Stop Compromising Yourself: Mark Manson On Hope, Human Dignity & The Perils of Comfort

One day not long ago, I awoke to a bright orange book ubiquitously displayed everywhere I looked. Provocatively titled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, today's guest birthed a publishing sensation, custom tailored for click-bait embrace. The title also made the book easy to dismiss. In fact, freely admit to downright refusing to read it. But it just would not go away. Not only did it top the New York Times bestseller list, the book stayed there. 6 million plus copies later, it still rests at #4 — a full 149 weeks since its publication. So who is this Mark Manson guy? Realizing that my reflexive reaction was perhaps misplaced, I finally relented. And was pleasantly surprised by what I discovered. To be sure, the book is both contrarian and confrontational. Chock-a-block with f-bombs. But it's also surprisingly refreshing, upending the tired tropes of self-help with an intractable glee. Grappling with real issues, I relished Mark's unique voice — depth meets grit with an infectious philosophical sensibility. Before he became a publishing juggernaut (his influence launching countless profanely titled copycat books), Mark began his writing career as a blogger. Sharing personal development advice that ‘doesn’t suck' (his words), he has amassed a devoted audience of 2 million monthly readers. Dissecting our dysfunctional cultural relationship with money, entertainment and the internet, Mark's latest chart-topper, Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope is an equally compelling yet more mature follow up that deftly explores the perils of distraction, comfort and success. This is a conversation about what happens when you exceed your every ambition. What then? Today we explore the high-altitude, existential crisis visited upon a young man who eclipsed his wildest dreams by age 32. More specifically, we cover Mark’s backstory as a blogger. We dissect the method to his various forms of madness. We discuss the enormous unexpected success of his first book. And the pressures that accompanied his skyward trajectory. Ultimately, this is a dialog about our increasingly distracted world. It's about the soul erosion precipitated by too much comfort. And it's a sounding call to restore the foundation of human dignity. You can watch it all go down on YouTube. I really enjoyed my time with Mark — and left this conversation with great respect for his profoundly curious mind and finely honed insights on the human condition. Peace + Plants, Rich 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.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Mark Manson?

  Well, first of all, any sort of self-improvement, by its very nature, is going to be difficult. Like, no self-improvement feels great. If it feels great, you're probably not actually changing very much. Any real change is, by definition, painful, stressful, difficult. And so if you're going to write very honestly about those subjects, one thing I discovered while I was blogging is you kind of have to mix a little bit of honey into the medicine. And so that's where the humor started, kind of the irreverent attitude, some of the stories. Because I just noticed that if you're dropping F-bombs and you're telling some crazy story

• 1:45Mark Manson?

  about this time you got drunk in college, then having that difficult conversation about life purpose, or whatever it may be, after that, it goes down much better for people. People are more open to it. The same way we need to challenge ourselves physically, I think we need to challenge ourselves intellectually, I think we need to challenge ourselves emotionally, and I guess you could argue even challenge ourselves spiritually.

• 2:12Rich Roll?

  That's Mark Manson, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:27Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. Up top, quick note, I implore anyone listening who is struggling with their diet, please check out our Plant Power Meal Planner. Affordable priced, it's just $1.90 a week. It provides access to thousands of nutritious and delicious plant-based recipes that we're constantly updating. You get grocery lists, grocery delivery, and access to a team of experienced dietary coaches seven days a week. To learn more and to sign up, visit meals.richroll.com. Okay, how to preface this. Let's just say that one day I woke up and suddenly everywhere

• 3:11Rich Roll?

  I looked, prominently positioned in every airport bookstore, ubiquitous in every bookseller window display, was this brightly colored orange book with the unmistakable title, "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck." And I will freely admit that I dismissed this book as sort of the ultimate clickbait. And I thought, I'm not biting. In fact, I downright refused to read it, but this book, it just wouldn't go away. Not only did it top the New York Times Bestseller List, it stayed there like forever. In fact, I just checked, it's still there. Six million-plus

• 3:55Rich Roll?

  copies later, sitting at number three, just below Ryan Holiday's number one ranked "Stillness is the Key." Congrats, Ryan, by the way. A full 147 weeks since its publication, this book is still on the New York Times Bestseller List, and that is a unicorn. And I just thought at the time, who is this Mark Manson guy? And realizing that perhaps my resistance was a little misplaced, maybe, that perhaps there was more going on here.

• 4:25Rich Roll?

  I finally relented. And I have to say, I was pleasantly and quite surprised. Sure, it's contrarian. It tackles the tired tropes of personal development and it's chock-a-block with F-bombs, but it's also refreshing and kind of beautiful in its confrontational tone. It grapples with real issues, with real depth and grit, and this naked, raw, and unique philosophical voice and sensibility. So here we are. For the few unfamiliar with this author, before he became a publishing juggernaut, his influence has launched countless profanely titled, copycat wannabe books.

• 5:08Rich Roll?

  Mark began his career as a blogger, where he still, to this day, shares personal development advice, which, in his word, quote-unquote, "doesn't suck," with 2 million monthly readers. And you can find that at markmanson.net. His follow-up book to The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck is a book also aptly titled Everything is Fucked: A Book About Hope. And this is another chart topper, which dissects our relationship with money, entertainment, and the internet, and how too much of a good thing can psychologically eat us alive. And it's, in my mind, equally compelling, even better, I think. It's a more mature work, and this book comprises a decent portion of today's conversation.

• 5:57Rich Roll?

  Okay, Mark. So, this is about a lot of things, but not the least of which is the existential crisis, the altitude sickness that is visited upon a person who eclipsed every ambition, achieved every goal, exceeded his wildest dreams by age 32. When that happens, what then? So that's one of the things we explore today. Specifically, we cover, of course, Mark's backstory as a blogger in his beginning years, the methods to his various forms of madness, the enormous unexpected success of his first book, and the unexpected pressures that accompanied that.

• 6:38Rich Roll?

  In other words, what happens when you have too much comfort, too much satisfaction, followed by a very interesting breakdown of social constructs and a really cool discourse on human dignity. I dig this one. I hope you do, too. So without further ado, this is me and Mark Manson.

• 7:01Rich Roll?

  So a little, before we even get into it, I gotta ask you, a little, a little birdie on the street told me that you're, you're working with Will Smith on, on his book, right?

• 7:12Mark Manson?

  It, it literally is a birdie on the street. Cause his house is like.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's funny, cause he literally lives around the corner from here. Although, you know what? I've never, I've never met him. I've actually, and I've never really seen him. I've seen him driving his car, but I've actually never.

• 7:26Mark Manson?

  He's never there.

• 7:27Rich Roll?

  Interacted with him.

• 7:28Mark Manson?

  He's never there. It's crazy. He's got this like incredible 400 acre property or something.

• 7:34Rich Roll?

  It's like Neverland Ranch down there.

• 7:35Mark Manson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:36Rich Roll?

  Entire compound with multiple dwellings and like a lake and a full court basketball court.

• 7:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah, they, they've got about a dozen people living there.

• 7:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:42Mark Manson?

  And, uh, you know, family and childhood friends and stuff. And he's never there. He's always on the road.

• 7:49Rich Roll?

  He does some Instagram stories from there every, every once in a while, though. So I know he's there from time to time. So you're, you're working on a book with him.

• 7:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So is it like a memoir or like a self-help? What is the, what's the angle?

• 8:00Mark Manson?

  A little bit of both. It's, I would say it's a self-help book told through the lens of his life. He just turned 50. He's, he's gone through some midlife crisis type stuff the last five years or so. His father passed away and kids have grown up. So he's kind of in a stage of his life where he wants to start giving back, start opening, opening up the kimono and being like, hey, this is who I am. This is what my life is really about. And this is what I've learned. So it's just, for me, it's like.

• 8:41Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be crazy.

• 8:42Mark Manson?

  It's the coolest project.

• 8:43Rich Roll?

  I mean, he's so unbelievably charismatic.

• 8:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  But what is it like when you're just chilling with him? Like, what is it about him that makes him so uniquely him?

• 8:53Mark Manson?

  He's exactly the same. It's funny, because all, you know, when I, when I come home, all my friends are like, oh, man, what's he like? I'm like, dude, he's, he's the Fresh Prince.

• 9:01Rich Roll?

  Full on.

• 9:02Mark Manson?

  He is the Fresh Prince. Like, that is just, that's not acting. Like, that is who he is. You know, it's just fun, jubilant, witty.

• 9:13Rich Roll?

  My sense is that he's one of those guys that, that has that thing. You know, Bill Clinton has it. There are certain very charismatic people that have it, that know how to make everybody feel special. Right?

• 9:27Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 9:28Rich Roll?

  What is that quality?

• 9:29Mark Manson?

  I don't know. You know, it was interesting when I met him. So it's funny, because celebrity books, in the publishing world, this surprises people, but in the publishing world, celebrity books actually have a very bad reputation. Because every celebrity wants one, but none of them actually want to put in the 18 months of work.

• 9:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:48Mark Manson?

  To write it.

• 9:48Rich Roll?

  They just want some ghostwriter to roll in and do it for them.

• 9:51Mark Manson?

  They just want to put it on their shelf. And, um, and they cost a lot of money. So they, the, the books tend to be bad. And the publishers pay, they usually lose a bunch of money on it. So when I went into it, you know, everybody kind of told me, they're like, hey, you know, don't just do this because he's who he is. And I had a lot of stuff going on in my career, too. So I was like, all right, I, you know, I, there needs to be a good book here. I can't, I'm not just going to sign on because I like Men in Black or whatever. So I met him, and one of the first questions I asked myself is, is, you know, what, what is truly unique about him? Like, what is different about him?

• 10:36Mark Manson?

  Like, what is something that he could share with the world that most people can't?

• 10:42Mark Manson?

  And I ended up telling him this the first time I I met with him is I said, like, you know, you're clearly smart, you're very successful, you're famous, obviously, but, you know, there, those things are all pretty common. What I told him is I said, spending three days with you, your emotional intelligence is off the charts, like absolutely off the charts, both in terms of that charisma that you were just talking about, his ability to just intuitively read and recognize how people are feeling and then, you know, get them feeling good in a very quick and efficient way. But also just things he's

• 11:24Mark Manson?

  gone through in his life, like just a lot of hardship and trauma and stuff that he bounced back harder and faster than pretty much anybody I've ever met from stuff that happened to him. And I told him, I said, that's one in a million, you know, and I think that's what that's what the book should be.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's interesting to watch over the last year, how he has embraced social media and become like this crazy, you know, wizard of self-improvement and motivation. You know, like, you see certain big time personalities dabble in it, but he just went full on.

• 12:04Mark Manson?

  He went all in.

• 12:05Rich Roll?

  He went full on. I know his trainer a little bit, and his trainer was telling me that the the idea really is to shift your thinking, like, instead of, I'm a movie star who does social media, to just say, like, I'm a social media person who occasionally does movies.

• 12:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Rich Roll?

  And he really kind of embodied that ethos and then just exploded. It's crazy.

• 12:27Mark Manson?

  The funny thing about him, too, is is he's the only, you know, everybody rags on social media these days. Everybody kind of gripes about it. He's the only person who is like, Like, what's everybody talking about? Social media is great. At one point I told him, like, yeah, Will, because everybody watches you. Like, you have no FOMO because you're doing the coolest shit on social media. So.

• 12:50Rich Roll?

  And he's just putting out a positive uplifting message.

• 12:53Mark Manson?

  He's having a blast. And I think, you know, he spent so much of his career hiding himself. Because that's what you did when you were a celebrity in the 90s. Like, you didn't want them.

• 13:02Rich Roll?

  No, you want a little mystery.

• 13:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah, well, and the paparazzis following you around and tabloids are publishing stuff about you all the time. And so he spent so much of his adult life hiding himself from the world. And it's, I think he feels like now he's like, oh, I get to finally show people like what I'm about.

• 13:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. Have you interacted with Jaden at all?

• 13:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  He's the best.

• 13:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah, Jaden.

• 13:27Rich Roll?

  He's, he is.

• 13:29Mark Manson?

  He's the sweetest guy.

• 13:29Rich Roll?

  One of the most impressive young people that I've ever met. Like, I've known him for a very long time. He's friends with my sons and he used to come over here and joke. So I've known him for years. And, you know, you see him at the grocery store, right? Like, he's out and about. And every time that I interact with that kid, he is 100% present.

• 13:48Mark Manson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:49Rich Roll?

  He looks you right in the eye. He's incredibly polite and gracious and interested. Like, and he's out in the world, like, doing incredible things that no one else is doing.

• 13:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and he's genuinely kind. I mean, that was another thing. And I hate to say it, it kind of surprised me. Like, you go in, you're like, all right, celebrity kids. Like, you expect them to be.

