Transcript: Matthew McConaughey on The Silent Crisis No One Is Talking About! – DOAC Podcast

So take it. Take your licks. You’re not going to get injured. It’s going to hurt. And don’t yell, because if you yell one of the licks, you’re going to get another one.” Licks. Licks with a belt.

The Three Cardinal Rules

“I can’t,” “I hate,” and lying were three things that you got in trouble for. If I said “I can’t,” my dad’s teeth would just start to go. “Excuse me. Sure you’re not just having trouble?”

I remember this one time I was going out to do my chores Saturday morning to mow the lawn, and I couldn’t get the damn lawnmower to start. Checked everything, couldn’t get a start. I’m going inside. I said, “Dad, can you help me? I can’t get the lawnmower started.” And he turned around, I saw his mowers, and I went. And he got up, walked with me through the kitchen, through the garage, out the backyard, went to the lawnmower, messed around, pulled a couple things out. After about 10 minutes, boom, cranked it.

And while the lawnmower was running right there, he came over to me and bent down and looked me at it. He goes, “See, son, you were just having trouble.”

I said, “I hate you” to my brother because I heard the word at school and I thought it made me feel like I was older. I thought it was like a teenage soap opera thing. And I was only nine. So I threw it out there. One day at my own birthday party, my own birthday party, I said to my “I hate you.”

And my mom stopped the entire party. 40 kids my age in the backyard stopped it. My birthday stopped it. Pulled me around the side of the house and said. “What did you say? You don’t ever use that word, especially as someone in your family” gave me licks on the side of the house and then went around, said, “Dry your tears, resume. Birthday party’s back on. Don’t ever use that word, especially someone in your family.”

So what did I learn from “Don’t say can’t”? That unable to do something you can, even if you can’t pull it off, you can go find help, which means you were just having trouble. What I learned from getting a butt whooping for saying “I hate you” to my brother. Well, what I was learning is the antonyms to those words. Because saying “I can’t,” lying and saying “I hate you” were bringing me pain. So the opposite must bring pleasure, right? Tell the truth, love, and believe that you can.

That was where the values, how I remember them getting instilled in me. And to this day, I still have them, trying to transfer them to my kids as well in a different way than my parents did. But I still not even intellectually have them. I have. They’re in my being now.

The Nature of Family Love

So the love was tough. The love was fit. We hugged 999 times, nine times more than we. The hands soothed much more than they hurt. 999 times out of a thousand. But it was a. We were a physical, hugging, loving family. You always went to bed with an “I love you” and a kiss. Even if it was ritual, which it was like a Sunday service.

Got to wake up. Even if I’m not listening to the damn preacher, I’m being subconsciously reminded that you should take a day out of the week to be at the most number two, that you should go get humbled and say thank you to a higher power and thank you for the things that you have in your life and thank you for the people you have in your life and helping those people double down on those great attributes that they have.

So the love was all there. I’m happy to say that all the. I have people, you know, after that story I told about my mom and dad with the knife and the ketchup, people come and say, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry about your childhood. Have you had therapy?” I’m like, no. And before you, please, if you don’t mind, don’t. I feel like you’re trespassing a little bit by giving, by coming out of the gate saying, “Oh my God, you were abused.”

No, I wasn’t abused. And I never felt like I wasn’t loved again. I felt like I let my parents down. Those times, did I fear my parents? Yep. Are there a lot of things I did not do as a kid that I should not have done for fear of the consequences? Yep. We knew we were loved. I knew I was loved. My brothers knew they were loved. My second brother’s adopted. He knew he was loved and it was hard love and it was tough love.

And my mom and dad’s love was passionate love. I mean, divorced twice, married three times is a pretty good example of “can’t live with you, can’t live without you.”

The Defining Moment at Eight Years Old

The one thing I remember being crystal clear to me when I was 8 years old, shaking hands with these two guys that turned out now, later in life, I know they were actually Dad’s collectors. I shook their hand. Oak Forest Country Club parking lot. Sun was down in my eyes, they had shades on. I asked her, “Nice to meet you, sir. Nice to meet you, sir.”

I remember my 8 year old mind going, you know, everyone that my dad’s making me say sir to? The one common denominator besides being older men is they’re all fathers. And in my head I went like, “Oh, that’s what success is. If you become a father, you’ve succeeded.” And that was in my 8 year old. That was the math. I did my 8 year old mind and it stuck with me.

So the one thing I always knew that I wanted to be was the dad. I meet Camila, fall in love, we make three children. I got 17, 15, 12. There’s nothing that I can put ahead of. There’s. Let me just put it this way, there’s no time that I spend being a father that I do not feel like that is the absolute best time I could be spending.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You’ve had that since you were eight?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve never heard that before.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I longed for that. I thought that was when you made it.

Early Career Aspirations

STEVEN BARTLETT: Outside of wanting to be a father at 8 years old, which is fascinating to me and something I do want to talk more about because I think that’s a lost goal in society, unfortunately, is at that age when you sort of in your adolescent years. If I’d asked you at the time what you want to be when you’re older, in a professional context, what would your answer have been?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: 15, 16 years old, Washington Redskins running back. But coming about 16 as I started to find out playing football, that I was not the fastest nor the biggest it then became probably. I don’t know if I really want to be this. But I sure am told I’m really good at debate. I’m a really good debater.

