If You Suffer From Depression or Anxiety, You Need to Watch This | Rainn Wilson on Impact Theory

[Music] Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. I am here with legendary actor and activist Rain Wilson. Rain, welcome to the show, man. Big it up. Big it up. Big it up. Bill Yeah, buddy. It is so good to have you back, man. Hey, it's great to talk to you again. And I really enjoyed our conversations uh back in the day when I was kind of more actively with Soul Pancake and on your first show and uh hearing your your life journey is always inspiring and congratulations on the success of your show. It's great to be here. Thank you, man. I I am so in awe of the way that you move through the world and really excited to have you back. One thing I I want to talk about that I think you're doing really well is this is such a crazy time for people, stress, anxiety, and all of that. you don't assue the sort of messiness of the real world. Um, you're in it trying to find a way to do something that matters to you, to the world. Um, and that is so cool to see you leverage purpose and service as a way through um, any difficult time. And I I know recently you've started talking about your struggles with anxiety and depression, and I would love to jump into that and and just understand more about how you've found a way out of it. Uh yeah, thank you uh for for saying that and for bringing that up. So there's a number of different fields that I'm interested in besides the whole writing, acting, producing, directing kind of Hollywood stuff, which you know comes and goes, has its ups and downs. But um you know, one is my wife and I do all this work in Haiti uh with girls education. I'm really passionate about that. I've been doing a bunch of stuff about climate change. I think we'll talk a little bit about that. But this is another one uh that I'm really uh an issue that I'm really passionate about which is uh mental health. And uh so I have this company Soul Pancake that I co-founded and we did last year a documentary about mental health um called uh Laughing Matters and it's um it's comedians talking about their struggles with mental health because there's there's a link between comedy and anxiety and comedy and depression as you know you know with Robin Williams and and you know there's addiction issues and you know all kinds of all kinds of stuff in that in that area. So, it was really an honor to be able to explore that. But this issue is so huge. In fact, I would say that um you know, there's just there's a handful of issues that are kind of the most important in the world as I see them. And you know, we've got racism is a huge one. Climate change is another one. But mental health, especially with young people, is huge. It's off the charts. When you start looking at the numbers, it's a very simple Google search. I won't repeat them for you right now, but you can just type in suicide, anxiety, depression, young people, teenagers, etc. And you see that, you know, suicides have gone up by a third over the last 15 years. the number of uh teens, genzers, 20somes suffering from uh depression and anxiety and loneliness. Loneliness is through the roof. This is one of the biggest issues that they're dealing with on college campuses. Um the the numbers is that even before uh co kicked off. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. This has been this has been it's been for years. And older people like ourselves, Gen Xers or boomers, like really have no idea how deep this [ __ ] runs cuz it is very very real. Um, a lot of lives have been touched by it. So, this is one of the things that I'm really uh passionate about and been working with Soul Pancake on some uh some uh content around. But yeah, through the course of this I've spoken about my own personal struggles with this and um you know I guess for me uh one of the things that's that's central to this discussion is that for any young person who feels like they're depressed or they're suicidal or they're anxious, you feel like you're the only one in the world feeling that way. you really there's a certain measure of isolation that goes with the disease of mental illness where you feel no one else could possibly understand what I'm going through. So it's really important for people for speakers, thinkers, writers, celebrities to speak about their struggles. Uh this has really helped people um um as I've gone along. So yeah. So, you know, I don't know how much I want to get into specifics, but I will say that, you know, when I got out of college, I was really lost for many years. Um, I suffered from severe anxiety attacks. I would get anxiety uh attacks where I would be on the subway in New York City like shaking. and was afraid that people were going to think that I was like a crack addict cuz I was like sweating. I'm kind of sweating right now actually, but that's more from the the LA weather. But um uh you know, I would be shaking and sweating on the subway. Um uh panicking or days I couldn't get out of bed. Sometimes I would just fall to the ground. Um these came and went for years. Sometimes they would be attached to a thing. So all of a sudden it would get attached to flying and then I would have this terrible fear of flying. Then it would go away from flying and then it would be enclosed spaces and I would get it around enclosed spaces. Then it would just kind of randomly happen. Um how did you as an actor on the stage? How did you deal with that? That's got to be a pretty big trigger um to literally be on stage in front of people. