, your podcast is hugely influential for, for my mental health and a lot of me processing these themes. I mean, you've introduced me through your guests, through so many people that are speaking to, and just even your own journey and, and how you're so about transformation and about kind of taking off the mask and examining what's really going on with being alive. I've consumed so much of, of, of your words and your guest words that it does filter into my work, you know?

• 29:56Rich Roll?

  That's beautiful. I appreciate that.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:58Rich Roll?

  But now that I know that, now I'm jealous that the podcast drop in season two wasn't me and it was Huberman, but actually much funnier that it was Andrew.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Well, you, you don't talk about dopamine as much as.

• 30:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I definitely don't. I definitely don't. That was very, very funny.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks.

• 30:17Rich Roll?

  What does that say about how you think about like the self-optimization movement and kind of the podcast landscape around?

• 30:28Rich Roll?

  Like, mental health, because it's changed a lot, you know, like, there's, like, I'm a beneficiary of this format of media, you know, becoming what it has become, but there's a lot about it also that's, causes me a fair amount of concern.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's certainly changed a lot. I mean, I think that's why it was sort of fun to, like, you know, poke fun at it through the show, but while also not rejecting it, because like, like, truthfully, like, I am Josh, like, I do, like, like, sit alone at my, you know, part of the house and listen to, you know, you and Huberman, and I'm constantly trying to, like, work on myself, but then, like, not really showing any fruits of that labor.

• 31:15Rich Roll?

  Or using it to check out from the real thing that you should be, you know, like, when Josh is like, I'm listening to a fucking podcast, but it's like, clearly he has a crisis that he should be addressing.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, I think it's just like any, anything that we do as humans, it starts in earnest, and, and there is great, uh, um, truth in it, but then, but then, like, it mutates, like, then everything else gets involved, then, like, then there's commerce, and, and humans, we hedonically adapt so quickly that suddenly this becomes the status quo, and then you're looking for, you get accustomed to the rhythm of, okay, I'm gonna listen to my podcast, but I'm gonna stay the same, and then suddenly the thing that was, it acting change becomes the thing that makes you stagnant, and, and then you need the new thing. And again, I think that's why we keep telling the same stories around the fire, like, we've been

• 32:08Speaker 01

  telling the same stories to each other for all of time, and I think it's because we're that dumb, like, we're like, we hear a story, we're like, deeply moved, and we're like, I'm gonna change, starting now, and then, and then we don't, and then we have to tell the same stories over and over again. Uh, and so, I think the self-help movement, while, like, it's helped me so much, um, it's going through the same reckoning, I think, that every movement does, uh, which is growth, and then stagnation, and then capitalism, you know, puts its claws in, and then, but then it has to adapt and change, and I think it will.

• 32:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the, the, the sort of overarching message that I get from season two is that change, evolution, growth, like, these things are possible, and they're always within our grasp, we just get in our own way.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:00Rich Roll?

  And because of that, we're just playing out these loops, you know, we're fated to a certain destiny, because we're, we're stuck in a certain rut, you know, and your samsara mandala kind of really illustrates this, like, breaking free is possible, it's just very difficult, and most of us just can't do it, you know, basically.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I certainly have it, and, uh, randomly, I was on my way to a Timberwolves game, and I was sitting next to Jay Shetty, uh, also in this world, and, and we, like, instantly became, like, fast friends, and started talking about the themes of the show, and he said something interesting about, you know, uh, what he learned, um, you know, studying, like, over at India and the, uh, Vedic texts, and that, you know, when it comes to mountains, there's actually mountains, um, in the east, where you're not allowed to climb them, it's illegal to climb them, because spiritually, uh, it, it's sort of like, uh, something that's a very, like, looked down upon, to feel like you have to,

• 34:04Speaker 01

  like, climb it, and, yeah, reach it, and really, what they do is instead, just kind of, they go around it, which is so beautiful to me, and I, my brain is so trained to climb mountains, and so even the act of breaking out of samsara, it's like a mountain that I want to achieve, and so, I think, season two, at least for me, and, you know, I'm, I'm speaking more overtly about it here, probably than, I, I try to be more vague in other interviews, because I do want to leave the show up into interpretation, but, you know, I, I know you, like, truly deeply get this, but, for me, like, that, the, the feeling of being trapped in samsara can be so suffocating at times, that it is truly

• 34:47Speaker 01

  the root of my mental health struggles, I feel like this thing is a prison, and I just want to break out, and I used to break, want to break out in a very, you know, detrimental way through self-harm, and now, it's almost the opposite side of the same coin, where it feels like a mountain, where I'm like, okay, if I work on myself, if I do this, if I do that, then like, okay, I gotta climb this mountain and break out, and season two for me was trying to learn to accept that, like, hey, it's, it's okay to just go around the mountain.

• 35:19Rich Roll?

  Not only is it okay, that's actually the solution, like, this sort of strivers approach to, like, I am going to achieve, you know, like, my mental health is applying the problematic aspect of yourself to the problem, you know what I mean, instead of, like, actually, if you just let go, and not approach it like it's a goal to be achieved, you're more likely to begin to inhabit the solution.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  It's so counterintuitive, but it's so correct, you know, Stephen Young had a Ursula K. LaGuin quote, that was a big North Star for, for Beef, where she says, uh, to oppose something is to maintain it, and, yeah, that letting go is actually the thing.

• 36:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  But we, we keep forgetting.

• 36:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, my wife always says, uh, if you're, if you're fighting against something, like, even for good reasons, like, you're an activist, or you're, you know, applying yourself to resolve, you know, you have a cause, like, you're still fighting.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:19Rich Roll?

  You know, and that's the, that's sort of the, the brain pretzel of it all, the conundrum.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Well, and I think that's, uh, Alan Watts talks about it a lot with that concept of Wu Way, of how, how do you, how do you feel where the natural momentum is in life, and sort of, like, use it against itself, like, you, you can, like, in activism, you can fight right up against it, um, usually causes more friction, but how can you actually, like, judo, uh, the thing that you're up against, and I tried to apply that, uh, just, you know, in, in writing, and, and, you know, in my collaborations, you know, oftentimes with networks, like, you know, you can get into, like, a standoff, and they're like, don't get a script, and then suddenly you're like, just, all right, I'm gonna dig my heels

• 37:09Speaker 01

  in, and that's never worked, like, it usually ends up where you have to, at the end of the day, lose, because they're ultimately the network, or you end up in this weird compromise that neither party likes, um, but I think you can learn to judo it, where, uh, you can, like, take their fervor of notes, and why they're saying the notes, and try to, like, use that to your advantage, and be like, well, I'm on the same team as you, I want what you want, but here, like, come over here, let me show you, like, a different way to achieve that, and let's talk about it together, and then suddenly, they're actually doing exactly the thing that you wanted, it just, it required a little, a different angle.

• 37:49Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 37:52Rich Roll?

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• 38:34Rich Roll?

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• 39:19Rich Roll?

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• 40:02Rich Roll?

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• 40:50Rich Roll?

  I want to get into your career path, but you mentioned your mental health journey. And I kind of want to start there. Like, you've been pretty transparent about your struggles with depression and how your personal life experiences find their way into the beef narratives. When did that start for you? And how do you make sense of what caused it?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, I do therapy every week and, you know, I'm still trying to unravel it all. But yeah, I think it started at a very young age. I think, I remember like in sixth grade, I started like just devouring C.S. Lewis because I wanted to make sense of this. And I think part of it is, you know, I moved around a lot. I moved every three to four years of my life and I love my parents so much. And, you know, they did so much to give us a better life, but then also, you know, we

• 41:53Speaker 01

  were constantly on the move and, you know, and I think part of that is they were sort of chasing a sense of happiness that would always go awry. And then they tried to clean slate it every three to four years. And so like home never felt like a safe space to me. And again, like, I know my parents may watch this, so like, I do love them and they, they did create safety in many ways, but for a variety of factors, I think emotionally, I, home wasn't safe. There's this one line that Ali Wong says at the finale of season one, where she says, "Where nowhere feels like home, you just go inward."

