Former No.1 Pick-Up Artist: “We’re Wired to Cheat After 7 Years”, “I Was In A Relationship With My Mum”, The True Danger Of Porn: Neil Strauss

This is certainly an interesting topic. Is it okay to ever check your partner's phone? It's a form of cheating. Here's what's interesting. The former world's greatest pickup artist. The best-selling author. He opens up about cheating, monogamy. Whose work is insightful and controversial.

Do you think it's natural to be faithful to one person? In my research, the most evolutionary argument that made the most sense was that we're wired to cheat after about seven years. That said, I realized that all relationship issues are historical. For example, I heard someone I loved to offer a sexual experience that wasn't that great, went to a sex addiction rehab. The therapist said the reason you've never been in a healthy relationship is because your mother wants to be in a relationship with you.

My mom never proved a single person I dated. When I wanted to live with my girlfriend, my mom cut me off. She'd come in my room and tell me about how old my dad was. I was the only one who understood her, so you grew up trapped. We call that emotional incest. And then what happens as soon as you're in a relationship, you want to escape. Having that outlet of cheating or drugs means we're not just trapped with this one person.

And how does one go about unwiring that? These little things program us, so you gotta disengage it. And so what works is... The people that really are struggling to find that love, what advice do you give to them? People have this fantasy about what they want, but you're gonna track someone at your level of growth and self-esteem. Everyone who has that list of, this is what I'm looking for, make that list for yourself and become that person, and then you'll meet that person. But it's like just 100% true. What do you think about masturbation? I like how you just ask that question, just...

I've never shared this. I'll probably regret it. I didn't experiment once. Neil, I first came across your work when I was... I'm gonna say 17 years old.

Your book was the first book I ever read without moving from the moment I opened it. Obviously, the book covers the life of pickup artists, and you kind of go on that journey with them, and then you kind of shine a light on that world. But for me, what the book taught me was a lot about human psychology, and that human psychology was even quite a significant thing in life, business, and everything in between and relationships.

And then I read your second book, some years later called The Truth. And again, this book changed my life, but for very different reasons. For reasons since centered around the fact that I was struggling in relationships, I was struggling with commitment. I thought that a relationship was prison. And your book, The Truth, gave me an olive branch that maybe I was wrong. And it showed me sort of a give me a mental model to redefine how I saw relationships.

There's a lot of people struggling with relationships. Yeah. I mean, that's why I wrote it. That was one of those people. Give me a little bit of an overview of your story up until writing the truth. I think we're really similar. We were talking a little bit before the show in terms of like being a late bloomer in terms of relationships and commitment and freedom being important and all those kind of criteria.

I just thought, you kind of think everything's normal and everyone else is strange and you're normal until you hit a bottom and something goes wrong. And for me, what happened was, I mean, it's super vulnerable to share, even though it's in the truth, but it's weird to say it in person. I was dating someone who I thought, oh, this is more serious relationship. Maybe this could go the long way and then I cheated on them. And sadly, people usually don't learn a lesson when they cheat and learn a lesson when they get caught.

So I got caught. And then you face the reality. That's when the compartment breaks down in your mind and you face the consequences of what you've done. And her being smart was like, I'm done with you. You cheated on me. You betrayed me. Goodbye. Good, which is good for her. And I felt like just wrecked. I felt just, you know, I hurt someone I loved and cared about. I destroyed my chances for the future that I wanted to have, all for like,

a sexual experience that wasn't that great anyway. So, and this is in the book, so his names are so, so Rick Rubin, the producer, the music producer, who's kind of been a mentor to me. He almost produces my life, like the way he literally produced my life, like the way he produced a record where I'm living, everything. He's someone who can just

the way he looks at music, he can look at your life and see what your logical fallacies are. So he said, like, maybe you're a sex addict. I'm like, well, what do you mean? It's not like I need to have sex all the time. I'm not addicted to it. I'm not like out there doing crazy things. He's like, well, I mean, hey, look at all the stuff you do in the game. Did that make you happy? You know, you got everything you wanted. Did that make you happy? And now you heard somebody cared about for a sexual experience. Maybe you are a sex addict.

We literally argued back and forth about that for months until he was ready to give up on me. And then I said, I don't know, but I'll tell you what, I'll go to sex addiction rehab because it's not going to hurt. I'll learn something. And I went there very cynically into sex addiction rehab. And we did something called like a timeline where you write down your most, and you can do this at home. It's a useful thing to do to write down your most impactful experiences, positive or negative in your first 17 or 18 years.

And you kind of write them out and I was going over my positive and negative experiences. Now the therapist goes, well, you know the reason you've never been in a healthy relationship. I'm like, no, why? Because everything either I cheated or someone cheated on me or they just didn't work out. And I go to know why she goes, well, it's because your mother wants to be in a relationship with you. And exactly, that look you just had was exactly what I had. I'm like, what are you talking about? But logically, but in my body,

like everything when it passed made sense. And then she said, and this was like a little intense. She's like, there's a word for that. We call that emotional incest. And I was like, what the fuck is that? Like the foot, you almost like I'm feeling it now. Like I felt this whole like this cold wind blow through like my entire soul and like my body recognized the truth that she was right.

Like, why did my mom never prove a single person I dated? Why was I grounded for most of my high school life? Why, when I wanted to live with my first girlfriend, my mom cut me off and said I wasn't allowed to do that, even though I was like, you know, 19 or 20 or something like that. Like, it's insane. You know, why would I sit while watching TV and like, it's fucking creepy, but like massage your hands and shit like that?

like literally and why would you come in my room and tell me about like you know how horrible my dad was and I was only one who understood her like yes you like it's crazy and so so once I recognize the truth of that all of a sudden like it just

It was never the same again. Basically, just like three types of parenting, right? See, there's functional parenting, which is just a parent that takes care of a child's knees. There's abandonment when a parent's not there for the child's emotional or physical, you know, emotional or physical needs or the parent's gone. It can be abandoned even if a parent dies when you're very, very young. You don't know that that you, sometimes you might think that's about you. Then there's enmeshment, which is like most people don't know and don't recognize, which is when

appearance when your job to take care of your parents needs. When you kind of start parenting them, we're taking care of them. Yes, or, or instead of making choices about what are best for you, they're making choices about what's best for them. So, simple version is you're taking care of them. In fact, you can see people who are adults and they call their mom or dad every single day and are always there for the problems that their parents are having and feel guilty if they're not.

But then it can be more subtle, like maybe a parent's really anxious, and you need to be home and close by and do all these things. But it's not for you to be a better child, it's for them to be less anxious and less worried. So sign that a measurement is occurring as if you grew up feeling sorry for a parent.

We're born with kind of all our brain cells, but the neural connections aren't made, right? And in our early, early childhood experiences, all that wiring is being put together. So they're like our programmers, right? Like they literally just programmed us. So these little things program us. And this woman, PML, she's brilliant. She has this great therapy called post-induction therapy, Pitt. And she thinks of your childhood as a hypnosis.