I would win over arguments with the family when it would be like, where to go or you know, if I could go out, why, I would have a great presentation. Parents were like, “Geez.” And they give us the floor. “Go ahead, take the floor. Let’s hear, let’s hear your argument.” And they’d be like, “Damn.”

And so the word around 15, 16 was like, “You got to go to law school, buddy. Go to go, go be a lawyer. Be the family lawyer, man. Dang, man, you’re really good arguing. You make great arguments. And it’s not a great argument. Damn. You got endurance. You’ll just outlast people.” And that became the thing. So I started to enjoy that. And that’s where I was headed towards law school.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I was reading about your youth exchange year in Australia and that you’d struggled a little bit in class and you were skipping class to read poems by Lord Byron.

The Australian Exchange Experience

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. So I just graduated high school at home in Longview in America. And at 18, I just turned 18. 18 in my family was freedom. If you hadn’t – I remember this – if you hadn’t learned it yet, you ain’t going to learn it. 18 was now no curfew. You’ve got it, you’ve got it. Come on when you want. Do what you want.

And I was rolling. I had straight A’s. Mom and dad are happy. I got a job on the weekends and after school. I got 45 bucks cash in my pocket every day. I got a car, it’s paid for. I’m dating the best looking girl at my school. Seeing another girl at the other school. I got a – Playing golf. I got a four handicap. I’ve had two holes in ones. I got no curfew. Talk about green lights, I’m rolling.

I don’t know what I want to do when I get out of high school exactly. But law school’s coming up. But you know what? My mom goes, “What about exchange student?” Sweden and Australia were the two, I suppose Australia, because it’s a – speak English and maybe Elle McPherson’s over there. 18 year old mind, right thinking, right.

So, boom, I go to Australia. I was told I was going to be living on the outskirts of Sydney, which sounded exciting to me. It was not the – it was the outskirts, but it was three and a half hours from there and it was in a very small town, population 305 people of Warnervale. And I remember pulling up that gravel driveway with that host family and when the breaks and they’re like, “Welcome to Australia, mate.” I was like, “All right, not what I thought, but I can make this work.”

Finding Resistance and Purpose

All of a sudden, I don’t have my car. I ain’t got my girlfriend I wanted to go see on the other side of town. I don’t have my golf clubs, I ain’t got money in my pocket. And I got a 10pm curfew. Even on Friday and Saturday night. I’m going to school again. So I feel like I’m going in reverse socially.

None of the friends at the school, they put me in my junior year over there because I went mid semester and they wanted me to go first half of the year with the juniors so I could carry on the second half my year with what would become seniors. So I’m going – I feel like I’m going backwards socially. No one’s got it. No one’s got a car. Their interests seem to be different. The teachers are not – I’m failing. They’re giving me F’s and everything.

So I start skipping this class, going to the library and find Lord Byron. And I got my Walkman. I remember I had U2’s Rattle and Hum on cassette. I had Maxi Priest. Maxi Priest, he’s got a great Cat Stevens cover. And had an INXS album, which was an Aussie band. Hutchinson as lead singer. And those are my rotation, especially Rattle and Hum.

Rattle and Hum. Very socially conscious album about oppression and “Silver and Gold,” man. That’s what we’re all after. Oh, yeah. You think that’s going to get you to the higher ground? Oh, the evils of capitalism gone wrong and things like that. And freeing Nelson Mandela and worldly things that Bono and U2 about. We’re like, oh, making sense to me. I’m outside of my home. I’m going to form a little island.

Self-Discovery Through Isolation

You learn to have an objective look back at your own life. When you leave what you know, you find out a lot about what you actually know. And all of a sudden I’m seeing what my life was as that kid who got the money. And I’m flowing and I’m starting to look back on – I missed that. But I’m also going like, “You’re kind of good time rolling Charlie. You’re popular. Everything’s going great for you.”

I didn’t have any resistance in front of me, which was fine. But boy, now I got a lot of resistance in front of me. I don’t have my friends to talk to. I got questions coming up. This family’s very awkward relationship with the family. They even wanted me to call them one night, said, “From now on you’ll address us as mum and pup.”

Which was a seminal moment because many things had happened up until that point that were odd that I was going, “Okay, that’s just a cultural difference. That’s you McConaughey. Hey, stay open here. That’s a cultural difference.” But I remember the night they said that. And it was the first time and I needed – it was six months into my trip the first time I went, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not doing that.” It was clear. It was the first time I had clarity.

Creating Personal Discipline

Remember this time I’m reading Lord Byron in the library. The principals come to now see me and go, “Look, doesn’t look like school’s going good for you. We have this thing called work experience. Let’s get you a job, you won’t get paid.” So I worked at the ANZ bank, I worked at the barrister’s office. I’m taking these odd jobs as a carpenter and all these different things.