• 42:38Speaker 01

  And that started really, really young. And, and I think also as a Korean kid, kind of moving up and down the Midwest, not having a sense of home with your family and you don't feel at home in society, then you, you really feel alone. Like, I just remember for, at such a young age, like truly understanding like loneliness. And back then, I think loneliness felt like a thing to solve. Like, again, the mountain where like, I need to, I need to fill it with this. I need to like find connection this way. I need to throw myself into music or, you know, also, I think for a lot of people my

• 43:23Speaker 01

  age, that's when the internet was invented. And I think a lot of guys my age, then we like also, you know, it was like suddenly access to porn, you know? And then, then that becomes like a thing that you scratch the itch with. So I was always kind of like finding, trying to find these crutches that would eventually collapse. And then that would just make me more depressed and more depressed.

• 43:49Rich Roll?

  Because there's always just emptiness on the other side of them.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Well, I think eventually we all have to grapple with the fact that like, I mean, I wrote a lot of this into the finale of season one, that I think the world is the way it is because we're just an extension of God. Like, like, and I say God in a sort of a loose sense, like we're the branches of a tree. And that tree is everything. So it is alone. Like, God is alone in nothingness and we are just working itself out through this eternal process. And I think we all have to grapple with the fact that we're alone.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  And, but we've created all this as an illusion to like feel not alone. But then, you know, this is all a, you know, that word, lela, divine play. It's a, it's a play. It ends and then you have to grapple with the fact that it's just you.

• 44:52Rich Roll?

  We're operating in our Maya and in the same way that music and story structure works in this rise and fall method, we craft these identities, archetypal identities to help us make sense of who we are and where we fit in. And that's just a story and an illusion as well, that we think makes us feel more connected, but actually becomes an obstacle. And like, you're somebody who has this incisive ability to like deconstruct the generational divide and you do it explicitly in season two with, with the difference between millennials and Gen Z. But it comes full circle to say like, it doesn't really matter. Like, we're all, we're all just becoming our parents and doing the same thing.

• 45:37Rich Roll?

  Like, you can, you can be under this illusion for a little while and then the older you get, you realize like, there really isn't the difference that we think there is.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. It's why the finale was titled, "It Will Stay This Way and You Will Obey," which is based on a Marion Woodland quote. That is literally like, I think it starts with like, "Old Mother God, Old Father God, you have trapped us here." And yeah, it's like this feeling that, like you said, it doesn't matter. The four seasons are going to come for you. I love talking to you about the finale because you're sort of the first person who, you know, explicitly is getting all the things that we put down. But we also ultimately wanted to leave that final shot really open-ended and a blank canvas for the audience because I don't know that, like, I know if I watched that in my twenties,

• 46:27Speaker 01

  I wouldn't really be speaking of it like this. I would, I would probably be speaking of it as more of like a negative ending, which I have found amongst my like Gen Z peers, when they watch the show, they have a very different takeaway than when my, you know, forty something friends watch the show. And I'd imagine, you know, boomers watch the show also take away something different. And I, I think that's the beauty of samsara is that as you go around the mountain, every time you go around, you're, you're feeling and thinking something different.

• 46:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Far be it from me to demand the artist explain his work. I don't want to put you in that position. But I think that you, like you walked a tightrope in ending it in the way that you did because you don't want to leave the audience with this cynical feeling about their fate. And you do a beautiful job of threading that needle by leaving us with some hope. But I do think, yeah, it is, it is, the, the interpretation is on the beholder and that's going to depend upon your lot in life and your, your set of unique life experiences and your age, your age as well. And so it's this interesting combination of timeless.

• 47:40Rich Roll?

  Like, if you go back and watch season two, you know, 10, 15 years later, you're going to interpret it differently because you've matured into a different, you know, kind of period of your life, season of your life. But it's also terminally online. You know, you have, you're like, you have this ability to really understand like youth culture and their relationship to the internet in this very authentic way that doesn't feel like patched on by a boomer. You know, it's like, this is, you are conversant in a way that I think that is another reason why audiences are responding to it, because it just feels so real.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Thank you. I, I think it's unfortunately due to me being terminally online and I need to, I need to stop. I've been, I've been researching for like six months. I don't know if you've found something where I really don't want to have my phone anymore. And there's all these new gadgets where like you can have the phone in the other room and it's just like a brick that you can just access Spotify, things like that. But then I just haven't found the right thing. And then I end up getting my phone and the next thing I know, I'm reading every single negative comment about the show that exists online.

• 48:47Rich Roll?

  Still.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Oh, I like did it yesterday.

• 48:51Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's become almost like a daily routine and I need to, I need to stop. But I think, you know, what I, then I try to take that spirit and then put it into the work and then hopefully other people who are terminally online will relate.

• 49:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  But yeah, I'm hoping the next project I do, I'll have reached that goal of being less online and you can feel it in the work.

• 49:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's almost like we need a new Maslow's hierarchy of needs that takes into account our relationship with the digital world.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh. Have you seen that Adam Curtis documentary, Hypernormalization?

• 49:31Rich Roll?

  I haven't.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  It is, I think he is the most brilliant documentarian alive. And if you haven't seen The Century of Self, that's like, that is so up your alley. Like literally goes through like pre-world war to now and how we've basically created this century of self. And it really comes down to three people that started it. And he did this other documentary, I think in 2016 called Hypernormalization, that just has spot on predicted what the internet has done to us. And then yet, I like, we were talking earlier, I watch it, I feel moved and then I get my phone and I go to Reddit.

• 50:13Rich Roll?

  What do you think is the, the fulcrum between understanding and behavior change?

• 50:22Speaker 01

  I mean, I was hoping you would tell me.

• 50:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, this is a question I ask everyone because it's, it is a, you know, it's a confounding one. You know, people change when they are ready to change, when, when they're visited with some degree of willingness and pain is always the obvious motivator.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:39Rich Roll?

  But, but.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  It usually takes something, depending on how, what part of your life is rigid and how rigid it is, I find that it's like, the more calamitous of an event, the more you're able to shake up the pattern. But it's tough because I think as we get older, you know, especially if you have privilege, you start to create a life that doesn't have any of those earthquakes. You know, Josh's monologue in episode six, after doing Bufo, where he talks about his inability to change, you know, that just, I wrote that in like, you know, two minutes. It just came pouring out of me.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Because I do feel that sometimes where, like, I don't know when the tipping point is, but in your twenties and thirties, you keep feeling like, oh, I'm going to work on that. I'm going to change. Like, ah, like, I, I feel it, but it's not that big of a problem yet and I'm going to, I'm going to work on it tomorrow. And then you blink and then it's become who you are. And suddenly it feels like you are unable to change at all. And that, that window closes so fast, at least in my experience. And I do wish, I kind of love that Josh is giving that advice to Austin and then Austin

• 52:07Speaker 01

  applies it to something so small, like have you ever like found someone else attractive while you were with?

• 52:16Speaker 01

  But I remember older people giving me that advice in my twenties and me registering it, but then still you can't, you know? And I think that's why so many religions, I think the people who started those Abrahamic religions are literally just us having this podcast, but like in the desert, having eaten some, you know, psychotropic, like, you know, root. And then they are thinking of these things and then their solution was like, well, that's why you gotta pray every day. That's why you have like these daily routines. We're just gonna write a bunch of rules, cuz you need strict rules to be able to offset everything we're talking about.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  And then I think in modern life, we've, you know, I went to Korean church when I was growing up and I, you know, I don't as much anymore. I like, I've, we've lost kind of, we need a new set of modern rules, which I think is why self-help podcasts have become such a thing.

