Speaker 1: I love life, I love living. I believe in good,
Speaker 1: I believe in beauty. But I also think that it's
Speaker 1: important not to turn a blind eye to all the
Speaker 1: messed up things that are going on our planet. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us everyone.
Speaker 1: Our guest this week is George Watsky, who goes by
Speaker 1: the stage name Watsky. He's a rapper and poet from
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and we had a chance to talk to
Speaker 1: George as he's wrapping up his US tour. His latest
Speaker 1: album is called Cardboard Castles, and you can find more
Speaker 1: details about him on our show notes at One You
Speaker 1: Feed dot net. Slash Watsky, thanks for joining us today, George,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. Thank you for having me. So our podcast
Speaker 1: is called The One You Feed, and it's based on
Speaker 1: an old parable that goes something like, there's an old
Speaker 1: Cherokee grandfather who is talking to his grandson and he's
Speaker 1: saying to him, uh, you know, in life, we have
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always fighting. One
Speaker 1: is good and kind and loving, and the other is bad,
Speaker 1: you know, greedy or hateful or self pity. And the
Speaker 1: grandson thinks for a second, he says, well, Grandpa, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And he says the one you feed? So
Speaker 1: our podcast is really about how people feed their good
Speaker 1: wolves well, and that means very different things to very
Speaker 1: different people. So I guess the first question I have
Speaker 1: for you is sort of what comes to mind when
Speaker 1: you when you hear that parable, and and how do
Speaker 1: you think it relates to what you do personally and
Speaker 1: in your work? Yeah, I mean it's very profound, it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I mean the first thing that springs to mind is
Speaker 1: just I'm not a perfect person that I know that
Speaker 1: the capacity for evil exists inside me. I've seen it
Speaker 1: rear its head. But I also believe that every human
Speaker 1: being is good too. And you know, as an artist
Speaker 1: and as a person, we get to choose on a
Speaker 1: daily basis what direction we want to take our lives
Speaker 1: and our art. And I've tried to do that with honesty.
Speaker 1: I've tried my best to do it with integrity every
Speaker 1: step of the way. I try to make the choices
Speaker 1: that I think I'm going to be able to live
Speaker 1: with and that my parents are gonna be proud of
Speaker 1: me for. And I fail sometimes, but I'm very proud
Speaker 1: of the little empire in the world that we've built
Speaker 1: with our fellow artists that were on the road with
Speaker 1: you know. So I think that relates to everyone. You know,
Speaker 1: everyone is fighting in constant struggle for trying to let
Speaker 1: the good parts of themselves emerge. And nobody's perfect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I And that's That's one of the things that resonates
Speaker 1: to me about your work is that that struggle is evident,
Speaker 1: but there's a clear um, there's an acknowledgement of it,
Speaker 1: as well as a an attempt to sort of an
Speaker 1: attempt that there's effort that has to go into sort
Speaker 1: of the uh, the positive, and there was I was
Speaker 1: reading some something you had somewhere where you're talking about UM,
Speaker 1: the the the kill, the hipster uh savior hood, and
Speaker 1: you're you say in one of your comments somewhere that
Speaker 1: you know the most important part of that is to
Speaker 1: take a look in the mirror. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was really interesting. That ship is no good plus where
Speaker 1: a mixture does no good right on? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that whole song, And I think that people the problem
Speaker 1: with that is that that's a five and a half
Speaker 1: minute song where I get to the self awareness portion
Speaker 1: of it about four and a half minutes into the song,
Speaker 1: and some people with today's modern attention span don't stick
Speaker 1: around to see the message evolve. But a huge part
Speaker 1: of my work is um not so much just diagnosing,
Speaker 1: but taking those things that I see wrong and then
Speaker 1: turning the mirror on myself. I mean, it's it's the
Speaker 1: same as Tiny Glowing Screens Part two. The poem that
Speaker 1: I have. It's a trope that I use in a
Speaker 1: lot of my stuff, which is diagnose an ill in
Speaker 1: the world and then figure out how I'm implicated in that,
Speaker 1: because I don't think that a message is as powerful
Speaker 1: if you remove yourself from responsibility. You know, like, if
Speaker 1: you're talking about global warming being a problem with the world,
Speaker 1: how am I a participant in that? You know that
Speaker 1: carries more weight than saying, hey, you guys who are
Speaker 1: screw up our planet, why don't you get it together?
