Brian Koppelman

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Hey, this is Dan Harris. I am a fidgety, skeptical newsman who had a panic attack live on Good Morning America. That led me to something I always thought was ridiculous. Meditation. I wrote a book about it, called 10% Happier, started an app, and now I'm launching this podcast to try to figure out whether there's anything beyond 10%. Basically, here's what I'm obsessed with. Can you be an ambitious person and still strive for enlightenment? Whatever that means.

Hey, it's Dan, our guest today, or my guest today, I guess I can say it's my guest today, this is kind of like my show. It's Brian Coughlin, he is the co-creator of the new show on Showtime called Billions, which is a great show if you're not watching it, you should be. He's also written a bunch of movies like Rounders, which is called Classic, Ocean's 13, Runner Runner,

He's also, and this is important, given the context, a meditator. And meditation shows up really prominently in Billions, where in the first episode you see two of the main characters. One is a hedge fund billionaire, and the other is the US attorneys out to get them, both of them meditate. So Brian, thanks for coming in. I appreciate it. It's my real pleasure to be here, man. I just bet you a couple minutes ago, I already really like you. Yeah, we're like best friends. We could be friends. We actually could be friends. You have the same drum kit that I can't have.

There is boy, so we're in my office I should have said that at the beginning where my office was the first time we're doing a podcast in my office And I have an electronic drum kit the lame that that makes me look 75,000 times cooler than I actually am because the truth is I've never played it because until today it was blocked off by like boxes and pictures Which in anticipation of your arrival we actually hung up the pictures

I just love the idea that you have it because it says something about exactly the right kind of aspiration for how you want to spend your day. Like even if you never can, the idea that it's possible that you could put the headphones on crank up back in black and try to play it in your office at ABC News is awesome. But doesn't it kind of suggest that I'm like really not into actually working?

No, it's the right kind of silly, right? For a meditator, it's the right kind of silliness. It's, I think, the sort of dada spirit of that is really a good thing. And no, I think there's no question that you need in any kind of hard endeavor that requires a certain kind of focus creativity.

The opportunity to blow off the exact kind of steam that playing the drums allows you to blow off is probably should be required. It shouldn't be something you have to excuse. I just love that you just added a sheen to my distractedness and laziness. So let's talk about meditation because you brought it up and because this whole show is about meditation. You, as I said, the two main characters right in the pilot are seen meditating. One is a hedge fund guy and the other is a US attorney. Why did you have your characters do this?

I mean, for a few different reasons. Story-wise and character-wise, it makes sense because as you do even a little research into the world of high-performance New York, Greenwich, Westport people.

You find that they're chasing, if not inner peace, they're chasing a kind of actualization as performance enhancement. And one of the key things that they seem to look to is meditation. So it fits the world, and it's true to the world.

Dave and I are David Levine was my creative partner. He and I both practice Transcendo Meditation. And so does Andrew R. Sorkin. Andrew R. Sorkin is a co-creator as well. He also does meditation though. Maybe you have to ask him. He told me it's TM I thought. Yeah, he does TM or he certainly has done TM.

And so when we have found tremendous benefit in it, and we'd go to events in New York occasionally, watch people speak, look at the ways in which people are using meditation now. And in other words, this idea that, or there is an idea people carry around that

It'll necessarily make you a kinder person or a gentler person or a more giving person. I mean, in fact, they don't even promise in TM. They make none of those promises that it'll make you more of the best of what you are is what they promise, which seems like an idea really that's really fits the hedge fund world and the world of prosecutors who are driven by the kind of ambition that our characters are driven by.

So I want to talk at length about what meditation does for you, but there are a lot of people, and I hear from them, who are critics of the growing popularization slash commercialization of meditation.

and the idea that masters of the universe and people who are complete jerks would be using meditation not to make themselves better kinder people but to make themselves better at what they already are. For example, your US attorney character played by Paul Giamatti, you see him meditating and in the next scene he threatens to put his father in handcuffs and arrest him. So this is not making him a kinder person unless his baseline is incredibly low.

So, what is your thought about? Well, he does say, I love you, Dad. He does. He does. I say, right before he threatens him. I love you, Dad. I'm not sure that's a mitigating detail. But do you have any problem as a guy who meditates with people using meditation just to make themselves more effective, even if they're going to be bad actors in the world? How should they use it?