• 53:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's secular religion.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:20Rich Roll?

  You know, this obsession with self-optimization, but it plays into the hyper individual, you know, kind of like the prioritizing the individual self above everything else, which loses sight of the best of what religious traditions teach us, which is it's about togetherness. It's about the oneness.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:40Rich Roll?

  But we're, you know, operating in our identities and our illusion and, you know, you're a storyteller. I mean, my theory on this is that there's nothing more powerful than a story well told. And we're very vulnerable to these stories and we craft stories about who we are, like a version of like, we have this sense of like, I am this person, I do these things, this is who I am, I can't do this and I can't do this. It's just a story. Like, we could rewrite that story at any time, but we don't, we buy into it and we believe it. And we then get stuck in these patterns of behavior that just play that story out again and again and again.

• 54:25Rich Roll?

  And we become, we basically imprison ourselves through storytelling.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was thinking about it the other day of, you know, the shapes that we were talking about, when you think about kind of old shamanic cultures, or even like, you know, you listen to like Tibetan monk music, there's no shape. They're just vamping on one note, you know? It's just this the whole time. And the stories they told weren't like rises and falls, it was just the story about a flower. And, you know, it is sort of a mirror, like you're saying, like, it's almost this recursive feedback loop that we're stuck in, where, again, the cycles too of, we're trying to

• 55:12Speaker 01

  chase change, so then we, the storytelling mirrors change and we have the status quo, rise, fall, rise. And then, and then we get addicted to that and then, and then suddenly it was just, we see rise, fall, rise, so then we do rise, fall, rise, and then, and I would love to get to a point where narratively, it's so hard with like, how streaming works now, but I love to get to a point where narratively, like, you could just sort of vamp, you know? Like, that's kind of what like, you know, Link Ladder used to do in his early work. He'd just be vamping.

• 55:46Rich Roll?

  There's no, there's no structure to Slacker.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, the best, you know? But for some reason, we're collectively not there yet. But I mean, maybe it does take someone doing that and trying to incite that change in culture, but, but then it's tough, you know, as a filmmaker, I'm like, oh, I'd love to make a Slacker, but then you can't.

• 56:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but then Marvel knocks on your door and says, are you interested in X-Men? And then you're 55 years old and, you know, you're living this big life and you're like, why would I risk this to go make my version of Slacker?

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Oh, totally. I mean, that's exactly what happened. I did uncredited work for Thunderbolts for my friend Jake Schreier, who I work with a lot. And I remember telling my reps and all my friends, I'm like, just remind me that I, like, I'm not gonna do blockbuster movies again, no knock on Marvel. And then, next thing you know, they're like, hey, we have X-Men. I'm like, I'll do it.

• 56:48Rich Roll?

  But Jake is involved in that.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  He is, he is.

• 56:51Rich Roll?

  He the director?

• 56:52Speaker 01

  He is the director, yeah. I mean, so, I mean, I love working with Jake, but then also like, you know, if Jake were doing like, you know, another Avengers, I probably wouldn't do it, but it's X-Men. Like, I grew up on X-Men, that's my favorite thing ever. Like, my dad and I used to wake up Saturday mornings and watch, you know, the animated series together. So it's really hard to say no to that, cuz then like, I think about like my childhood me, like, how am I gonna go back in time and tell that, you know? Okay, yeah, we got offered X-Men.

• 57:25Rich Roll?

  This is not true to my artistic, there's a hubris in being like, no, I'm not doing that because like, I need to make Slacker.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 57:33Rich Roll?

  You probably can't say very much about X-Men, but can you report on where you are in the cycle of this movie getting made?

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I mean, we, we've been working on a draft. Joanna Calo and I, who's also a frequent collaborator, she co-show runs and co-directs The Bear. There's a lot of internet stuff about casting and we, you know, that is true, Marvel is casting right now. And, you know, Kevin, Jake and Lou read a draft of ours. I think they're super excited. We're in the middle of rewriting that draft. And what I love about Kevin Feige, and I've just grown to admire him more and more, is like, there's a reason he is running Marvel for as long as he is.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Like, he has incredible instincts and a true like, childlike joy in the work. It really is play when you like get in a room with him. And, and so that's been really a surprisingly fun part of this. Like, I was sort of dreading going back into the blockbuster world, but I didn't interact with Kevin as much on Thunderbolts, but on X-Men, it's like, every single meeting he's a part of, every single writing session he's a part of. And getting to, his joy is so contagious that getting to do that and remember that what

• 59:01Speaker 01

  I get to do is play at the end of the day, has been a nice, like, you know, perspective reshift for me.

• 59:08Rich Roll?

  Well, it's an interesting moment for Marvel.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:11Rich Roll?

  You know, we're, we're having this kind of epic, original IP moment right now, which is fantastic, you know, you just can't even get a ticket to see The Odyssey on IMAX for like weeks. It's really exciting and, and fun and cool. And we're also seeing the maturation of these younger filmmakers, you know, backrooms and obsession, like, things are shifting in a good and super interesting way right now, but it changes the audience's relationship with legacy IP, like what Marvel has been so good at. And now, you know, now there's, you know, it's, it's a little bit different. Like, I think the stakes are pretty high.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Very high.

• 59:53Rich Roll?

  And maybe that's why Kevin Feige is showing up at all the meetings. Do you feel that pressure? Like, they need a win.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Kevin's very self-aware and he'll, he'll joke about it for sure. But I think that's why he's been so supportive of taking big swings with X-Men and not, not thinking plot first, but character first, which is, you know, kind of a no-brainer. Like, you know, that's like writing 101 is of course character first, but I think with success, again, like what we were talking about, like, every movement starts in earnest, just like Marvel did, and then it stagnates. And then capitalism comes in and then it has to evolve. And I, I think Marvel is evolving.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  You know, I got to see an early cut of Spider-Man, a brand new day, and it's fantastic. It's really, really good. Like, Destin knocked it out of the park. And so I think there is a, a turning of the cycle happening over there.

• 1:00:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, it's a gigantic conglomerate corporation, you know, and like any maturation of any company, at some point, they're gonna be disrupted unless they disrupt themselves, you know? But you can, you can kind of cave in under the weight of your largess.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Rich Roll?

  And that, that's like the life cycle of every big company.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think they were very smart. They had scaled too much and too fast, in my opinion, with all the TV shows and things like that. And I think Kevin very smartly has, like, all right, like, let's, let's, let's, like, you know, filter out some of the noise and get back to what we're very good at. I'm just kind of one small cog in that giant process. And I think Joanne and I are just trying to do right by these characters and inject some depth. There's a lot of Venn diagram, I think, with Beef Season Two from a bird's eye view, you know?

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  So I think, hopefully audiences will feel that.

• 1:02:03Rich Roll?

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. I am a 30-plus-year believer in the transformational power of therapy, which is why I've advocated on behalf of BetterHelp for many years at this point, because it's a platform that democratizes access to mental health services. But don't take my word for it. Take in the reviews BetterHelp makes available and easy for anyone to read at betterhelp.com/reviews. Hundreds of people describing in their own words what working with their therapist has actually done for them. And the aggregate numbers behind those reviews are pretty impressive. An average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session, and this is all based on over 1.7

• 1:02:47Rich Roll?

  million client session reviews. More than 6 million people have used BetterHelp globally, and at that scale, the feedback is very reliable, it speaks for itself. The service underneath it is straightforward. You answer a few questions, they match you with a therapist based on what you need, every one of them with at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience. And if the fit isn't right, you switch anytime. See the reviews, see what stands out, and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com/richroll. That's better H E L P dot com slash richroll.