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, it was a big deal. I um I it never happened on stage, but I would get that fear, you know, that when you get that cold, chilled ice water in your veins, like heart thumping fear like, oh, oh [ __ ] this thing is about to happen. I would get that terror that I was on the stage because I did theater for 10 years before I came to LA and eventually did The Office. So, um, I did a lot of different plays, a lot of different styles of acting and characters, and I was terrified that one of these days I was going to seize up on stage, forget all my lines, and start shaking and sweating. Do you have a guess as to why it didn't happen? Well, I think I think that it's like people who stutter. Like, I have a couple friends that stutter, and when they're acting, they don't stutter. They're actors who stutter. So in real life they stutter and when they're on stage playing characters they don't stutter. So what is that about? There's a certain part of the brain that you're using. There's a certain consciousness and focus that you're bringing to the words that you're saying that um I think allow you to not stutter and to not succumb to panic attacks. Um, but I was going to say jumping ahead, this all came back years later when I started doing talk shows and I had, this sounds crazy. It sounds absolutely nuts, but I started having a debilitating fear of doing talk shows. This is like in the when I started doing the office the early 2000s you know this was I did my first one in like 200 five 2006 between like 2006 2010 right in there when the office was just taking off and I was doing Conan O'Brien back when he was at Rockefeller Center and stuff like that and I would not sleep the night before. I would have night terrors and I would have a debilitating fear of freezing on camera. not having anything to say and uh and just kind of shutting down and even stuff happening with my body. I had so I actually it never actually happened but I would have to like work on my material. Talk shows are a really weird thing. This is different. we're just having a conversation, but a talk show with a live studio audience that's being taped and then that uh what's being taped is just going to be fed through. And this was back in the day when people were actually watching network television. And there was actually one episode I need to find it somewhere. It's in the annals of of the YouTube videos that no one cares about or watches anymore. It was like me on Jay Leno in 2008 or something like that. And I I told him about my fear of talk shows and that my therapist wanted me to act out having a nervous breakdown on national television. And I actually did it almost as like a skit and people thought like, "Is this supposed to be funny? Is this real?" It had a little bit of a Charlie Kaufman edge to it. You weren't sure what you're supposed to think. But I I literally went on the floor on Jay Leno's show and I was like shaking and like uh and I said, "Thank you so much. just was so therapeutic because I went through my my biggest fear which was having an anxiety attack uh on a talk show. I have to see that interview now. That that is crazy. Did it actually help? Like was there something therapeutic? Like was it exposure therapy or you know it did help a little bit. It did help. It showed me the absurdity of like rain. You're not going to be seized by tremors and have giant flop sweat and shake, you know, in a fetal position on the floor of a national talk show. It's just it's not going to happen. Um, it didn't completely go away. It's not like I was magically cured after that, but it definitely took a step in the right direction. And have you had a process beyond that like meditation or um cold plunges? anything to to help with that or is it just over time you've done so many of them that now it's not as troublesome? You're so 2020 meditation and cold plunges. Um that that really is a time stamp. Those are those actually are great tools. You know, I've done a lot of work around it and uh a lot of therapy and meditation. I do meditation. Tell me about the therapy. Is the is it therapy exposure therapy or is it talk therapy? cognitive behavioral therapy like what what was actually useful as somebody who has struggled profoundly with anxiety. Um I find the breakthroughs that people have had to be super useful. Well, generally I'm a big proponent of therapy because my parents didn't know how to talk about emotions, let alone to teach me about how to process feelings that my wiring was all screwed up by the time I got to my 20s. That's what I was finding out. It's like my internal wiring. So, it took me years and fortunately I was making enough money as an actor that I could afford therapy and I had pretty good health care. So, that that helps. But the process of learning about how feelings work, you know, and they need to be expressed and they need to be felt. And you know, if you're sad, you need to cry and you need to let it out and you need to do self-care and allow yourself to be sad and process that. So, you had a a guy, a young adult with all these unprocessed feelings. Then you factor various addictions in on that as well. You, you know, there was my drinking phase, drugs phase, porn phase, gambling phase, you name it, whatever I could kind of become addicted to at the time. Um, trying to soothe those feelings that were not being expressed, trying to numb them, trying to escape them through taking things into my body and into my senses. Um, that that didn't help. Generally just learning about how feelings work was very helpful. The guy I've been working with for the last 6 to 8 years, he does a thing called gestalt therapy which is very interesting. It was very big in I don't know the 50s or 60s and it kind of waned but it's really interesting. So it's some people do call it like the empty chair work and that's essentially gestalt therapy. So for instance, there's the part of me that's debilitated by anxiety. So that and according to Gestalt