Well, I'm not comfortable with anyone using anything to be a bad actor in the world, right? But someone could decide to drink a cans of Coca-Cola and go get all hopped up and do something bad. But meditation is a tool, and it's a really effective tool.

And so someone's going to use that tool to be more, to me, to be more of what they are, to help them in their own aims. Now, is it possible that if you really pursue meditation and you are doing TM, so you're doing it 40 minutes a day?

that perhaps some thoughts or some feelings of calmness or that your cortisol levels will adjust to a place where you're just naturally a little less hair trigger? Yeah. Could that be nicer for the people around you? Yes. But I don't have

I don't think that there's a value positive or negative in terms of societal good to any of these things. There's not a societal value to yoga versus doing sprints or tabata, right? It just has certain eastern accoutrement that makes us think that it must be more peaceful somehow.

I don't necessarily think that that's the case. Look, there's philosophy you could read alongside a meditation if you want. There are a ton of other things you can do. But what I've found it to do for many people is just make them more what they are. Or truer, like a more distilled version.

It's possible that I disagree with you, but but I want to think out loud. I want to understand how. Yes. Okay. Tell me I'm not sure. So let me think a lot before I think out loud. I think it might be useful to define. Terms because so you're talking about transcendental meditation, which is the type of type of meditation you do and just just for the uninitiated I should explain.

The Transcendental Meditation is derived from Hinduism, and it was popular, basically invented, if you want to use that word, by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. That name may be familiar to some of our listeners slash viewers, because he was the guy who was, for a brief period of time, the spiritual guru to a reasonably well-known rock band known as the Beatles.

And so he kind of rocketed to global fame as a consequence of that. So he was teaching transcendental meditation which again is basically a form of Hindu meditation which uses a mantra which is a silent word you repeat to yourself. And as you repeat this word to yourself often in conjunction with your breath you can achieve this level of concentrative

absorption that allows you to shut out the discursive thinking mind and can put you in touch with sort of levels of calm and even bliss and maybe even creativity that heretofore were unavailable you know you're not chasing bliss in

TM as you're meditating, right? One of the sort of central tenets of TM is that what happens in that 20-minute period, the way in which you perceive what happens doesn't really matter. So that I am not looking for a blissful state. All I'm looking to do is say that mantra to myself. And if thoughts come, they can exist and then they'll move past.

I just keep saying the mantra. But what happened to me, and I'm not a spokesman for a TM. First of all, I'm an atheist, and I'm like a hardcore atheist. And one of the first things I said when I went to talk about learning this was that the cult-like aspects of any organized meditative group freak me out.

But you don't have to believe in any sort of ideas that came from Hinduism. You don't have to believe that the Maharishi had tapped into some mystical thing at all. But you can look at the EEGs, you can look at the scientific studies that show what happens to cortisol levels when people do this. For blood pressure.

blood pressure, cortisol levels, heart rate, all these things that just happen and the controlled studies, I mean I know you've gone through this stuff, but if you just sit quietly for 20 minutes, there's some benefit to that and breathe. But if you sit quietly and repeat the mantra, I think there are more tangible benefits that are greater than if you don't.

And for me, it was a salve for an way to control anxiety. And I found that the physical manifestations of anxiety just dissipated by about 85% or 90%. And so that was a gigantic life change to not get a field fluttering stomach to not get a stress headache. Were you a JIA, Jew and agony?

That's pretty good. Well, I'm an atheist, but I'm a Jew. I mean, I guess I was raised Jewish and culturally. I didn't make that term up. It was just some of my Hebrew school friends. No, I guess when a fascistic leader comes to power and decides to kill the Jews, he'll kill me whether I identify as Jew or not. So, yes, I guess by that definition.

I am, no, you know, whatever the anxieties are being someone trying to make a living in show business, or more to the point, like a parent who loves his kids, any kind of outsized worry that I might have. It doesn't mean I don't still have concerns, right, or I don't still worry as we all do. I'm not still aware of the

you know, thin existential situation we all find ourselves in. But the physical manifestations, the actual sort of way that I walk through the world and feel changed a dramatic amount when I started meditating after probably three weeks of meditating.

So just back to the sort of clarification of terms, when I described TM, I've never really done TM. So when I described it, did I describe it more or less accurately? Yeah, 20 minutes. 20 minutes twice a day, as soon as you wake up in the morning, and then at some point in the afternoon before dinner, I sit quietly, close my eyes, and repeat a mantra for about 20 minutes. And so the difference in this sort of goes back to what I was saying before about how maybe I disagree with you, but I want to kind of talk it out.