Speaker 1: You know, there's nothing more powerful than saying I'm a
Speaker 1: part of this problem. We're all a part of this problem.
Speaker 1: Now let's look at it together. The other thing I've
Speaker 1: I was looking at of yours that I really liked
Speaker 1: was the letter to your sixteen year old self. I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the most powerful things that you've done.
Speaker 1: And it's probably resonates with me a lot because I
Speaker 1: have fifteen year old boys, and so you know, they're
Speaker 1: at that age where they're starting to make their decisions about,
Speaker 1: you know, what they're gonna do with their life, and
Speaker 1: is a parent you sort of sit by semi helplessly
Speaker 1: at this age. I mean, you can, you have influence,
Speaker 1: you talk to them, but they're gonna they're kind of
Speaker 1: at the age they're gonna do what they want to do.
Speaker 1: And and I love the positivity that's in that letter
Speaker 1: um to yourself, as well as the acknowledgement of how
Speaker 1: challenging it's going to be at certain times. Do you
Speaker 1: want to share a little bit about that? Sure? I mean,
Speaker 1: I just think that that era, like fifteen sixteen, you're
Speaker 1: freshman and sophomore year of high school. At least for me,
Speaker 1: that's when I kind of on myself and those those things,
Speaker 1: those parts of my identity that came out in that
Speaker 1: time are things that are still with me today. You know.
Speaker 1: That's really when I feel like I became an adult
Speaker 1: in many ways, and like the man that I am
Speaker 1: was kind of became concrete, and not that I'm not changing,
Speaker 1: but that's when so much identity comes in. And it's
Speaker 1: a message in a lot of my pieces, which is
Speaker 1: I don't have all the answers, that there's a balance
Speaker 1: between hopelessness and hope, that there's a balance between ugliness
Speaker 1: and beauty. I mean, letter to my sixteen year old self,
Speaker 1: Tinygoing Screens, Part two. It's kind of all different variations
Speaker 1: on that theme of I believe in life, I love life,
Speaker 1: I love living, I believe in good, I believe in beauty.
Speaker 1: But I also think that it's important not to turn
Speaker 1: a blind eye to all the messed up things that
Speaker 1: are going on our planet. And you know, I don't
Speaker 1: have a message that's as appealing as say a religious
Speaker 1: leader who can say, here are all the answers, this
Speaker 1: is how you should live your life. Uh. The message
Speaker 1: that I have is a little bit less appealing than that.
Speaker 1: In many ways, my messages that I don't have the answers,
Speaker 1: and that none of us have all the answers, and
Speaker 1: that we're all kind of trying to puzzle through this. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I've actually I had a girl email me through
Speaker 1: my manager a couple of weeks ago saying, how could
Speaker 1: you do that to me with tiny going screens? Part two?
Speaker 1: Like you built me up to believe in hope and
Speaker 1: optimism and then at the end you said, well but
Speaker 1: it's really kind of all meaningless at the end. And um,
Speaker 1: you know that is my That's the core message of
Speaker 1: my work is that is that life is worth living
Speaker 1: even though it sucks sometimes, and that you just have
Speaker 1: to you have to ride the roller coaster and just
Speaker 1: enjoy it for what it is. Another thing that my
Speaker 1: my one of my boys said, if you're going to
Speaker 1: talk to wats. You gotta ask him a question. He said,
Speaker 1: what what is it about his little cousin on the record?