• 1:03:27Rich Roll?

  One of the things I love about Rivian is the way they fill their vehicles with so much amazing high-performance technology, but always make sure it feels like second nature, that it keeps that human touch. And a great example would be the haptic halo wheels on the new R2. On either side of the steering wheel, there's a dial that you could roll, push and pull to adjust things like the AC or skip to the next song. And they have this incredibly satisfying tactile feel because you're really clicking a button and rolling a mechanical wheel. I was recently able to drive an R2 with RJ Skarren, the founder and CEO, and he shared the thinking behind this cool and unique feature. So walk me through the thinking on that because as technology is sort of informing

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  this screen-only experience, there is something in the human animal that craves that kind of tactile control.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that was part of what the logic was here is we, and that was from the feedback we had in R1 is the desire from some more mechanical touchpoints and also the ability to not have to use the multi-touch screen for everything. And so being able to do HVAC through this side, your entertainment through that side, you also have drive modes in you as well.

• 1:04:40Rich Roll?

  There are just so many features packed into this vehicle. You can learn all about them, watch the rest of our conversation, and even book a demo drive at stories.rivian.com/richroll.

• 1:04:57Rich Roll?

  I was thinking about Ashley and Austin and their relationship dynamic because there's a lot, there's so much like relationship stuff going on. New love, matured love, old love. What do relationships mean? What is the definition of love for different people at different stages of their life? And on Reddit, there's like a lot of hand wringing around the Ashley character. Like people are, it's really like a lightning rod for people. And I think that's also a lens into somebody's generational perspective. Like depending upon how old you are, you're going to have a certain opinion of that character.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:05:33Rich Roll?

  And what's generating her bad behavior or what's creating sympathy for the way that she's behaving?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we talked a lot about that as we were writing and even in the edit because, you know, most of the network and people chiming in on notes on the show are, you know, elder millennial, Gen X or older, and they have a very specific lens upon how they're viewing these characters. But then I, we'd often have to like remind everyone, like intentionally we are crafting this show so that, you know, Gen Z can have a different experience watching this show than millennials do and vice versa. But it has been surprising to me, like the degree to which Ashley is such a lightning rod. But, you know, I think if we're all

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  being honest, like, and at least for me, I don't want to speak for everybody, but there, there are so many aspects of Ashley that are, have been in my psyche, whether in the past or currently, you know? And I think maybe that's why it's so triggering. It's just like, she is the most overtly like, ugh, like a part of myself that I don't like. And then you see it and then you have to protect yourself as a viewer because you're like, that's not me and I'm going to just hate her then, you know? But I think if we're being honest, her behavior is triggering because there's some truth in there.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's something about yourself that you're unhappy with that's being reflected in this character. Like if you're upset about that, it's, it's probably because you're compartmentalizing or in denial about some aspect of your own behavior.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:16Rich Roll?

  That's being mirrored in that character. Like when I look at her, I see my mother, you know, like this is a person, to me, it's very clear. Like she has, like, both of them have attachment issues. She is an avoidant, or she's an, she hasn't, she's anxious attachment.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:33Rich Roll?

  And he is an avoidant.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:35Rich Roll?

  And of course they're together. Like, you know, it's like archetypal, right? And so that, yeah, they're behaving this way. Like this is my mother and my father. And it's upsetting to me because like, it's, it's making me relive that dynamic, you know?

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, she is for sure anxious attachment. And I'd be curious, like if there's, I wish Netflix had like data that was like, like, you know, this percentage of avoidant viewers found Ashley like despicable. You know, like I am curious, like if you have anxious attachment, are you more inclined to relate to Ashley or do you like her less?

• 1:08:11Rich Roll?

  I think you, I think if you're, if you're an anxious attachment person, then you're going to sympathize with her.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:17Rich Roll?

  You're going to understand why she's behaving that way.

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope so.

• 1:08:19Rich Roll?

  But they've both suffered trauma that make them this way.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:08:23Rich Roll?

  It's like you, you can, you can sympathize with what caused them to behave in this way, whether you disagree with their behavior or not.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Which is why we wrote her backstory the way it was. A lot of it was influenced by, you know, some of Kaylee Spaney's, you know, backstory, not one-to-one, but you know, the soup of discussions led to this backstory of someone who, her, you know, Ashley's mom wasn't around. Like, her mom and dad split when they were young and then the dad started a new family and the mom just is, is not really around. And, and so then you have, you know, I'm sure for Ashley as a child, her parents split, her dad's got a new family. So there must be this need to like, okay, I want to still be a part of a family. Like,

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  you know, I need a people, please. I need to, do they still like me? Like, I imagine at a young age that started. And so, you know, we try to show, not tell in our show of, you know, we have that backstory. There's that hallucinatory moment, nightmare in the hospital with the mom phone call. As we try to leave some breadcrumbs to get the audience to hopefully have empathy for why she is the way she is. But there seems to be definitely a certain subset of the beef viewership that like rejects that backstory.

• 1:09:50Rich Roll?

  I mean, she has been rejected by the people who were meant to love and nurture her.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Rich Roll?

  And so she is going to do everything in her power to create stability and a feeling of connection. And anything that threatens that is an existential threat to her life. And so she's going to respond violently to that.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I think that's why she's hanging on so tightly to this relationship. It's not even about Austin. At the end of the day, she just can't.

• 1:10:17Rich Roll?

  He's just a vehicle for that.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. Her, I don't think she can emotionally process the grief of losing this crutch that replaced the original hurt. And for Austin, who, you know, is avoidant, I think when he's faced with the fact like, oh, I'm going to go chase Eunice, who is also being, now being avoidant with me, that doesn't feel good for an avoidant because they actually secretly like this chase of an anxious person coming at them because they're avoidant. They get to be the avoider. And suddenly avoidant is facing an avoidant. And then I think in the finale, he, he has to reckon with, wait, like, I don't think this person

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  actually loves me back. I don't love Ashley, but she is at least dependable in the sense that I can depend on her to be anxiously attached to me no matter what. So he does the, you know, safe, you know, I guess not courageous thing in some regards. Charles Melton, I think in embodying Austin, actually, I think he views the ending as courageous in some ways, as almost as he, that his character realized that he has to be an adult in order to have a family and a career. And, you know, he's actually making a mature choice for

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  once to, to buy into adulthood. You know, that's one take on it. But I think for me, in that moment in the cab, Austin is kind of going back to the familiar.

• 1:11:54Rich Roll?

  It's, it is a tragic choice because he's making it with a degree of self-awareness. Like he understands why he's making this decision and he's still making it. But that archetype will also rationalize it by saying, well, like, you know, like they're, they're sacrificing themselves for this other person and there's something beautiful about that. And that's true.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:15Rich Roll?

  It was curious to me when Austin, Charles Melton's character, like who, you know, he, he just is so good at playing the kind of somewhat dim-witted but sweet guy. Like you just, you, you, you want him to win. You're cheering for him, but you know, he's just kind of like, you know, he just doesn't, he's not dealing with a full deck all the time. But then when it comes to diagnosing Ashley, he just like nails it as if he was, you know, young himself. And I'm like, that feels sort of inconsistent with this character that you've established. But then I think, well, he's always going on Reddit and like getting answers. He just memorize, like, is that the idea there that he just went there and found this thing and like recited it?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, we try to like sort of breadcrumb, even from the first episode, someone who, like you're saying, like goes on Reddit, you know, reads all the smart things. And he, he references also like self-help and, and love advice all the time. So, you know, again, we're trying to write what we know and feel true to, to real life. Like I do that for sure. Like so many writers in the room do that where like, we'd be like talking about something in the writers room and someone would be like, oh, hey, I read that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, did you read it or did you see an Instagram post? And they're like, I saw a post. And I'm like, and do you, do you have anything

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  else to add to that? Or is it that, is that like the end of your knowledge? And I think that's just all of us right now as we have a very like cursory, superficial relationship with the, you know, amount of self-help stuff coming at us. And, and so I think Austin's been doing that all season and he's probably been, you know, in conversations with his mom and conversations with, on Reddit, starting to get a sense of how he feels about Ashley. But then being an avoidant, he hasn't expressed it. And then finally at the end, it just kind of all comes pouring out, you know? I've, I've definitely done that too, where

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  like, you know, I certainly am not a psychologist, but I will like see an article, I'll be like, oh, that's this person. Can I mentally clock that? You know? And, and then I just, I hold it and hold it and hit and then some fight and I just like, drop the bomb. But I have no like actual like knowledge or like, I'm not in a position to be giving that, giving that diagnosis. So, you know, we were trying to, to kind of stay true to, you know? What a lot of us, I think, experience in real life.