And she's trying to wake you up from that hypnosis. And it's such a great way to think about it, that we're really indoctrinating this cult as children, right? Like, and that cult is our family, our family values, the family system, the way it is. Mom, dad, like we have nothing else and that shapes the wine of our brain. And then as adults, so much of our journey is to like, just wake up.

So how does that all come background to this sex addiction? So if you grow up in mesh with a parent, well, what happens as soon as you're in a relationship again, you feel trapped. And that trapness reminds you of

Your parents. Your parents and your childhood. And so what do you want to do when you're trapped? Fly escape. Exactly. You want to escape. And how do we escape? Cheating. Exactly. Interesting. But cheating is a path to escaping. That's quite interesting. Yeah. And it doesn't have to. It's almost like a, and by the way, it's not cheap. Some people will act out in some other way. It could be some other type of a type of escape. But often it's cheating because we feel trapped again and we feel we just want to pop a hole in that.

like plastic bag over head before we suffocate suffocate and having that outlet of just cheating or fantasy or Drugs or whatever it is like something there like just helps us escape and not feel trapped. We have our own separate life or we're not just trapped with this one person It's scary. We feel this like terror I mean sometimes like before I did all this work like by a girlfriend like

hug me and I just feel like my skin crawl. I just feel trapped and like she just loves me as a hug me but I feel like just like I wanted to escape. See I can relate in a way because I remember when I would pursue someone that I was attracted to when I was up until the age I'd say about 22 and the minute they showed an interest in me I would kind of like dissuade them from wanting to be with me.

So I would pursue them. Then once they were interested in me, I dissuade them. I would get like my skin would grow when they showed interested in me. I really had to do a lot of work to get rid of that. Yeah. Like I was, I had an allergic reaction to someone being interested in me. Yeah, it's that exact same thing. It's like, and so that's why a lot of people who are avoidance don't recognize their avoidance. They're like, no, I want that. I want to be in love. That's my whole goal in life. Yeah. How does it feel when someone actually returns your love powerfully? And how does one go about unwiring that or unlearning those limiting beliefs?

I'll give it to you in the way that I think is like the most effective. The first step to heal is humility. Like the number one thing you need is humility, and as someone once told me, the same brain that got you into this problem isn't going to get you out of it. And a lot of people think, well, if I read books and I write books, I love books and I was in a podcast, and I love podcasts and do podcasts as well. But just taking in information, you're not going to, you need really humility to say, shoot, I don't know the answers, and you just surrender to a

to an expert can just say, I know nothing. That's why we're talking before the podcast about AA. And the first step is realizing we were powerless. And I think that humility is the first step to change. And man, it's a hell of a step because it's hard for people to really be humble in this world and say, I don't know. So from there, this is the three things that I think they work in combination. I really think this is the formula. I love that the therapy model was redone around this.

which is one is you need deep, intensive workshops where you're really like an emotional puddle on the ground crying. This stuff came in emotionally, and I think normally heal emotionally. I think anyone who's listening or maybe even yourself, if you had a moment that really changed, it's something you felt emotionally. If there's an idea and you're like, oh, I get it, it's just a behavioral problem, and then you change it. The things that you understand and you keep making the same mistake,

You know, as I call them, NLP conscious and competence, those are the things where it takes something deeper. So deep, intensive, emotional workshop. And then everyone goes to these things. The Hoffman process, for example, is very popular right now. Have you heard of that? Yeah, I have my friends put into the group chat in the day. Yeah, yeah. So it's powerful. It's great. What the survivors program at the Meadows or it's the Rio Retreat Center is amazing or therapeutic. But there are a bunch of, so you go to these,

What always happens, or even after any kind of seminar, is you leave, you're like, this is amazing. I totally get it. I see who I am. I'm going to go live my best life now. And then you get around the same environment. And the same behavioral patterns start sneaking back in, and you're back to where you started. So you need the big shift, and then you need something for maintenance. That's where talk therapy comes in. So step one, deep workshops, step two, is some kind of ongoing maintenance. And here's something I recommend. And it's also cheaper, I think, than therapy. And everyone can afford to see a therapist every week.

So you need something that where every week or every couple weeks, your wrong thinking is corrected. So as an example, I got a bunch of guys together in my neighborhood, different men are at the same level in life. And we all chipped in for one therapist. So instead of you buying a therapist, five, six, 10 of your friends can ship out on a therapist, you can do that. Skip a few coffees a week. And then we meet every week. We've done this for probably since my seven years now.

Same almost, almost the exact same group of people, a few people have come in and out. And every week we go in there and here's my group therapy. I think in a lot of research backs this up actually, but research can back anything up is that it works better than one in one therapy is if you're having a discussion with me or a therapist, you can just say, well, I think you're wrong, I disagree. Even though you don't have an degree, I disagree. But if that therapist and like eight of your friends, I'll say, no man, you're wrong.

You're like, I disagree, but if you all say so, you're probably right. I'll consider that. So I think it's really powerful. And the other great thing is you don't have to wait every week, every two weeks to see a therapist, you're in touch with all your friends. Like you said about your group chat, you're in touch with all your friends all the time. So group therapy, like for example,

We know we show this pattern so I could be in my therapy thing and start to say something like I'm starting to see this person and this is going on and right away they're like oh man you're doing that same thing you did with your last two people you started dating why don't you try this new thing they see you so well so deep shift

ongoing maintenance, that's where the talk therapy comes in. Then the third thing is tools to use when you're backsliding. As an example, we talked earlier about how someone would, I get hugged by my girlfriend and I'd start to feel that, what you said, that same feeling like I just felt like uncomfortable and wanted to escape. So the tool there was something called re-parenting. Re-parenting's being the, is like talking to your

talking to your child or talking to yourself and I just say, hey, she's not your mom. You can relax. I got this. I'll take care of you. She just loves you and cares about you and man, accept that. So I'll just give myself that inner monologue. And why do you think that works? They're repairing or the tools? The re-parenting part. Yeah, I think the re-parenting part is this. Like there's

Inner child's kind of like a word that if you haven't done the inner child work just sounds like so woo woo. So another way to think about it is this. When you see something that's familiar that traumatized you as a child or a teen, right away your protective mechanisms from then are going to take over. So you've got to, you've got to like disengage it. And so what works is saying is works is recognizing it and saying like, no, this isn't that. This is actually okay. So you can relax.

and just accept. And that's all quite unconscious, isn't it? So you won't consciously know that the reason this hug with this person is giving me the like the heebie-jeebies or the creeps, whatever, is because it reminds me of my mother or whatever, whatever. But unconsciously, that's kind of what's going on. The old circuits are starting to fire, but you haven't had a thought yourself. You're just experiencing a feeling.