• 14:11Rich Roll?

  And they, you know, and like, they got a lot of wacky press, like him and his sister for being a little nutty. But like, my experience with them is nothing short of like, you know, I always leave feeling good.

• 14:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:23Rich Roll?

  The interaction.

• 14:24Mark Manson?

  I'm, all three of his kids, I'm hugely impressed by them. Very smart, very kind, very good, young people. And it's, and yeah, they've got their quirks and. You know, mistakes and stuff that they've done in the past, but like, I look at it, I'm like, man, if I grew up like that.

• 14:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:44Mark Manson?

  I wouldn't turn out that well.

• 14:45Rich Roll?

  No, I mean, 99 times out of 100, it's some dilettante who isn't motivated to do anything, which is kind of, you know, the part of the thesis of your latest book, essentially.

• 14:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Rich Roll?

  Right? So let's set the stage a little bit.

• 14:59Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 15:00Rich Roll?

  I mean, you write, you write this first book, The Subolar of Not Giving a Fuck, and it just becomes this, you know, like unbelievable phenomenon. We sold like eight mil, eight million copies at this point, something like that.

• 15:11Mark Manson?

  It's passed.

• 15:11Rich Roll?

  Like, I can't even comprehend that.

• 15:14Mark Manson?

  I can't even.

• 15:15Rich Roll?

  You know, so like, let's, let's walk through, I wanna, I wanna like inch up to the kind of existential crisis that you faced in the aftermath of this.

• 15:24Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 15:24Rich Roll?

  But, you know, prior to this, you're like this blogger, you're kind of a four hour work week, you know, experiment in motion. You're, you're putting out stuff into the world and you write some blog posts that explode and it leads to this book.

• 15:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Rich Roll?

  But my sense or my understanding is that you're somebody who just prided yourself on putting out good writing and kind of incrementally, gradually, organically growing your audience.

• 15:51Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 15:51Rich Roll?

  Then you stumble into, you know, this phenomenon that nobody could have ever predicted.

• 15:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Rich Roll?

  Elaborate.

• 16:01Mark Manson?

  You know, it, I always feel weird telling this story because it, you know, the last thing anybody wants to hear is, uh, you know, a boo hoo.

• 16:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know.

• 16:13Mark Manson?

  Poor bestselling author.

• 16:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, crime near the river.

• 16:16Mark Manson?

  But it, it, it really messed with me because I, I guess since I started writing seriously in my mid twenties, my dream was I wanna have a, you know, I wanna have a book deal, I wanna have a bestseller, I wanna be on the Times list, I wanna like tour the country.

• 16:35Mark Manson?

  You know, it was kind of this checklist of life goals in my head. And in my mind, it was like, okay, I'm gonna like, this is what I'm gonna work towards over my adult. Like, this is my life's work. This is what I'm gonna be working on until I'm like 60.

• 16:54Mark Manson?

  And subtle art just knocked all those out in like two months.

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 16:58Mark Manson?

  And so it's, which is amazing, but on the other hand.

• 17:01Rich Roll?

  So it was, it was an instantaneous thing when it happened. I don't, I don't remember at the time.

• 17:07Mark Manson?

  It took a few months to take off. It had a decent launch. It debuted it on the Times list, but then it fell off. And then about three months later, it came back.

• 17:18Rich Roll?

  What, why, what do you attribute that to? Like, did something specific happen?

• 17:22Mark Manson?

  I think, I think it took that long for word of mouth.

• 17:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the ground swell took, took a minute.

• 17:27Mark Manson?

  And then, and then it was right around that time too, the, the holidays were kicking in. So, um, and it's, it, it does great on the holidays. People, it's a good gift book.

• 17:40Mark Manson?

  So it just, it started this ascent. And the whole time I'm like, watching it, I'm like, well, this is crazy. This is crazy. But every, every month I'm like, okay, well, this is gonna end soon. You know, this is my little 15 minutes. Enjoy it. And, uh, now we're about three years in and it's, it's still number one this week.

• 18:02Mark Manson?

  It's been number one in like 14 different countries. I think I've had, I have number, number one and number two right now in like four different countries.

• 18:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:12Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's just silly.

• 18:13Mark Manson?

  It is. It's reached a point where I'm like, I, I tell people, I'm like, you know, I'm, I'll take credit for the first million. You know, I worked my ass off for 10 years. I, I, I came up with a great title, wrote a great book, like, I'll take credit for the first million. You know, the other seven or eight, like. I don't know what's going on.

• 18:33Rich Roll?

  Well, it's, it's, it's a book that, I mean, first of all, the cover's bright orange. You can't miss it. And, you know, the title is gonna grab anybody. It has a kind of pop culture, you know, aesthetic about it. And, and I will freely admit that when, you know, it came online and I first saw it, I was like, this fucking guy with this fucking book, you know, this is a bullshit book, you know, right? And, uh, and the truth is, is that you're this ardent, well-read student of literature and history and philosophy. And when you start to read the book, it tells a very different story from, you know, the, my knee-jerk sense when you look at the cover.

• 19:14Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 19:15Rich Roll?

  And it's funny because I'm, I would imagine that your, people are always saying to you like, you know, it's easy to just think, oh, this is a book about like, you know, how to be an asshole, basically, right? But it's really a book about trying to help people drill down on what their values are so that they can be discerning about what they care about and not care about.

• 19:36Mark Manson?

  I think, I think one thing that I learned over the years of blogging is that, well, first of all, any sort of self-improvement by its very nature is going, going to be difficult. Like, no self-improvement feels great, you know, it's like, if it feels great, you're probably not actually changing very much.

• 19:55Rich Roll?

  Like, like people on Instagram who are posting quotes that just make you feel good about what you're already doing.

• 20:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's like, oh my God, life-changing, hashtag life-changing. And, you know, three days later, they're doing the same shit. Uh, you know, any, any real change is by definition painful, stressful, difficult. Um, and so if you're gonna write very honestly about those subjects, one thing I discovered while I was blogging is you kind of have to like, Mix a little bit of honey into the medicine. And so that's, that's where like the humor started, kind of the irreverent attitude. Some of the stories started to come out. Because I just noticed that if you're dropping F bombs and you're telling some crazy story about this time you got drunk in college, then having that difficult conversation about life purpose

• 20:46Mark Manson?

  or whatever it may be, after that, it goes down much better for people. Like if people are more open to it.

• 20:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 20:54Mark Manson?

  Whereas if you just launch straight into like, what are you doing with your life? Like, you know, why do you hate yourself? It's, nobody wants.

• 21:00Rich Roll?

  Well, you have to be able to create an emotional connection.

• 21:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Rich Roll?

  Right? And this is like philosophy for millennials on some level. Like it's written for that audience very, you know, intentionally. But, you know, if you can tell that story and whoever's reading it goes, oh, I see myself in that now I'm in. When you deliver the medicine, they're in a place to be able to like receive it.

• 21:21Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Exactly. And I, and I think that same shock value that causes a lot of people to write me off. I've actually, I've written about it on my blog. Like I argue that there is value to that, that, that it is, if you can shock people a little bit, they lower their defenses and they're willing, they're more willing to maybe hear something, hear an idea or a suggestion that they're not, they wouldn't normally be open to. So there's, there's definitely, there's a method to the madness and it was very much crafted over many, many years of writing online.

• 21:58Mark Manson?

  And it's, it's one of those things where in the publishing world, I'm like the star new author. And I'm like, dude, I've been doing this for 12 years.

• 22:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, that's the case. Yeah. The overnight success.

• 22:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah. The 12 year overnight success.

• 22:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Right.

• 22:13Rich Roll?

  But it had to be completely disorienting when this, when this happened.

• 22:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I mean, it's. It sounds crazy, but I woke up and I'm like, I don't know what to do. You know, it's like, okay, yeah, that checklist in my head of what I was gonna be working on until I was 60. Everything was checked off. So I'm like, all right. And then you got money pouring in. I'm like, all right, I guess, I don't know.

• 22:40Rich Roll?

  Here you are. You've done everything that you ever aspired to do and you're as successful as you could have ever possibly imagined being. And you have the means to make choices about your life. Like you're basically sitting in this position that everybody, you know, works so hard to get to, right? And, you know, let's, let's, you know, paint the picture of the truth of what it's like to actually achieve your dreams.

• 23:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, I mean, it's.

• 23:08Rich Roll?

  I mean, there's pride for what you've created.

• 23:10Mark Manson?

  Absolutely. There's a lot of pride and there's a lot of gratitude, but there's also, I mean, it's like getting slammed into a midlife crisis at 60 miles an hour. Because I, I'm, what you just said is true. I did, I hit everything I ever aspired to do and I was 32. So I'm like, crap, I still have like to do something for the next 50 years. And figuring out what that next thing to do with your life is, is difficult. And, and then on top of that, I guess, just the nature, I guess, of having a successful creative career is the incentives don't line up exact. So, you know, most people, if you, if you're like, let's say you're a successful executive at a company.

• 23:52Mark Manson?

  You get paid for being there. Like you, you, your pay is proportional to how much you show, how often you show up and how much value you add to that company. When you're a writer, I mean, I, I was sitting around in 2017. I'm like, well, I could go back on tour and promote the book for a month. Or I could just sit around and play Zelda and I'm gonna sell the exact same amount of copies. So, so I'm just gonna sit around and play video games and, and that's fun for a month or two, but it eventually this kind of.

• 24:27Rich Roll?

  Did you make a bunch of crazy purchases?

• 24:30Mark Manson?

  No, that's the other thing. Like I'm a really Spartan dude.

• 24:37Mark Manson?

  Honest to God truth, my big purchase was I bought a Nintendo Switch.

• 24:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Rich Roll?

  You could have like traveled the world. You probably had already been traveling.

• 24:46Mark Manson?

  I've already.

• 24:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you've already done that.

• 24:48Mark Manson?

  Um, I took the wife to Paris. You know, we, we did a bunch of like fancy restaurants and stuff. And, and we did a nice birthday. So, I mean, there were some, there were some little things there. But I mean, I was already living the life I wanted.

• 25:02Mark Manson?

  So I, I, I quite honestly didn't know what to do with myself. And so it, it, it. The end result was this very strange situation because I, I kind of went through this lost, depressed period in my early twenties of like, I have no idea what to do. I'm broke. I like have no, I have no opportunities in front of me. Like I, I, that, that whole loss of purpose, you know, that, that a lot of people experience. Like I went through that. And here I am on the complete opposite situation. I've achieved everything I wanted.

• 25:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:37Mark Manson?

  Got a buttload of money, tons of opportunities, but I feel exactly the same. Like I've got this weird depression going on.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  But you're well read enough to know to, to, to have like predicted that, right? Like we're all told, look, you know, money's great, but it's, it's not going to change. You know, it's not gonna, it's not gonna make you hap- like all these platitudes about success and money.

• 26:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Rich Roll?

  But then when you experienced it, was it, was your, your experience surprising to you or different than what you might have imagined?

• 26:09Mark Manson?

  I think what surprised me is that it felt exactly the same as it did when I had nothing.

• 26:16Mark Manson?

  I thought it was gonna feel, you know, I knew it'd be weird and disorienting, but I thought it would feel different.

• 26:24Mark Manson?

  And, and, and I should note that it's like, I see now why people self-destruct when they experience success that quickly. It's funny to, to bring Will back into it. I talked to him about this and he said that, um, he said Quincy Jones used to call it altitude sickness. He said if people, if, if people experience success too quickly, they, they get sick and pass out and fall down the mountain.

• 26:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:50Mark Manson?

  And I get it. It's crazy.

• 26:52Rich Roll?

  How did Will avoid that? I mean, he was pretty young.

• 26:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I think for Will, it happened, first of all, he was 17. So I, I don't think he ever, and he started rapping when he was like 13. So I, I, I don't think he ever, everything was always on this kind of trajectory.

• 27:12Mark Manson?

  But I think it happened to him, oh, I say gradually, but you know, I actually, I think he went through a period, he got famous and rich and then blew it all. And so he had that valley.

• 27:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, he did.

• 27:24Mark Manson?

  For a couple of years. Yeah, in the late eighties. Yeah, he owed the IRS like 1.6 million or something insane. Like, he, he made like six million bucks when he was 18 and then blew through all of it. And then his next album flopped. And so he had this, this like two year period before the Fresh Prince show.

• 27:43Rich Roll?

  Ah, I didn't know that.

• 27:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah, that he was like in a pretty dark spot. So I think he went through that in a very like more extreme way.

• 27:50Rich Roll?

  Right. So you're what, 32 when this happens?

• 27:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Rich Roll?

  You're on the couch. And at some point, you have to just realize like, hey, I'm a writer and this is what I do, right?