The difference is that the kind of meditation I practice is called mindfulness meditation, which is derived not from Hinduism but from Buddhism. And actually, to be honest with you, I'm a Buddhist, right? But that kind of means more and less than you might think. I mean, I don't view Buddhism as a religion.

It is practiced as a religion by some people, but I believe Buddhism is something to do, not something to believe in. And I, too, I don't know if I call myself an atheist, but more like a respectful agnostic. So I don't believe in anything I can't prove. Although I'm willing to entertain other people's arguments on behalf of those unprovable metaphysical claims.

So in Buddhism, in fact the argument is that there is an ethical component, but the interesting thing about it is not a finger-wagging ethical component. It is that if you act like a jerk, we're not allowed to swear here, so the words I would use otherwise I can't use, but if you act like a jerk, it screws up your meditation practice because it's very hard to concentrate

when you're trying to keep your lives straight or dealing with a man. So we dramatize that on the show. There's a moment in the show, a couple episodes in, where Damian Lou, it's our version of the king trying to pray in Hamlet.

um, uh, which is not a strictly Buddhist text, but I think it has the same idea. Uh, the universe attached to it, right? Uh, Hamlet. And, and so, um, when, uh, there's Damian Lewis's character, Bobby Axelrod is in a particularly tight spot. Um, he is trying to, uh, meditate and he can't and you see it. So yes, of course your, your life bleeds in to your meditation practice, your meditation practice bleeds into your life.

But what I don't like is the fake spirituality that gets grafted onto this kind of practice. So that people, I don't agree with this idea that if you meditate, you will become a better person, a more spiritual person, whatever that means. For me, it's simpler. The more I can reduce this stuff down and distill it,

This more, you can make these things simpler. It's basically breathing with some stuff attached to it. It'll probably make you feel better. It makes you feel better. Maybe it'd be nicer to people. Wouldn't that be great? Like, but I don't think you can say it's going to make people nicer. It's like, you know what? If you have less anxiety and less, most people, given less stress, less anxiety, clearer thought are going to act like better versions of themselves. But I don't think you can promise it.

I think I would agree with that, like 98%. I would give that a huge amen. The only thing I would say is that there is a difference between, and I don't fully understand this because, again, I don't know enough about TM to speak about it with authority, so I want to be clear about that. But my understanding about the difference between TM and mindfulness is that mindfulness goes with extreme prejudice at mindfulness, which is lowered emotional reactivity.

And while I believe there's a huge mindfulness component to 2TM, because every time you notice that you're thinking and you just notice that these are just... It makes you much less reactive, for sure. Absolutely, because you see that the voice in your head is just like a... Just a compulsory... Well, you know when they look at the EEGs, the mindfulness lights up these certain parts of the brain that are targeted towards empathy and TM lights up a broader area.

So it includes that area, but absolutely fires other things as well. Yeah. Many friends of mine practice mindfulness. What drew you to that practice as opposed to TM or one of the others? The science. There's definitely some science around TM that appears to be quite good. I mean, look, I think, in fact, all the science around meditation needs to be delivered with a big grain of salt because it's in danger at times of being hyped.

because it's really in its early stages, but having issued that caveat, I think most of the science has really been done around mindfulness, and initially what I liked about mindfulness meditation was it is really thoroughly secularized, whereas TM is associated with sectarian organization, it's promulgated by the Maharishi, and so for me as a pretty hardcore, you know, I was raised by scientists, I'm married to a scientist,

mindfulness seemed like the more interesting thing. Also, I was reading a lot about Buddhism and I thought that the philosophy, the sort of intellectual infrastructure of Buddhism was really compelling. So I was also drawn to Buddhist meditation. But I'm not a snobbish about it. I actually think mental exercise of whatever variety you choose should you should do.

Yeah, I just knew I needed the technology. I needed some access to it, NTM. I had friends who'd done it. Friends of mine introduced me to Bob Roth and runs the David Lynch Foundation. I'd read David Lynch's book, really, Catching the Big Fish. And his book really spoke about the connection between his art and meditation in a way that was incredibly compelling.

And that and a few other things Russell Simmons book as well Russell who'd lived this really big kind of crazy life Really saw huge changes and became by his own account a much better person through TM and I he also had studied with Bob Roth from the David Lynch Foundation and so I got in a room with Bobby and I asked him all these questions, you know about its ties to religion and they really

They no longer really draw that connection. They draw the connection to the... My Hireshi definitely brought it to America and they love him and regard him, but they do view it as a technology that he figures.