therapy is a character that resides in me. I have a lot of different there's a chorus of voices, a chorus of characters that reside in each one of us. You simply engage in a conversation with that character. So it's this kind of actors actually do really well with it. It's kind of like role playing. So, you have myself, there's the therapist over here, and there's an empty chair. So, I'm me. Then, I have a conversation with my anxious guy. I'm like, "Tell me about yourself. I remember sometimes I've been just debilitated by anxiety. I couldn't move. I um was tongue-tied, sweating, in panic attacks. Like, who are you and what what are you about that you kind of take me over in that way?" And then I get you literally get up and you walk over and you sit in that other chair and you talk back to the empty chair. That guy talking back to rain to reasonable rain and that guy. You don't know what's going to come out. You don't you don't try and plan it. You just try and just It's like improv. You just step into the shoes of that person. And by the way, you can do this all with writing, too. You can just do conversations by writing. And some people take to that a lot more easily. And then that guy might say like you you know you're a piece of [ __ ] and nobody likes you and so you're you're terrified of being found out as a total fraud and unlovable and so I'm there to protect you and and if that happens like I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to protect you and you're going to I'm going to seize you up and I'm going to overwhelm you so that I'm just by the way I don't know that any of this that I'm saying is is the truth. I'm just giving an example. No, it's super helpful. And and you can do that with all of these different characters in your head and um they then they cease to have that as much control because they're not these characters swimming in the sea of our unconscious that sometimes leap out with their tentacles and grab on and control us. They're much more like, oh, when you hear that voice, you you start to feel the anxiety like, oh, there's Mr. anxiety guy again or you try and control it's like oh there's my control freak I wonder what he's trying to control or there's my angry act reactive guy going again you kind of it allows that kind of distance to know that I don't have to be a victim to these characters that live within me. There's a concept I forget uh a really famous negotiator I'm forgetting his name but he talked about a similar concept where he said you go to the balcony. So, you're going to the balcony to get that distance to be looking down on yourself so that you can be more objective in the situation and really figure out what is true, what's not true. Um, and and you know, talk yourself down as it were. It's interesting. That's a really powerful I've never done it, but that sounds like a super powerful way to begin to develop self-awareness, which is certainly what a lot of people struggle with. The interesting thing for me is I didn't have anxiety when I was a kid, but I was woefully unself-aware. And then as I began to develop self-awareness, I began to have thoughts about, oh, what do people think of me? Am I going to make a fool of myself? And and that was sort of planting those first seeds of anxiety. But then you sort of become blind to yourself again of not understanding like what's really driving this. And that notion of learning to process through your emotions, I think is really really powerful. Um, so we've got the empty chair technique, we've got journaling, um, which that that certainly is something closer to what I do. I found journaling to be incredibly powerful. Um, have there been other breakthrough moments for you? And I'm asking you particularly in the context of service and faith. Um, so you know between the bajai faith and if there's anything there around that about the nature of life and maybe stillness or something. I'm obviously guessing, but um and then service, you know, seeing how actively you pursue um mattering purpose. Uh I wonder if any of that is tied up in into getting to the other side of anxiety and depression. Yeah, that's um yeah, we haven't even gotten to the depression part, but the um so my my personal faith, a member of the Bahigh faith has definitely inspired uh this idea that we rise to our maximum potential when we're of service to others. And not only our maximum potential, but our our greatest usefulness and living in that potential. and usefulness uh gives us the most kind of rich human satisfaction. And I know for me cuz I spent a long time when I first started getting famous various points in time just trying to satisfy myself and my ego and I was miserable. In fact, they do studies on happiness and this is part of mental health is you can um I'm sure you've had some happiness experts on but there you know there's so many books about it and and the whole field of positive psychology is really exciting uh field. It just started in the '9s. I mean when I was going to college there was no such field as positive psychology. Now there's thousands of books about it and um and they're they're really exciting. But one of the things that is um 100% true in positive psychology, it's irrefutable that one of the worst ways to achieve happiness or contentment, whatever you want to call it, is through materialism. And yet we live in a culture that tells you over and over and over again, if you get this car, if you get this amount of money, if you have this amount of of success, this amount of fame, this amount of um promotion, uh then you will be happy. You will achieve happiness once you get to that certain level. And yet the pursuit of that, the pursuit of like I need to make 165,000 a year to be happy or I need to own the new Tesla to be