And my home life is this over in Australia. I am getting home, we have dinner at 5, we eat from 5 to 5:30. I clean the dishes. I am immediately going back to my room, take a bath, listen to one of those three album cassettes, read Lord Byron in the bathtub, work one out six nights a week. This, I’m running six miles a day. I’ve become vegetarian. I’m eating lettuce. Freaking lettuce head with ketchup on it. I’m down to 135 pounds.

I’m pretty doggone sure that I – my job is to go to South Africa and I’m supposed to – I’m going to be a monk and that’s where I’m going now. I look back now and I see, oh, I needed these disciplines to give me a sense of measurement each day of, “Oh, I’ve got my own thing going here.” Because my home life, I was lost, man, I’m lost. I don’t have any – I’m writing 16 page letters to myself and I’m returning them with a 17 page letter. Socratic letters to myself about what? Existential, huge existential questions mixed in with, “Oh, everything’s going great.” Trying to talk myself and then keeping my head up, you know what I mean?

The Power of Commitment

But I showed in hindsight, everyone was like, “Why didn’t you come home early?” And I remember it very clearly when I said, “Yes, I’ll go become the exchange student.” The ambassador, the American ambassador said, “Sign this contract that says you won’t return until a full year unless there’s a fatality in your family or you’re majorly sick.” And I said, “I’m not signing that. I’ll give you a handshake on it, man, because I’m going over there for the year, I’m not pulling the parachute.”

And I remember that handshake. And I remember what my dad told me about what happens when two men shake a hand, that you don’t need a contract, that that is the contract. And I had a certain honor with that. There was no way I was coming home. If I’d have come home, I’d have felt like I did my dad wrong.

So while I’m over in Australia going inside out, imploding, I start to find a little power in the fact that, “Oh man, harder this gets, the greater the reward there’s going to be on the other side once I get out of here.” Because it was non negotiable I was staying the year. So I never gave my mind the chance to go where you could go home. That was never on my proverbial mental table as a choice.

So I start to get identity off the strength of making that choice. The rest of the year became much easier. At least some of the troubles I was having I was laughing at. I wasn’t going to the bathtub at 5:30 doing what I was doing many years, many times a week, if at all. All of a sudden I’m kind of starting to live a little life and dancing with it going, “Yeah man, just not easy. But this is how it is. We got it, we got it.” I’m writing, writing first poems in there that I wrote.

Returning to Law School

STEVEN BARTLETT: And then life brings you back to Texas to study law.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Which doesn’t end up working out for you because in your sophomore year you start questioning yourself. I think based on this little book.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yep. That book right there is a gift.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you’re studying law and you start questioning yourself because of something you read in this book.

The Greatest Salesman in the World

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So this book was the end of my sophomore year, I’m headed towards law school, going to take my finals. I was a study bug. I made A’s across the board. And all of a sudden for the first time in my life, I go, “Dude, you got this, you don’t need to study this anymore.” And I shut my books I’d never done that before. And now I got two hours before my first exam.

And I look over and there’s a stack of magazines over here. Sports Illustrated, Playboys, Penthouse. I’m like, “I like sports. I like women too. Let’s check these out.” I get them, I flip through, eh, nothing, nothing, nothing. After about the seventh magazine deep, I look down and this book is laying there and this is what’s facing me. It was in the middle of the stack of the magazines and I look at it and I go, “The Greatest Salesman in the World.” And I said out loud, I go, “Who’s that?”

I pick it up, I start reading first chapters about forming good habits and becoming their slave. And I remember thinking, “Well, if you’re going to go against yourself and go to law school, you’re just going to say, man, yeah, I think I’ll do it. That’s not a good habit, McConaughey. It’s not a good habit for you. You might be missing out on something. You better create a new habit of just doing what you think you were expected to do.” That was the thinking in my mind. And I said, “All right, well, I’m going to – I want to go to film school. I don’t want to go to law school. I want to go to film school.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Simply because the book mentioned that having the habit of doing something just because you think you should or can.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Isn’t it that part I verbalized that doesn’t seem to say that directly. Just saying “I will form good habits and become their slave.” And I was like, “If I go to law school, that’s making me a slave to a bad habit.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: And the bad habit being bad habit.

The Power of Commitment and Faith

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Being, you’d be good at it. It’s kind of what you’re supposed to do. It’s all you’ve ever kind of thought you were doing. It’s what everyone expects you to do in the family. But remember, it’s keeping me up at night. Law school, all the twenties. I don’t know. I’ve also got this other thing. I’ve got a friend telling me, “Your short stories are good, man. You can tell a good story. When we’re filmmaking, you could tell.” That sounds fun.

Then I go, my dad’s paying for school, I got to get permission from him first. So I go, okay, what’s a good time to call him? I remember I planned it out. I said, it was Monday and I said, I’ll call him now. I said, no, no, no, he’s at work, don’t call him now at work. He won’t be able to compartmentalize. This is going to come out of left field for him. He’s in the middle of pipe sales, right?