Like I would experience that feeling of feeling like I was trapped, but I wouldn't consciously know why. You wouldn't know. No, of course. You would have no idea. You literally just think I'm trapped. And that's why these things all work together. So like the package, the short version of it, because there's a long answer is deep intensive workshops, ongoing maintenance through group of talk therapy and tools to use when old behaviors come up. So once you've done that deep intensive workshop and recognize, oh, shoot, I react like this because I'm getting flashbacks to being like suffocated by my mom or my dad.

then you're now you're conscious about what's happening. And then as you consistently use the tools, you get to intervene quickly. So the key is like intervening quickly. I'll give another example that a lot of people might relate to is like when you're in a conflict or you're starting to get upset about something. And then if you just stay there, you might start to get upset or behave in a way that you don't love.

Does that make sense or? Yeah. So we want to start recognizing the signs of, oh, my heart's starting to be faster. I feel like maybe there's something you feel in your chest or in your arms. For me, like my arms start to get like, I feel like a, I don't know, just sort of like a weird tension in my hands as soon as I feel that.

I'll just say, one second, I'll be right back. I'll step back, bring myself back to earth, and then come back and I'll never react. So I think one of our goals, I think the goal of self-improvement of this work is to be like non-reactive, connected, but non-reactive. Masturbation. Yeah. What do you think about masturbation?

I didn't experiment once because there were a lot of people who really co-organ from the smashing pumpkins, for example, like doesn't let his band have an orgasm the day of a show or something like that. I think Darren and I were not some director. I don't want to say his name wrong. I felt like

There are all these artists who I was talking to who, by not having an orgasm, felt like they could use it. I think Napoleon Hill, I'm thinking Grow Rich or something, talks about just not letting the energy out and then recycling and using it for productivity in your life. I'm sure a lot of tantric and other teachings say the same. I tried an experiment of not doing that.

I just felt horrible and I was attracted to everything. I remember watching South Park and like Cartman's mom came on and like, and I felt like aroused. I was literally like, what kind of your life was this in? This was like in a pre-truth. Okay. So the answer is like, I don't, maybe I'm not there yet, but I don't have a strong, I think that

As long as it's not compulsive, as long as it's not changing your healthy relationship with women or sexuality. And there's everything in masturbation or pornography. Pornography. Yeah. What's your view on pornography? I don't think it helps. Yeah. But here's a, here's a, let me give you a last thought of masturbation. This is like a crazy thought. I've never shared this. I'll probably regret it. I'll probably call you later, ask you to cut it out. I think that everything in your life, I think you can be giving yourself a seminar in your life all the time. So.

Maybe we'll end here. But I almost think of this training list. So if I'm going to do it, I'll just think, okay, my goal is to like last longer or try to like do it twice or something. So I try to think of everything. How can I, even with that, I'm like, how can I train myself to be better? Interesting. And so I'm always thinking even in my life, I'm like, how can I, how can

So a lot of people talk about, even I mentioned this kind of cliche of the authentic self versus the false self. And I always think like, shit, what is authentic? How can I measure authentic? I don't know what's authentic. I think when I was really inauthentic, I thought I was being authentic. And I realized that a better dichotomy is the creative versus the destructive self. So like if you're watching pornography and then masturbating and like you feel better afterward, was it constructive for you or was it destructive? And so trying to do things that are constructive

feels right. Is that just an excuse though for a destructive behavior? Go ahead. What do you mean? So in the context of masturbation, you're giving it some kind of purpose by saying it's like training. Am I just deluding myself? This is okay. I guess the answer is like you know the seed by the fruit.

So to see if it hurts in my relationship by sexuality or my relationship with women and things like that. What about pornography then? Do you think pornography is harmful? For relationships, love.

I guess the answer again is it depends on how you're using it. I don't know. I haven't really thought this out. There are certainly a lot of studies that show the opposite of pornography. But I think if it's just becoming regularly and you're doing it too much, I'm sure you can use productivity in a healthy way with your partner and watching together and maybe getting turned on and then experiencing something together or mixing it up sometimes. I'm sure there are ways. I think everything can be healthy and unhealthy. You can drink too much water and die.

Do you think it's natural to be faithful to one person for life? In all my research, I think the person who came up with what I think is the most evolutionary argument that made the most sense was Helen Fisher. And she's an evolutionary biologist, I believe. And she said that she thinks it's natural to, and she studied marriage patterns, divorce patterns, and this changes based on the number of kids. But where she believes we're wired for seven years,

for serial monogamy with clandestine adultery. That's what she says, meaning serial monogamy means one partner at a time, but secretly cheating sometimes on the side. That's how she thinks we're wired.

And that I average is about seven years. If you have more kids that last longer, meaning that's enough time for the child to grow up and kind of take care of self. And then you get to have new children with someone else and vary your genes. That said, that's like the evolutionary perspective. That said, I don't believe like evolution is destiny. You know what I mean? It's probably evolutionary for people to

want to take someone's, usurp someone's power and money and I don't know. I'm sure there are all kinds of evolutionary impulses that we have a prefrontal cortex that allows us to make these choices. I mean, if we had to do everything, I think you have a choice whether you want to be faithful or not. That said, fidelity is different than honesty.

Meaning that I think you can be honest with your partner. And for example, I know people whose partner, maybe the partner went through bed of pause and sex stopped and they had a discussion and said, I still have these sexual needs. What do I do about it? And they renegotiated the relationship. And so I think that we can rethink a relationship as an ongoing discussion between two partners and probably the partner with the lowest comfort will generally win out.

I talked to this woman, Stephanie Coontz, who's like the biggest expert on marriage. She wrote a book on it. And she said, the history of marriage was originally it was for property rights and inheritance. And kids were just extra workers. And then it was marriage for love. It's a radical idea. And she says, now we're in this thing where it's just tick a box. Like I was at a dinner the other day.

And a bunch of people were there talking about their relationships. And someone's like, well, I'm going to have a kid. I'm freezing my eggs. I want to have a kid later. And I'm going to do this. And someone else is like, I'm never. I want to get married and fall in love and have kids. And it's like a ticker box thing. Do you want one partner or many? A lot of people are into ethical non-monogamy now. Do you want kids? Do you not want kids? You can just check a box and decide. We're in this way where we have so much choice.

ethical non-monogamy. I didn't know that was a thing. What does that mean? Some people call it consensual non-monogamy or ethical non-monogamy, but that's basically you're not monogamous with your relationship partner, but your ethical meeting, you're both honest about it. As you said earlier, you went on a journey to figure out whether that stuff could work for you.

polyamorous relationships, swinging, all of those kinds of things. And you concluded that it just, it can work for you. I think you remember you saying that you kind of wanted like a half open relationship at the time. I think most people probably do. I think that was probably coming out of like a, it was me coming out of a wounded place saying that by half open, you mean like, I can see what I want and they don't do something. I think that usually, whoever says that,

And I, including myself at the time is probably like a wounded person, like in terms of like, I just want to do what I want, but I want to deal with uncomfortable, and you deal with those uncomfortable emotions, but, but, but you can't do what you want because I can't deal with uncomfortable emotions. So, so I think that the answer is,

I think there's like three entities. There's you, there's your partner, there's a relationship. And I think the right answer is something that makes all three better. So for example, when I was in those scenes, there were a lot of couples and it wasn't sometimes the woman leading the charge, sometimes the guy leading the charge where one partner was letting the other partner be more open so they didn't lose them. They were just silently suffering. That's not good for the person or the relationship. But I think if you can find a way where like,

For example, one person I met, he thinks his partner's fabulous and other men, he shouldn't just get to hog all that fabulousness to himself. Like he wants to share that, other people can get to experience that. And so that's right for him and right for her and right for their relationship. And you've met people that are in that sort of polyamorous situation that are like really, really, really happy.