happy or once I get this kind of girlfriend or spouse or whatever then I'll be happy. The pursuit of kind of a materialistic uh view of happiness is um has an inverse effect. It it decreases your happiness. It makes you less healthy. I mean you can do again I don't have the exact specifics on the tip of my tongue it's a simple Google search um and conversely happiness contentment selfin enrichment I always talk about udemonia udemonia you know you've probably heard about that and talked about that before I think we spoke about it before the idea that the ancient Greeks had a word for happiness called udemonia which is human flourishing you know and I love that umbrella concept like what creates the the the largest human flourishing let's let's focus on that um forget happiness human flourishing but from the bahigh faith from the study of positive psychology helping others being of service maximizing how much you matter actually is the number one u uh cause of human flourishing So, um, I just when I kind of get into my [ __ ] of like, oh, I'm not acting as much as I should be, or people only know me as Dwight, or uh, I'll never have a career again, or, you know, I need X show to make X amount of money so that I can go on X vacation or or something. when I get into that whole stuff, which you know that comes and goes every week, um it's kind of like how can I be of service? How can I how can I help people? How can I take the skills that God has given me, that nature has given me, and put those to their best possible use? So, I let that be um I try uh and let that be a guiding light in my life. Yeah, that to me is really interesting because it jives with what I'll call sort of the physics of being human. You know, when you think about um and I know that one thing you don't love is uh reducing things that feel a little that I want to be true to your words that are sort of a spiritual god-inspired moment like holding your child for the first time. Um, for me I share that same sense of wonder and beauty, but for me I love recognizing it as the neurochemistry, you know, just like the the cocktail of what's going on in your brain that it is, but with that same reverence and awe that you bring to it. So understanding like the physics of being human is when because we're a social creature, you have this natural reward that's built in when you are using a set of skills that you have worked to build up and now you're helping not only yourself but you're helping somebody else. And when I think about human flourishing and udeimmonia, that to me feels like that magic cocktail where you will, whether you want to or not, you will get a burst of feel-good chemistry when you start heading down that path. Um, and so that is again one of the things that I find so interesting about you is there seems like this throughine in your life of even even at the height of fame for you. I feel like you'd be leveraging that to do something for other people as well. Um, and that gives this sort of equilibrium. That's from the outside. I'm sure that it feels differently from the inside, but from the outside, it has that throughine that seems to provide a lot of sort of emotional stability. Um, and you know, when I put it in the context of what we're all going through now in this time of isolation where I'm sure a lot of people are really struggling, um, is service something that you think will see people through and how in this time can they leverage that? What can they do to to reach out and feel more useful and connected? Yeah. So, uh, and by the way, I just want to go back to a little bit about what you said about the physics of being a human being. You know, whether you're u an atheist materialist, and I'm talking about the use of the word materialist, not as acrewing material items, but just seeing the world as molecules. um or whether you're a spiritual uh person that believes that there's some larger force at work beyond time and space uh some creator let's call it God whatever um this it it spirituality works through dopamine spirituality works through endorphins and the reward system in the brain and it works through physics so it's like when people there was a scientist who uh in the last decade discovered like a point in the brain where people would have uh religious and spiritual epiphies and say aha I've disproved spirituality because I actually found the point in the brain where people experience spirituality and this disproves it. It's like, "No, of course not, you idiot. This is we're in material bodies." You know, when we see beauty, we experience it through the eyes. When we hear something beautiful, we experience it through the ear. And then it and there's neurons flashing around in the brain. So, it all works harmoniously. The physical, the spiritual, it all is combined. So, going back to service, um, yeah, so there's selfish reasons to be to do service. I want to do service because it makes me feel good. Um but you know even if you look at human flourishing a little bit broader than that there are other reasons to to there are other ways to flourish. Um beyond just like oh I'm getting a a nice dopamine rush because I helped this homeless person out. Uh and that is also and the other component to service is like look around look around at the world because things are [ __ ] up right now. They always have been. You can you have those authors, you know, like Pinker, other people that are like, "Oh, the world is great. We've had less wars and less deaths than we've ever had." Yeah, okay. I get it. However, just go talk to one of the billion people in the planet that are going to bed hungry every night. And okay, maybe it used to be two billion 80 years ago. Uh but people are hurting. There's, you know, systemic racism. There's there's