I said I’ll call him tonight. No, no, no. Monday, back from work, it’s a stressful day. Tuesday night, second day of the week, he’s into the work week. He’ll have eaten dinner. He’s on the couch having a beer with mom. Called him at 7:36pm I remember the number.

“Hey, Pop.”

“Hey, what’s up, monkey man?”

“Can I talk to you about something?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“I don’t want to go to law school anymore. I want to go to film school.”

And I’m like, little bead of sweat starts to go down the back of my neck. I’m like, here it comes. “You want a what?” I thought he was going to go into other stuff about my ass. You know what I mean? “That could be a hobby, but that’s not a real job.” I thought all this was coming.

And after about a five second pause, he goes, I hear this, “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

“Yes, sir.”

Another long pause. Then I hear, “Well, don’t half ass it.”

And I remember just beaming, hopping up. It’s like yes, launch pad man. My dad not only said okay in the way he said “don’t half ass,” it was also okay. “Let’s go, big boy, own that shit. Put some leverage, get some horsepower behind where you’re going. Go do it now.”

Remember, to this day, and I’ve learned this later, I think, from becoming a father, part of what I believe happened to him and why he said that to me that way on that call was the way that I asked him. I wasn’t really asking, was I? “I don’t want to go to law school, Dad. I want to go to film school.” I didn’t stutter. He heard his son saying, this is what I want to do.

And what I think happened to him in that moment is what I think any father, any parent loves is you raise your kids a certain way and you give them a guideline, a ladder to climb. And here’s the guidelines. If you do it this way, you’re most likely going to have some success in life and it’ll work out for you. And when we do it that way, we can be proud parents.

But what do we really want to happen when our kids are out of the house and they’re on their own, we kind of want him to call one day and go, “I’m breaking out. I’m going my own way.” And as a parent, we go, as much as it may scare us, we’re going, yes. I gave my kid the confidence and the courage and the foundation to say they’re going to go their own way. And in a way, I think every parent honors and loves that moment.

And I heard my dad, when he didn’t hear me stutter, when he heard me directly say what I said. And I wasn’t really asking him, even though I was out of respect asking him, the way I said it, I wasn’t asking him. And I think he felt that.

Don’t Half Ass It: A Philosophy for Life

STEVEN BARTLETT: “Don’t half ass it,” don’t half ass it as a philosophy for life. How important has that proven to be since then? Because you’ve remembered it and I’ve heard you reference it as being important.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Look, it’s become quite, and again, not it’s become more than intellectually important or more than something I need to put on my fridge to remind me. It has become important in relationships, it has become important in work, it has become important in self help. It has become important for my own spirituality. It’s become important for me as a father, as a husband.

Relationship wise, don’t half ass it. What’s that turned into me is another sort of theory I have and I call it “own don’t rent.” Going with an owner’s mindset into relationships. Most relationships that we make, assistant or girlfriend, boyfriend. Most of them don’t last the whole life. But I believe that if you go into those with the idea that I want it to be a lifer, if this works out, hopefully this is forever. Usually they don’t end up being that. But the owner’s mentality will give you that per you and that person the dignity and the power to go. We can be everything we can be in this relationship. And if it doesn’t work out, we say it didn’t work out.

But if I’m going into renter’s mentality, I flip it. “Yeah, I’ll do this for a few weeks. Yeah, I don’t know if this kid’s going to make it. Maybe, maybe a couple months.” You’re not going to get the most out of that person.

The Power of Commitment

STEVEN BARTLETT: But it was like you in Australia. You went in committed to owning that full experience and not leaving. There’s something really, people tell me all the time, especially married people, because I asked them, I said, “What’s, why do people get married. Why don’t you just, you know, why do you need the contract?” And they talked to me about how going in with commitment itself changes how you deal with the inevitability of the messiness. The messiness that you saw in your parents relationships and challenge itself. Challenge as you saw in Australia, but also in your parents. Marriage is inbuilt into all things meaningful. And if you go in with that renter mentality, the first red light, you’re out.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know what you do? Something happens, “Oh, this is a sign of things to come. Oh, this is only going to get worse.” No, when you get married, you’re like, we’re owning this. Oh, my alarms. The spider sense. My alarm didn’t start going off because we’re going to work through this. And if it does become a habit, we’ll work through it. Or it’s a one off and I just got to put up with it because they do what they’re doing more than I don’t them doing that. Which is another good measurement.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You know, I guess it begets the question about the role or the benefit of having Plan Bs because we’re increasingly told to have plan B in a relationship or plan C, D and E. And in work, a plan C, D.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And E options can make us a tyrant. Too many options can make a tyrant of any of us, man. You know what I mean? So can conveniences. You know what I mean? Yeah. And you, when you don’t give yourself that option. And mind you, there’s plenty of divorces out there that were necessary and were good for both of them. Problem. But I think there’s more divorces because someone had a little. Gave them selfie out. Had the renter’s mentality. “Ooh, first sign of smoke, I’m going to say there’s fire. Be easier to get out of here.” Path, least resistance. Sorry. I think too many people quit. I think that’s. That. That’s more of a problem than the divorces that are ones that turned out to be good.