• 1:14:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You also stayed true to the way that young people actually use their phones and the internet. Like, a lot of sort of texting and that sort of thing in television shows and movies feels tacked on for exposition reasons. But here, it's so germane to the characters and the advancement of the plot that it just becomes like, it's a feature, not a bug, you know, in the way that you do it. So I thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on, like, what is the difference between, in your mind, like, Gen Z and millennials? Like, what is the, how do you define that divide or that delta?

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's a great question. I find that, and, like, I don't want to speak too generally, because then I know I'm going to spend an evening reading the negative comments to what I'm about to say.

• 1:15:47Rich Roll?

  You gotta stop doing that.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  I do, yes. And I think millennials tend to use social media to be very presentational. It's more about, like, how do I use this vehicle to then, like, create a certain image that can then funnel back into my ego? And I think Gen Z, because they, maybe they started doing that similarly at a younger age, but then at this point, I feel like Gen Z is more, like, using social media to, like, get what they want, you know, rather than, like, it's like millennials are like, we're like outwardly seeking into the void of the internet to hopefully get something

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  back, whereas Gen Z is like, no, I want money, so I'm going to create content to then get money. I don't, like, sure, like, it's nice to get likes and blah, blah, but at the end of the day, I want this, so I'm going to use this means to get it. Whereas I still see millennials, like, I don't see as many millennials, like, content creating, but they certainly are producing just as much content, but to just feel good about themselves.

• 1:17:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for external validation reasons.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, that's, again, my observation. I hope, I don't like painting in broad strokes, because the internet gets mad, but that tends to be what I see.

• 1:17:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's super interesting. I'm an elder Gen X. No Gen X in season two. You skipped over this. We get, this is my thing, this is my beef with, not just this season of beef, but like, in general, like, we get lumped in with boomers. It's like, everything's okay, boomer. And I was like, dude, we're the coolest. Why did everyone forget this?

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  I, well, what, I fully agree.

• 1:17:43Rich Roll?

  Erased from the record.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  I'm 81, so I am elder millennial Gen X cusp. And I do think that Gen X is the greatest generation, but I fully agree, Gen X just kind of gets lost. And honestly, Oscar Isaac is Gen X. Like, he is not, like, in real life, he is not elder millennial. And there's a time when we were writing where we're like, oh, should we, like, stay true to real life and have, like, Carey Mulligan be elder millennial and Oscar Isaac be Gen X? But then, just in theme, it felt cleaner to just be like, it's elder millennial versus Gen Z. So that's how Gen X got cut out of this one. But it is interesting.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  I do, like, spiritually, I relate to Gen X the most, because being cusp, where the late 90s and early 2000s was very, like, the most influential for me, you know, like, late 90s music is like what I live and breathe. And, you know, early Linklater, like, Reality Bites singles, like, that was so formative. But, yeah, we, I don't know if it's just because, like, Gen X is, like, when you think about those movies and that music, it's, spiritually, it doesn't feel like an energy that, like, doth protest too much. You know what I mean? Like, it's like, literally, like Slackers, you know, it's just like, ah.

• 1:19:14Rich Roll?

  But that's the whole sensibility of Gen X. You know what I mean? Just sort of like, whatever.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, as you get lost as a generation, it's just like.

• 1:19:22Rich Roll?

  Because we didn't raise our hands enough, I guess. But there is this great 90s nostalgia moment right now that is impacting Gen Z. Like, Gen Z seems very affectionate in their kind of nostalgia for the 90s.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  I think the same thing is happening, because the Gen X was a response to Reagan-era, very corporate, buttoned-up, Christian ideology. And then, of course, the generation after was like, no, thank you, like, we're gonna break all those rules. And I think Gen Z feels that way, it's like the next cycle of it, you know? They're looking at all the rules and sort of ideologies and the rigidness of what came before, and being like, wait, like, I'm listening to Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins, and I'm starting to, something's resonating in me because I'm going through that right now.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  And so it's really cool to, like, see them rediscover, and then also how Gen Z gravitates towards things that, like, the fact that Gen Z gravitates towards Deftones in a way that, you know, Gen X Deftones never got its proper due in the 90s, that's amazing, you know? And it does give me great hope for the future. It actually, like, truly is life-affirming to see things like this, because, like, the cycles, it's not just like a circle, it feels like it's a spiral. And like, each time, it's a little different, and each time, it grows and evolves, and it's like heading somewhere, which is nice.

• 1:20:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I have a 19-year-old daughter, and she has the most eclectic taste, because she's not waiting for the new album to drop, or what the radio station is gonna tell her that she should like. She has the entire canon of music available to her to, like, choose what speaks to her.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:19Rich Roll?

  And, you know, she's like, it's like Sonic Youth and Elliott Smith, and then it's jazz, and then it's like some, you know, from the 40s, and then it's Boards of Canada, like, all this cool new stuff, too. And so she's like my muse for tasting culture, you know? Like, I just think there's something really awesome about that.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:40Rich Roll?

  Because I was just like, what's on the radio, you know, when I grew up?

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:21:44Rich Roll?

  It's all within this nostalgia for the 90s, because it was, you know, the last analog era. Like, I think what gets overlooked is, you know, the limitations of that. And that culture was sort of impressed upon us or dictated. Like, we didn't necessarily get to define it until something like Nirvana comes along, and like, and it just becomes undeniable.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Doing season two, I did find myself becoming more aware of how I was turning into the older generation. And I think what naturally happens as, you know, millennials are hitting their 40s, is it's easy to become the version of the generation that used to be above us, where you're judging the next generation, and you're like, oh, like, these kids don't know, and like, back in my day, blah, blah. But I love what you're saying, because it's like, that's actually us as old heads talking. Like, when you really put yourself in the shoes of the youth, like, that is really

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  cool, that they, like, can just get to pick eclectically in a way that we didn't. And I try to remind myself, I catch myself every day doing things where I'm like, oh, I sound like what a 47-year-old used to sound like to me. That's so important to try to keep your brain, you know, your neuroplasticity from getting too rigid. And that's what I'm so excited about, like, raising my daughter, like, already, like, her personality's shining through, she's walking and talking, and I can't wait to see what she likes, you know? That's so beautiful.

• 1:23:27Rich Roll?

  It was a real wake-up call for me, watching season two. I had this, like, realization that millennials are adults now, like, because I'm old enough, I'm like, millennials are the young generation, you know? And I was like, wait, Oscar Isaac, yeah, okay, maybe he's Gen X, but he's portraying a character, like a mature, grown-up character who is a millennial. And I was like, wow, I'm old.

• 1:23:51Rich Roll?