Speaker 1: You know you look cousins all over the record and
Speaker 1: and I said, I think it's because he's adorable and
Speaker 1: he loves his cousin. But he seemed to think there
Speaker 1: might be more to it than that. So yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 1: Actually people assume we're related, but I am not related
Speaker 1: to that kid. His name is Norton, and I actually
Speaker 1: met him through casting him in a music video and
Speaker 1: trying to remember the first thing I did with him
Speaker 1: was a promo from the Rest album when I just
Speaker 1: needed a little cute kid to say, hey, Wat's key,
Speaker 1: why are you doing a bluegrass hip hop album that
Speaker 1: sounds really weird? And uh, and that's all. I just
Speaker 1: shot a little promo video with him, but then he
Speaker 1: I ended up talking to him on set and making
Speaker 1: this connection with this kid who in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways reminds me of myself when I was younger. And
Speaker 1: Norton and his mom have become like friends of mine,
Speaker 1: and he lived in l A. He's a very quirky
Speaker 1: kid who he's been getting bullied in school and stuff
Speaker 1: and so I've kind of become a mentor to him
Speaker 1: and went to his jiu jitsu ceremony graduation, and like,
Speaker 1: I went to go see The Hobbit with him and
Speaker 1: his mom, and I went to see his play in
Speaker 1: North Hollywood. I kind of have like a little big
Speaker 1: brother little brother relationship with him. And Uh, when I
Speaker 1: was kind of coming up with cardboard castles and figuring
Speaker 1: out what glue was going to hold the album together,
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, so much of it is about
Speaker 1: coming of age and having realizations of things in the past,
Speaker 1: and I thought, how cool would it be to get
Speaker 1: a kid who I feel like articulates a lot of
Speaker 1: the things that I was going through when I was
Speaker 1: younger and actually have him provide the perspective from an
Speaker 1: honest place. There's like only womb in my class. He
Speaker 1: just thinks he's all cool. He thinks he's smarter than me,
Speaker 1: He saks, he thinks a lot of things. What's really
Speaker 1: cool about it is that their unscripted moments of honesty
Speaker 1: from a ten year old and at that time an
Speaker 1: eight year old kid. It was just kind of trying
Speaker 1: to you know, he wasn't filtering his thoughts. He was
Speaker 1: just talking about growing up and you know, the thing
Speaker 1: that I'm constantly in search of his honesty moments, unscripted
Speaker 1: moments that reflects something that we can all relate to.
Speaker 1: And and he was kind of that glue that held
Speaker 1: the album together. He said so many things that were
Speaker 1: like to me. I was like, like the idea of
Speaker 1: feeling your own, the impending doom of turning ten years
Speaker 1: old because will never be nine anymore, and just like
Speaker 1: you know how how much weight you put on everything
Speaker 1: when you're that age, because that's what you know. And
Speaker 1: so um, that's the answer. He's not my cousin. He's
Speaker 1: just a random kid that I've created a connection with
Speaker 1: and who I'm trying to not have too close a
Speaker 1: connection with because like, if things go wrong in his life,
Speaker 1: he'll text me and and he'll he'll ask me for advice,
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, dude, don't text me, Like ask
Speaker 1: your parents if I give you the wrong advice and
Speaker 1: then you go and get punched in the face in school.
Speaker 1: I don't want that on my hands, you know, like
Speaker 1: you you gotta you gotta let your parents do that.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm trying to be a positive figure in
Speaker 1: his life without being too to present. Yeah, he's he's uh,
Speaker 1: he is a he's funny. The there's the things he
Speaker 1: says come come unexpectedly. When you were just talking about
Speaker 1: the then you know he was mortified about turning ten. Um.
Speaker 1: And at the very end of that you say something,
Speaker 1: you say ten is a great year or something like that,
Speaker 1: and then you go on and say the thing that
Speaker 1: used to help you was your parents would make funny
Speaker 1: faces and tell you stories. And then you kind of
Speaker 1: go into the song you want to share a little
Speaker 1: bit about that. Sure, Yeah, I love my mom and dad.