Breaking Free from Certain Misery

STEVEN BARTLETT: So many people are at that stage in their life where they might have that bad habit that you described. They might know that they’re in a situation which isn’t for them. Maybe their parents gave them this idea, society pushed them into that position. And I think it’s the uncertainty that keeps them trapped. The certain misery is often much more appealing than the uncertainty.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I just want you. You managed to make that change, which is quite rare.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, what that reminds me of is I started to become a little cynical, which is different than being skeptical. I believe it. We go from innocence when we’re born to naivete to skepticism where we’re discerning and discriminate on choices. We have judgment, and then the next one is off the cliff. What I think is cynicism, the misery of cynicism is a hell of a lot easier than the optimism and belief of skepticism. Hell of a lot easier. It’s a. Easy. Bam. Put it down. “Oh, that’s hard.” Bam. I’m out. The individuality. Bam. “Nah, man, it’s hard. If I sweat, don’t do it.” Bam. You put him down. “Hey. Everyone just laughed at my joke. See, it was easy. I was at life, the party,” I think less respected once you leave that situation.

But you now, you’re living in doubt and you’re also doubting yourself that I don’t want to work that hard. I don’t want to see if I can make that work anymore. I don’t want to give that person the benefit of the doubt because it can be a lot of work and they’re going to screw up and I’m going to go, “Told you so.” Nah. So let’s not even try it. Or if I do try it, let’s just rent. Let’s do more than just sign that prenup. You know what I mean?

There’s. There’s parish. We give ourselves the options and the parachutes in too many places. We pull it early when we could still be flying, even though maybe rocky flight pull that some bitch. Okay. It was a safe move. Got down to the ground. What I was building didn’t last. Sometimes maybe it shouldn’t. I think most of the time it could if you hung in there. Both of you.

The Crisis of Independence

STEVEN BARTLETT: Before we started recording, we were having a little bit of a chat about a thought that’s been on my mind recently about how independence and I guess an abundance of choice kind of links to that might be leading people astray. Because the most, it appears to me, the most fulfilled people that I know generally have a lot of dependence. The culture we live in tells us to be our own boss. Stand on your own two feet. More people are lonely than ever, less friends than ever, less likely to have kids, less likely to get married. And it feels like independence. And those people often, I think, are struggling.

I think of so many of my friends, one in particular that I’ve mentioned a few times, who, 38 years old, living the life of independence a picture of independence. Skyrise, apartment, single, no kids, freelancer so not going to a team, working from his home. And then, you know, one of my best friends, six months later, I see him in person and he’s flown to America, been baptized and tells me that for three or four months he just couldn’t get out of bed. There was no meaning in his life. And so now he’s interesting, you know, strongly Christian man. And we’re seeing this especially with young men in particular. We’re seeing more and more of them turn to religion. And I’m wondering what’s going on there.

The Need to Be Relied Upon

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, let’s stay on young men for a while. And this does not exclude young women. But for the sake of this conversation, I’m going to block it over here and say, young man, we want and need to be relied on. We want and need to be depended on.

And a sheer independent individual lifestyle with nothing that you’re responsible for outside of what you only need. Nothing. No other gardens. You have to tend to career relationally. No other collective, communal. Oh, thank you. I needed that. Who. Who relies on us? How much do we need to rely on others? There’s another question and I don’t know that answer. Be fun to discuss it. How much do we need to be. How much do we need to depend on others?

I want my self reliance is at the top of the. My value system. And I don’t think it is contradictory to faith. I actually think that free will and fate again are here. As a believer, I believe that it’s all been written at the same time. I believe God’s going, “I need your hands on the wheel, man. You’re steering this, okay? Don’t just rely on fate.” Too many people doing that, man.

The Agnostic Years and Self-Reliance

I’ve had my agnostic years where I was not believer at all. Fully and self reliant. It’s on me, everything. And I think it was such a valuable few years because I did need to call myself on some. I did need to say, “The buck stops here with you, McConaughey.” I didn’t need to become a. Quit becoming such a repeat offender.

You know, I was sinning, which means to miss the mark, miss, have bad aim, literally. It comes from an archery term. To sin means to miss the mark. When you think about it like that becomes more practical, especially for us agnostics and stuff. I was missing the mark and it was time for me. I didn’t want to keep forgiving myself on Sunday and then repeat and do the same shit again Monday through Friday and then go, “Oh, now I can be forgiven.”

I was like, “No, Man, Forgive me, Father. I know what I’m doing and I’m keep doing it. Cut the shit, McConaughey. Quit giving yourself that out that parachute, even though you may have it, even though word says grace of God will forgive you.” Yeah, you need to. I need to strong arm myself, put my damn hands on the wheel, look in the mirror and go, “It’s on you.” Because it is.

At the same time, when I came out of that, I was like, “Oh, those two aren’t mutually exclusive. The self reliance and belief.” I heard God applauding going, “Thank you. I need more. More like you that go, yes, I’m responsible. The choices I make today have to do with where I’ll be tomorrow. Yes, they have consequences. My choices matter. Thank you.” That’s what I heard. But it wasn’t exclusive of having faith and belief again.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What caused that period of your life in your late twenties where you started to drift because at that time you’d had your first success as an actor?