• 28:03Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 28:03Rich Roll?

  Divorce yourself from this, you know, attachment or idea that like, hey, I've peaked.

• 28:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Rich Roll?

  I'll never be this good again.

• 28:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:12Rich Roll?

  And try to fall in love with what it was that got you, you know, started in the first place.

• 28:17Mark Manson?

  Totally. Yeah. The, the other interesting thing about success like that is that there, it introduces all sorts of new pressures. You know, so now, now the publisher wants.

• 28:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:31Mark Manson?

  You know, the publisher wanted subtle art, not giving a fuck for teens and subtle art.

• 28:34Rich Roll?

  We could do this forever, right?

• 28:36Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 28:38Rich Roll?

  And let's just, let's just, you know, note that now there's this just proliferation of books that have covers that look very similar to this with the word fuck on them. I mean,

• 28:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Rich Roll?

  Please help us put this to sleep, you know?

• 28:51Mark Manson?

  You know what I'm sort of, this is gonna sound, this is gonna sound so arrogant, but I've started saying this because I'm so sick of it. I started telling people, I'm like, yeah, everybody thinks if they put fuck on the cover, it's gonna be a best seller. What they're missing is that you have to put Mark Manson on the cover.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, dude. Wow. Okay. There might have to be some words in between the, the cover and the back page.

• 29:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  That makes sense.

• 29:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I mean, it's, I, I, I was pretty diplomatic about it, but at this point, there's like 12 or 15 other books that are.

• 29:22Rich Roll?

  It must, you must laugh when you walk through a bookstore, a bookstore or an airport and you see books that look just like your.

• 29:28Mark Manson?

  It's.

• 29:30Mark Manson?

  It's, yeah, I mean, you have to, right?

• 29:32Rich Roll?

  Right. So how did that go down when you tell the publisher, like, I'm not gonna, you know, just do, like, it's not gonna be Chicken Soup for the Soul, you know, with 5,000 versions of the same book?

• 29:43Mark Manson?

  Uh, I mean, they were fine with that, but it's, it's interesting because,

• 29:51Mark Manson?

  like, there's kind of an irony in the, in the, and I'm sure this is true with every creative field, like, when you're the unknown guy, they're actually very casual with you. They're like, hey, man, if you need another few months with that draft, like, take your time, you know, we're here to help.

• 30:08Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 30:09Mark Manson?

  And you're like, oh, thanks, guys. I really appreciate that. When you're a big bestseller, they're like, what the fuck? Where's the next book?

• 30:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 30:16Mark Manson?

  We gotta make money. We gotta keep the lights on. Like, you know, no, no, we won't edit it. It's okay. We'll put it out. You know, and so you actually have to, it becomes much more combative because strangely, the incentives of the author and the incentives of the publisher are no longer aligned. The publisher,

• 30:32Mark Manson?

  you know, it's, they're just, they just wanna cash in as quickly as possible because they've got, you know, investors and,

• 30:41Mark Manson?

  calls with Wall Street and stuff.

• 30:44Mark Manson?

  Whereas an author, you're like, wait, I need to protect my brand. I need to, like, make sure I'm still doing this 10 years from now. And so,

• 30:52Mark Manson?

  the second time around, it was way more combative. And they were trying to push me into a lot of different ideas that I didn't really wanna go into. They were pushing me on timeline. They wanted to put this thing out, like, six months before it came out. I had to fight for, you know, Subtle Art went through, I think, four or five rounds of revision. Initially, they only wanted to do one with the new book. I had to fight for, like, three more.

• 31:19Mark Manson?

  I mean, I basically had to sit on it. I basically had to be like, guys, we're not putting this out until it's good.

• 31:23Rich Roll?

  Well, you're the guy who allows all these other authors to write books because most books don't make money.

• 31:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Rich Roll?

  It's the, you know, it's the one in 20 or one in, well, I don't know, whatever the ratio is, but you are the guy who's keeping the lights on. So that you're the bankable, you know, element here. So,

• 31:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 31:40Rich Roll?

  it doesn't surprise me that the pressure would come down.

• 31:42Mark Manson?

  I know. It's just-

• 31:43Rich Roll?

  You carry, you shoulder the responsibility for all the other authors who got, you know, fairly decent advances that they'll never earn out of.

• 31:49Mark Manson?

  Right. And it's, I've told my agent, I'm like, you know, you would think that they would-

• 31:55Mark Manson?

  They would like work with me.

• 31:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like to make sure this is good if we want to, you know, try to catch lightning in a bottle again.

• 32:01Mark Manson?

  Cause it's like, guys, I want to put up, put out a follow up soon too. Like, you know, it's good for me too, but like, you know, let's get on the same page here. So it was, um.

• 32:10Rich Roll?

  It's disheartening. It makes you realize or, or, you know, think that it really is just about marketing and branding and not about quality of content.

• 32:18Mark Manson?

  And it's, I think, one thing that helped me a lot, you know, so initially, like the first six months or so, I, I was constantly pissed at them. And eventually what helped me understand is that, you know, you, you essentially, you have this building full of people who love books, who make their living selling books. And they do pretty much everything except actually write the book. And so anytime you have a group of people whose livelihood is based on like doing this one thing, they'll start to convince themselves that that one thing is actually what moves. And authors do the same thing. They're like, oh, well, my brilliant work, if the publisher didn't mess it up, like, you know, I would have sold five times more copies.

• 33:01Mark Manson?

  You know, so we're all like, they've got their biases, I have my biases. And so I think it's, it's just important to, the communication should just needs to be good. And sadly, um, the industry, at least the publishing industry, and from what I've heard, it's true in film and music as well. It's like the communication is awful, you know, it's, it's very sneaky and kind of, they do things behind your back and try to like, they'll say one thing to your face, but you know, meanwhile, the marketing team's doing something completely different and it just feels icky, just feels really bad.

• 33:40Rich Roll?

  I mean, I haven't had, you know, crazy publishing success. My books have done well, so I can't, you know, I, I don't have that kind of direct experience, but I do know that there are a lot of.

• 33:52Rich Roll?

  Miss, you know, that people believe like when they write a book that the publisher is going to do certain things.

• 33:58Mark Manson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:58Rich Roll?

  It's not until you go through it that you realize that. It's basically all on you.

• 34:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 34:03Rich Roll?

  Like you really, and it's like, wait, what are you doing again?

• 34:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 34:07Rich Roll?

  You know, you're printing the book. Yeah, I got that. But, um, you know, especially when it comes to the marketing stuff. And I heard you talking to somebody where you, even despite all this crazy success, you were still having to kind of, uh, you know, organize a lot of your own.

• 34:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 34:21Rich Roll?

  You know, press.

• 34:22Mark Manson?

  The first time around.

• 34:23Rich Roll?

  Never did like mainstream stuff still. Eight million books without like, you know, spending five days in a row on the Today Show or whatever.

• 34:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. And it's weird. What's weird too is that it's a distinctly American thing. So, um, I've been on TV in Brazil. I've been on TV in Australia.

• 34:42Rich Roll?

  It's because of the title.

• 34:43Mark Manson?

  I think so.

• 34:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Mark Manson?

  And I think the other thing too, I mean, we were talking about Ryan Holiday before we sat down, but like, I've talked to Ryan about this a lot too, is like, I think the, the media in the US has this weird prejudice against internet people. So if you built your platform online.

• 35:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:05Mark Manson?

  They pretend you don't exist until they can't. It's impossible for them to pretend anymore. And then, once they stop pretending, it's this very condescending, like, you know, like, oh, well, a lot of people read him, but we don't know why.

• 35:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:20Mark Manson?

  You know, that, that type of thing.

• 35:21Rich Roll?

  That's very true. And it's so interesting to watch that. I mean, even if you like, take Joe Rogan, for example.

• 35:28Mark Manson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:28Rich Roll?

  The guy is a behemoth. It's a juggernaut. You know, it's like, if you're, you know, a young male between 18 and, you know, I don't know, 36 or something like that. He, he just might be the most important person in, you know, media figure.

• 35:41Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 35:41Rich Roll?

  In your life. And, and he's getting just millions and millions and millions of downloads and views on every single show that he does. And he's doing, you know, four or five shows a week.

• 35:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 35:50Rich Roll?

  Widely, almost completely ignored by mainstream media, unless there's some controversy that forces them to grapple with him.

• 35:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Rich Roll?

  But it's such an interesting phenomenon that there's two worlds that are existing that, you know, the, the mainstream media just, you know, refuses to recognize this growing reality.

• 36:09Mark Manson?

  And it's, what's bizarre too, is that it's.

• 36:15Mark Manson?

  I mean, it makes sense, I guess, but I forget what article it was, but like the New York Times mentioned him in an article recently and they like totally brushed him off. They're like, oh yeah, this fringe YouTuber, Joe Rogan, that some people listen to.

• 36:31Rich Roll?

  His audience is larger than like hits on network television.

• 36:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I was telling my wife, I'm like, if you gave me the option of like doing Joe's show or doing like six, having six profiles in the New York Times over the next month?

• 36:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:46Mark Manson?

  I would do Joe's show.

• 36:47Rich Roll?

  It doesn't even compare.

• 36:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's not even close.

• 36:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:49Mark Manson?

  And I think that's why they have that at, like, they don't, they don't get it. They're like, like, we're the New York Times. Why don't people take us as seriously as this guy on YouTube? And it's like, well, you know, maybe you should try to understand.

• 37:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how that unfolds over the next couple of years because it's changing, but it's interesting that you would think it would be changing more quickly.

• 37:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And again, what's weird to me is I don't get this sense in Canada and Australia. When I go to Canada, I'm going to Australia tonight, actually, and it's, I mean, I'm loaded all the morning TV shows. I'm doing all the biggest newspapers, like they do glowing profiles and the interviews are good. Like, it's not, it's not this-

• 37:34Rich Roll?

  The two minute, two second thing.

• 37:36Mark Manson?

  It's not this bullshit, like, soundbite thing where, you know, once it gets published, you don't even recognize half the stuff they quote you on. It's, it's like they grapple with the philosophical content of, of my work and they take it seriously. And so, yeah, I don't know what it is.

• 37:58Rich Roll?

  All right. So 32, you're having this existential crisis, you know, pre, you know, pre midlife crisis, quarter life crisis, or whatever it is. And hindsight's 2020, but looking through the rearview mirror, like, your second book is baked into this experience.

• 38:16Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  Like, all you have to do is read your first book and go on this search for, you know, what are your values?

• 38:21Mark Manson?

  I know.

• 38:22Rich Roll?

  And the path forward becomes crystal clear. Like, did it, I mean, how long did it take for that to dawn on you that this needs to be the next book that you're going to write?

• 38:30Mark Manson?

  It was, it was an awkward experience because there were a lot of-

• 38:36Mark Manson?

  So I, so I signed on to do, to do more books with Harper and, and I was just under this immense, uh, both pressure from them, but also pressure from myself of just like, God, how do I live up to this thing? How do I follow this up? Um, all the stuff you said about comparisons of like, you know, oh my God, did I peak at 32? Like that sucks. Um, and so I had a lot of kind of therapeutic conversations with friends and, and family. And they just look at me and they're like, dude, stop giving a fuck.

• 39:07Rich Roll?

  You know, like

• 39:08Mark Manson?

  Take your own medicine, bro.

• 39:10Rich Roll?

  Take your own advice. And I'm like, oh God, this is so embarrassing. Yeah. Well, it speaks to how hard it is to actually implement the wisdom.

• 39:19Mark Manson?

  It is. It's really hard.

• 39:20Rich Roll?

  There's, there's the intellect. And you talk about this in the new book, the difference between the thinking and the feeling brain. Like intellectually, yeah, I can, I can grok that. Like I know what you're talking about, but then actually practicing it moment to moment to moment as you're experiencing feelings that you've never encountered before. That's a whole different ball of wax.

• 39:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, and it's, it's intense because it is, you know, the, I guess the experiences I was going through at that, that time were so extreme. Um, and so vastly different than anything I'd ever encountered before. Um, but it's funny. Eventually like what I came back to, I mean, it sounds cliche, but I had to remember like why I write. And I've always written, writing has always been my own little kind of public form of therapy. And, um, everything I write, it's because it's stuff that I'm dealing with myself. And by writing about it, it helps me kind of process and understand my own values and worldview.

• 40:23Mark Manson?

  Um, and so it's, I had a few book ideas that I started on and I'm like, like, oh, this will be a huge hit. Or the publisher will be like, hey, maybe you should do that. I'm like, all right, I'll try to do that. And it just wasn't going anywhere. And, and I was becoming more aware of all this stuff that we're talking about around the same time. And I'm like, what am I doing? Like, I need to go back to what I've always done, which is just Take whatever I'm freaking out about at this moment and write it out.