Speaker 1: My mom and daddy. If you happen to be watching,
Speaker 1: it's possible. My dad follows my online activity closer than
Speaker 1: I do, so he might be. Um. My parents were
Speaker 1: really great parents to me. They my dad is a
Speaker 1: psychotherapist and was also a poet. Um, he's a writer
Speaker 1: and he has you know, million degrees. Is one of
Speaker 1: the smartest guys I know. And my mom is an
Speaker 1: elementary school librarian now and they both read to me
Speaker 1: a lot. Growing up very active. My dad showed up
Speaker 1: at all my baseball games even if I struck out
Speaker 1: three times and sat on the bench. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: I think them reading to me was one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things about growing up. That we did bedtime every
Speaker 1: night and reading time and um, he would read me
Speaker 1: novels and think that definitely like spiked my intellectual curiosity
Speaker 1: and never you know, being smart in our household was
Speaker 1: not something that you should be ashamed of or embarst of. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just there's a lot of curiosity and um,
Speaker 1: a love for language and a love for art. Did
Speaker 1: you go through any adolescent rebellion period towards your parents?
Speaker 1: You know, I went through periods of like angst and
Speaker 1: being a teenager and like not wanting to hang out
Speaker 1: with my parents all the time, and being embarrassed of
Speaker 1: them and the kids, the stuff that all kids do.
Speaker 1: But I was never like I hate you guys, like
Speaker 1: I'm moving out of the house and running away. It
Speaker 1: was never that much, you know. I always knew that
Speaker 1: they loved me and wanted the best for me. Um.
Speaker 1: But I every kid, most kids of that age, I
Speaker 1: feel like, have a period where they don't want to
Speaker 1: be best friends with their parents anymore. So I had that.
Speaker 1: But now I'm twenty seven, and I have a great
Speaker 1: relationship with my folks. And I call them all the
Speaker 1: time and I love seeing them. Yeah, I think for
Speaker 1: teenagers there's a it's part of their their duty to
Speaker 1: distance themselves from their parents. It's part just part of
Speaker 1: what they have to do. Yeah, and so to some degree,
Speaker 1: and some of its you know better worse, it's one
Speaker 1: of the things I you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things I like about what you're doing, but I love
Speaker 1: it when my sons and I can find something that
Speaker 1: we both genuinely enjoy and can share. And your music
Speaker 1: is one of those things. So that's really great because
Speaker 1: it does get hard to connect sometimes and it's nice
Speaker 1: to find those things that are genuine and real right on. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. That's awesome, and I think it's it's
Speaker 1: been really cool seeing the kind of people who show
Speaker 1: up to our shows and seeing that sometimes it's fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen year old kids, and you know, we and
Speaker 1: then we get clusters of people who are like in
Speaker 1: their mid thirties and mid forties who relate to the
Speaker 1: poetry and love it too. So we bring out a
Speaker 1: motley crew definitely to our events. And I think that's
Speaker 1: great because it means it's reaching a broad variety of people. UM.
Speaker 1: Another question for you around you know, there's a theme
Speaker 1: that runs through a lot of what you do is, um,
Speaker 1: the concept of work. Can you talk about kind of
Speaker 1: what what work means to you and and and the
Speaker 1: value that that has. Yeah, well, I'm self employed. I
Speaker 1: am an independent artist, which means that if I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go on tour and I'm gonna make an album, it
Speaker 1: has to come from me. I'm not I have known
Speaker 1: breathing down my neck to say, George, you gotta get
Speaker 1: up at nine and do this, and you know you've
Speaker 1: got to be on the clock or else it's you know,
Speaker 1: time is money. It comes from me because uh, we're
Speaker 1: doing this as a labor of love. And I feel like,
Speaker 1: especially for someone in my position who gets to being
Speaker 1: a professional artist and gets to perform and gets to
Speaker 1: follow his passion. You know, it's not that people who
Speaker 1: are in these luxury jobs should be able to be
Speaker 1: lazier than everyone else. I feel like, if you're going
Speaker 1: to have one of the jobs that's coveted by nine
Speaker 1: percent of the population, you have a duty to actually
Speaker 1: treat it like a real job and work really hard
Speaker 1: because it's a hell of a lot more fun doing
Speaker 1: what I do than being a fry cook or shoveling
Speaker 1: in a mind somewhere, which is what most human beings
Speaker 1: have to dedicate their lives to, or something of that variety.
Speaker 1: If it's a desk job, even you have to do
Speaker 1: something that you don't want to be able, that you
Speaker 1: don't want to have to do from nine to five
Speaker 1: in order to you know, pay rent and pay the bills.