Yeah, I don't know. Actually, you asked me why I was drawn to mindfulness over over TM. Those are the reasons why at the time, six years ago, but I don't have a team. Yeah, I did a one medit, you know, Tony Robbins, there's a thing, the one meditation that he brought over. And yeah, I did that once with Tony, and that was a really great experience too. But TM as a repeat for me is like a practice I can repeat.

I've always, Sid Arthur is one of my favorite books, and the idea of the Buddhist kiss and that kind of enlightenment, because I know you're interested in this idea of enlightenment, is really compelling. It just seems like a lot to get there. And you gotta go out to the river, and there's just a lot of stuff. You have to be hungry for a long time. It's a lot. It's a lot of stuff that has to happen. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm in this weird position of being interested in pursuing something

Enlightenment that I don't even know if it's real So it's it's a kind of a funny dilemma and yet my hair is on fire with curiosity about it. Who have you met? Who you think is enlightened?

I've never met anybody who claims to be kind of in the area of fully enlightened. My meditation teacher, when you ask him, are you fully enlightened? This guy named Joseph Goldstein is like a mentioned Jewish guy from here in New York, went to Columbia and joined the Peace Corps and ended up in Thailand finding meditation 50 years ago and he's been teaching ever since.

He comes from a school of Buddhism where these four levels of enlightenment, these four experiences that you need to have before you're fully enlightened. If you ask him where are you on this spectrum, he'll say, cagually, somewhere between the first and the third. But you didn't ask, you asked about who do I think is actually enlightened. And I have to say that of all the human beings with whom I've ever had contact, Joseph Goldstein is the closest to being sort of

behavior lee he is behavior attitude speech are all things that i emulate on my best days that i just have clarity of clarity of thought cares about what he should care about yes uh... doesn't sweat uh... stuff that he shouldn't care about yes i mean i've seen him on having bad hair days he would joke that he doesn't have that much hair uh... the you know i've seen him get you know mildly persnickety about stuff but not really that much and

I just, the innate, uncontrived integrity to the man is hard to describe. And so to me, that gives me some confidence, even though I'm not sure that I'm like Ms. Real or this whole map that he's, that he subscribes to is a real thing. I don't know. Yeah, as soon as you start, I mean, as soon as you start laying out a metric by which to measure, I'm checking out.

I mean, there's something about that that feels like belts in karate or something. And that, you know, nobody who's really good at that stuff ever talked about the moment they went from the blue belt to purple belt or something as the thing, right, the people who really can practice it or on a different kind of continuum.

that was only about learning and knowledge and mining their abilities. So to me, when I've met people occasionally who seem to really have the ability to be present.

Because I think to me, I think you can really just really take it down to can I exist right here in the present right now with my full empathy and all my antenna out and ready to just like react, listen, not worry about the consequences from external forces. Can I be right here?

That's really challenging, but that's the closest thing that I can imagine to the idea of that kind of enlightenment, which is like to live without fear for even those little moments. And so if you can have two seconds where you're living without fear of judgment, then you have those. If you can look at somebody else and really be there, because if you can just be present, you'll do the right thing, right? Because you're not thinking about the other stuff.

then you can be really good, you can help. And so there are very few people I've met who really are like that. I mean, you know, there's Teddy and Salinger's short story, but that's not a real person. Sadly, he's enlightened. That's good that you know that. He's enlightened. I mean, there have been times that I haven't thought so.

And to the extent that meditation allows you to string a few more of those moments of presence together, then perhaps it's a road toward that kind of enlightenment. But if you go back to Siddhartha and the idea that the chasing it, right, Govinda's chasing it the whole time, Siddhartha's not chasing it.

He's just following in a very present way what feels like the thing he needs to do. And of course, that leads him to it. And it's not something you can share other than by a kiss. And so by a kiss, the transfer is the feeling, not any kind of knowledge that you can gain.