• 40:53Rich Roll?

  Was there an impediment to that because you felt like this is such a privileged problem? Aren't going to be able to relate to it? Or is it just getting behind, like if you go past that and just get to the truth of it, which is the struggle for identity, you know, essentially?

• 41:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Rich Roll?

  That we can all relate to.

• 41:12Mark Manson?

  Well, I, so there's, everything we've been talking about is kind of one thread. There's a second thread that went into this book, which is around the same time, a lot of people, a lot of academics were publishing books about like Steven Pinker's books and Jonathan Haidt's books. They're publishing all these books about how basically from every material metric, like the world is great right now. Like it's, we're safer and healthier and there's less conflict and violence and crime than ever in world history. Meanwhile, you see all these mental health issues escalating.

• 41:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:51Mark Manson?

  And so I was doing, I was just out of curiosity, I was reading a lot of those books and digging into a lot of that research. And at some point I kind of put two and two together. I'm like, there's something about this, you know, one of my favorite quotes, I think it's actually in subtle art is that it's like, if you, if you remove, if you remove all, all problems from your life, that your mind will immediately set out to find new ones. I think it was Jose Marti or somebody said that, but it's, I always liked that quote. And I was like, that always kind of made sense, but I, you know, all these things kind of came together.

• 42:28Mark Manson?

  I'm like, wow, there's something about too much comfort or satisfaction that seems to make us anxious and

• 42:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:40Mark Manson?

  A little bit, like our perceptions of reality get skewed a little bit.

• 42:46Mark Manson?

  And then you take from that, like everything, you know, basically our whole world is built around, our whole economy is built around providing comfort and convenience and satisfaction to people. And so I got on this kind of interesting kick of like, you know, maybe the issue is.

• 43:05Mark Manson?

  Success. Maybe the issue is hope. Like, maybe it's too many of our dreams have come true. I mean, and that's not to downplay like the legit issues that are going on today. It's just to say that, um, you know, when you're sitting in a nice air-conditioned room with like 500 Netflix shows and you can have 20 different cuisines delivered to you from like a press of a button, um, suddenly all these questions about identity and purpose and, you know, what is, what is the meaning of my life and what, what value am I adding to the world? Like, these all, they, they actually become very difficult questions.

• 43:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:42Mark Manson?

  Much harder than, say, if you're, um, you know, poor or, or, uh, you know, living out on a farm somewhere.

• 43:52Rich Roll?

  Right. You're, you're, in, in that case, your mind is occupied by meeting your needs.

• 43:57Mark Manson?

  It's simple, yeah.

• 43:58Rich Roll?

  They become very pressing, but when those needs are met and you have clean water and a roof over your head and you have the, all the modern conveniences

• 44:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:05Rich Roll?

  that we've, you know, acclimated ourselves to, then what?

• 44:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And, and I think, I think we're, we're also kind of reaching a saturation point. I think as, as a culture, I know when I was growing up, there, there was kind of this unspoken cultural assumption of like, we need to fill our whole day with stimulation, whether it's entertainment or learning something or like creating value. It's like every minute you're awake, there should be like some sort of stimulation going on. And I think in the last five or 10 years, we hit this point of like stimulation saturation. It's like, okay, we are constantly stimulated, uh, we are overflowing with stimulation and, and it's actually, uh, it complicates our, it complicates our understanding of ourselves.

• 44:53Mark Manson?

  Not, it doesn't clarify it at all.

• 44:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, our whole, you were talking about what our economy is built on. I mean, our economy is fundamentally premised on marketing and advertising. And you talk about this in the book, this shift in advertising from basically explaining why a product, you know, what the benefits of owning a product are to appealing to our emotional bodies and trying to trigger our fears and our insecurities. And when your needs are met, now we're, you know, fast forward to an era where we're bombarded with messages that are telling us our lives will be better if we have this, or you're not enough because you don't have that.

• 45:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Rich Roll?

  And it creates this future-tripping mindset that prevents us from being present in the moment, that consistently forces us to, you know, spin out over what our future might be, or how we compare to our fellow man. And ultimately is this colossal distraction from what is truly important in life.

• 46:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And it's, I think, I originally had a whole chapter on this. I kind of regret, I mean, so this is one of the things that, like, kind of rushing the book out, I think, maybe harmed it a little bit. But there's a section, I think I have maybe like three or four pages about it, towards the end of the book, about loneliness, kind of the rise in loneliness and the loss of community. I originally had a whole chapter, but the chapter kind of sucked. And instead of having time to like hash it out and fix it, I just took like the three or four pages that were good and crammed it into the chapter before. And, um, but it's funny because the, you know, I've been doing this, this speaking tour around the US and Canada the last couple

• 46:46Mark Manson?

  of months, and I'm meeting a lot of people in person and answering their questions. And the more time I'm like, talking about all these issues, the more convinced I am that the loneliness issue is

• 46:58Mark Manson?

  Maybe the paramount one, because I think what, what we don't realize is that the more options and stimulation that we have in front of us, the less willing we are to

• 47:12Mark Manson?

  compromise what we want to like be with somebody else, you know? So it's like, if I want to watch Netflix and you want to like go to a concert, it's like, well, fuck you, I'm going to watch Netflix, you know, like, you know, where's?

• 47:24Rich Roll?

  Or if you, you want to watch two different shows, you can sit in the same room.

• 47:28Mark Manson?

  And both watch them.

• 47:30Mark Manson?

  Or it's like, if I want to check my email and you want to watch a show, you know?

• 47:33Rich Roll?

  So even when you're with other people, when your face is planted into a screen, you're still alone.

• 47:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah, exactly. And I, I mentioned, you know, there's a, there's a famous book that came out about 15 years ago called Bowling Alone. And, and I talk about it a little bit in the new book, but it's

• 47:52Mark Manson?

  what he taught, basically the, it's called Bowling Alone because more people than ever before are bowling. But there are fewer bowling leagues than there have ever been. And he kind of goes, he goes all the way across society and, you know, everything from like PTA groups to church groups to political activism, like it's just fewer people are coming together into, into groups and communities. Everybody's trying to do everything themselves. And he, he blames entertainment. He says that it's, you know, the more options there are to be entertained, the more accustomed we become to just, I guess, feeling entitled to do what we want.

• 48:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Mark Manson?

  And not be impeded upon by other people.

• 48:32Mark Manson?

  But that causes relationships to break down. And so

• 48:37Mark Manson?

  I think we've got a bunch of lonely people who aren't getting that face to face exposure to, to the world, who aren't, don't feel like they're a part of a community or have significant relationships in their lives, yet they're

• 48:52Mark Manson?

  Constantly being engaged through social media and just the conventional media about like political issues, group issues, social identity issues. And it's so easy for them to respond, you know? So it's, I think the combination of those two things, you see this outrage culture that's emerged, where everybody's just pissed off and feels victimized all the time.

• 49:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the more you engage with that, the more calcified you become in your belief systems, the more resistant you are to being open to other ideas. And the more difficult it becomes to actually change or be open minded about another way to think and live.

• 49:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah, totally.

• 49:35Rich Roll?

  So how does this dovetail? You have this, this kind of counterintuitive, arguably paradoxical ideas around hope.

• 49:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Rich Roll?

  So how does all of this like dovetail into this, into the, into, you know, into, into this thesis that you've come up with about how we think about and practice hope?

• 49:56Mark Manson?

  So I make the argument that hope is necess- like, we all need some form of hope. We all need to believe that the future can be better than it is today. That that's what gives us a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. My argument is that our visions of hope can potentially be destructive. Because every, everything that you hope for, you, it's, it's by definition, you hope for it on faith. Like, you, you never know, you know, it's like, I had, I believed on faith that having a bestselling book would make my life better. I didn't actually know that. It's just something I chose to believe and it motivated me for many years.

• 50:43Mark Manson?

  So we all develop these kind of faith-based belief systems around what we hope for in the future. It could be religious, it could be non-religious. And my argument is that because these belief systems that we tie so much of our personal meaning into are, at the end of the day, kind of arbitrary, like, we need to defend them against people. We need to, we protect our hope. And if people try to contradict what we hope for, you know, they're the enemy and we attack them. And so there's this, this kind of like shadow to hope that never gets discussed, this destructive potential of hope. And so,

• 51:26Mark Manson?

  essentially, I mean, the book is really just, A, be very, very careful what you hope for, and B, I make the argument that as our society and technology and everything accelerates our ability to fulfill our hopes, that might not necessarily be a good thing. Because it's the having hope that sustains us. When we achieve what we hope for, we actually lose our hope, which is what happened to me.

• 51:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:54Mark Manson?

  And so, in a very paradoxical way, it's giving people, and when I say giving people what they want, what I mean is kind of like, I mean, that on more of a superficial level, like fulfilling people's desires can actually kind of erode a way at our, at our ability to feel as though we have meaningful lives.

• 52:18Rich Roll?

  It depends in some respect, though, like, how good your life is, right? Like, if you're, like, you use the example of this guy, Wiltold Pylecki, the Polish dude who's like, in, you know, basically submits himself to Auschwitz. I mean, his life is just, you know, an endless stream of, like, horrors.

• 52:40Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and, you know, hope is what sustains this guy. But to use your example, when we're all in air conditioned homes and our needs are met and we can postmates everything and we're on net, we're watching Netflix. Hope then gets kind of tweaked into, you know, I would almost characterize it as it gets, it gets run through this, you know, machine that turns it into fear, like fear of losing what we have.

• 53:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 53:05Rich Roll?

  And, and an insecurity about how we measure up to other people.

• 53:09Mark Manson?

  Totally. Yeah, it's one of, one of the paradoxical things I talk about is that the worse things are, the easier it is to hope for something.

• 53:18Rich Roll?

  And the more value that hope holds.

• 53:20Mark Manson?

  Exactly. You know, so it's like if war breaks out and, you know, God forbid this like West Coast is being bombed, it's like you and I suddenly know exactly what we're waking up in the morning for.

• 53:34Mark Manson?

  But it's like when everything's just fucking great. And we're just chilling, drinking some tea, like looking at the mountain, you know, it's like, what do I hope for? You know, there's whole seminars and there's a billion dollar industry on basically like helping people figure out what the hell they should hope for. And like, that is a very privileged position. That's actually, that's a criticism that the book has received. They're like, oh, this is just hashtag first world broad. And I'm like, yeah, that's the point. Like, the point is that, you know, first world creates a lot of, you know, people get upset over a lot of like trifling problems. And like that itself is a problem.

• 54:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Mark Manson?

  You know, how do we become aware of that in ourselves and manage that in ourselves and not like do something stupid?

• 54:22Rich Roll?

  The easy sell from a marketing perspective is to convince people that their lives are going to be better if they have a bunch of money and they, they can sit on the couch and go on these vacations and, you know, make all of these choices and. You know, that triggers something instinctually in all of us that looks very good.

• 54:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:41Rich Roll?

  It's a much harder sell to tell people, uh, listen, you know, forget about all the life hacks.

• 54:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  Forget about the air conditioning. You'll actually be a much happier person if you're forced to confront yourself, to grapple with your, you know, character defects.

• 54:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Rich Roll?

  If you're compelled to put yourself in uncomfortable situations and, you know, expand the, the, the outer edges of your comfort zone and to like fucking do hard shit.

• 55:09Mark Manson?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 55:10Rich Roll?

  People don't want to hear that, even though time and time again, you know, especially in the podcast world, like people are constantly talking about the value of this and how this is really the path to finding purpose and meaning and ultimately fulfillment in your life.

• 55:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, the, the argument I make towards the end of the book is that, you know, the same way our body needs a certain amount of stress and hardship.

• 55:36Rich Roll?

  Resistance.

• 55:37Mark Manson?

  To grow, be, get stronger, get more resilient. I think our minds need the same thing. We need mental challenges, you know? It's like, if you feel like, um, you know, if you feel like, like I told my wife, I'm like, you know, it's at some point in the next year, I want to go like stay in a roach infested hostel somewhere like I, like I did 10 years ago, you know, just so that I don't.

• 56:03Rich Roll?

  You're such an elitist.

• 56:04Mark Manson?

  I don't lose myself, you know, cause it's, I'm, I'm now, now that I have money, I'm enjoying luxury, but it's, it's, it's a trap, you know? Like it's, it's because your, your mind adjusts and suddenly you get to this point where you're like, well, this is bullshit. These aren't feather pillows. Like, you know, you call the front desk, you're like, I demand this type of pillow. And, you know, it's like, you don't want to be that guy. So it, I think there's, you know, the same way we need to challenge ourselves physically, I think we need to challenge ourselves intellectually. I think we need to challenge ourselves emotionally. And I guess you could argue even challenge ourselves spiritually.