Speaker 1: And for me, I'm in this extremely lucky position to
Speaker 1: get to do exactly what I want to do, and
Speaker 1: for me to be lazy and flip into about that
Speaker 1: opportunity would be a criminal travesty. Like I believe so
Speaker 1: strongly that I am in a privileged position and that
Speaker 1: since I love what I do, I have a duty
Speaker 1: to try and do it the best I can and
Speaker 1: work really hard at it. And you know, that's pretty
Speaker 1: much as far as it goes. And it seems that
Speaker 1: you you have, you know, clearly had this had this
Speaker 1: work ethic for for a long time. And I'm always
Speaker 1: interested in people who are successful because there's tends to
Speaker 1: be two things that sort of at least that I
Speaker 1: notice that are driving. One is just the love of
Speaker 1: what you're doing the satisfaction of doing work that's good.
Speaker 1: And then the second is the desire to be successful
Speaker 1: at it. And and I sort of have heard both
Speaker 1: coming through in in your music. How do you how
Speaker 1: do those two relate to each other? Well, I think
Speaker 1: that this is like the fundamental paradox of my life
Speaker 1: and of a lot of artists lives, is knowing that
Speaker 1: we don't matter, but wanting to matter a lot at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you know. And and I
Speaker 1: think that the idea of trying to be successful is
Speaker 1: is my drug. You know, everyone has a poison. Some
Speaker 1: people it's alcohol, some people. You know, every everyone has
Speaker 1: a bomb that sues them. And at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, the positive reinforcement that what I'm doing is
Speaker 1: good is what my poison is. It's what my drug is.
Speaker 1: And I've, you know, from a very young age, I've
Speaker 1: had this feeling. You know, I'm gonna put my cards
Speaker 1: on the table. I'm not a religious person. I don't
Speaker 1: believe in the afterlife, at least from from what I've
Speaker 1: gathered and the lens that I have to view the world.
Speaker 1: That is not something that is part of my life.
Speaker 1: And that that fear of not existing and knowing that
Speaker 1: I love this life so much means that I've from
Speaker 1: a very young age felt like I have a very
Speaker 1: brief time on this planet to make my mark and
Speaker 1: to exist and to do something meaningful. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's that it's that constant struggle against wanting to matter.
Speaker 1: And you know, since I was fifteen or sixteen, I
Speaker 1: kind of felt like the clock was ticking and I
Speaker 1: only have so long to kind of make an impression.
Speaker 1: And and it can be a bad thing too, because
Speaker 1: sometimes constant seeking out of validation is not healthy, and
Speaker 1: you have to be able to to exist and be
Speaker 1: happy without being validated all the time. So there's not
Speaker 1: really a simple answer to that question. You know, I
Speaker 1: struggling constantly against trying not to care too much about
Speaker 1: what people think about my stuff versus also taking a
Speaker 1: pride in it and being able to have self satisfaction
Speaker 1: that what I'm putting out into the world is good.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a constant pushing a pull between
Speaker 1: those two things. It's fairly timely in that today was
Speaker 1: the I think it started today, maybe yesterday, the whole
Speaker 1: thing with Joe Rogan and this podcast and sort of
Speaker 1: you know, bizarre, uh you know, sort of attack of
Speaker 1: slam poetry and of yours in general. And I thought
Speaker 1: your response was really really well done. How much does
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, you know, it is a somebody
Speaker 1: not validating you, not doing that. How much do the
Speaker 1: do the haters get to you? Um people? The things
Speaker 1: that get to me most are the well thought out criticisms,
Speaker 1: And Joe Rogan's didn't actually bother me that much because
Speaker 1: it was very clear from listening to the podcast that
Speaker 1: he just kind of had a producer pull out an
Speaker 1: example of a white person doing slam poetry and that's
Speaker 1: what he wanted to go after. So I actually thought
Speaker 1: that it was an opportunity for me to use that
Speaker 1: random coincidence as a way to actually have a meaningful
Speaker 1: conversation about the merits and spoken word poetry. What does
Speaker 1: get under my skin is when I feel like somebody
Speaker 1: says something very insightful and well thought out. That is
Speaker 1: that you know, that unearthed insecurities that I have, which
Speaker 1: happens occasionally, although I'd say nine percent of the time
Speaker 1: on the Internet, someone just writes like gay lamb and