So you know for some people it's listening to a great song or reading a book that transports them and maybe in that like little moment that lingers after you finish a great piece of art there's a moment where you're just like right there and maybe that's the closest to enlightening that we get to be. So whatever

ladder you need to climb like whatever that thing is is worth trying I think as long as the the idea of trying doesn't become the thing right as long as we remember the goal is to not be trying it's to just be right here

Well said all of that and it's also possible that there are that there isn't a thing called enlightenment, but there are things called enlightenment and there may be lots of different experience. You should brand and sell those things. I actually think somebody is selling enlightenment. You should get out there and do it. I believe my mother-in-law actually gave me them in my Christmas stocking. I married a non-jute.

Anyway, but you raised something and I just want to address, which is you talked about your worry about like a map that you wouldn't want to be part of. So let me just play devil's advocate and defense of the map. And the maps, because in the various religious traditions within Buddhism, but also I believe within the mystical strains of the Abrahamic faiths, there are this sort of stepwise progression toward

You know, you can start with a few moments of presence and empathy, but then you can get to protracted periods of it, and then you can have it become not just a state, but a trait. And so the argument for the map is that actually you can do things

practices and that outcomes will, there will be predictable and reliable outcomes. So the maps to which I'm referring, don't involve like, you have to study with this person, you have to pay X amount of dollars at this point. What they are is simply monastics over 2,600 years have found, and this I find truly fascinating, that if you sit and do the practice in a certain way, certain experiences will happen in your mind reliably and predictably. Again, I don't know if there's any truth to this because I haven't had these experiences.

But it is fascinating to me that there's something going on apparently in the human mind as a baseline capacity that you can have these experiences if you sit and do follow the instructions. And that this has been happening for millennia is a really, really interesting thing. Again, if it's true. So I'm not referring to some sort of shoots and ladders type of thing where you have to study with X person and pay this fee and then

X is revealed to you. That's not really what I'm interested in. No, and even as a skeptic, which I am, I can read Tony Robbins' book, Awaken the Giant Within, and I can find this stuff in there that's useful. And I'll just, I like to look at those things as like, well, is there a discovery that someone's made about a tool or technique that I can try?

And then I'll be able to measure whether it's helpful or it helps me find a direction in my life. And so I definitely look for that stuff. I'm more skeptical of it when it's in the religious sphere because that stuff's been used to even every religion has been used to control big groups of people.

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I love that the show is sponsored by Whole Foods Market. My family and I shop there on the regular. We stock up with our packaged foods, our prepared foods, like sushi. We love their chicken salad. We also get a lot of our natural cleaning products there. But today I want to talk to you about the fact that Easter is in full bloom at Whole Foods Market.

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I love and share your skepticism. I failed, I think, as a podcast host, to do one of the primary things, which is to give our audience a sense of, like, how you became who you are. So let me just say a few things about your past and then let you pick it up from there. I know that you went to Tufts, you grew up here in New York City, your dad was a long island, sorry. Your dad was a music executive. Yes.

And when you, in college, I understand it, you actually started getting interested in recruiting artists. You discovered Tracy Chapman, if I have that correct. I did. But it wasn't, yeah. So I started going to the recording studio with my father when I was a very little boy. It was an incredible thing to get to do. In fact, there was a little Easter egg in

For my dad only in the last episode of Billions, someone says that Bobby Axelrod has Laura Mar's eyes and my dad produced the theme song from that movie, The Eyes of Laura Mar's. And it works great because his eyes are fade on the way. It all worked great. People love the line.

But, and I didn't tip it to him and I got a text from my dad saying like, I can't believe we put Laura Mars in, which is great. I remember falling asleep before they started recording that on the studio couch and Jeff Skunk Baxter, one of the great musicians of all time, played this guitar solo at the end of that track and I was between nine years old and I remember just sitting up and watching him do it over and over again and it was mind-blowing experience.

But when I was in college, it was at the time that, so because I was around music and listening to songs all the time and I'm a music fan, I learned how to figure out what was good. I learned about what made somebody a good songwriter, a good singer. We would talk about it all the time.

It spent hours and hours listening closely. But then when I was in college, I was very involved in student government. And colleges, particularly in the Northeast, there was a big movement. The endowments were invested. Many of them in companies that did business in South Africa. This is during apartheid. And so I was one of the two or three people who led the movement on my campus for divestment.

which was to get the boards to agree to divest from these companies that were doing business in South Africa, because endowments were hundreds of millions of dollars or whatever. And in doing that, I organized an all day boycott of classes and got speakers from all over New England to come and speak.

And a friend of mine, named Peter Zizzo, said there's this folk singer that I might want to go see because she might be great to play at this rally and then like her. And I went to see her and it was Tracy Chapman. And I got, I broke down in tears watching her perform because my whole life had set me up to recognize what it was that she was able to do.