  Because I remember when we were just lamenting the millennials as like lazy and not wanting to work. And now it's like Gen Z is like, hold my beer, like these tropes around like, you know, like, no one wants to work hard and all that kind of stuff. Like, we're just recycling these things. I'm sure, you know, the great generation and the boomers looked at Gen X as the ultimate slackers, you know, and now we're doing the same thing.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  The exact same thing. Yeah. And that's, that's, that's, that's that final shot of the season. Yeah. You know, I feel like the best thing to do with, with these, these waves is, is to try to learn how to surf them, you know, and acknowledge the differences, but then not be so entrenched and triggered. You know, the wave exists. And so instead of like fighting it or being mad at it, like, it's, it's there. It's beautiful. It's, it's, let's surf the fact that this keeps happening and that, that each generation is, is repeating itself in their own way. But, you know, I, I, it's easier to say than do, for sure.

• 1:24:59Rich Roll?

  So you've been writing now for 20 years?

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  Almost 20, yeah. I think I moved out here 2008. Yeah, I don't, time, I don't understand time.

• 1:25:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Wait till you get to be my age. It changes. Um, your first job was in the NBC Page Program, is that right? Like, when was your first, like, break, break? You know, how long did it take before you were like, oh, I actually think I might be able to have a career?

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  I think it was two, two, two mini, one mini break and then one big break. The mini break was getting into the NBC Page Program. You know, I was unemployed and just kind of temping in New York. And a friend of mine, I lived in Greenpoint back then, and he was concerned for my mental health because I literally, Greenpoint back then was just not gentrified yet. It was fully Polish. Like, you couldn't find a grocery store that was like, ingredients in English, you know? And so I never left the home. I just stayed in my apartment and watched the OC over and over again. And he was starting to get very concerned about me. So he slipped my resume without me asking to his friend who was in

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  the Page Program. And surprisingly, I got a call for an interview. I didn't take it seriously. I was 15 minutes late to the interview. And somehow miraculously, I got in. And that was my first real exposure to the entertainment industry. And sure, I was like, wearing a peacock tie and giving studio tours for $10 an hour, but I caught the bug. I was like, I can't believe there are jobs in this world. Out of that, I got a job at the Today Show. Truly hated it. Lovely people, but my hours were like 1:30 PM to 4:30 AM, which is the opposite of everyone. So I used that weird schedule to then, I had a writing partner

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  back then. We, we just started teaching ourselves how to write. We would watch shows, read books, and every weekend, instead of going out, we would sit down and, you know, try writing scenes together. And eventually, we wrote a pilot about the Page Program and sent it to friends. And one of our friends, Lynn Berry, who used to be at the Today Show, she was an assistant to Jeff Engold, who at the time was the head of NBC Comedy. He, he runs Bill Lawrence's company now. And he was so gracious. He read it, called us, and was like, hey, I just bought a pilot about the Page Program, and this script's better. Like, do you guys have agents? And we said, no. And he's like, you know what?

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  I'm gonna call every major agency on your behalf. And suddenly, we had like, CAA, William Morris, Endeavor, just everyone calling us. And so we took a week off work, flew out to LA. I remember, my then writing partner didn't want to do this, but I was hell bent on splurging, like, an extra couple hundred dollars to rent a Mustang convertible. Because I wanted to like, ride around Beverly Hills with the top down and feel like, you know, I was in the industry. And we went with the fanciest agent at the time, who repped like, all of The Office, and Mindy Kaling, and all the Scrubs writers. And he told us to

• 1:28:10Speaker 01

  move out to LA by upfronts, which was May 15, I think. And we did. And then everything went to shit. It was just like, couldn't get meetings, agent wouldn't, wouldn't return our calls. And then, next thing I know, I was unemployed and temping again in LA. And it wasn't until, you know, we got a new manager, somehow, our scripts ended up on the table of Rob Charlie and Glenn at It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And they brought us in for a general meeting. It lasted 10 minutes. I was certain we didn't get it. And then we got the call. And that was like, the true big break.

• 1:28:51Rich Roll?

  So that was your first Writer's Room?

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  First Writer's Room is my favorite show on television. I couldn't believe I was going to hang out with Rob Charlie and Glenn every day in the Writer's Room. They're like the nicest, best guys. Still, to this day, I'm, I'm like, Glenn Howerton's one of my closest friends. And that was a real 360 degree education, because those guys do everything. They write, direct, act, produce. And that became like, the foundation for what I do. Like, I kind of joke with the Beef Writer's Room sometime, that if Always Sunny and Beef are actually like, really similar. It's just, Always Sunny is like, the, the broaden,

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  the comedy broadness just cranked up to 12. But it's usually like, something small and annoying happens. And then everyone acts out of ego on Always Sunny. And then, you know, it gets worse and worse and worse. And that's really like, the formula for Beef. It's just, we take the tone and just dial it down a little bit.

• 1:29:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah. When you're collaborating with so many people on a television show, tone is everything. Like, and you're not, I mean, you, you did your first director gig in the finale of season one, right? And then you directed three or four episodes in season two?

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:09Rich Roll?

  But you're not directing every episode. You're the showrunner. You're the, you're the head writer. You're responsible for the tone. But there's hundreds of people working on this show. Like, you have to be a general, like, to, to like, make sure that everyone is making the same show. And you can't control everything. Like, how do you ensure that?

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  Ah, just so many hours of talking. And, and a lot of like, analogies, I find are very helpful. Because, like, it's so hard to like, get someone inside your brain. And so I'm just trying to always find words and analogies and formulas. Yeah. Season one of The Writer's Room, I came up with a, a tone formula that I told the room, kind of as a joke, but then it started to get serious and we stuck to it, where I said that the Beef tone should be 35%, early Paul Thomas Anderson slash Sopranos comedy, where you're laughing at the broken psychology of someone, plus 35% like Netflix bingeability,

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  White Lotus water cooler moments, like Fincher propulsion, plus 30% Ingmar Bergman slash Hirokazu Koryeta warm melancholic pathos. And like, and like, the warm melancholy was key. And we had that up on, on our Zoom a lot. And anytime we looked at a scene, we'd kind of try to make sure, like, okay, are we hitting the percentages? Like, does this scene, we, we just had a scene that was really propulsive. Like, should we make sure that this scene has sort of that, that Ingmar Bergman pathos to it? And doing season two, I, I just, you know, tone wise, gave that same formula to everybody.

• 1:31:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it feels like A24 could, is the only, like, home for the, there's something about A24. It's like, you know it when you see it. You can't quite put your finger on it. It is tone, it's sensibility, it's aesthetic. But it's real.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  It is real. I mean, you know, people, there's been a lot of articles and being written about how they're like, now, just like, you know, they're, they're more merch than creative, et cetera, et cetera. Which, sure, I think that's just a testament to how good their marketing is. Like, their merch is great. But at the end of the day, the reason they have so much success is still the creative. And I think they have people, you know, Ravi Nandan, who's the head of A24 Television, I actually knew him from when I worked at NBC. He was a producer on this, like, really broad, bad pilot that I wrote for NBC in 2009. And then we kind of like, kept in touch over the years. And then as

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  he got to A24, we just had sushi to get like, reacquainted. And I was telling him about this road rage incident that I had gotten into. And I was like, I don't know, I think there's like, a show here. Because like, there's something so funny about being trapped in like, a literal mechanical bubble. And you're just like, in your own subjectivity, no idea what the other person's going through. And he, right there, he was like, let's do that show. I was like, really? He's like, go off? Like, who do you want to have in it? I was like, well, I, I've always wanted to work with Stephen Young. He's one of my good friends. And we've been trying to find something together. He's like, that's brilliant. Let's attach Stephen Young. And so there's this, other places where you'd have to go through so much red tape and like, oh, that's interesting, let's develop it. And, you know,

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  blah, blah, blah, blah. When they feel something, they move, you know? And they really trust the artist's instincts, too. It's less about like, them trying to prescriptively tell you what to do. It's more like, oh, you're passionate about that? Let's find ways to support it, you know? Even now, there's this one idea, I mean, Ravi and I are such, so close friends now, but I was on the phone with him. I was telling him about a project that I'm not doing with A24. And, and I was telling him about the world. And he was like, oh, my gosh, that's fascinating. Let me hook you up with my friend who actually runs the biggest company in that, in that industry. And you should like, you know, get close to him and do like, a tour or something. Like, that's someone who is just

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  acting from like, a pure artistic place. And you hear it time and time again with people who've worked with them. Like, it's just like, it's different, for sure.