Speaker 1: you know that's that's a lot easier to deflect because
Speaker 1: it's it's not well thought out. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good at having a thick skin. And at
Speaker 1: this point, you know, comments pouring and pouring and so many,
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority of them are so positive that you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm doing fine, comfortably, But I can't say that
Speaker 1: I'm perfectly immune criticism. I think that the best thing
Speaker 1: is to wait a while, Like if somebody says something
Speaker 1: negative and you're heated about it, just take a day,
Speaker 1: take five hours, take ten hours, whatever you need until
Speaker 1: you're not so emotional about it, and then try and
Speaker 1: actually figure out if there was some merit to it,
Speaker 1: because sometimes you need to listen to criticism or else
Speaker 1: you're just gonna go bloatally on a path of thinking
Speaker 1: that you're all what you're doing is always golden, And
Speaker 1: sometimes you need to be able to say, you know,
Speaker 1: what that criticism isn't is merit lists and I don't
Speaker 1: need to listen to it. And there's a balancing act
Speaker 1: between taking in criticism and actually being able to internalize
Speaker 1: it when it's appropriate and being able to brush it
Speaker 1: off and what you're doing is right, and it's coming
Speaker 1: from somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about. So
Speaker 1: back to you, back to your letter to yourself as
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old you. There's another part in here
Speaker 1: that I love where you talk about you know, you
Speaker 1: don't remember people's names, you're at the center of attention
Speaker 1: for all the reasons, and spend roughly six hours a
Speaker 1: night on your side watching Boy Meets World reruns. That
Speaker 1: was that a phase in your life? I watched a
Speaker 1: lot of TV. Watched a lot of TV, and the
Speaker 1: reason that I like to pick on specific examples that
Speaker 1: I think illuminate trends, and to me that speaks to
Speaker 1: an era and nostalgia for people who were in that
Speaker 1: era of growing up, but also just the idea of
Speaker 1: TV being medication, the way that technology is medication. Now,
Speaker 1: when I didn't want to think about stuff, I would
Speaker 1: just turn the tube on and I wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: think about it. So that was a way for me
Speaker 1: to distance myself from the things that I was afraid
Speaker 1: of and didn't want to think about. Was just constantly
Speaker 1: distracting myself with stimuli. Yeah, and that the great part
Speaker 1: that follows that is when you say you're capable about
Speaker 1: growing that bullshit all right on? Yeah, yeah, and everyone is.
Speaker 1: Everyone is. Do you still did you find for yourself
Speaker 1: that you hit a certain point where you started to
Speaker 1: uh work and make some progress and and it you
Speaker 1: got momentum that made it easier to keep doing that
Speaker 1: stuff or is it just sort of a constant battle
Speaker 1: for you to stay productive and do the things that matter.
Speaker 1: I had a real crisis, a real existential crisis around
Speaker 1: the time when I was seventeen, where I I felt
Speaker 1: like I had these fears of growing up and of
Speaker 1: mortality that we're bubbling underneath the surface and I can't
Speaker 1: I was pushing them down with distractions, and they bubbled
Speaker 1: up to the surface in a way that I couldn't
Speaker 1: ignore anymore. When I was a junior in high school,
Speaker 1: and I became depressed, not because I was sad about
Speaker 1: anything specific, but just because all these things that I
Speaker 1: was afraid of they really hit me like a ton
Speaker 1: of bricks, and I was like, and they they were
Speaker 1: very present for me, And so I went to therapy
Speaker 1: and I started talking to therapists and they were like, well,
Speaker 1: these are just things that all humans have to deal with,
Speaker 1: and you're kind of making me depressed right now, So
Speaker 1: can we talk about girls or something, and you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't getting the answers from anywhere. My parents were
Speaker 1: just like, oh, don't think about that. That's not for
Speaker 1: a long time. And none of those answers were satisfying
Speaker 1: to me. And the one thing that did actually kind
Speaker 1: of give me some relief was reading books by this
Speaker 1: guy named Tiq not Han who's a Buddhist philosopher, and
Speaker 1: very simple, basic Buddhist message messages of living in the
Speaker 1: present moment and of realizing that if you're afraid of something,
Speaker 1: the only thing that you can do is face that
Speaker 1: fear head on and actually allow yourself to be afraid.