The Chateau Marmont Years

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I think I was living, I was giving. I gave myself the luxury of living that fully independent top of the penthouse. I got money. I decided to go check in at the Chateau Marmont. I laid down $120,000 tab, said, “Let me know when that’s out.” Me and my dog, couple years, bought a pair of leather pants and a motorcycle.

Told myself the next two years, “If you ever think you’ve had too many, order another one. Next two years. You ever go, oh, maybe I should have a single order double.” I exercised it in as healthy way as I could, but I was sheerly independent and I did not. I was swimming, I was transient, it was fun.

But when every day’s a Saturday and every night’s a Saturday night, started looking for a little. I need to break a sweat here. I need. Where’s the resistance? Where’s my. I need my Monday morning, literally. And I need it here. And I need it faith wise.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Did the loss of your father around in your 20s have a big impact on this sort of unanchoring?

The Loss of His Father

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No. The loss of the father dropped the anchor deeper and got more secure. That was ’92. That was five days into shooting my first film, Dazed and Confused. The loss of him one which was. I didn’t think he could die. Obviously he could and he did. And it was. Took my mother to kill him. As you know from the story, they made love on a Monday morning. He had a heart attack.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s not a bad way to go.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I mean, he called it. He told me, my brothers, “Boys, when I’m going to go. When I go, I’m making love to your mother,” and damn it if he didn’t do it.

But him passing away after the shock in the morning really woke me up to go, “Oh, you don’t have that.” Talking about parachutes again. You don’t have that one being in your life that has your back. That in my mind was above government, above religion, everything. “Oh, if I’m really in a pinch, Dad’s got my back.” You don’t have that anymore, Matthew.

So all the things he taught you, that you’ve kind of been acting like it’s time to become those and put your ass on the line. Me, I remember that’s around the time I carved into a tree in the middle of the night. I woke up and these words were just stuck. And I went. And I was like, “I’d be less impressed and more involved.”

And my father passing on the world got flat. Things that I revered, mortal things that I revered, people, places. All of a sudden, my eye got level. Things that I was patronizing and condescending and looking down my nose at rose up to eye level. And I was like, “Time to become a man. Walk forward, peripheral vision. Get it. Own yourself. Walk forward with more courage and start becoming the man you want to be. Instead of acting like it and putting it off.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Be less impressed and more involved.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: More involved, yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What did you mean by that, and where did that come from?

Be Less Impressed and More Involved

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It came from. We grew up hardcore on gratitude. I’m a very thankful guy, and being thankful and having gratitude is very important. But you can’t stop there, because too much just, “Oh, I’m so happy to be here. You’re so impressed to be here. Thank you for having me.” Which we should have. But if you live only there, I can’t even. We can’t be present and be involved in whatever we’re doing and do it as well as we want to do it.

You got to go, “No, thank you for letting me be here. And I’m supposed to be here now. Let’s go.” If I’m even talking to you, if I’m here going, “Man, I’m so happy to be here.” If I’m just happy to be here and go no further than that. We can’t have this conversation. I won’t be there yet. I can’t be grounded enough to have it right here. I’d be like. I’d anticipate my thoughts. I’d say something that may is only the pretty stuff and not the ugly stuff. Or, “Oh, don’t want to be mean.”

So to be involved allowed me to be more honest and have more courage. When we’re involved, we’re more honest and have more courage to do what we’re fashioned to do, how we’re fashioned to do it. But if we’re only impressed, you know.

And I’ve had these moments when I met the Coen brothers. They’re my favorite directors. I revered them, had dinner with them. I blew it. And I fumbled over my weapon. Damn it, jet back. Because I was nervous. I was so happy to be there. I was so impressed to be sitting down with the Coen brothers and not involved enough to sit there and have a conversation.

And I look back that night and I go, “That’s why they never cast me at anything. I blew it that night.” And I’ve since seen them. And I was like, “That night we met, I want to do over. Coen brothers, if you’re out there, I want to do over.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: This is really transferable advice to both me as a podcaster, because I get to meet so many of the people that I’ve admired for so long, especially being a kid from the UK, but also generally for people just going to job interviews and trying out for things that you really can inadvertently lower your perceived value just by being impressed and not involved.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Probably won’t get hired that way either.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: What’s the hiring person want to see? Someone who’s respectful, but if you hold them in reverence, they’re like, you know, there’s so many ways to say it. I don’t need my ass kissed, man. I want to hear. I want to meet you. I want. I don’t agree with me on everything, you know, I want to hear you. “Ah, but back.” And they had a reason behind it. They weren’t, you know, being negative for or cynical or they weren’t just trying to be contrary for contrary reasons. They actually had thought about that and was challenging. Look at that.