• 56:42Rich Roll?

  Well, with success, the difference becomes that you have to invite those challenges into your life.

• 56:48Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 56:48Rich Roll?

  In a proactive way versus just, you know, swatting them away like flies when you're, you know, in the shit and just trying to figure your life out.

• 56:56Mark Manson?

  Totally. Well, and, and this is why I actually think the fitness analogy is perfect for this. Cause it's like, if you're.

• 57:04Mark Manson?

  If you're working on a ranch somewhere and somebody's like, hey, man, what's your workout routine? Like, they're gonna look at you like you're crazy.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and if you're working on a ranch, you're probably not the guy who's gonna go sign up for the Spartan race.

• 57:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 57:14Rich Roll?

  Because you don't need that in your life.

• 57:16Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 57:16Rich Roll?

  That's not missing from your daily experience.

• 57:18Mark Manson?

  Exactly. And so it's, you know, the people who sign up for the Spartan race are a bunch of like-

• 57:22Rich Roll?

  There are people who are working in cubicles, who are too sedentary and not, and aren't stressing their physical-

• 57:27Mark Manson?

  And they're educated and comfortable and, yeah, and it's, it's, so they have to go seek that out. And I think we're, we're gonna have to develop some sort of regimen for ourselves of doing the same thing intellectually and emotionally.

• 57:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, no one gets out of life alive.

• 57:42Mark Manson?

  No.

• 57:43Rich Roll?

  Right? You know, we're all, we're all gonna die here. And, you know, I believe that the universe puts in front of you what it is that you need to see and work on the most. So with your success, it was, you know, an argument could be made that this mirror came up in front of you, you were forced to grapple with this existential crisis and probably some character defects that you really had to look at, that maybe if you're just in survival mode and you're a blogger, like, that's not pertinent.

• 58:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 58:13Rich Roll?

  But when these other problems get resolved, you get new problems. And this is something you talk about all the time. It's like, life is not about getting rid of your problems.

• 58:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Rich Roll?

  It's like trying to get better problems.

• 58:22Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly. And it, again, I had to eat my own, what's that saying? That you have to eat your own chow or-

• 58:30Rich Roll?

  Eat your own shit?

• 58:30Mark Manson?

  Eat your own, well, you could say shit, yeah. But it, but it, yeah, I mean, it's, you're absolutely right. And it's, I think one of the things that was very uncomfortable about the success of the first book is that it did show me that my values weren't so aligned as well as I thought they were. That I probably did put too much emphasis on, say, commercial success or popularity. And that, that, that was what ended up, you know, once I got it, that's kind of what messed me up.

• 59:01Rich Roll?

  You couldn't be told that that wasn't gonna fill that hole. You had to experience that for yourself in order to really connect with it.

• 59:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And I, I think honestly, in my mind, if you had told me back then, that I cared too much about, I'd be like, no, I don't really care. No.

• 59:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:16Mark Manson?

  I'm fine, you know? But it's, then you experience it, and you're like, oh-

• 59:19Rich Roll?

  Refreshing your mentions on Twitter.

• 59:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And then you're like, oh, I'm full of shit. Otherwise, I wouldn't be like this right now.

• 59:28Rich Roll?

  So let's talk about the the fallacy of the pursuit of happiness.

• 59:33Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 59:35Rich Roll?

  Elaborate. Your turn to talk.

• 59:41Mark Manson?

  You know, I, the argument I've always made is that happiness is a byproduct of working on the right things, choosing the good struggles.

• 59:58Mark Manson?

  The problem with happiness is that it's kind of like a mirage. The more you run towards it, the further away it gets from you. And it's the fact that you're running towards it that makes, that pushes it further away from you.

• 1:00:12Rich Roll?

  It's like trying to meditate.

• 1:00:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:00:16Rich Roll?

  The more you try, the further away you are from actually doing the thing.

• 1:00:20Mark Manson?

  Exactly. And, and so it's just, I think, I think there's also, I didn't talk about this in the book, but I mean, it's if you look at, you know, when Aristotle defined two forms of happiness, there's kind of like a pleasurable hedonistic happiness, and then there's a more like meaningful fulfillment happiness. And so the pleasurable happiness is like, sweet, I've got like a nice fruity drink and it's a beautiful day and I want to go surfing or whatever. And you, you basically, it's just being able to indulge on your desires. Whereas the, the more, the fulfillment, the more meaningful happiness is about, it's about purpose.

• 1:01:05Mark Manson?

  It's about, you know, okay, today sucks, not feeling good, but I'm on the path I want to be on. And I think our culture has lost that sense of, like, if you look at what happiness meant hundreds of years ago, it usually meant that fulfillment thing. You know, when Thomas Jefferson wrote the right to pursue happiness, like, it's basically the right to pursue your life purpose. What that's gotten, I think, through consumer culture and marketing and advertising, what that has been distorted into is you have a right to feel good.

• 1:01:40Rich Roll?

  Happy, yeah.

• 1:01:41Mark Manson?

  You have a right to have your desires indulged. And And we don't, we don't. And it's funny, I forget who, well, even if I remembered, I wouldn't call him out. But I didn't, I did a podcast interview a couple of months ago. And whoever it was, was like, it's like, yeah, but don't we all deserve to be happy? I'm like, fuck you. Why do you deserve to be happy? Who says you deserve to be happy? Like, it doesn't, you don't deserve anything, you know? Like, if you want to feel something, if you want to have some experience, like, you gotta go out and get it. You gotta like, do, you gotta like, find some sort of meaningful struggle that, that earns it for you. You can't just sit in a room and be like, I deserve to be happy, boo hoo, you know?

• 1:02:26Mark Manson?

  So anyway, that's my rant.

• 1:02:27Rich Roll?

  I got you.

• 1:02:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, it was kind of all over the place, but.

• 1:02:32Rich Roll?

  No, I like it.

• 1:02:34Rich Roll?

  How does that mesh with, with the fact that Will Smith has a movie called The Pursuit of Happiness? Have you talked about that with him?

• 1:02:40Mark Manson?

  You know, it's funny though, you know, it's so funny. So, a few people brought that up. And so, we're, you know, working on this project, I went back and watched all these movies.

• 1:02:51Mark Manson?

  And it's funny, like, that, when that movie came out, I thought it was just kind of a conventional movie about like, a success story, like a homeless guy down on his luck, who like, got this great job and turned things around. What's fascinating, if you go back and like, really pay attention to it.

• 1:03:11Rich Roll?

  The movie holds up.

• 1:03:12Mark Manson?

  It really holds, I, I think it's his best movie, he thinks it's his best movie. It, it's, there's some dark stuff that's happening on the periphery of that movie. Like, the, the homeless shelters, the, like, churches turning people away. Like, it's, it's actually a very deep commentary on the American dream. And he told me a really interesting story, it's gonna be in the book. He said that, um, when they were trying to figure out who, who did, who they wanted to direct the movie. Will, I forget the name of the, he's an Italian guy. But Will had seen this Italian, some movie by this Italian guy, really liked it. And was like, hey, let's talk to this Italian guy.

• 1:03:54Mark Manson?

  And so, the Italian guy comes out, comes to California, like, doesn't even speak English. And is, is like stumbling his way through like, some awful pitch. And Will's team is just like, they're shaking their, they're like, yeah, there's, there's no way.

• 1:04:10Mark Manson?

  And Will's like, kind of skeptical. And he said that the director could tell it wasn't going well. And finally, he said, he said, like, look, Will, can I say one thing? He said, whatever you do, he's like, I can kind of tell I'm not going to get the job. But like, whatever you do, don't let an American direct this movie. And Will was like, why is that? And he said, because you can't, Americans can't see what the American dream actually is.

• 1:04:38Rich Roll?

  Like the

• 1:04:39Mark Manson?

  You need a

• 1:04:39Rich Roll?

  It's a ditto kind of take, right?

• 1:04:43Mark Manson?

  And so when you watch it, it is, is actually a very nuanced commentary on what, what, what rags to riches actually is. And what it is, what, what kind of society like we've kind of constructed that creates narratives like, like that. And for every person like Chris Gardner, there's like 200 sitting, sitting in the hopeless shelter, you know, probably today. So it's like, it's a, that's a bit of a tangent, but it's a really like, everybody should go back and watch.

• 1:05:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm going to go back and watch it. So he got the gig, though.

• 1:05:16Mark Manson?

  Oh, totally. Like, as soon as he said that, Will's like, all right, you got it.

• 1:05:22Rich Roll?

  All right. So in terms of, of like turning our attention to decision making, like, how can we, you know, make better decisions about, you know, how we're moving forward and how we're evaluating our values, et cetera. You go into this deep dive on the difference between the thinking mind and the, you know, the thinking brain and the feeling brain. And the illusion that we think we're all making logical choices, when in fact, we're just, you know, we're just at the behest of, you know, a chaotic, emotional, you know, light storm going on between our ears.

• 1:05:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, there's an interesting history of kind of understanding this aspect of ourselves. So to, to just summarize it really quickly, I used, I have an extended metaphor in the book of, you have a thinking brain and a feeling brain. And if your consciousness is a car, most people assume that it's our thinking brain that's driving and our feeling brain is kind of like this loud, obnoxious kid in the passenger seat that you're like, shut up, shut up. It's like always yelling at you, you know, wants to go get candy and wants to do whatever. But the truth is, if you dive into the research, like, the truth is that actually the feeling brain's driving and the thinking brain is the navigator.

• 1:06:41Mark Manson?

  The thinking brain's the one drawing the maps. And so there's two ways that can go. The first way is that, and I compare the feeling brain to like, like, an abusive, bullheaded boyfriend or husband who like refuses to ask for directions, refuses to like change their, you know, whatever. So it's like, there's two ways this can go. Your thinking brain can either draw the maps that the feeling brain wants to see to justify where the feeling brain wants to go. Or you can draw the maps in such a way to kind of negotiate with the feeling brain of like, no, this is the best way to go. The first way is kind of our default state.

• 1:07:25Mark Manson?

  You know, we all, if we're tired, if we're not, we have low, like, very low self-awareness, if we're not very educated, we tend to just draw the map that our feeling brain wants to see. It takes a lot of conscious effort, takes some willpower, takes a little bit, you know, developing a skill of self-awareness to be able to consistently draw the maps that kind of negotiate with our feeling brain to get it to drive in the right direction. So because of this, I make the argument that all these questions about, you know, habits and self-discipline and willpower and procrastination, all these things, all these things that,

• 1:08:08Mark Manson?

  you know, there's a million productivity blogs that have all these systems and all this shit. I'm like, these are emotional problems. Like, if you, if you can't get yourself to work out consistently, that is not, it's not your plan, it's not, you know, that you don't have the right workout, it's not that you don't have like the right trainer, it's an emotional problem. There's some, you don't go because it doesn't feel good.

• 1:08:36Mark Manson?

  And so the real question is, is how do you convince yourself? How do you find a way to make working out feel good? How do you find a way to make eating healthy feel good? How do you find a way to make being honest feel good? Like, these are all fundamentally emotionally based questions. And so we have to find emotional answers. Which sucks, because emotional answers are hard and they're individual. You know, there's no book out there that's gonna be able to like, you know, here's how to solve it forever.

• 1:09:09Rich Roll?

  And there's certain people that, like, in that context of self-will and discipline, and people that struggle to like, wake up at a certain time or go to the gym. Like, certain people are more, you know, short-term reward focused. And other people value, you know, the long-term payoff of like, a certain kind of practice.

• 1:09:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  And I think, you know, there's differences in how people are wired fundamentally. But I think it is true, like, if you look at Jaco Willink, who's like, posting a photo every day of him waking up at 4:30.

• 1:09:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:09:38Rich Roll?

  And a lot of people, like, it's inspiring.

• 1:09:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Rich Roll?

  But it's also shame provoking, and a lot of people that just can't get there, or maybe do it once or twice, and then fall off the bandwagon and say, I'll never be like Jaco. But that's doing something for Jaco that aligns with his core values about the kind of person that he wants to be. And that may not be you. Like, I could, I'm a very disciplined person. If I wanted to wake up at 4:30 every day, I could. I did it all through high school. But I value my, you know, I want eight hours of sleep, and I'm actually more productive, and I'm a better human being when I get that. So that's a value that exceeds the value of getting up and taking a picture of my watch every morning to share on social media. And that works for me.

• 1:10:23Rich Roll?

  But I think the challenge for people is to find, first of all, yes, you have to grapple with your emotional demons and figure out what makes you tick, and what you need to redress in order for you to basically align your thinking brain, your thinking mind and your feeling brain in a way that they're, you know, sort of charging, you know, down the superhighway in unison with each other.