I mean she played talking about a revolution that night and so I got Tracy to play the rally and then spent the next two and a half years trying to get her to agree to let me record demos with her and to make record and then I brought her New York and introduced to my dad and got him to fly off. It took a long time but that did end up becoming that first huge Tracy Chapman album.

And you then spent many years post college, as I understand it, as an A&R guy. I was an A&R guy in the music business. I went to law school at night. And then when I turned 30, I mean, we're skipping steps. But basically when I turned 30, I realized that if I didn't, my first child was born, our first child, Amy and my first child. And I looked at my son.

He was a nine-month-old. And I realized that there was a big lie, which I was going to tell him to grow up and chase his dreams. And I realized I wasn't chasing mine. I realized I wanted to be an artist. And that if I didn't go out and chase it somehow, if I didn't commit to it, I wouldn't be able to tell him that and look him really in the eye. And I realized I was a block writer. I'd always been a blocked writer for a long time.

I realized that if you're a blocked writer, it becomes toxic. And that toxicity, when that kind of dream dies, that toxicity spreads. And you end up, I think, becoming toxic to the people around you. And I didn't want that. I wanted to be like a great husband and a great father.

And so that's when my best friend and I went to a basement every week, we agreed to meet in a basement every day and we wrote our first movie, which was Rounders. And the research for that movie was involved. You're getting involved. I was playing a lot of poker. Yeah, so years of poker. Underground poker. Yeah. And so how did that happen? That was all part of like the realization that I wasn't happy. I see. The realization that I wasn't living the life I was supposed to be living was I found myself in my office one night and

I'd like gain weight and I'd never been a cigarette smoker my entire life and I was 29 I'd never been a cigarette smoker something I was like smoking and I was playing cards like and every opportunity I had and I realized what the problem was problem was I wasn't living the life I was supposed to live so you've got you've gone on and built a Defentastic writing career so you said that was at 30 you're 49 now 49 in 19 years of 19 years of doing this I

Yeah. And when did the meditation start? So what I did then, when I was 30, I wasn't meditating yet. I was doing something very close to it, which I still do, which is Julia Cameron's The Artist Way, which is these free writing for a half an hour in the morning, three long hand pages, where you write anything that you want to write. In fact, you can't censor it. It's not what you want to write. It's just what you happen to write.

And so they are something very meditative about that practice because you are not censored, you're free-flowing, you're not in any way reacting to the words. Anything that comes into your head you're putting out. And for me it has a centering effect. And I started taking very long walks. And so I did those things. And that's when I read Tony Robbins' book, Awaken the Giant Within, to try to figure out

why I wanted to do what I wanted to do and how. And I started meditating five years ago. And because I felt like the stress and pressure of all this stuff was becoming intrusive. And I'm always looking for a way to like fine tune whatever it is that I do as a, you know, for me as a parent and husband and then as an artist.

As I say, when I read that book by David Lynch and then read Russell's book and then talk to a few other people, I had the thought that I should really investigate it and try it. Does it help with creativity and exactly what is the mechanism by which it helps with creativity?

So anxiety and fear to me are the greatest blocks to creativity that I know. Because for me, I need to be in a state where I feel free, where I don't feel burdened. And where I don't feel the pull to the monkey mind, right? And to those where I don't feel the pull to that stuff, to reactive thinking.

And so it helps because I think, you know, the science says it changes your cortisol levels and it does all this stuff to make you feel less anxious. And then also, there are, I've just found a few different times and you don't push for it. In fact, it's the opposite, right? You're just saying in a mantra, sometimes I'll be sitting there and like, the answer will just show up or it'll show up 10 minutes later.

I mean an answer, a huge answer to something that happens in the season finale of Billions. Just, you know, I did all the stuff that I always do to generate ideas. And then I remember I just sat down and closed my eyes and like this whole thing just popped into my head as I was meditating. And did you stop meditating? It's funny, I asked Bob Roth the other day, what do you do? And he said, if it's really one of those ideas, you stand up and you write it down and then you come right back and meditate. Get it out of your head. Why do you think?

TM specifically has taken off in such a big way in among celebrities and also like in Hollywood generally. Well, you know, Tim Ferriss. Do you? I don't know if you know Tim Ferriss. He's a friend of mine. And he says that 75 or more than 75% of his guests and he interviews all these incredibly high achieving people. They do it.