Relationships, girls, guys, what do we want? Not the one that’s like, “Yeah, whatever you want to do.” You want someone to go like, “Oh, how about this? I got this other idea. Oh, oh, interesting.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: You just reminded me of a guy I interviewed the other day called Jonah. And Jonah, at the very end of the call, young guy turned around to me and said, “You know, by the way, I think you should completely change this particular company was going to be joining of mine, completely change the branding. I don’t think it’s good enough.”

And I paused and I said to him, I’ll never forget what I said. I said, “I want to say two things to you, Jonah. First,” I jokingly went, “How dare you? And secondly, that is the best thing you have said in the last hour because for me, he did exactly what you did. He wasn’t impressed. He was involved and he challenged. He told me that basically our entire brand for this particular company needed to be changed and redone.”

So, “How dare you? And that is the best thing you’ve done” because it did exactly what you said. It made me think, “Oh, okay, interesting. This is who he is and he’s a value.” Because people that are impressed are much less value than those that are able to. You know.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yes. Well said picture here.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, this picture said a lot to me. Maybe it’s just the way that you’re all gathered around.

Family Memories and Reverence

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, yeah, this picture. So that’s my oldest brother Rooster on the right. That’s Pat, Rooster’s 10 year old birthday present. Adopted. Wanted to go meet his parents one time when he was 17. Check his dad’s hairline. That’s me reverentially looking down on my father who’s holding court at the bar in the house. Quail Valley, Houston, Texas.

Looks like he just got off the golf course. I have a T shirt on. They have golf shirts on. Looks like I didn’t play with them at that time, but there were stories probably going on right there about something that they had just experienced. And I’m probably a little, I’m trying to, you know, I’m, I’m probably, this conversation is probably more between those two. And I’m going like, “Oh, I wish I was there in the stories,” which only happened for me once I turned 18. I had some stories before then, but that’s what that.

Look at the reverence with which I’m looking on to my dad. And he was old, he was holding court. He was a ham man. Him and, him and Rooster were best friends. Pat worked for him. I got to have a couple years with him before I went to Australia. A year with him. Yeah. But no, I had, I remember I had more than a full. Had a full summer with him, which later on I found out was their second divorce. I didn’t know it was. I thought mom was on an extended vacation in Florida.

So he and I had a summer where we got to hang out and I got a story in Greenlights about a night when I jumped the bouncer. Big rite of passage.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you miss him?

Missing His Father as a Creative Partner

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, I miss him creatively the most because I found out later and I didn’t know he was doing this. I found out later in life, years after he passed away, we found all these old paintings in the garage, and we found this pottery that he made. And he loved. He collected art and he loved charcoal paintings in pencil, black and whites. I had no idea he practiced art or liked it.

And so when I’m reading a script or I’m interested in doing a film, I still think, “Ah, I would love to have sent this. Dad, what do you think?” And talked about, “Hey, you know anybody like this? What do you think of this character? What do you think of the scenario? Hey, you know any men like this?” Because I based a lot of my characters off of people that I met through him. A whole lot. There’s been many characters that are based on parts of my brother Pat, who was my hero growing up. And there’s a lot of characters I’ve met through my older brother Rooster. But all those came through dad, and I would love to. I miss having those. I wish I could have those conversations with him.

He would have loved. The other night, we’re at Toronto Film Festival premiere in Lost Bus. My mom was in it. She’s 93. My son’s in it. That could have been. He would have come to Santa Fe with Mom. You know, he didn’t. Mom wanted. Mom wants to be on the stage. Mom. Every performance I’ve ever done, she’s like, “You did great, Matthew. I see where you get it from.” All right. Dad didn’t want to be on the stage. He could take the stage, but he would have seen from the beginning me doing my thing from the front row and been like, “There you go, buddy.”

So I miss him as a creative partner and in sharing the declarations, when you have a red carpet and in here. And what’s your opinion on that? Hey, well, watching movies with me. Never watched movies. I miss that. In his hands, man. He had these healing hands, and we’d have been buddies by now, right out of philosophically, wherever we had our differences, he would have enjoyed the debates instead of looking at me at 16 going, “Who the hell do you think you are talking bucking like that?” Which is what led him to go, “You’re a great debater. I want to be a family lawyer.”

But we’d have been buddies because at 18 was the freedom, rite of passage. That’s when he goes, “You ain’t learned by now. You ain’t going to learn it.” So we would have. I wouldn’t have had to hear, this is a time when I’m still hearing about the experiences of yesterday and last night. Yearning to one day be able to be there and be part of the stories. And we did get a year together where we got to be part of the same stories, which meant so much to me, but I would have had years of that.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you think he would have been surprised by the life you’ve lived subsequently?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No, My family’s got an odd thing they aren’t surprised by. Shit, man. Especially any of my success. I mean, my brothers hadn’t even seen all my movies. If I invited them to the premiere in Toronto the other night, they’d have found every excuse they could not to go and wouldn’t have come. They don’t disrespect or love many less for it’s just like, “Man, we know you, little brother.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s something beautiful in that. Do you remember these?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yes.