Yeah, and here's what's interesting. I found that just as many people cheated in polyamorous relationships is monogamous relationships. But I'll give you an example. Like one of the first people I met, like maybe they have a boundary like, oh, you're not allowed to do this specific sexual thing with other people. You're not allowed to do this. Like they would still break. They can literally do like 95% of what they want and 5% just restricted and they'll cross that boundary. I found just as much cheating in that is monogamous. And the idea being that

The idea really being if you're healthy, whatever relationship you choose will be healthy. If you're unhealthy, whatever relationship style you choose will be unhealthy.

And maybe there was something in just breaking the boundary that people find somewhat appealing. So it doesn't really matter what the boundary is, but there being one, you're going back to that avoidant nature of trying to stop yourself from being a bird trapped in a cage, breaking a boundary as part of the thrill. Yeah, there's someone I met, part of the wisest person I met, I forget his full name, his name was Pepper. And he had two big thoughts. And one was that intentions are better than rules.

And then his second thought was, your partner has to have an abundance of you before they can sort of be with other people. So explain both of those then. Sure. Sure. The intention is like, well, what are our intentions to honor each other, to be honest, to respect, and to have sort of intentions, which are discussion points versus, well, you can do that, but you can't do this. And behind those rules is an intention. For example,

What's behind the discomfort of someone sleeping with someone else is the intention to safety. I feel unsafe if you're off with someone else because I could lose you.

And so the intention maybe might be safety and maybe there are other ways to get that need met. You know, as a short guy who who's like literally like five, six and, you know, and people are always looking for someone who's like six feet or over a guy and you're like, come on, I'm like six inches below the mark. I realized, oh no, what they want is like safety there or security being when someone feels bigger or stronger helps them feel safe. And I'm like, okay, I can do safe. I can't do tall, but I can do safe. Interesting.

So, um, so, so that's the idea of a partner has abundance. If you means a lot of people are like, this relationship isn't working or fighting a lot, like maybe we should split up. Maybe let's try polyamory. That's not going to work versus, or it's just if your partner has enough sex, has enough love, has enough connection, and then you're with someone else, there's less of that fear because their full, your partner should be full first.

Third thing for people are considering doing this in case, I'm sure some people are like thinking, maybe this will work for me. And it's, I think it's called the burning period, which is that if you do open up a monogamous, open up a relationship, there's probably, there's a period of six months or whatever that there's a lot of discomfort and awkwardness. And it requires a lot of communication to work through it. A lot of insecurity, I imagine.

Yeah, our biggest fear as a child is abandonment because what happens if our parents out there, we don't get milk or water or food and we die. We can't take care of ourselves.

And so we're fear of abandonment, a great, a great line from the truth. It was, I think about this all the time when people are scared in a relationship about being abandoned, this therapist named the rain said, um, unless you're a child or dependent elder, no one can abandon you except yourself. And you're like, you're not going to die of the person you love leaves you. It's just going to hurt and suck. Right. That's how it feels right on a psychological level. It feels like we are being

Because that emotional reaction stems, I guess, right back to like, I don't know, being thrown off the island by our tribe or something. And when we think about the physiological consequence of loneliness as well, like the body completely changes. We go into self-preservation. We don't sleep as well. And that's just when we're lonely. So... Yeah, I know you nailed it. I think there's two sides. There's abandonment. Like if a child's abandoned, maybe that child doesn't survive.

And that's obviously happened to us, to children historically. And then the other side, like you said, if you're kicked out of the tribe, and this is why people are so fearful on social media and all these things, you're kicked out of the tribe, well, you can't survive on your own, out of the wild. So we are afraid of abandonment and social rejection. There's abandonment and social rejection and loneliness. Your first book, The Game, I think it spoke to some men who feel that way.

Like, because I think those men, I think I was probably, maybe I was one of them where I was a young man who wanted to figure out how to be loved. And the game appeared to give me a code to that. In a world where figuring out how to be loved and finding someone to love me was kind of this like complicated, you know, thing that didn't make sense.

And I reflect on, I don't know how many years we run from the game now, maybe 10 years or something, but in terms of men feeling like they understand what masculinity is and loneliness and the statistics around the amount of men that are sexless, we've gone in a worse direction.

Like there are more men now that feel isolated, lonely, that are struggling to find love and a partner. We've had dating apps emerge I think since the game, pretty much since the game, which has confused the whole dynamic of how do I find someone that loves me? Where do I find them? It's roughly about 50% of people now meet online. So there's this new generation of men and women that are struggling now to find

to find that love. It's interesting, like you raised this question, like, why is it when we're more connected than ever that we feel more disconnected? I think that maybe one of the issues, I think it's really tough to all be connected because we thought that technology would, we'd decided the global village, Marshall McLuhan and stuff like that, technology is going to just create a global village.

which it did, but we forgot that the village, it sucked to live in the village. Because in the village, everybody's gossiping. You know, if you step out of line, you're, at least we were saying earlier, kicked out of the village. Everyone tries to keep everyone down because it's petty and it's jealous. And if you're different or express yourself in some other way, you're like an outcast.

It used to be that, you know, if you left high school, went to college or moved somewhere else, you get to just create a whole new life. And now we're all in this fishbowl, staring at each other and it's uncomfortable and maybe feels less safe. On top of that, I think there's some statistic a few years ago that 25% of marriages started in the workplace. And now you can't really date in the workplace anymore. So that's kind of on the table now. Yeah. And then I think the other thing is,

People, I noticed that on the apps, people sort of have this fantasy about what they want. And then they might be with someone and start dating a few times and say, oh, you know, that one thing's just not quite right in what I want. And there's so much abundance that they can just go back to the dating pool instead of working it through or writing it out. In other words,

before you bet someone out, you exchanged phone numbers. That was like exciting thing. You got the phone number and gosh, well mentioned, I call, I guess I'll wait two days to call and then you call and oh my God, I'm gonna see him in four days and, you know, and there's so much excitement around that. And now you literally just, you like, you go back at one of these apps and within like 24 hours, you have so many options. In your, in the last two decades, you've met so many people that are like struggling in relationships and love and

I guess my question is like, what advice do you give to them, the people that really, really are struggling? And it's different issues for men and women, because there's different dating dynamics in play there. So for those that start with men, for those young men, and I've had many guests in the podcast talk to those speak of the statistics around young men, and also around the suicidality of those young men. And I mean, some of the really crazy stats are around suicide. I think I've shown a few times before that.