• 1:10:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, I actually, I use Jaco as an example in the book. Because the 4:30 thing's perfect. I think he said in his book that the reason he started doing it, he did it in Iraq, because it made him feel like he was getting an advantage over his enemy.

• 1:11:04Rich Roll?

  It's serving something that that works for him and makes him feel good.

• 1:11:09Mark Manson?

  Exactly. And that narrative, he brought that narrative home and it still works for him. But I think you raise a really good point, which is, and I don't think this gets discussed enough. I guess in the personal development industry is that it's

• 1:11:24Mark Manson?

  there's, it's okay. Like if you try Jaco's thing, I mean, I, I would hate it. I already know. Like I, I hate getting up early and I used to beat myself up about that, you know? It's like, oh, well, you know, Beethoven got up at 5am. I should be up at 5, you know? And it's like, I would try that and I'm like, wow, I just feel awful. Like, I don't like this. And eventually you have to arrive at a point where it's like, okay, that's okay. You know, you don't need to be like Jaco or Tony Robbins or Bill Clinton or like whoever, whoever it is.

• 1:11:58Rich Roll?

  You don't need to feel bad about yourself because you're not either.

• 1:12:00Mark Manson?

  We're all wired very individually.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  But the caveat, sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you. The caveat I would say is Jaco's core principle of discipline equals freedom still reigns true. You've got to find a different discipline that gives you that sense of freedom. It may not be waking up at 4:30 in the morning, but I, I truly, I believe in that edict. And I think you do too. I mean, you talk about it in this book.

• 1:12:24Mark Manson?

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 1:12:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And it's, it's, I think it's

• 1:12:33Mark Manson?

  ultimately there's a central principle of health and growth, I think, that needs to drive everything. You know, some people are early morning people. Some people are not early morning people. You know, our circadian rhythms are different and our brains kind of operate at different hours differently. And I think it's just

• 1:12:53Mark Manson?

  the ultimate principle should be just understanding what works for you. What optimizes your time on this planet? And what, what habits and disciplines, as you said, you know, can you implement that? That, that optimize you essentially?

• 1:13:12Mark Manson?

  That should be the question, not like, oh shit, well, I didn't.

• 1:13:16Mark Manson?

  I guess I'm just bad at this, you know?

• 1:13:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:18Mark Manson?

  Cause I can't get up early.

• 1:13:26Rich Roll?

  So if you're somebody who's feeling brain is going haywire all the time and you struggle with discipline and trying to adopt practices that you know your thinking brain wants you to adopt in order to be a more fulfilled person on a healthier trajectory for yourself, like what is the path towards grappling with those emotional barriers or whatever it is inside of you that's preventing you from making those changes?

• 1:13:52Mark Manson?

  The way I put it is that the thinking brain and the feeling brain need to learn to speak to each other. And the problem is, is that they speak different languages. And so people who tend to be more thinking brain, caught up in their thinking brain all the time, they're very bad at listening to their emotions. And so one aspect of that conversation is you need to train yourself to become more aware of your emotions. Like what are you, like when you, when you feel that resistance about exercising, or when you feel that like deep urge to like eat a chocolate cake or whatever it is, you know, ask yourself like, what are you feeling at that moment? Is it anxiety? Is it fear?

• 1:14:34Mark Manson?

  Is it desperation? You know, like really try to pay attention to your body so that your thinking brain can start deciphering what your feeling brain is telling it. And then it's got to go the other way around, too, is that you have to, if the thinking brain kind of draws up a potential new narrative or reality, your feeling brain will try it on for size. You know, so you can enter into kind of this funny little negotiation with yourself of like, okay, going to the gym feels really intimidating right now. You know, what if I just go outside and walk for 30 minutes instead? Like, that's still

• 1:15:15Mark Manson?

  exercise. That's still better than nothing. You know, like, and you listen to your feeling brain, you're like, oh, yeah, that doesn't feel so bad. So you go outside and you walk for 30 minutes. And then at least you get to, you know, your feeling brain gets that feeling of satisfaction, of accomplishment. And then next time, you know, you do that a few times, and then suddenly the gym doesn't feel so intimidating.

• 1:15:38Mark Manson?

  You know, and this plays out for all sorts of different things. I mean, essentially that conversation of thinking brain and feeling brain, trying on new narratives, seeing how it feels, that is what therapy is.

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  So, in other words, to kind of break this down, your thinking brain says to your feeling brain, "All right, dude, like, I'm tired of being fat, like, it's time to get in gear here, we're gonna go to the gym every day," and the feeling brain has a freak out.

• 1:16:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Rich Roll?

  So, they're not communicating effectively, that negotiation, you know, quickly leads to an impasse, so, "All right, let's step it down." "All right, how can I, how can I, you know, get the feeling brain to do something that is uncomfortable for the feeling brain but not overwhelming, that is blowing out all the circuits?"

• 1:16:20Mark Manson?

  So, you can like stair-step into it. The other thing that happens a lot, too, is that, so people, and this happens on January 1st every year, people are like, "All right, this is it, this is the year, I'm gonna do it," you know, and then they wake up that first day and they are pumped, they're so excited, and then by day four, you know, they're like, "Oh, God, this again? Yeah, I'm not so sure about this," you know, so they lose that enthusiasm, and that, the reason they, they stop going is because they lose that enthusiasm. So, the, the goal of the thinking brain is to find ways to keep that enthusiasm going. Um, you know, the reason accountability works, the reason like going with a friend works,

• 1:17:02Mark Manson?

  hiring a trainer, it's because the social pressure basically pushes your feeling brain into enjoying it, you know, it's like, "Maybe I don't enjoy going by myself, but my best friend's gonna come with me, and that's gonna be fun, so yeah, let's do it together."

• 1:17:20Rich Roll?

  It's so annoying, though, that we can't, like, we know we're gonna be happier once we're, we've lost that 30 pounds, or we crossed the finish line at that marathon, and yet, we can't, it, it's, it's really inadequate to try to leverage that in order to get us to do the thing we need to do today, to work us, ourselves towards that.

• 1:17:42Mark Manson?

  It's too abstract, you know, you're thinking, or your feeling brain doesn't understand past or future. That's why trauma still fucks with us, you know, it's like something happened 20 years ago, my feeling brain doesn't understand that that was 20 years ago, my feeling brain still hurts now. And it's the same thing with the future, you know, you can- List 80 different reasons why adopting a certain habit is going to benefit you. You know, at the end, you know, you're going to live longer, you're gonna have more money, like, whatever. Feeling brain doesn't understand that. Feeling brain understands now.

• 1:18:17Rich Roll?

  Right. Which is going to lead us into this terrain of talking about the present moment. But before we do that,

• 1:18:24Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:18:24Rich Roll?

  How does this feeling brain, thinking brain, you know, battle this ongoing thing, dovetail into these three laws of emotion?

• 1:18:33Mark Manson?

  Oh, man. Oh, man. Um, I kind of went crazy with this, with the, with the emotion thing. You know, I've always wanted to write a book.

• 1:18:49Mark Manson?

  I've always wanted to like, really just lay out kind of the, the, the chain links between our experiences, how experiences lead to emotions, how emotions lead to our values, and then how our values lead to our identities or our sense of like, who we are. And so the first few chapters of the book are my attempt to do that. So the laws of emotion are, it's kind of, it's a fun play on Newton's laws of motion. You know, first one is, um, every, every action has an equal and opposite emotional reaction. Second one, I'm gonna mess these up. Second one-

• 1:19:23Rich Roll?

  Worth is the sum of our emotions over time.

• 1:19:26Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 1:19:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Third one is, uh, your identity stays your identity until a new experience acts against it.

• 1:19:33Mark Manson?

  Yep. So, basically, our, our values are ultimately derived from our emotional experiences. Something super simple, it's like, if growing up, uh, your dad always took you to the baseball game, your light and you, and it was like, the highlight of your childhood, you're likely going to value baseball throughout most of your life. That's true of all of our experiences. Everything that we find important in our lives, it has made us feel good at some point in the past. And generally, the, the extent that we value it is proportional to how good it ma- made us feel.

• 1:20:18Mark Manson?

  Or, or I think a probably more accurate way of putting it is, is the extent that it met our needs. So, kinda like with the visions of hope, it's like, once we find something in our life that we find valuable, we think is important, we hold on to that, we protect it. You know, it's like, I am a baseball fan, I go to games, I am like, my dad and I did this, blah, blah, blah, this is who I am. Right, this is the story that you're telling yourself and other people. Yeah, exactly, it's the story you're telling yourself, and it's the story you're sharing with the world, and it's how you understand yourself. Now, let's say that, you know, you find out that your favorite baseball team was, you know, crooked and run

• 1:21:03Mark Manson?

  by the mafia, and they were like, not, they were, every, all the games were rigged, and it just crushes you, like, absolutely crushes you. So, that experience, that contrary experience to what you value, you know, you love baseball, and then you find out it's all a lie, like, your devastation is proportional to how much you valued it. And so, that, that kind of identity crisis that occurs, where it's like, well, I thought I loved this thing, but it, it screwed me over, and now I don't know who I am anymore. The pain of that fall is proportional to how high you held it up on the pedestal. And so, eventually, you have to find something

• 1:21:43Mark Manson?

  else that you value to replace that, to, to keep, to, to keep your identity, some sort of cohesive identity going. And so, it's, it's very much the same way that, you know, physical objects move through the world in very predictable ways. I think emotionally, our understanding of ourselves moves through the world in a very predictable way. And so, it's useful to understand how that happens, but I also think it's very useful to understand that, how arbitrary that is, that...

• 1:22:18Mark Manson?

  You know, my love for baseball, if I had been born in France, would have been a love for soccer. Or if I had been born with different genetics, it would have been, I would have a different cultural affinity or ethnic affinity.

• 1:22:36Mark Manson?

  So all these things in our lives that we see is like, this is who I am.

• 1:22:41Mark Manson?

  They are ultimately a product of our experiences and which are then a product, largely a product of the environment that.

• 1:22:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think it's interesting how we're selective about those experiences. There's something in our, in our unconscious mind that identifies certain things, probably because of their emotional valence, that then become the cornerstones in that story.

• 1:23:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Rich Roll?

  Where when you really deconstruct it, like, it's an illusion because it's a continuum of billions of experiences that we've had. And for some reason, there are certain ones that pop up that, that we then craft this whole sense of who we are around.

• 1:23:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:24Rich Roll?

  And I think just looking at that and being honest with ourselves about that helps us deconstruct that. But I'm interested in this model, which I, you know, I agree with you completely, but how does this model hold up in our post fact, fake news world where, you know, when we're told our baseball team was just a bunch of crooks.

• 1:23:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:46Rich Roll?

  And there's all these newspaper articles about it. We, instead of allowing that to seep in and, and forcing us to find new identity, we just refute it and dig in even deeper.

• 1:23:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  And I think that this is, is what we're seeing. This is endemic to our culture right now across the board.

• 1:24:03Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 1:24:04Rich Roll?

  And it's freezing us in this space that is moving us away, and you get into this in the later part of the book, moving us away from all of the freedom that we, you know, aspire to have in our life and that we espouse in our, you know, in, in, in the way that we live.

• 1:24:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I, I think it's a couple of things. I think one thing is that right now, our media or, or not, not just media, but like.

• 1:24:32Mark Manson?

  The way information travels in our society is very much based on attention.

• 1:24:40Mark Manson?

  So it's, it's, it's the, the more, most factual thing is not what travels the furthest. In fact, studies are showing that it's actually the, the bigger the lie, the more it travels. Right. What's that adage, like a lie goes around the world, you know, a hundred thousand times before the truth can get out of the gate or whatever, something like that. Yeah. And, um, yeah. So the, in terms of virality and everything, like the, the research is bearing that out. Um, so the problem is, is that everything is based on attention. Everything is based on, um, if I can, uh, get enough clicks, then I can make a bunch of money and whatever. Um, the problem with that is that, let's say, let's say that I,

• 1:25:24Mark Manson?

  so keep, keep this ridiculous baseball analogy going. Uh, let's say that I'm like a intrepid reporter who spent six months of my life digging into this huge baseball scandal and it's going to bring the sport to its knees. Are you going to pick a team here? Yeah. Um, yeah, let's say the Yankees. Oh, okay. You know, it's like I, I'm investigating the Yankees and I find just corruption at every level, you know, and, um, the players are throwing the games and, you know, the refs are in on it and yada, yada, yada. And, uh, and I published this huge, like 40-page investigative piece. This is like a Ronan Farrow. Yeah.

• 1:26:05Mark Manson?