there's climate change coming. There's uh economic uh in injustice everywhere. And so the other reason to do service is to try and make the world a better place because we need it. And if you want to maximize your compassion uh for others, then you want to devote yourself to trying to uplift and and help other people just because it's good for the species and good for the planet. It's also good for your human flourishing on a micro level as a human as a human being. And it's your human flourishing on a macro level. You know, we have these two paths in the Bahigh faith. There's a it's called the two-fold moral. You have a two-fold moral purpose. We refer to it. You try and make yourself a better person. So, part of my goal, Tom, as I go through life is I want to be a better person. What does that mean? I want to reflect more of the qualities of the divine. And you can call them leadership traits or character virtues or whatever you want to call it. It's fine. For me, I'm I'm going to look at it in that sense. I want to be more kind. I want to be more compassionate. I want to be more patient. I want to be more honest. I want to be more giving. I want to be more loving. I battle with this stuff every day. It's not like I don't have it all figured out by any means. Ask my wife. But I want to I'm working on this path and I'm also working to make the world a better place. I want to make myself a better place and I want to make the world a better place. And if I if I hitch my wagons to those two pursuits, going back to anxiety, going back to depression, going back to loneliness, I truly believe that's the answer. That's the way out of any kind of mental illness. It's like I'm going to make myself a better person. I want to make the world a better place. And everything that I'm doing, I've got these two chariots and I'm going down this road or I'm going down this road or I'm going down both together. Yeah, I'm I'm with you on that. This when I think about, you know, what we're going through now and like you were talking about loneliness was epidemic before we came into the pandemic. So, how do you, you know, begin to deal with sort of the really overwhelming sense of being lonely and disconnected as you get into a time like this? Um, and I think you're right on the money. I think that having the having established your value system, that's actually a really powerful insight and I'd be very curious to hear more about what your value system is and if you um have sort of intentionally documented that or if it's you're playing by ear. Um, but having a value system, living by it, um, you know, you're calling it sort of traits of the divine, and I think we're saying the same thing, just like you said, I use maybe slightly different words. So, um, leveraging that we're a social creature that will get rewards by um, trying to uplift the group, right? So, by doing things like that, you are going to start to feel better. You are going to start to feel more connected. Um, how have you, given that we're still physically distancing, how have you done that? Is it the um reachouts that you do on social media over Zoom or Skype or um do you have techniques that are working well for you to allow you to serve, allow you to connect? How have I done it in the pandemic? I I don't know that I've been very successful, you know, honestly. I've tried to increase my prayer and meditation. Uh increase kind of gratitude. You know, I'm sure you've spoken to people about gratitude on your show, but gratitude is the number one tool of positive psychology. And it's really the number one tool of people of faith when you think about it. Because when you're praying, you're giving thanks to the divine. You know, you're saying God is great. allow Akbar what however you want to look at God or the divine and saying thank you for this beautiful day or thank you for the stuff I have or thank you for me being alive and having my senses today. So uh increasing gratitude is a huge uh help in increasing happiness and human flourishing. So my tendency is to get very dark and cynical and I can look at what I I think anyone that's on this path has gone through uh dark and cynical times. And you may not perceive me as that, but I can be pretty pessimistic. So, it takes a lot of work for me to counter my natural impulse. See my I would say my natural impulse and a lot of people's natural impulse is for self-satisfaction uh pleasure, increased status, increased comfort, uh kind of pessimism, things aren't going to work out, negativity. So, I've had to do all this work to counter that. You know what I mean? Uh it's Seisphus pushing the boulder up the hill. But gratitude is um is that who Seephus was or did he get the fire? No, that was Icorus. I don't know if pushed the You were right on the money. Seephophist pushed the rock up the hill. I was all of a sudden I was like, did I get my did I [ __ ] up my my Greek mythology metaphors here. Um, but one thing again that positive psychology in the study of mental health issues shows us is we need connectivity. Um, yes, we need it for increased uh endorphins and uh and dopamine, but we need it to thrive and this is a very difficult time. Um, so how do we make community? You know, we I just try and like do social distancing with friends at Starbucks and have a coffee from six feet away. do that a couple times a day, you know, play some tennis, get outside, connect with nature. I don't know that I'm being very successful. But again, so we talked our western society in 2020 is trying to convince us that buying stuff and acrewing stuff will make us happier. We're being fooled by this as we spend hours a day. You know, when you get that the weekly updates of like how much time you spend on your screen and you're just like, "Oh my god, what the