In the UK alone, someone dies by suicide every 90 minutes and 76% of them are male. Look at some of the other stats. The number of unmarried men in the United States has increased by 50% since 1970. The number of men who are reporting that they are lonely has increased by 50% since 1980. The number of men who have had

Sex by the age of 20 has decreased by 20% since 1990. The age men have their first kiss is now getting later and later. The number of men who are reporting that they have been victims of sexual assault by another man has increased by 20%.

So the stats tell a pretty horrific story. And then the same here for women. In 1970, only 13% of women over 30 were unmarried. Today, that number is nearly 50%. The divorce rate for women over 30 has doubled in the past 50 years. And I can go on and on and on. So clearly, there's something going on with relationships dating.

Let's hold two ideas. One is there's something going on, and the other one is stats. So when I wrote the truth, I went through, like I started the book with these similar stats. You know, 5% of marriage is in a divorce. But I'm like, I got my start. One of my starts is like a fact checker at the Village Voice before I was like writing these books and things. And so I'm like, I just really rigorously checked facts. If you really dig deep, you'll find that probably

50% of statistics are made up. You'll literally, to the degree that most of them I couldn't keep the stats because either they never existed. In one case, we call the actual researcher. I think the divorce stat or the infidelity stat, and they're like, she's like, I never said this. This is not for my research. My name's always attached to this. I don't know how to stop it.

So, so what happened? So a lot of these things first of all, but I think the sense of all this is very true. I'd be slow to jump on a stat. It's funny. I did a piece for Rolling Stone on on Elon Musk and some other thing happened where I told him the statistic and he's like, I'd have to see how they did that study before I could even comment on it. That said, I think we're in a crisis. I think what we're speaking of is a like we

We're really like, there's a real mental health crisis. And if you think about when you were a kid, how often do you have doctor's appointments? Gosh, not often, but maybe twice a year. Well, yeah, twice a year and have dentist appointments. The same, I think twice a year. And often do you have like therapist or psychologist appointments? Exactly, right? And that's our culture. Our culture is your teeth better look great. Got to make sure everything physically is fine.

But no concern for mental health. No teaching of mental health. So we have no foundation to build on. And then we get to our age where all those wiring and all those patterns are set. And then if we want to heal, we better have a lot of money because it's a rich person's game to heal because insurance and nothing covers it. So we really want to work on this. And again, like if I could be sort of a crusader,

And maybe I should be, I don't maybe I need to be, is it would be for taking like mental health as seriously as we take physical health. Because guess what? Obviously stress leads to all kinds of diseases and also so many, so much self harm and other harm are related to obviously mental health issues.

And then we have this idea that we all have some sort of mental health issue, you know, like everyone does. And if you don't think you have a mental health issue, there's something going on, you know, look in the mirror, we're still, we're all wounded from the way we were raised. So we really need to get the culture and the system to take mental health seriously. They take all the rest of education. But we can't be finding hard just to meet each other as well.

Yeah, there's a great, there's a Japanese writer named Kobo Abe, and he wrote this, Woman in the Dunes, which is a great book and movie. He has this great line, he says like, he goes, we're wired for this tribal existence. And the city is the first place where we had a meet a stranger that's not an enemy. And we're still not used to that.

strangers are scary. I think most people, people are scary. I mean, even now back in the dating thing, I'm like, I'm meeting someone on an app. And I don't know who they are. Like before, if I met someone, they're kind of in my scene or in my peer group or somehow we share these interests, but there's just a random person on app that literally like maybe they're a scammer, right? Are you even that?

phase now where you're dating again? Yeah. How's it going? And what's new in terms of like, since last time you were in the, in a dating phase of your life? Let's see. I just ended like a, like a short but serious relationship, which was interesting.

Um, and I, yeah, I guess what's new is just the things we, things we talked, we talked about. I think I'm, I'm with my son, like Fridays to Mondays. So, so it's hard. I think it's hard for us when it's not a single parent, um, or doesn't have a child to sort of understand that maybe I'm less available. You can react one of two ways when you recognize you're getting older, right? You can go.

by a flashy car and start dating like, you know, people who feed your ego and you can just feed your ego till you're dead. And that seems like a horrible way to go. I remember my first time in LA, when I moved to LA, I was in this nightclub. And there was this guy in a wheelchair with an older, with a mass debris, he was like very old, like 70 or 80. I don't know, he was, he was at Death Door. And he was surrounding, he had these like two like, you know, very young plastic surgery. We had a round of them and I'm like, oh man, like,

You know, I don't know whether to feel sorry for him or or what but I was like Oh, that's that's like that's I guess that's his life choice and good for him, you know Some so you can kind of chase that validation He liked dating multiple women because he liked women competing over him that felt good when there was drama like it made him feel wanted So you can live basically you're living out of your unhealed wounds

right? You can either live out of your unhealed wounds or you can sort of heal your wound and see what else am I here to heal or what else am I here to do. What's going to, what are the few things that make me happy and the few things I can contribute? I've got close friends of mine that

feel somewhat similar from conversations we've had with them where they're in a relationship with someone. And it's almost like they're torn into two pieces. It kind of takes me back to maybe the start of your journey into the truth, which is they love this person. But at the same time, they just can't stop the urge to be with to either cheat or think about other people or to text other people, et cetera. And they're almost tormented by it.

I know some people that are like really tormented by that. Yeah, then you have to look at yourself. And I guess all the time is what parts coming out of a wound and what parts like authentic, right? So there's one part where, yeah, other people are attractive. Like if you're in a relationship and you find other people attractive or hot or like might even think someone's a better match for you.

that's healthy, you still have eyes, you still have a comparing mind a little bit. And that's okay. It takes the right person. What's that? Does it take the right person in your view to make you commit? It takes you being the right person. Okay. It takes you 100% takes you being the right person. And even to the degree that you're going to attract people, you're going to attract someone who's at your level of growth and self-esteem. So like literally everyone who has that list of, this is what I'm looking for, like,

make that list for yourself and become that person. And then you'll meet that person. That's like just a hundred percent true. And, but, but then the other side, like you said, then there's a part where it's agonizing where it's like, Oh God, I mean, I can speak from experience that once I did all that work, we talked about the truth. I was like really happily monogamous with anger. Like I didn't look at other people. I didn't chase that other stuff. Like everything was clean. What changed? Um, what changed was I wasn't afraid of going deeper into intimacy anymore.

Meaning that like I would just look at her and I wasn't, I just had walls up. They kept me from getting closer. That of really loving her and really accepting her. So you can either do the work with another person or do the work against that person.