Do TM or meditation? Meditation, but I think a huge percentage of them do TM. First of all, it's very simple, right? The fear many people have with meditation, mindfulness, is everyone who does most people who do your kind of meditation constantly talk about how hard it is. People who do TM constantly talk about how easy it is. And we're not selling because I get nothing by talking about it. It's just easy.

And so it's easy. And let's say for the sake of argument, let's say that you're maybe there's slightly more benefit to you than to me if you're looking at the science or whatever. Maybe mindfulness practice every day correctly. Let's just say for the sake of it gives you 5% more of something. I don't know that to be true. No, I don't even think that that's true. But I'm saying let's say that it does.

The thing is, I know I'm not doing the stuff that I'd have to do to do the mind for this. TM, I just have to sit down and say mantra and whether I can do it or not doesn't matter. All I have to do is say the mantra to myself. You can't fail at TM. The whole point of it is that you can't fail. The whole way you relax into it is to know I don't have to feel like it was a good meditation. I don't have to succeed at blocking thoughts out. I don't have to notice my breath on my upper lip.

You know, I mean, I was an actor all through college, and so we did stuff that was similar to Mindful, and you did breathing stuff, and I hated all of it. TM, I love how I feel afterwards, and I love every part of doing it. It's, look, in our culture, I think we feel like if something's not hard, it's not worth doing, maybe. Or how can I make gain if it's not challenging?

TM is great because it's simple to do. You just have to carve the time and you get results. So I think that's why it, I think that's why it catches on.

Also, you know, the fact that Bob Roth, who you've referenced a couple of times, is available to T, you know, he's, he works for the David Lynch Foundation. I've never actually met him, but you should have a great, best one for sure. I want to reach out to him. He seems like such an interesting guy, but he, he makes himself available as far as I understand it to, to, to pretty prominent folks to teach them one on one. And I think that, I think that has made a big difference.

he does and his team will, but I mean, they're not elitist in that I've walked into that office and Bob is teaching somebody for free who's the furthest thing from famous. Like the whole point of the David Lynch Foundation is, I mean, he'll tell you the numbers. Again, I'm the furthest thing from a spokesman for any of it. They've taught hundreds and hundreds of thousands of inner city kids to meditate and veterans who have post-traumatic syndrome to meditate.

yeah in high schools for sure sure you know switching gears just slightly you do you've mentioned the name tony robin's a couple times yes uh... and i know you're producing you're involved in producing a new documentary that's going to come out about him yet david our executive producers of the document joe burlinger who's a great documentarian you know um... one of the like legendary documentarians you made some kind of monster any made the alica movie made the paradise loss movies which are incredibly important films

Um, that were really important and figuring out who was really innocent and who was really guilty in the West Memphis, uh, three murders. Um, uh, Burlington made the film. Uh, David and I just introduced him to Tony. So what is your view, because you, you have established yourself in the course of this interview, I think in a sort of rock solid way as a skeptical dude. Uh, what is your view of Tony Robbins? I mean, I, I actually, I will admit again, I feel like I'm having to admit this a lot in this interview that he's not somebody about whom I have an encyclopedia.

inside it in cyclopedic knowledge but i know he does have his critics so what is your view of him we all have our critics uh... and uh... but uh... but i think uh... tony has fewer and fewer court critics now and i think when you see burlingers uh... movie you'll get a really clear sense of what it is that uh... tony robins does again i'm not a spokesman tony but uh... i'm a huge fan

The walking on coals thing. Yeah, well, the walking on coals thing to me is a metaphor. And he talks about it as metaphor in his events. But that's the performance piece of what he does.

What works about what Tony Robbins talks about is, to me, he found a way to codify some questions that are really important. I think the easiest way, if you watch his TED Talk, he gave a TED Talk with Al Gore in the audience a few years ago. That's like one of the most popular TED Talks. And maybe you guys will link to it in the show notes or something.

But it'll give you a really clear sense of what it is that he's interested in, which is like human beings and their why, their reason for doing the things that they do and how he can help you figure out whether you're doing things just reactively or whether you're doing things for an actual reason. And I can tell you there are a few different times in my life where

I read something that Tony said or I listened to something and I was able to translate into language that made sense for me and help me to get to the next level of something.