Speaker 1: And actually it's something that Louis c Ka talked about
Speaker 1: in his recent clip that went viral and conan about
Speaker 1: just like allowing yourself to feel shitty things sometimes, and
Speaker 1: if you feel fear and your fearings feel anxiety. Terror
Speaker 1: is a natural human thing and if you allow yourself
Speaker 1: to feel it, then what's going to happen is your
Speaker 1: body is going to accept it, and then you're going
Speaker 1: to have this wave of actually positive emotions that come
Speaker 1: after that. And so um, when I was around seventeen,
Speaker 1: I had that kind of realization and I think trended
Speaker 1: Buddhist a little bit, and I think that helped me
Speaker 1: a lot. And since then, I you know, I've been
Speaker 1: a very hard worker my whole life. Since then. I
Speaker 1: think the last ten years, I've just, if anything, worked
Speaker 1: too hard. I think that the bat the battle for
Speaker 1: me is really trying to prioritize my personal life and
Speaker 1: love and family. Uh, and working on my career comes
Speaker 1: naturally to me, and it's making sure that I'm feeding
Speaker 1: the other things. That is something that I need to
Speaker 1: do and remember to do all the time. You were
Speaker 1: talking about in in tiny glowing screens to uh sort
Speaker 1: of meaninglessness, and you know, the the universe is so huge,
Speaker 1: how could we possibly matter? There's seven billion, forty six
Speaker 1: million people on the planet and most of us have
Speaker 1: the audacity to think we matter. Hey, you hear the
Speaker 1: one about the comedian who croaked. Someone stabbed him in
Speaker 1: the heart, just a little poke, but he keeled over
Speaker 1: because he went into battle wearing chain mailmated chokes. And
Speaker 1: then you went on to say that you've found a
Speaker 1: way to find meanings sort of within that. Can you
Speaker 1: share a little bit about that. I think that that
Speaker 1: you know, humans have been thinking about this forever. It's
Speaker 1: like almost every Shakespeare poem is about it's how are
Speaker 1: you going to exist beyond your short existence? And for me,
Speaker 1: the answer isn't trying to build up a legacy that's
Speaker 1: so huge and unavoidably awesome that people are gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about you for centuries. It's finding meaning for yourself.
Speaker 1: It's it's finding joy. You know. One of the things
Speaker 1: that gets talked about a lot in these Buddhist texts
Speaker 1: is you can't just find joy and pleasure in the
Speaker 1: fireworks that life as you which are you know, weddings
Speaker 1: and babies being born and you know, hooking up with
Speaker 1: the person that you always wanted to be with and
Speaker 1: seeing you know, the sunset. Those are explosive moments that
Speaker 1: life gives you. But also being able to be excited
Speaker 1: about the feeling of washing your hands and of sipping
Speaker 1: on a cup of tea and just the breeze blowing
Speaker 1: on you. You know that that you have to be
Speaker 1: able to marvel at the life that we have just
Speaker 1: for the sheer reason that it's amazing that we even
Speaker 1: get to be alive and to be able to be
Speaker 1: in awe of life on a daily basis, is really important.
Speaker 1: And I profoundly believe that that, like this life is
Speaker 1: amazing and it's for you know, we we don't. We
Speaker 1: get used to things. We get used to technologies that
Speaker 1: are given to us, and we stop being amazed by them.
Speaker 1: But technology is amazing, and our bodies are amazing, and
Speaker 1: the birds flying through the air is amazing, and we
Speaker 1: don't take enough time to actually realize those things. And
Speaker 1: so that that's what I work on the most, is
Speaker 1: trying to actually let myself be in awe of little things.