And against that person is acting out and fantasizing in your head and resenting. Or the other thing is you can work on yourself and work on how can I get deeper with them and how can I learn to accept them and how can I realize the issues I have with them have nothing to do with them. There's a saying, I'm pretty sure it's a saying, but that all relationship issues are historical. It's not about them. It's about something that happened with mom or dad and the things you're trying to change and fix were things that you needed from your parents.

How important do you think it is to be completely honest in a relationship? I, your partner should have the pin for your mobile phone, or there should be no pin on your mobile phone, that complete honesty, where they are able to see and know everything. Yeah, good, great, great question. I think the ultimate balance is they have the pin for your mobile phone, but they never use it. Checking your partner's mobile phone behind their back is a form of cheating.

And I think a relationship needs both honesty and trust to work. Honesty means one partner is being honest, but as other partner just trusts, it's going to go just as badly. Do you think that if you cheat on someone and they never find out, do you think, what is the harm to you?

So if you cheat on someone, the harm to you is all of a sudden you've taken the relationship and you just like drove a cleaver through it and now you're living in a separate world than they are.

You can't get back to the same intimacy that you had before because intimacy is showing who you are and your vulnerability to someone else and being accepted. Right then you're lying in bed. You're thinking about that other person. You're worried about them texting. You start being of a different little differently around your partner. They sense that and they feel like something's wrong. Maybe it's wrong with them and they behave different. And it sets, it sets off a whole, you know, invisible chain into motion.

And you can never authentically connect whilst you're cheating on someone. If you're cheating on them, you can never really. It's not a real connection, is it? You're hiding compartmentalizing something. Some people are so good they hide it from themselves. There's a great line. This is also from Rick Rubin. He said, it's in the book. So he said, I don't trade long-term happiness for short-term pleasure. I don't trade long-term happiness for short-term pleasure. Interesting.

Right? It's really good. And I hear it so I became of the mind of this, which is in terms of guys like you and I and other mesh and women too who feel trapped by their relationship is I recognize that they're not keeping me from sleeping with anyone else. I can actually go ahead and sleep with whoever I want. I really can't. I'm there. I can sleep with everyone. But I have to be honest and accept the consequences.

So if sleeping with that person is more important than my relationship, I'm free to sleep with them. It's actually my choice. So no one's being, you're not being made to do or forced to do anything. It's all your choice. You just have to accept the consequences that, well, that sex with that person better be more important than your relationship. And so you can still, no one's keeping you from doing anything. You made an agreement, if you don't like that agreement, then make a different agreement for your relationship.

You wrote Rick Rubin's book, but you also, you wrote Kevin Hart's book. Yeah. What did you learn about Kevin Hart? Oh, man. I love like, and he's, he's like, I learned a lot from him. He's really one of my like favorite people. Like what you see, what you see is what you get. He is who he is. What I learned is this. And, and this is like more of a business thing, but he has no resistance. He goes, he doesn't have resistance to everything, meaning that

We have a plan, we want things to work out, and there's an obstacle. You had Ryan Holliday, and the obstacle is the way there's an obstacle, or someone's just being difficult to work with, or whatever it is. He just takes the call, he deals with it, he hangs up, and he doesn't get into a story about it. And so I don't know if it makes sense, because I haven't seen this like written anywhere as a principle. But when things go wrong, or there's something he has to do that he doesn't want to do, he doesn't have resistance to anything. He just does it, rolls through it, and moves on.

And he doesn't think I'm like one of the biggest actors and committees in Hollywood. Why don't we have to deal with this? He just deals with it. Doesn't procrastinate. He doesn't procrastinate. He gets it done. He does stuff himself. He doesn't play mothers for bothering him. He really is like, and he's he has a strength of positivity. He's even if he's I've seen him like quote unquote yell at his kids, but he's so positive and accepting.

interesting. When something happens, we get right into a victim place right away. Right away, we think, why me or God, why do I have to deal with this? This is supposed to be like this. And he doesn't have that story. And he just does it. And going back to how we're raised, he was raised with a very strict mom. And like, you know, and he applies that strictness into his life as a discipline. And it works. What about Rick? Rick Rubin.

What if I learned, man, I mean, that book, the Creative Act, I originally didn't plan to write it. I just said, I'll do all the interviews for the book, and you can find a writer, because I don't want to, you know, friends, and it's okay, like, you need to find the right person for your book. But I just want to do all the interviews, because I want to learn from him, because he's produced what everyone, Kanye, JZ, like Beastie Boys run DMC, like Johnny Cash,

And he's so wise. And so I just wanted to learn from him. And this is what I think the main thing I learned, it's in the book. I'm not trying to make a book be something. I'm almost listening to the work and trying to hear what it wants to be. So I really learned to take the ego out of the creative process and surrender to the moment and understand that there's something being called into existence that's not about me. And I'm just trying to guide it there and not get in the way.

And it was a whole new way of thinking it wasn't an artist-centered form of creation, it was an art-centered form of creation.

Interesting. Yeah. If you're making a book or your podcast or whatever else, it's, you kind of get you, you out of the picture to allow the thing to become what it wants to become. Yeah. As an example, the truth was going to be like against monogamy and trying to maybe create a new form of merit of relational and marriage that works better. Cause as you were saying earlier, it's all broken. But instead of became a book about healing my own trauma. And I sort of listened to that. And that's why maybe the book's impactful.

Well, it gives back to what we were saying earlier. You said the first point of what they were calling a sex addiction was humility. Yeah, or anything. And that's it. And it's really having humility in the face of the universe. And there's so many other great points in that book. One of his great, one of his great lines in there is, uh, is about, and this is great true, it's true of bands is business relationships. You know, people get in conflicts or do you have a, like a business partner? Do you come do it all yourself?

Oh, I used to have a business partner in my previous business. Yeah. And he said, if you're disagreeing on things and not saying things the same way, that's great. Because if you both think alike in a partnership and want the same things and want to do things the same, then one of you is unnecessary.

So true. Yeah. So true. We were successful in our business relationship because we were so fundamentally different. So there was never a crossover. Yeah. And we, we knew each other's responsibilities were a piece of work could come in and we wouldn't have to speak. We knew whose job that would be based on skill set. Yeah. It's great. And you're able to do that when you and not everyone can do that. You know, they're like, it's, it's a hard thing for them. What's your mission now in life?

Like you've done so much. You've been successful in so many areas of your life. What are you aiming at now? Yeah, it's interesting. And it's funny, man. When I was like a kid, when I was there, like in college, my whole goal, there was a newspaper called The Village Voice, which was like the cool newspaper in New York. I just wanted to write for The Village Voice. It was like the center of the art scene and the culture. And I started writing for them when I was like in my early 20s.

And then everything, that was really my life goal and then everything's been a bonus. And I really think in terms of projects, like I was thinking before your show, I was looking at your podcast thing. It was like the relationship expert, the sex expert, the sex expert, the number one this. And I was thinking, what do I do or what am I?