  Yorker expose. Exactly. And it doesn't matter how right I am because as soon as that gets published and it gets all the attention and all the clicks, it creates, it's such a big incentive for anybody to come out and contradict me because they're going to siphon off like half of those clicks. So this is why, like, anything you see at my talks, I, I, I, I use nutrition as an example. It's like, if you, if you like Google, like, how do I lose weight? You know, you'll go to one article and it's like, oh, you just cut out fat. And then it's like, no, no, no, that's a lie. Cut out carbs. And it's like, no, no, carbs are good. No, no, you gotta cut out meat, you know? And it's like, everything is just trying to contradict each other because the easiest way to grab attention.

• 1:26:51Mark Manson?

  Is to contradict whatever currently has attention. And so when you play this out for years and years and years where it's like, everything that is grabbing attention gets immediately contradicted by something else that you enter into this this post-truth reality where it's like, well, just pick a side. You know, whatever you and and when it comes down to pick a side, it's the feeling brain just goes, well, it's like, well,

• 1:27:15Rich Roll?

  It becomes all feeling.

• 1:27:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's like, I like baseball, so this

• 1:27:20Rich Roll?

  Or I love the Yankees.

• 1:27:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I love the Yankees. And so this guy Mark Manson is full of shit and it's all set up and the media is just trying to corrupt sports because they want to like, whatever, you know, and it's because it all appears the same when everything is just contradiction.

• 1:27:35Rich Roll?

  Right. It's when it's like when you're watching a new show and there's 10 people, you know, in those little boxes and they're all shouting and the inference is that their opinions are all of equal value.

• 1:27:47Mark Manson?

  Yes. Yeah. And it's that that's that's a really good example because that's been going on for for decades now, you know, like they'll bring on like a climate scientist and they'll bring on some fringe right wing loon who thinks it's all a hoax and they'll put them side by side

• 1:28:06Rich Roll?

  Give them people weight.

• 1:28:07Mark Manson?

  And let them debate each other and it's and so if you're a viewer, you're like, all right, I'll just pick a side, you know, because it's it's in the structure of the media environment is is that it's it's in their favor to always keep things, it's like Vegas, you always want to keep things equal on both sides, you know, like that's that's where where the most money is. Problem is, is when you're talking about information and truth and, you know, politics and things like that, it has a very corrosive effect on our society.

• 1:28:39Rich Roll?

  So let's telescope that out then from the micro example of the Yankees or the news program to, you know, governments and democracy and and how we how we live essentially, you know, like the structures that drive, you know, how we live day to day.

• 1:28:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so it once, once everything becomes contradiction.

• 1:29:03Mark Manson?

  We start losing faith in all these social structures that we depend on.

• 1:29:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:08Mark Manson?

  And one of the things I I talk about early on in the book is that, you know, and this is, this is something that Harari popularized, popularized with sapiens. But it's like, all these social structures are based on faith. They are based on like, uh, democracy is a faith-based construct of like, we all just agree.

• 1:29:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, money, corporations.

• 1:29:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:30Rich Roll?

  All of these are illusions that we've made a social contract.

• 1:29:33Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Exactly. And so when you start contradicting everything, those illusions start breaking down. And so you, you get situations like today where, you know, where it's like fundamental branches of government that we all depend on. You know, it's like, oh, now it's the deep state and they're trying to like, you know, subvert everything or, or, or on the left, you know, it's like every now it's, now you've got fascists in power, you know, and so it's, it's, it's these constant kind of extreme messages of like, oh, we have to tear the whole thing down. And this, this kind of comes full circle back to my original point of like, things are great and everybody's freaking out because it's, none of the problems that we have today.

• 1:30:17Mark Manson?

  And yes, we have a lot of problems, but none of the problems we have today are problems that we haven't had in the past, that we haven't dealt with in the past.

• 1:30:26Rich Roll?

  And yet the level of despair, anxiety and depression has never been higher.

• 1:30:30Mark Manson?

  Right. And, and, and politically speaking, you have large groups on both the right and the left who are ready to just tear everything down. Say, you know what? Let's start over. And like that, that is the danger. Like, that's the bigger danger. Like, what's going on? And like, Congress has been gridlocked before, you know, we've had, you know, we've had all sorts of corruption and breakdowns in different parts of the government before. Like, the system is designed to compensate and kind of hold itself together. The only thing that can bring it down is when a critical mass of people are like, no, it's all bullshit.

• 1:31:08Rich Roll?

  Right. And that's being weaponized right now.

• 1:31:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Rich Roll?

  You know, there are vested interests who are very savvy and are swaying public opinion by using the levers of technology to tilt the scales. And that, that becomes something unprecedented.

• 1:31:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:24Rich Roll?

  In history and, and rather terrifying.

• 1:31:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, um,

• 1:31:29Mark Manson?

  It's a strange time. It's a very strange time.

• 1:31:31Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, technology continues to advance. We're seeing innovation at a rate that we've never seen before.

• 1:31:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Rich Roll?

  And this gets into, you know, a related subject that you talk about in the book, which is how these innovations, which we're all welcoming into our lives and signing up for and excited about and can't wait for the new iteration of, and yet they're all fueling, they're really just fueling diversion, which is reducing our, the freedoms that we think that, you know, we should, that we're enjoying and should be increasing.

• 1:32:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, um, so this kind of ties into Jaco's thing about freedom equals discipline or discipline equals freedom. It's one of the, I guess, more profound conclusions, and I say profound for me, I don't know if anybody else cares, but for me personally, one of the more profound conclusions I came to the last four or five years is this realization that like freedom isn't necessarily having more stuff or more options or being able to do more things. What real freedom is, is the ability to, to choose my commitments, to choose the people I want to be with, to choose the information I want to engage with, to

• 1:32:47Mark Manson?

  choose the work I want to spend my life pursuing. And it's, I make the argument in the book that this proliferation of options, that we're essentially, we're mistaking options for freedom. And options are great. When you have no options, options are great. They increase freedom. But once you have options, if, once the options get to the point, like way, way, way past the point that you're ever going to be able to choose from them.

• 1:33:16Rich Roll?

  You're just continually scrolling down Netflix and it just keeps going.

• 1:33:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, it's the old.

• 1:33:21Rich Roll?

  There's that joke on Saturday Night Live, like the goal is just, by the time you're done scrolling, they've now added new shows.

• 1:33:30Rich Roll?

  It just becomes a perpetual habit trail.

• 1:33:33Mark Manson?

  It feels like we're getting there. But absolutely, you know, it's the classic like 500 channels on TV is nothing on. And it's, it's the proliferation of options has psychological effects on us. It makes, there's a thing called paradoxical choice, which, you know, if you, if you give people an option between two, two types of cereal, you know, you pick one and you're like, all right, I got the better cereal, you're satisfied with it. If you give people a choice between 20 types of cereal, on paper, that sounds like a better deal, but actually what happens is, is people, first of all, they like get really anxious

• 1:34:16Mark Manson?

  and obsessive and are worried that they're going to pick the wrong one. And then once they pick it, they're less satisfied with whatever they picked because they're actually thinking more about the 19 that they gave up.

• 1:34:28Rich Roll?

  That they didn't pick, yeah. And that ultimately leads to, that's, you know, the root of FOMO, I guess, on some level, and it just makes people feel despairing, like they're always missing out and they can't make the right choice. It's disorienting.

• 1:34:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:34:45Rich Roll?

  So let's get into this idea of finding the solution in the present moment.

• 1:34:53Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:34:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so hope is about the future.

• 1:34:56Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 1:34:57Rich Roll?

  These stories we tell ourselves about who we are are rooted in the past.

• 1:35:01Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:35:01Rich Roll?

  These are things that are fueling, you know, all of these conditions that we're seeing, the epidemic of loneliness and depression and anxiety and all of this. It all goes back to the ancient wisdom. Be here in the now, man.

• 1:35:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:15Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:35:16Mark Manson?

  There's nothing new under the sun.

• 1:35:17Rich Roll?

  Like, did you invent this idea?

• 1:35:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I came up with the present moment. Thank you.

• 1:35:25Mark Manson?

  It really is incredible, you know, so I my background, you know, and people who read subtle art probably figure this out, but like my background is like a Buddhist background. I see you've got the statue.

• 1:35:44Rich Roll?

  I've got all the new age trappings.

• 1:35:49Mark Manson?

  But I was.

• 1:35:50Rich Roll?

  I've got the amor fati.

• 1:35:52Mark Manson?

  Oh, well, yeah.

• 1:35:53Rich Roll?

  We can talk about in a minute.

• 1:35:54Mark Manson?

  Absolutely. Yeah, I'm going there, actually. So my background's a little bit Buddhist. I spent a lot of my college years and twenties like engaging with it and practicing meditation and really getting into it. And so it's funny, I'm kind of, I got on this big Western philosophy kick after subtle art came out and I had read some stuff in college, but some of it was interesting and some of it was completely indecipherable, but I guess at some point in the last 15 years, my brain is like, developed the attention span and patience to actually like wade through Kant and Nietzsche.

• 1:36:36Mark Manson?

  And so I was reading a lot of Western philosophy and I was like, really finding it inspiring in a lot of ways. And it's crazy because it's, it all just comes back to the same principles. And, you know, Nietzsche, I talk about Nietzsche in the book.

• 1:36:55Mark Manson?

  Nietzsche was, he's considered the first postmodernist, which is because he, he basically showed up and he was like, look, any human system, because it was conceived of by humans, is going to be inherently flawed and faulty and it's never going to last. Anything, anything you can conceive of, it's going to fail at some point. And so.

• 1:37:20Mark Manson?

  Ultimately, the conclusion that he arrived upon is you just need to learn to love the failure. He called it amor fati, love your fate. Just understand that everything's and what's amazing too is that he was people in Europe weren't aware of the Buddhist stuff at this time. And so, you know, they're kind of arriving at this independently in their own way. And then

• 1:37:42Rich Roll?

  It's the same as saying, stop resisting what is

• 1:37:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:47Rich Roll?

  And embrace the now.

• 1:37:49Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 1:37:49Rich Roll?

  And be in surrender and acceptance.

• 1:37:52Mark Manson?

  Yep, absolutely. And then Kant, it was a similar thing. You know, Kant, Kant actually tried to do what Nietzsche said was impossible, which is to find some sort of universal moral principle of like, okay, this is the one thing that we should all value above all else. And he really struggled with it. And he, I think he only, he came up with, he called them categorical imperatives. And I think he only came up with three and they've been torn to shreds ever since by a lot of really smart people and two of them in particular. But there is a third one, which I thought, I think holds up the best out of the three,

• 1:38:34Mark Manson?

  which is what he called this formula of humanity, which is essentially never treat an individual, a conscious individual as a means always as an end, which is kind of a fancy philosophical way of saying, you know, the highest value, the thing we should value more than anything else is always the dignity of each human being. And if you subscribe to any sort of religion or ideology or relationship or passion that ever forces you to treat another individual as a means does not respect their inherent dignity as a human being.

• 1:39:20Mark Manson?

  Then that is a moral failure.

• 1:39:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you describe it as, as stop living a transactional life.

• 1:39:26Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 1:39:26Rich Roll?

  Right? To live a transactional life is to treat another individual or a situation as a means to an end, which immediately gets you into the future.

• 1:39:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:38Rich Roll?

  You're plotting and planning.

• 1:39:39Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:39:40Rich Roll?

  You're, you know, you're trying to create a machination that's going to get you to this other place at some unspecified future time.

• 1:39:49Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:39:49Rich Roll?

  Opposed to living in the moment, treating somebody as an end in and of itself, which is another way of saying, just be present with who you are.

• 1:39:58Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:39:59Rich Roll?

  And who that person is.

• 1:40:00Mark Manson?

  And be unconditional in your actions. You know, treat everything.

• 1:40:05Rich Roll?

  Did that one get torn down? Because that one holds up pretty well.

• 1:40:08Mark Manson?

  I, I have not seen any convincing destruction of it.

• 1:40:15Mark Manson?

  And it's, it, what's amazing too, is that it, the same principle is really at the heart of pretty much every major religion. I think it's just, it's all the institutional stuff. You know, so it's like the teachings of Jesus, or Mohammed, or Buddha, like it's all like, you know, Buddha's like, cause no suffering. Jesus is like, love your neighbor. You know, it's, it's like, it's all the same stuff. It's just all these cultural institutions get built on top of it that then start treating people as means to ends.

• 1:40:46Mark Manson?

  But it's, it's, you know, that, that transactional thing is, that is where the destructive side of hope emerges, because you get people who are like, well, violence is wrong, but I'm pretty sure this guy's a Nazi, so I'm gonna beat the fuck out of him. You know, and it's like, that's where evil starts. That's, at least that's what Kant said. That's where evil starts. Because you are, you, the basis of your actions is no longer the inherent human dignity of each individual.