Sounds like it's been... I mean, I give you specific, like, specific little things. They're tiny things. David and I were trying to get a movie made called Solitary Men, which it was very difficult to do. It was a small independent movie. We had Michael Douglas wanting to do it and play the lead. I'd written it, took me four years to write it. David and I are going to direct it together. And we'd had this conversation with some agents who said, oh, you'll never be able to raise the money for this. And they gave us all these, like, technical reasons why.

And I happen to be listening to a thing where Tony talked about the danger of listening people who hold themselves out as experts or smarter than you in an area, if it's possible that you're smart enough to do the research yourself, read up on the thing, and figure out deconstruct their language and figure out how to tell the truth or not.

So I was like, I can do that. And so I started reading a little bit more about how foreign sales were done. And he talks about ways to sort of remind yourself to take action every day. So I made myself a pair of Nike ID shoes that had the word solitary on them, written a hundred times. And I wore them every day until I got the movie greenlit. And I would look at the shoes and they would remind me to do something to move

solitary man forward. And I called these agents one day and I said, okay, instead of you guys having those conversations, Dave and I are going to go have them set us up with the meetings with these foreign sales people. And they were like, they're bankers. You won't know how to talk to them. And I said, no, no, I'm not going to talk to them. Put me in the room with them. I'll get the money. We'll go make the movie. Within a week of making that call, we had the money because they realized we were going to go do it. Yes, it was hard what they had to do. But rather than be embarrassed by having us do it, they had to go out and figure out how to do it.

And that was a direct result of like reading three things that the guy had said. Now, I'm not a fan of the walking on coal idea because I think it's possible people miss the metaphor and think it's actually dangerous. But I think that he's helped a lot of people and I think that the work has helped me. And I'm looking forward to watching the movie.

The movie was the best-reviewed thing of our career. It was Roger Ebert's year-end best list, the New York Times year-end best list. It was a small movie, an art movie, like I said, but we knew that it was really an important thing to get made, and this really helped us do it.

We only have a couple minutes left in the remaining minutes. Are there any other things that you wish I had asked? Any other projects you want? The only other thing I would say is that if people like this kind of conversation, I host a podcast called The Moment where I have conversations with people that are similar to this about

the inflection points, what I call the inflection points in their lives, moments where everything was kind of in the balance. So I'll talk to someone like Seth Meyers about what it feels like to be on the cover of Time and Newsweek, you know, as like Bruce Springsteen before him, or I'll talk to Mario Batali about the night he had an aneurysm and what that changed. And so I'll talk to authors that I love, musicians,

And really drill down about how they found the best version of themselves. So it's also in the iTunes store. That sounds awesome. I'm going to subscribe. One last question. I was reading something you wrote the other day about the things that you do to kind of put yourself in the zone.

And one and and we have a lot of things in common because you listed exercise you listed meditation But the other thing you mentioned which is a little obscure and some of our audio listeners or viewers might not know it if you mentioned a band called the whole study. Oh, yeah, guys. Oh So that's the episode of my podcast you should start with is the episode Craig Finn Craig and Tad I got both of them in there

So I did a long since deceased slash euthanized show about indie rock many years ago and it was called Amplified and I had them on and they're incredibly nice guys and are also great bands. So what's your favorite hold steady song that we should play out the show with?

Uh, Houdrecht. Houdrecht, I mean, really probably sequester to Memphis, but, um, Houdrecht friend. Houdrecht friend, because people don't know that song. It's a great song. And it's a great one. I mean, I get to say it how a resurrection really feels. But, uh, what's yours? The swish. Right. Sure. Right. Well, second second, second, first album. Phenomenal, phenomenal song. Almost killed me, man. The whole study almost killed me.

My friend, my new friend, thank you very much for doing this. You were a phenomenal guest. What a pleasure. Great to talk to you about this and I'm really glad you're doing this research. Tell me what you find. As soon as I find out. Everybody watch Billions. Everybody check out the moment. Thank you again, Brian. Appreciate it.

OK, so that was Brian Koppelman, who I think I'm going to make one of my new friends. That guy's kind of awesome. I want to add, and I know, sorry, this is self-promotional, so excuse me, but I want this podcast to live for a long time. And part of that is to beg you to subscribe to it, to rate it, preferably five stars. I don't want to work the rest here, but five stars would be nice, and to write a review.

It can be just a short little review, anything, but all that really helps us stay alive, which we want to do because we want to be bringing you this podcast for a long time. Thanks very much for listening. We'll be back soon with a new one.

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