And I believe, I have the saying like, that don't brand yourself, like let the world try to brand you while you keep moving forward. And I really just think in terms of projects. So I have no goal other than I want the next project I'm working on. I just want to do really great at it and share it. And then move on to the next project that I'm really excited about.

The difficulty with labels is we pick them up when we are successful at something. Yeah, and then we get stuck. Yeah. I mean, how many people do we know that say the health industry, where someone's like, they stake their health reputation on something that's really true in the moment, and now maybe the research has changed, and then there's still

they don't want to lose their audience. So they're saying something that maybe they don't even believe anymore. Cause we grow and we evolve. And if you label yourself as something, well, man, it's hard to move on. And so we have to be really, I think we have to be really careful of that. Some people, by the way, there's certain people, they have just one mission and that's their mission. And they, and that's great for them. And there are people like you and I who are very growth oriented who keep changing. Like you had one identity before this podcast. You have a completely new one and I have no doubt that I'm like,

five, seven years. Maybe that was, I'd say, seven years on all ourselves, recycling, we're completely new. They're going to be doing something equally amazing and unexpected and cool. What's that bit? What was that like for you? Because your book was so successful, the game. It was so successful. So you become the game guy. Yeah.

Yeah, and my thought was, if I thought was, okay, I have to do something else that strikes people so powerfully become the whatever guy. It was still like, okay, what could I do? Logically, that's what I would think. I think I just have to do something bigger and they'll not know me for that. And then there are other people who are still doing that, who are literally the people in that book, the game, who are out there still doing the same thing. And with a book, it's not like a social media post where it just kind of falls off the timeline.

Yeah. It's selling every day. Yeah. And you're really fortunate to be thought of as by other people as the whatever guy. Yeah, because people never even know knows anything. Yeah. So it's like, I'm really grateful for it. And I'm like, how can I? What? What's next? Again, going back to Rick Rubin, his thing as soon as you finish a work and you, once you share it, you just move on to whatever's next. Why was it so resonant that book, the game, in your view?

I don't know. It's a weird thing. It was really out of my control. And it's funny because I really feel the books. I feel like you get the book. Like to me, I was really writing about mail in security. Like it isn't a book about like, like you were saying you were lonely. You felt disconnected. You didn't know how to connect. That's what you said, right? Yeah, it was like getting it. I mean, it was the, it was the girls at school. I like, I didn't know.

why that dude over there was really successful with them. And I was less successful than that guy over there. And I didn't realize that there was this whole kind of psychology about my posture and how I could present myself. And honestly, one of the big things that I came to learn, I don't think I've ever said this before, was at 18 years old, I was very unsuccessful with the women that I wanted. So whenever I wanted someone, I couldn't get them.

I didn't mean I couldn't get, you know, girlfriends, whatever. But whenever I wanted them, I couldn't get them, which is obviously quite annoying. So there's like five people, girlfriends in a road that I wanted, and I couldn't get any of them. I could get other people. I was doing fine. I don't want to make it seem like I wasn't doing fine. I was doing fine. And I always wondered why that was.

And then reading about the psychology of the game and understanding that there's this sort of social proofing thing, and that I portray my values to people in everything that I do. How I speak, how I hold myself, how desperate I am, whether I lean in in conversations and pack them, and how to just be a little bit more composed. Right, which you do very well, by the way. Now I do. Yeah.

Maybe not so much then. And then I saw this really interesting thing, which was by 25 years old, when I was actually securing myself, my mannerisms all changed naturally. And I fell more in line to what, in the game you referred to as a natural, as in like, I did the high value things naturally, and then I was successful.

Yeah, because I think it was like a real shallow path to like self-improvement or self-esteem. Yeah. And it's nothing. And I think it's interesting. I felt like that I think it did well because I think of the culture of things like the douchebags bible or something like that. And for me, it was really like about male insecurity and that feeling less than and then sort of finding this

very shallow path and also like, it's a path in going the wrong direction. If you keep, like you did, the goal is to become a natural and let go of all those things, almost like when someone's learning to play, to paint or play tennis or whatever it is, they're following the form and then let go and step into who they are. And then I lost in that. I didn't need any, funnily enough, I didn't need any tips or tricks or strategies or little gains, whatever, when I was securing myself. Yes. What's the book you'd write then instead?

If the goal is to get to a place where you're securing yourself, what is the, what kind of book would that be?

Yeah. I mean, I think there could be an other book because that was the, A, that was the path I took and B, like somehow I thought female validation would get me there when it really needed to be my own validation. Yeah. Like how do we get? That's what I'm saying. Like how do we get, what's the book on our own validation? Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it's, there's a couple of great books on that, but I also think there's no shortcuts to this stuff. Like again, bless things to everyone who does plant medicine and I'm not against plant medicine anyway, but I think like,

like you can't just I don't and again there are plenty of exceptions to everything I'm saying but I think like

doing one ayahuasca like journey, he's not going to, you know, are doing one of the workshops that I do in the Hoffman process or doing anything. We all were in this culture where we want these shortcuts. But like, it's always that long cut. It was like the many year journey per the many year journey we went on to figure this stuff out is where we got there. So I think maybe there's no other path other than one we took and if there's a shorter path, we went to gotten there.

That's exactly what I think I I wish I think men specifically like young disillusioned single men that are like looking for love and not having much success need now is is a book about the long cut. The long route. They're the long cut to get the next book the long cut. Oh, gosh. Yeah. I'm not an expert on the subject matter enough to write about it. But but like what is what does the long cut look like? Because

The long cut to self-esteem is like going to the gym, working on yourself, working on your mental health, being of service to society, friendships, emotional expression, those kinds of things. You just did the table of contents of your book. We're getting there. I'm just trying to figure it out. I don't know. I'm just trying to figure it out. I'm trying to figure it out. That list you gave is really great. It's funny with my son who's in the other room, we have Sunday service days, and we do something of service, because I think that's like that. I love that you mentioned that.

try to do something. So I think it's true that it's really a combination of stuff. And some people just look at one path, but it is a little bit of all those different components of working on your psychological health, feeling like, why do I feel less than?

What was the thing? What's great about like the stuff in your past, looking at your childhood is you see that it's not you. I always thought it was just me, like somehow I'm not enough. And then I realized, oh, no, I feel like not enough because these experience, you know, my mom calling me all these different names. I internalized that and thought that's who I was. And I can say, oh, that's not who I am and now I get to change.

So it's nice to look back and see how these seeds were planted. So we can say, oh, that's not me. That was just some programming. And then I can run a virus scan on myself, right? And quarantine the virus. So I think like the long cut to self-esteem is figuring out why, what those reasons are, and then working on them, and then all those different components you said. I think the easiest step is being other oriented instead of self-oriented.