• 1:34:38Rich Roll?

  It's definitely special. I think people are concerned. They just raised a bunch of money. What does this mean? You know, is it going to stay the same? Is it going to be different? You know, the A24 bros.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  You know,

• 1:34:49Rich Roll?

  they're a vocal bunch.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  And it probably won't stay the same. It'll follow the same thing we've been talking about where it'll start in earnest, it'll grow, it's stagnate, and then they'll have to change. But the fact that they like made backrooms, you know, like King Parsons, it's like 27

• 1:35:06Rich Roll?

  A 64 million dollar development deal in 20?

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, like no other place would do that. I think they are also evolving. And I definitely like Beef would not exist without Ravi and A24, that's for sure.

• 1:35:22Rich Roll?

  You've spoken publicly about your early experiences in writers' rooms and some of the challenges that you had and this sensibility that that you were a DEI hire and kind of like, oh, well, you know, I'm not really a writer. Like, walk me through like that experience and then maturing out of that, you know, kind of really inhabit your authentic voice. Like, what did that take? What was that experience like? And what did you have to do to like, you know, own your confidence and your voice?

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  In hindsight, I think I get frustrated with my younger self because I, you know, I've relived some moments in writers' rooms where there's one show I wrote on where there was a very stereotypical Asian character and a very cliche. And the jokes, just 100% of the time, came at his expense. You know, I remember there was one, the showrunner of that show, like, there was one joke about that Asian character where it was about him eating a dog. And, you know, everyone, half the room was appalled by it, but then the

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  other half of them was cackling and the showrunner loves it. And, you know, like, he turns to me and to see how I feel. And like, in the moment, I should have been like, go fuck yourself, you know, like, I should have like stood up for, for, for myself, for, for that character. And then I just kind of like shrugged and I was like, oh, you know, like, it's funny, like, you know, like, I just kind of went along with it. And there were just so many incidents like that where inside I was dying, but outwardly, you know, you're afraid of losing your job, you're afraid of, and, and, yes, like, I, I, I

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  think, should, could I have been more courageous? Absolutely. But I acknowledge I wasn't in those moments. And, you know, I think I have to live with that. I, but it, you know, I think a lot of writers of color, the stories that I share are just like tip of the iceberg. There's some horrible things that happen in these rooms if you're a person of color. And we kind of, the system was in a way where it was really hard to shake it up. I'm very grateful that in the last, you know, 10 years, that so much progress has been made and so

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  much change has been made and a show like Beef can exist. And like, certainly, behavior like that just will not be tolerated in today's writers' rooms. But then, like, you look out at 2026, at society at large, and then it does get scary because you're like, a lot of progress has been made, but then it also at times feels like we're kind of one step forward, two steps back. And, you know, speaking of generations, I do admire that about Gen Z, you know. I think that, that Instagram, the social media thing is just, I think, a microcosm of, for myself and my peers of my generation, there was so much outward validation seeking, you know, like, so you're sitting in that writers' room, you hear this

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  joke at your expense, but you are outwardly seeking validation that you belong here and that, so you laugh. Versus Gen Z, what's so cool about what, what they're doing is they're not seeking.

• 1:39:01Rich Roll?

  They're having none of it.

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're just like, no, like, I'm here in this room to, to build my career? And we're not doing that joke.

• 1:39:11Rich Roll?

  And guys like me are like, have you earned that confidence? Like, first you have to do the work and then maybe I will like, you know, grant you that you should be here.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  But then, but that's the thing is then like, I do find myself saying that as well. But then, one of the younger writers that I have kind of like, I don't want to say mentored, but Alex Russell, who's, who's younger than me, I think he's Gen Z, millennial cusp. He's, the moment I met him, he has that energy where it's just like, says what he wants, knows what he wants, very, very secure in his tone. And it often ran against whatever room he was in, you know, but he didn't care. And I saw that and, you know, helped him get a manager. And for his debut film that he directed, Lurker, I executive produced it because I was like, that guy is going to like create something that is

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  so uniquely him because you feel that energy of like, I don't care that you're older than me or that you're a more established producer, like, this is what I know. And, and so it's been cool to see, like, even though like my instinct was like, okay, like, dude, I had to like slum it in rooms for decades before I even had the opportunity. But then, like, process that, put it aside, know that there's talent there and try to like, you know, connect the right dots for him to, you know, he, he eventually, this amazing producer, Alex Orlovsky, came onto the movie and, and took it to the finish line. But generationally, like, how can we, as millennials and Gen X, not do the thing that the boomers did to

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  us? Like, certainly, it's normal to feel like they have to earn it, but then how can we change that, you know? But again, easier said than done.

• 1:41:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. There's something awesome. Like, I just marvel at a young person who's walking around just brimming with confidence. You know, it's just like, how is that possible? You know, like, I'm just like, I don't deserve, like, I'm just, my, you know, inner monologue is just like, just berating me constantly.

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  Well, do you have

• 1:41:18Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's so like, like, how did that happen?

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  Well, have you heard the study that, there's some study that came out that your inner monologue is just one of your parents' voice from a specific year of childhood? And I think that's, so I think we probably have similar inner monologues, but probably like, similar, parent saying similar things. And I think Gen Z, a large portion of them have the opposite inner monologue because their parents were just like,

• 1:41:46Rich Roll?

  Telling them they're just the best in the world.

• 1:41:50Rich Roll?

  Like, yeah, I'm the best. Of course I'm supposed to be in this room. You know, that's what I've heard my whole life.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And now as a parent, I'm like, I don't know what the right approach is, you know, perhaps it's the middle ground, but.

• 1:42:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's the pendulum, you know, it's swinging and it's extremes and it has to find it, you know, its balance.

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:09Rich Roll?

  Over time. So that's the spiral, you know, like trying to find its happy medium, I guess.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  Did you fall at all into the sort of gentle parenting as a response to what came before or?

• 1:42:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, 100%. Like, I just, you know, it was, it's, it was just a free for all with, like, for the, like, like, I, I'm also like an avoidant, I don't want conflict. So like, I'm not the, I'm not a taskmaster, you know, and I'm, I, I suffered at the hands of like, you know, outrageous expectations that I could never meet and just, you know, this withholding of love and, you know, like, the idea that it's conditioned upon like, some degree of achievement in the world and all of that. And, and I wanted to alleviate that burden from my kids, but I probably have gone too far in the other direction. I don't know. But like, you also realize, because now, like, my kids are older, like,

• 1:43:04Rich Roll?

  and you, you realize young, when they're super young, like, they, they are who they are. Like, they come, like, especially when you have multiple kids and you realize how different they are, it has nothing to do with you.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:14Rich Roll?

  Arrive, like, on some level, fully baked.

• 1:43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:18Rich Roll?

  And now seeing them as young adults, it's like, you're still exactly the same as you were as a kid. And I think it's humbling because we have this idea as parents that we're, that like, like, it's so critical. And parenting is important. I think parenting is, like, to be a healthy, conscious parent is like, really the most important thing you can do.

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:40Rich Roll?

  But at the same time, you also realize you're just kind of like throwing guardrails up here and there and they're going to be who they're going to be.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:48Rich Roll?