• 1:41:17Rich Roll?

  The ends don't justify the means.

• 1:41:19Mark Manson?

  Yes. If, if the means are other people, never.

• 1:41:23Rich Roll?

  Right. So to extend that into a thought experiment, if you could go back in time and like murder Hitler when he was a baby, like, how does that play out, right? That's where it gets sticky. But I understand your point, which is essentially, you know, listen.

• 1:41:40Rich Roll?

  How other people are living their lives really is none of your business. It's not for you to take their inventory and be in judgment of them. Let's cast that, you know, turn that mirror around and look at yourself. Let's focus on being the best person that you can be. And when you enter into every situation, if you can be present and if you can try to identify the shared divinity between you and that other person and hold, you know, hold that person in their highest regard and just be in allowing.

• 1:42:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:13Rich Roll?

  That that is actually a much better plan for life.

• 1:42:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I mean, I think, I think as individuals, absolutely. I think part of where it gets sticky is that the nature of politics is very transactional. Like, I think we've kind of built a transactional system just because we understand how selfish and prejudiced humans are. Like, I think that's, that is really the genius of democracy is that people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison realized how shitty people are and are like, okay.

• 1:42:48Rich Roll?

  Well, that's why we're a democratic republic and not a pure democracy.

• 1:42:52Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 1:42:52Rich Roll?

  I think that's a, you know, a stop on that a little bit.

• 1:42:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah, but it's, it's, um, I think what I love about that Kant's principle, because, you know, I spend basically a half, the first half of the book explaining like how all of our hopes and values are created. And then at the very end, I have the Nietzsche chapter, which just tears everything down. And so you're actually left with like a little bit of a bleak situation. And I get a lot of emails from people like, dude, I just finished the first part of your book, like, this is a downer, man. I'm like, keep going, it's okay, keep going. You know, and I think the beauty of Kant's principle is that it's, it's the only thing I've really found that doesn't, you don't need an ideology or a belief system or any

• 1:43:41Mark Manson?

  sort of like structure, institutional structure to practice it. You don't need. Anything in your environment to be correct, you know, you don't need it. It's it's true for every individual. It's true no matter what situation you're in, you know, and it's always. It can always be practiced in the present moment. As you said, like it's no matter how much you fuck people over in the past, no matter how much you want to fuck people over in the future. In this moment, you can treat people unconditionally as an ends and not just a means.

• 1:44:14Rich Roll?

  The irony in that is that when you do do that, all the things that you're kind of aspiring to manifest in your life are actually more likely to occur. Like, you know what I mean? Like, if you go into every situation in a transactional mindset, like I'm gonna, you know, like, oh, I'm going to this marketing conference. I'm gonna meet all these people and they're all gonna help me and this is gonna make my career. And you're in there just, you know, trying to get stuff from people.

• 1:44:39Mark Manson?

  Nobody wants to be you.

• 1:44:40Rich Roll?

  Nobody, nobody, nobody likes that guy, you know? But if you just show up full of heart.

• 1:44:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:46Rich Roll?

  And they remember like, wow, I really like talking to that person. Like, how, you know, how can I, I want that person in my life. Like, you're, you're more likely to create a social circle that's conducive to, to the things that you're trying to do.

• 1:45:00Mark Manson?

  Which, which, and it's funny, I just now put this together, but that's what, that explains the backwards law I talk about in subtle art. You know, this, this idea that the more you let go, the more you have.

• 1:45:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That's been so true in my own life and I've seen it operative in so many people.

• 1:45:18Mark Manson?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:45:19Rich Roll?

  And it's so counterintuitive.

• 1:45:20Mark Manson?

  It really is.

• 1:45:21Rich Roll?

  And it really, it requires you to live in faith, like, because you, you have to just believe. I mean, you have to let go of all of that conditioning and programming in order to inhabit that space.

• 1:45:33Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 1:45:34Rich Roll?

  And, and it's a constant, you have to constantly remind yourself too, because we'll all default back into those, you know, ways that we've always behaved.

• 1:45:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:42Rich Roll?

  All right, so let's marshal in the robots.

• 1:45:47Rich Roll?

  Our only hope, yeah, I know. So, talk about like a counterintuitive way to kind of close this book down, too. Like, there's a lot of talk about AI. You know, we're afraid of AI, is AI a good thing? We've got people like Elon Musk and some very smart people out there waving a very cautionary tail about what this is going to usher in. We need to have these conversations about what we're doing and have stops and controls. You take a very different tack in this whole thing.

• 1:46:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I again, find myself, I think, standing kind of alone here. You know, so there's, there's two camps with AI. There is, I think you call them kind of the utopians, which think that AI is gonna create this amazing place where humans can just chill out at the beach for forever.

• 1:46:33Rich Roll?

  As we've just explored over the last couple hours, this is, you're not gonna, you're not gonna transcend your, you know, your, your, your feeling brain, no matter, even if you're uploaded to the cloud.

• 1:46:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:46Mark Manson?

  So you've got those people, and then you've got, I think, kind of the doomsayers like Musk, who are concerned that we're gonna, who I think very rightly recognize that as soon as we create something that is some sort of super intelligent entity that outstrips all of our intelligence, we're gonna be out of control. And, because it's gonna be able to outsmart us, manipulate us, whatever.

• 1:47:12Mark Manson?

  I, so I often describe my, my work as pessimistic self-help. You know, one thing I, I say a lot when I do interviews or go on TV is, you know, I say most self-help is very idealistic about human nature. You know, they believe we can do anything, we can, if you believe it, you can go do it, if you, you just need to think positive and all this stuff.

• 1:47:38Mark Manson?

  I, I don't like any of that shit. I've spent enough time with psych research to understand that humans are, were inherently flawed, selfish, somewhat shitty creatures. And we don't treat ourselves well, we don't treat other people well.

• 1:47:55Mark Manson?

  So, my work has always been, instead of like, hey, you can do anything you want, my work has always been, let's just try to be a little less shitty. Let's, let's be aware of how flawed we are and work on those flaws. So, bringing that back to the AI thing.

• 1:48:15Mark Manson?

  I'm a pessimist about human nature. And so, yes, I do think we're gonna lose control to AI. But no, I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't think they're gonna wipe us out. Like, why? That's like, that's like being like, well, you know, horses aren't productive anymore. So we're gonna kill all the horse. Like, why? You, there's no reason to do that, you know? So humans are gonna be fine. We're just gonna be like the horses in the AI society. You know, it's like, oh, we fun. Hey, wouldn't it be fun to get to get rich to go do that thing?

• 1:48:47Rich Roll?

  Right. But what if we're not the horses, we're the ants?

• 1:48:50Mark Manson?

  That too. But I mean, what's wrong with that?

• 1:48:55Rich Roll?

  Well, it just means that that we're so, we're so insignificant to the AI that, that our well being doesn't even factor into whatever decision is being made about the future of the planet.

• 1:49:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:08Rich Roll?

  And we could be eradicated without a second thought.

• 1:49:12Mark Manson?

  But that's true.

• 1:49:13Rich Roll?

  Maybe we should be. I don't know.

• 1:49:14Mark Manson?

  But that's true already. I mean, like, we could be eradicated at any moment, you know, asteroid hits or whatever. I just, I don't see, I don't see the problem with it. And I think, you know, given how, I think it's far more likely we're gonna blow ourselves up than AI is.

• 1:49:36Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it's a, it's a timing thing, right? Like, it's gonna take longer for AI to advance to the point where it becomes sophisticated enough to do that. We're more likely to blow ourselves up in the short term.

• 1:49:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:50Rich Roll?

  In the long term, I think we're more likely to fall prey to the whimsical, or maybe not, the algorithmical desires of artificial intelligence that we have created.

• 1:50:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah. But it's, and I mentioned that. So I finished the book with a kind of a cheeky list of hopes that I have. And one of them is, is that we don't blow ourselves up before the AI can develop enough to like, you know, take the gun away from the baby.

• 1:50:19Rich Roll?

  If, if, if to challenge you a little bit, your, your whole thesis here is that we've arrived at this place in culture where our needs are met, and this is creating this existential crisis and all these mental health disorders. But won't AI just exacerbate that? It's going to fill all these other needs so that we literally become like the guys in the wheelchairs in, in, in Wally. Like we never have to do anything.

• 1:50:43Mark Manson?

  Not necessar- I mean, we take dogs for walks, you know? It's like, why won't the, why won't the AI take us for a walk? Like I talk, I've got this like-

• 1:50:50Rich Roll?

  Well, the AI could walk the dog.

• 1:50:53Mark Manson?

  But, but what I'm saying is like-

• 1:50:54Rich Roll?

  Or we're gonna all have robot dogs.

• 1:50:55Mark Manson?

  Well, I, I have this kind of like fun sci-fi moment in the last chapter about this, where I say like, yeah, we'll all be, we'll be in like some virtual reality cloud where the AI has constructed some game that we're all engaged in that keeps us occupied and that we're all, we all enjoy.

• 1:51:12Rich Roll?

  The ultimate distraction.

• 1:51:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:14Rich Roll?

  And then we become batteries, like in The Matrix.

• 1:51:17Mark Manson?

  Sure, why not?

• 1:51:18Rich Roll?

  You're like, sign me up?

• 1:51:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like dude, what's wrong with The Matrix, man?

• 1:51:22Rich Roll?

  All right, well, when that happens, and then you have your next existential crisis, then you will have the material for the follow-up book about why this was all a really bad idea. All right, well, I think that's a good-

• 1:51:35Mark Manson?

  That's a good place to end.

• 1:51:36Rich Roll?

  Land it, yeah.

• 1:51:40Rich Roll?

  James Altucher called this book, "The Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning for, for the Next Generation." And I, I see, I see why he said that. I think there's a lot, there's a lot to that. It's a bold statement.

• 1:51:52Mark Manson?

  It's really bold.

• 1:51:53Rich Roll?

  But you have sold a lot of books.

• 1:51:54Mark Manson?

  So bold, it makes me uncomfortable.

• 1:51:57Rich Roll?

  Well, I guess we'll know if AI, if the robots don't kill us in a hundred years, then we can revisit this and see whether it holds up. But I love the books. I love the work that you're doing. I think you're doing, you know, some, some deep thinking about issues that are really important and affect all of us. So keep doing it, my friend.

• 1:52:15Mark Manson?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:52:15Rich Roll?

  Thanks for coming by today.

• 1:52:16Mark Manson?

  Appreciate it.

• 1:52:16Rich Roll?

  Appreciate it.

• 1:52:17Mark Manson?

  Glad to be here.

• 1:52:17Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 1:52:21Rich Roll?

  Good times for even more on Mark. Check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. Let him know how this one landed for you by sharing your thoughts with him directly on Twitter at I am Mark Manson. And you can follow him on Instagram at plainly put Mark Manson. Also, don't forget to pick up a copy of his latest book, Everything is F, Everything is Fucked, a book about hope. And of course, check out his wildly successful, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F: A Counterintuitive Approach. If you haven't done so already, most of you probably have already read that book. If you'd like to support our work here on the podcast, subscribe, rate, and comment on the show on Apple Podcasts. That really helps new people discover the show. Tell your friends

• 1:53:01Rich Roll?

  about your favorite episode, or maybe this episode. Share the show on social media. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, to Spotify, to Google Podcasts. And you can support us financially on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I appreciate my team that helps put on this show every week. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, and show notes. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for video and editing the show for YouTube, as well as the short clips we share across social media. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Ally Rogers for portraits. DK for advertiser relationships. And the music by Analemma. Appreciate the love, you guys. I will see you back here shortly with a great conversation and a very special performance

• 1:53:45Rich Roll?

  from musicians Rodrigo and Gabriela. This one's a little bit different. We're trying a little bit of a new format. It's very exciting. I think you guys are gonna really dig it. They are amazing people. So, let me take you out with a short clip. Until then, remember, there is still hope despite everything being F. Peace. Plas. Namaste.

• 1:54:09Speaker 02

  We knew we wanted just to play guitar. And at some point after quitting the band, and we was like, it doesn't matter if we're playing a coffee or background music. And for us, To stick to our guns when we left X-Tap and went to Dublin, that was kind of the same goal. So like, we're not going to do anything else but playing music. And we quickly realized that we had to play on the streets. And it was the best experience ever.

• 1:54:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, but I must say that adding to the redefinition of success, the experience with the band was quite intense because instead of focusing on music and stuff, we were focusing on how can we play here? How can we do this? And that drained us. That's why we said, no, we don't like, we can't quit music. And as a matter of fact, now we're going to embrace music. And that's how we said, okay, whatever. We can go and play in anybody's wedding, anywhere else, background music, whatever. But for us, every single note is going to have a meaning.