Being of service said it's saying, I expect everyone to make me feel good. How can I make others feel good? And how can I make my job is to feel good about myself? It's a great line. I mentioned PML earlier who's this amazing therapist and author. She says like self-esteem should come from the inside out, not seeking it from the outside in. And so like you said,

You've gone to gym, I think doing something physical, you know, like doing something meaningful, having friendship, social relationship connection, all those things, having looking at those different areas of your life and keeping them full and then looking at the things that are destructive in your life. How often do you do scrolling? You know, how often are you comparing yourself to others? How often are you chasing things that you don't really want but feel like you should want and all those other things?

Your son comes to you at 21 years old and says, dad, I'm struggling. I, I'm single. I'm lonely. Nobody's interested in me. Women aren't interested in me. Which book do you pass him the game or the truth? Yeah, good, good question. Um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, first of all, he probably would never, I feel like I don't know.

I don't know. I feel like the game, maybe I give him neither. I don't know. Maybe I sort of just talk to him and listen. Yeah, I feel like he almost have to read both until I get it because the game can be seductive in itself. But also the game doesn't necessarily end well, even within the game for the pickup artists.

Uh, yes, I don't know which I give them. Maybe I talk to them. Those characters from the game, do you know where they are in their lives? Yeah. You do. Yeah, yeah. I talk, I like, I, I sometimes hear from a mystery who's out there doing his thing, doing workshops in Europe right now, I think. Yeah. It's funny. Like a lot of people still doing it or going through just still being them doing them, right? Going in and out of it. Like I think it's hard. How do we stop doing ourselves if ourself isn't serving us?

So you will be writing a third book in this series. I know you've heard many, many, many books, but a third installment of Neil's kind of journey in love.

Yeah. Or, or, or maybe not back to the idea like it feels natural that I do the next installment because that's what I do. But how often are we trap at what we've done before? Yeah. Like lately I've been doing these podcasts. True crime. These true crime podcasts that I'm feel like I'm hopefully helping people and making a difference and storytelling in another way and trying to like help people locally.

So maybe I don't do that, but I don't know. We talked about labeling. Yeah. And that's kind of linked in with identity. What do you...

what do you want to be known for? And I think this is an interesting question, because I think if someone asked me that, there's like a bullshit answer, and then there's probably like the truth, like if I could choose what people knew me for, I would be known for the businesses that I've built. I guess these podcasts as well, but for me, like I'm

I have a preference towards that part of my identity for some reason. Yeah. What about you? Yeah. I mean, I really like, I always, I always want the books to be known more than me. Like I like, you'll notice in the books, my picture is not on them or anything like that. I don't like, I really want the books to be known. So we just, I guess I would like it like, Oh, that's a new Neil Strauss thing. I can't wait to read it or listen to it or watch it. I just, I just want to be known as like oath.

He does something it's worth noticing or reading or paying attention to. So that's as a writer or a storyteller or something. But really, I'd rather the projects be known, like the new podcast series I'm doing, which is different than the rest. In my head, I'm just thinking, I just want it to be awesome and people to be really excited by it. And I think I'm just always thinking about the next project and

I can't wait for it to come out and have an impact. When's it coming out? I think January. I'll tell you about it offline. It's crazy. Really? Yeah, it's crazy. Because when I saw you were doing a true grand podcast, I thought, does that mean you're reading out stories from cases that were a couple of years ago or something? Yeah. OK.

I'm a big true crime fan, it's something I listen to. Oh my God, okay. So I don't listen to any other genre, I don't even listen to this podcast. Right. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. The question left for you is describe the moment in your life when uncertainty was dominant. How did you navigate this uncertainty and how did it change you? After 9.11.

And then after Hurricane Katrina, I think we had a certain thing that Americans that we felt were just Americans and not touchable or something like that, nothing bad happened. And then when 9-11 happened and we responded in the way we did as a country and felt like the whole world hated,

American terrorists and you know you had yellow red all these alert levels and when Hurricane Katrina happened and You saw bodies flowing down the street in American City and here was a disaster The government knew was coming and there's nothing we could do about it. I think I felt this existentially uncertainty which is like

which everybody feels now, by the way. The whole world feels it now, because no one trusts the system. No one trusts the government. But this was like, it felt new then. It's crazy how now everybody feels this way. But then certainly I felt was like, fuck, you can't rely on the system to protect you. You're on your own.

Is that why you wrote the book about prepping? Yeah, that's how I wrote the book about prepping. And then what I did was prepping is basically preparing for the worst possible day. So like doomsday or I don't know, like a wild or a nuclear bomb. So you start stockpiling in your house stuff that will mean that you can survive on your own. Yeah, learning kind of survival skills. So I guess the way I

So I felt that existential uncertainty in a way. I did that was doing the things that would allow me to feel safe and give me peace of mind. So the idea is when I feel the uncertainty, I try to take the steps that give me peace of mind and are constructive, not destructive. Sometimes it feels like we're in such an uncertain time, then people do things that are giving them peace of mind that are destructive to themselves or others, like a lot of hatred and division and things like that. But recognizing, I think,

that uncertainty maybe comes from within. So what I did, I guess, I guess, I guess, like the answer is, when I feel the uncertainty, I go on a journey that becomes a book, whether that was the game, that's certainly about dating, relationship to the truth, or uncertainty about the world with emergency.

And are you still a prepper? I'm prepped. But at the same time, I also recognize there's only so much you can prep for. You know what I mean? We don't know when these disasters are coming and we don't know how it's going to come or what it's going to look like. We had a pandemic, so we think we're preparing for an exponent pandemic. But the next thing that's going to happen is nothing we're ready or we're concerned for. So I think the best thing you can do is be like,

mentally prepared for the unknown and crisis situations. But I did get like a second passport and all those things in case I need to get my family to safety. So second passport maybe is the answer. Neil, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for writing the truth because this book has certainly helped me to set you before we start recording. There was

a part of this book where you describe a bird in a cage, and that's exactly how I felt. And then you go on to reframe that notion to make me understand that I'm not trapped in a cage, and that I am consciously making a choice to be in the relationship that I'm in. And at any point, if I wanted to leave, I can. And for me, that I do in this book is part of the reason I've been in a

wonderful successful relationship for the last four years that has enriched my life. So thank you so much for that. Your writing style has always been something I've admired so much. And even when I became an author, I remember that being front of mind that you were able to take me on these incredible journeys. And in through the journeys, I learned something. And that's how I've aspired to write. We can do a whole other podcast another time about your writing ability because that is profound and evidenced by the fact you've written Rick Rubens book, which is behind me in Kevin Hart's book and many others that people don't know about.

So thank you for the inspiration. It means a lot to me and thank you for your generosity. Thank you. I'm excited for where your journey takes you and at the next conversation I'm parenting. I look forward to it. Yeah. Thank you. Do you need a podcast to listen to next? We've discovered that people who liked this episode also tend to absolutely love another recent episode we've done. So I've linked that episode in the description below. I know you'll enjoy it.