  So, and that's, that's sort of alleviates the anxiety of parenting a little bit.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Certainly helps me a lot. Yeah. Because you, we sort of, I feel like there was this myth of nature nurture and that, like, it's sort of like 50/50, but it certainly sounds like it's more nature.

• 1:44:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I go back and forth. I don't know. You know, I think it's another Zen Cohen brain pretzel sort of thing that, you know, we're going to, we're in a, we're in a cycle of just, you know, trying to understand that forever.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:21Rich Roll?

  But we don't have free will anyway.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:22Rich Roll?

  Do we? So who cares?

• 1:44:26Rich Roll?

  You, on that subject, though, for, you know, a very long time, you were Sonny Lee. Like, it's only more recently that you're putting your, you know, original, your real birth name on your work. Like, when did Sonny become your name? And when did you get to a point where you're like, no, it's Lee Sung Jin? And that's how it's gonna be from now on out?

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. I mean, I was born with the name Lee Sung Jin. And Lee's my surname. So many outlets like think Jin's my surname. But I put Lee first because in Korean, the surname goes first. So that's why, you know, director Bang Jin Ho, Bang is his surname. And director Park Chanuk Park is his surname. So I was born with that name. And then sixth grade, when I moved from Korea to Minnesota, that's when, you know, the name became a daily issue. Because, you know, I had an accent. And Minnesotan teachers had never seen those letters in that order before.

• 1:45:32Speaker 01

  And so that every day in attendance, they would like add new consonants as they called out my name, you know? They'd be like, Seong-ga kkeut-jin Lee. And people would laugh. I'd feel so embarrassed. And after like a couple of weeks of that, I remember I was sitting at my desk in class and there was like a paper, like an assignment with, and I was just staring at the name portion. And I don't know what came over me. I just wrote Sonny. With an O for some reason. And it's certainly not like I had watched something with that name. I didn't like just watch Godfather or something. I was just like, Sonny, that's what I'm gonna go by. And I told my teacher, I told my friends, and everyone was like, that makes our lives easier. And I told my family.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  And somehow it stuck from sixth grade all the way to probably, I wanna say, like 36, 37 ish. And I was perfectly content going by Sonny in my career. And then I think it was 2018, I wanna say, that I was getting coffee at Dogtown Coffee in Santa Monica. And I put in my order and they read your order off of your credit card name. And I'm just waiting and I was back in sixth grade all of a sudden because they read it wrong. And then people around me laughed. And then I like shrunk, grabbed my order and just kinda slunk out of there.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  And I didn't like the way that felt, you know? I was like, why, I am, I'm a grown man. And I am like reverting back to my sixth grade self because of my name. And I, that year, I think Parasite was coming out. And I was thinking about director Bang Jin Ho and director Park Chanuk. And like, when people say those three syllables, like, one, no one's butchering their name. And two, it's just so cool sounding because they make cool stuff. And so I thought, well, if I start making cooler things and I go by my Korean name, maybe that'll help like offset the stigma of these, you know, Korean three syllable names in Western culture.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  So I was writing on this show called Tuken Verdi at the time. And I went to Lisa Hanawalt, the showrunner, and I asked her like, hey, I know it's probably an ordeal because you already have the credits set, but like, can I go by Lee Sung Jin? And she very graciously like heard me out. And I think they went through like a lot of trouble to change my credits in that show. And then it kinda just stuck from there.

• 1:48:04Rich Roll?

  What is the advice that you have for the young, you know, Asian American who's trying to put their own perimeter on the world and establish themselves in whatever career it is that, you know, who's dealing with that, that kind of identity situation?

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  From my observation, and again, don't like broad strokes, but just in my experience, I've found with this next generation, there is that pendulum thing happening like here as well, where in response to before, a lot of Asian American filmmakers are leading with identity. You know, I get so many younger writers when like I go to like a, you know, panel or something being like, you know, I wrote my life story. Because, you know, I wanna like, I'm proud of my identity. But like, no one's into it. Like, you know, what can I do? Like, is it, is it the system? Is it this? Is it that?

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  And I'm like, look, that's awesome that like you, there's so much in your life that you wanna tap into. But it can't just be identity, you know? Like, you have to also think about craft. Like, you have to get like really good at music theory before you, you know, are a studio musician. And I think right now, like, a lot of younger generation, and not all, but some are like, well, you know, like, okay, I see that in the past, we didn't get to express our identity. So I wanna just express my identity and go hard at that without thinking about, okay, how do I, what vessel do I put that in? Like, it still has to be entertaining, you know?

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  There still has to be rises and falls and a shape. And when you ask, when you kind of pointedly ask like, oh, like, do you know about like three act structure? Do you know about like hero's journey? And a lot of them don't. It's like, well, okay, like, instead of worrying about, you know, where's the tide turning at the network side? Worry about what you can control, which is your craft. And so I think that's, it's the balance, you know, the middle, middle ground of having a strong sense of identity in your work, but also not forgetting that this is also a craft-based occupation.

• 1:50:24Rich Roll?

  There's no end run around the work part of it.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the idea that just because something feels important to you, it doesn't mean that it's worthy of becoming broadly entertaining to other people.

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's why season one, like, it wasn't just a show about Asian Americans. It was within the vessel of Road Rage. Something that universally everyone has done. So it's just, you know, you do have to kind of find ways to hide the kale in the smoothie, so to speak.

• 1:50:55Rich Roll?

  Is there gonna be a season three?

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Uh, you know, every season, much like I did with Thunderbolts, like, I'm like, that's it, I'm done. Uh, I think that's just like me processing. But right now, at the moment, I feel like I'm done. But, you know, if something, if inspiration strikes, like, sure. Like, I can, I can dust off Beef. But, you know, in the moment, like, I am focused on X-Men. It's like such an important project. And there's a couple of other ideas I'm, you know, developing under my overall deal. But, you know, never say never. I don't know what tomorrow will bring.

• 1:51:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. In the meantime, you've got the Emmys coming up. I hope you win all 16, or the show wins all 16. Should be 17, Kaylee Spaney.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  I know, crazy. Honestly, it should be 18, Phineas too.

• 1:51:49Rich Roll?

  Phineas, yeah. We didn't even talk about him. And how much the score informs the character works and the narrative. He did an incredible job.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  I think he's-

• 1:51:59Rich Roll?

  And it just meets the moment perfectly.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  He's such a brilliant composer. I only wanna work with him going forward. And I think it is, I was shocked that him and Kaylee did not get nominated. But, you know, it's, it is what it is. And I think the work speaks for itself, like, both her and his score, like, is something that I think will be timeless.

• 1:52:24Rich Roll?

  It seemed like you really liked working with you. I love the podcasts that you do with the show. There's a lot of companion, like television show companion podcasts. Most of them are terrible. Yours is really good. Like, you're a natural at this. It feels like, you know, everyone that comes on is like wanting to be there. And the stories are fantastic.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:52:42Rich Roll?

  So, you know, for anyone who has enjoyed Beef, you have the opportunity to do that deep dive. If you haven't checked out Beef, you're probably not still listening because you won't even know what we were talking about. But you should go watch it as soon as possible. And this was a delight, man.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  Likewise. Thank you so much.

• 1:53:00Rich Roll?

  I'm such a fan. And I just think, you know, you're just operating at an entirely different level, like mad respect. And I just enjoy it. And I can go back and watch it and find more things. And the richness of it, you know, is really special.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  No, thank you so much. Thank you.

• 1:53:16Rich Roll?

  So come back and talk to me again. And if you ever wanna screen anything here.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

• 1:53:22Rich Roll?

  It would be really fun to do a Q and A or something like that with you.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I would love that. Let's do it.

• 1:53:26Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Thank you.

• 1:53:28Speaker 01

  Thank you.