hell am I doing?" So, um trying to put the phone away whenever I can. Um and increase the connectivity. Yeah, I think uh wise moves. Wise moves for sure. Do you when you're working with your son, do you think about it any differently given the age that he's going through this at? Um are you recommending the same things for him? I know there's a lot of parents out there right now that are struggling with the same thing. You know, it's we all thought this was going to be brief and this has become I mean this is crazy. Um on so many levels this is crazy. Yeah. My son is 15 almost 16 and it's brutal for teenagers right now. I I really truly think they have it the worst and the parents of teenagers. We only have one. You can imagine having being a parent of three teenagers or something like that. It's because all teenagers want to do is be with other teenagers and they can't. And you you may think, you know, a Zoom classroom kind of scratches that itch a little bit, but it's not uh panacea toward toward that. So, it's incredibly uh trying. We I went camping with him. We went six days out in the wilderness. I don't have any answers around this. It's really tough and my my heart really goes out to the, you know, the single mom with two or three or four kids um during this time. It's it's brutal. This is a real test. So, as you um walk us through what's going on, how you're leveraging service and how powerful that can be to help people at pretty much any point in their life. um when I look at the ways that you have done that from creating soul pancake to just entertaining people and now moving into um what you're doing with climate change super curious to know and what you're doing in Haiti and trying to empower women through the arts. I mean it's really a pretty extensive resume of cool things you've done to to be of service. Um walk me through what you're doing now with the climate change. I think it's really interesting because you've framed it as I don't know [ __ ] about it, but I'm not afraid to go discover and like really take myself out there and just take you guys along on the journey. Um, which I love because so many people will dismiss something like that saying, well, I don't know about it. So, um, you sort of being the the pied piper of, well, let's go discover it together. Um, what made you pick that? Is that a general technique that you use of just like, hey, I'm just going to go learn? Well, so you use the tools that you have uh to try and make yourself better and to make the world a better place as we talked about. And one thing I've really haven't known very much about and I was just a slackivist, you know, it's just a keyboard social justice warrior was about climate change. Just kind of like reading an article about how terrible climate change is, posting it on my Twitter, then a bunch of people are like, "Oh, that's [ __ ] It doesn't exist. The weather's always been changing. That's one I really love. Yeah. Not like this. Not over a hundred years. Over 20,000 years. Sure. The weather's been changing. Not over 120 years, idiot. Um, so I I was doing the minimum, you know? I was, yeah, I have an electric car and I was tweeting about it. That's the minimum. So I was like, how do I use my platform? how to use my voice to to not only get the message across, but for me to learn more about it. I need to get off my fat ass and actually do something. So, you know, fortunately, I have a lot of young Office fans who loved Dwight and they also know me as kind of an idiot and, you know, I can just be coarse and uncou and weird and uh sloppy and um you know, offbeat and these are my qualities. So, how do I harness that? I I started to get to know these scientists, especially this one Dr. Gail Whiteitman, who's uh an amazing uh amazing social scientist who studies climate change. And so she kind of interacts with climate science and climate scientists and connects them to municipalities, cities, governments, big business, you know, the the government of the Netherlands and, you know, about effects of climate change and what we can do and whatnot. and she was like, "Let's just let's we're going up to Greenland. There's a bunch of scientists I know up there. Come meet me." We shot this whole series on Soul Pancakes YouTube channel called An Idiot's Guide to Climate Change. That's where people can find it. Um we've done five of the six episodes have aired so far. The sixth is airing very soon. And um it's uh it's a it's a we shot the whole thing for like $67,000. the entire thing. Like I just did this Amazon show called Utopia that's coming out soon and that's like that's literally like the mustache wig budget for for that show. I mean we did it for super cheap. But for me it's like get off your butt and actually do something. A learn about the science. We can all learn about the science. It's not that hard. It's all right there. Um and communicate about the science. Um one of the failings in the whole uh journey, humanity's journey around climate change is the scientists have really failed us. Um up until about 10 up until about 10 years ago, scientists always because academia is is so messed up and just how academia works and that's a whole other conversation. Um, scientists really viewed it as their role to research and discover data and post their data and that's it. They would write they would see these warning signs that humanity is headed for the precipice and they type up their data and they put it in, you know, the journal of science and that's that's it. I'm done. Do I get my raise? Do I get my tenure? Do I get to transfer? I I publish this thing. Can I go to another college university again? And so these uh scientists are not viewing their their duty and their role to their being a member of the human species. The