Speaker 1: And when you step back, a lot of cool stuff
Speaker 1: going on. It's uh, it's great to hear you talking
Speaker 1: about Buddhism and tick nott Han as you are framed
Speaker 1: in a zen background. Where are you? I I'm actually
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis right now, in the basement of a Shriner's
Speaker 1: club where, um, we're having a show tonight. We're playing
Speaker 1: a place called the Old National in Indianapolis. Were on
Speaker 1: tour um. But yeah, I mean, these these things that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about are are things that are addressed in
Speaker 1: every major religion. Also, you know, I don't mean to
Speaker 1: exclude it to Buddhism. It's it's things that you can
Speaker 1: find in Christianity. It's things that you can find in
Speaker 1: Judaism and Islam, and it's also things that you can
Speaker 1: find in in atheist thinkers too. You know, these these
Speaker 1: are not things that are exclusive to one faith or another.
Speaker 1: They are just things that I think, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of smart people have jointly realized over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've had we've actually interviewed to Buddhist teachers, uh so
Speaker 1: far for this UM and we're interviewing a guy coming
Speaker 1: up who's really fascinating. He's I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know who Victor Frankel is. He wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Man Search for Meaning. It's very applical to what we're
Speaker 1: talking about because Victor Frankel was in concentration camps. They
Speaker 1: killed his family, they killed his parents, and in there
Speaker 1: he came to the realization that the last human freedom
Speaker 1: he had was his ability to sort of choose his
Speaker 1: attitude and to choose what it meant. And he he
Speaker 1: formed a form of psychotherapy called logo therapy, which is
Speaker 1: all about making your own meaning. That there is no
Speaker 1: meaning in life that is um universal, It is your
Speaker 1: you know, you kind of have to make your own meetings.
Speaker 1: So this is interesting with this sort of tie ties
Speaker 1: into that. And I was actually thinking earlier because I
Speaker 1: think a lot about that too, that sort of all
Speaker 1: the religions, they're all sort of saying the same thing, um,
Speaker 1: which is to to give a hater a hug, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: turn the other cheek. The window dressing is different, but
Speaker 1: the core is the same, so that that covers. Is
Speaker 1: there anything you wanna you think it's important to what
Speaker 1: we're discussing that we haven't covered that you want to say, No,
Speaker 1: not really, I don't think we covered some really interesting territory.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think my main thing that I would
Speaker 1: like to say is to that I don't think I
Speaker 1: have any of the answers, you know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to seem like I'm coming off like I know exactly
Speaker 1: how anyone should live their life. And I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people listening to this podcast who are
Speaker 1: from all walks of life, different faith backgrounds and stuff.
Speaker 1: And I used to perform at colleges and universities all
Speaker 1: over the country, which meant that when I was in college,
Speaker 1: I would be going to a lot of Red states
Speaker 1: and perform And I'm from San Francisco, so like that's
Speaker 1: from the other end of the spectrum. And I was
Speaker 1: actually very challenged to uh communicate with people who grew
Speaker 1: up across the political aisle from me, who grew up
Speaker 1: in very religious households. And the main thing that I
Speaker 1: came away with was feeling like we're divided so much
Speaker 1: as a culture, and there's so much opinion based media
Speaker 1: that's going on right now, and it's being driven by
Speaker 1: putting wedges between people and creating these false um flashpoints
Speaker 1: between different groups of people because that's what sells and
Speaker 1: that's what what drives clicks up. But everyone is trying
Speaker 1: to do good. You know, this world is not red
Speaker 1: or blue or black and white. And if you're Christian
Speaker 1: or if you're agnostic or atheist, you know we're all
Speaker 1: on the same team. That is. That's the last thing
Speaker 1: that I want to say. You know, perfect, that's a
Speaker 1: great way to end it. Well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time. I know you got a show
Speaker 1: to do in a little while, so um, and thanks
Speaker 1: thanks Nils for me. Also please for for helping get
Speaker 1: this set up all right. Take care, Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the one you feed. You can find out more
Speaker 1: about Watsky and his work in our show notes at
Speaker 1: one you feed dot Net slash Watsky