information that they have been accumulating. Remember that we've had this information about climate change since the late 70s and early 80s. You know, we had the when you you can go back and look at studies from like 1982, I forget which one, and we're exactly on track, exactly on track with what scientists were discovering in 1982 in the Reagan years, back when both the Republicans and the Democrats thought that this was a great threat. Um, back when it was not so polarized. So scientists need to share their data uh more forcefully and in different ways to uh to help us move forward because now we have this whole science anti-science kind of thing going on. And it's it's partially the fault of of academia. So I've been rambling, but anyways, there you have it. Not at all, man. It's interesting to see your thought process and to see what you get interested in. And one, I love tackling the big challenges you listed at the beginning of the interview like here are the big things that I think are really going on. And so to see you in there um not accepting, you know, the deviation from your own value system. So it's like, hey, I feel like I should be doing something about this, so I'm going to get off my ass. I'm going to go do something. I don't know about it, but I'm not afraid to learn. I'm also not afraid to look stupid, which I think is incredibly important. And so going in and and your challenge to not letting things be so divisive, I think is um really important. I fear it seems to be falling on deaf ears. Uh but I I would love to amplify that notion of people really looking um you know what works and just being obsessed. Elon Musk said it best for me when it comes to climate change. Like are humans causing climate change? I I almost don't care what the answer is. It is a really stupid experiment since we know that we have to find an alternative to fossil fuels. Burning through them all and sending, you know, carbon dioxide into the atmosphere until the bitter end, not knowing if that's going to be a problem just seems like a really stupid experiment. And I thought that is the perfect way to look at this. There's no there's no great outcome here. So putting your time and energy into solving or not forget saying it like solving the problem just moving to something that is renewable is certainly the obvious answer. And so when people begin to entrench and it becomes us versus them. I'm on this side or that side. It's like I'm on the side of what works. I always want to be on the side of what works. What is our goal? What's actually moving us towards our goal? And that you can always count me on that team. And if I realize I've been running in the wrong direction and there's data to show me that I'm running in the wrong direction, then you know I'm happy to switch it up and trying to get people excited about that idea. Like be data driven. What is your goal? And are we marching towards that goal? Yes or no? And if you're making prog, if you can state your goal and you're willing to state it, your goal is, I will say, honorable, it should be both exciting and honorable so that you can get people behind it. And that in getting people behind it, you're actually making things better for the world. So if you have an exciting and honorable goal, then you just ask, are we actually moving towards that or away from that? And if we could get people excited about that instead of excited about I'm on this team and I just dunked on somebody on Twitter and made them look a fool, uh, I think we'd be in a much better position. But that would require people to do what you're doing, which is go out and say, "Look, I don't know about this, but I'm going to go learn." And, um, that to me is is exciting, man. It was so neat to see you do that. And as always, your your content is is quality. Your your personality is beyond disarming. Um, so it it's it's a great ride. Um, where do you want people engaging with you and all the cool stuff that you're up to these days? Well, they can certainly check out An Idiot's Guide to Climate Change uh on the Soul Pancake YouTube channel. Um, and uh follow me on the social media. Uh, I'm working on a book on all of this stuff. So, eventually hopefully Do we have a loose title? Oh, it's a it's a terrible title. My working title is the worst working title and I feel horrible but it it um uh the in its um I don't even remember what it is now. Well, the last one I remember Bassoon King. So, you you definitely have a tall order to top that. My life story is in the my memoir that came out four or five years ago, The Bassoon King. That's a good that's a good laugh. But my yeah my new book is something like uh the upcoming spiritual revolution or something like that. It's kind of like um how do we harness the power of spirituality to change the world going all the way back to the to the Bhagavad Gita to the vas to the upanishads to you know the writings of the Buddha to the to the Bible the Quran uh are there tools in there that can make us better people and make the world a better place? So I love it man that's awesome. Well, I cannot wait to see what you put together on that. Um, I certainly have enjoyed the last two books of yours that I read, so I'm about it. Can't wait. Excellent, Tom. Great talking to you again, man. Dude, same. Everybody, this man is not only funny, but he has got a just absolute treasure trove of insight. So, I highly encourage you to spend time, read his books, check out his content, all of it. It's amazing. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe here as well. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. I think that trying to generate your own material will not only maybe you'll get it made, but it'll also give you a better sense of what it is that you want to do.