The 10 Goals in Life

STEVEN BARTLETT: You wrote this roughly around the same time in 92. Roughly, actually, when I was born. Funnily enough, I saw the date on the top and thought, oh, it was a few days after my birthday. And again you put fatherhood number one. But there’s a series of other things on this list of your 10 goals in life, which you wrote in 1992. As you reflect on those goals, do you wish you hadn’t written any of them? And is there anything else you wish you had written?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No, that. That. That I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: 10 goals in life. Become a father. Find and keep a woman for me. Keep my relationship with God. Chase my best self. Be an egotistical utilitarian. Take more risks. Stay close to mum and family. Win an Oscar for Best Actor. Look back and enjoy the view. Just keep living.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I don’t know what I’d add to that.

The Necessity of Resistance

STEVEN BARTLETT: One of the things that you talk, you’ve talked a few times about is this idea of you needing resistance. Yeah, you said it two or three times. And we’re going back to what it is to be a man and what it is to be a well orientated, stable man needing resistance. Is that a goal to aim for? Is that.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I think it’s just a necessary necessity for having more than just an individual life. The top of the high rise with money. If that’s, if you’re successful, do that. I mean, I’m supposing that whether it’s different words, your friend went to Christianity for this for a very similar reason. It’s like certain amount of guilt’s very healthy. It helps us, keeps us its boundaries without any shame, without any embarrassment without any guilt, tell me it’s all just four dimensional. Where’s the form? Where’s the art? It’s four dimensional. It has no form.

You got to have gravity to have form. You got to have some resistance. To have some form. You got to push off of something to go somewhere. You got to be. It’s very hard when you’re just floating and no gravity and no resistance. To actually pursue a North Star, you have no leverage. You’re floating. Where’s the art? Probably more anarchy than art.

So resistance gives form. Heard great artists say this. Limitations reveal style, resistance, something to go or else sucking green lights. If life’s just nothing but green lights, if you got no yellows and reds, no reasons to pause or crisises that stop you. Resistance. What, are you just going to go in circles till you run out of gas, get dizzy? I don’t see that. How do we evolve or devolve without resistance?

Now, picking the right resistance is an art in itself. It’s challenging. I’ve been clumsy with it in my life. When, especially when I got famous and got success and enough people telling me, “I love you” and the caviar and the champagne, I was like, “The shit. Why me? I don’t deserve any of this. What did I do?” And I fucked things up on purpose just to say, I tripped myself running downhill so I could bloody my own nose and go, “Oh, now I can feel. Okay, okay, now my heels are on the ground.” I need clumsy.

So I don’t think we need the kind of resistance that we create that can harm us or get in our way for getting in our way sake. Because I’ve come to learn, I think we all are. No, when things are going really well, resistance is going to come. If you stay, if you stay with, if you’re, if you have any ambition, resistance is going to come.

The Comfort Crisis

STEVEN BARTLETT: We often see resistance as a form of failure and something that we should endeavor to avoid. You think about the avoidance of, people building families or even, you know, many people consider that we’re living in a bit of a comfort crisis. This is slightly a different sort of analogy. But most of the diseases that we have today, whether the diseases of, I don’t know, the mind, people feeling lonely and isolated, all physical diseases, 80% of Americans getting back pain, but no one in the Hadza tribe in Africa getting back pain. They’re all a consequence of us continually choosing comfort, which is a short term friend, but long term enemy. And resistance, I think, is something increasingly. We can choose, opt out of it’s a choice too.

Tips Included

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I mean, can I hit a little point on this subject? It’s called tips included. And I wrote this based on participation, trophies, entitlement. How too much of something can be just as harmful is not enough. How we all need good fortune, good fate and charity sometimes, but we shouldn’t rely on that. Okay, called tips included.

“When extra credit’s included, credit doesn’t get us due. When more gives us less, the exchange rates gone askew. When amnesty is offered going into the crime, we’re more bound to commit it because there’s no fine, we start playing to tie instead of going for the win. When participation is the trophy for every cow in the pen. If I stay on the porch because you picked up the slack when you look over your shoulder, I can’t have your back. If there is no curfew, we’re going to stay out all night. No tab at our bar, we’re going to get drunk and start a fight. All these long lenses got us losing our sight. You keep lifting it from me, I’m going to lose all my might. When a four star duty suits a six star rate, we take our hands off the wheel and rely on fate. Eating all we can at the all we can eat buffet gives us a 3.8 education and a 4.2 GPA. We steal from ourselves and get away with the scam. What’s the measure of merit? With less give a damn. These unlimited options sure have me confused. While all the conveniences are keeping me properly lubed in this red light district with the horror of inflation, the ROI’s math don’t pay for vacation. So let’s just admit it, this extra credit’s quite a fluffer because when the tips included, the service will suffer.”

But it’s about that. The conveniences, the long lenses, everything’s like, oh, and we. We’ve out convenienced ourselves. What’s AI going to do to us? Talk about convenience. How much? And I want to keep hearing studies. I wonder if you have an opinion on this. How much of you coming up with an idea and then writing and rewriting it, thinking about it. No, no, no, no. That’s not our expert. Oh no, this is what I really mean. And how to get it done. How much of that is really valuable to get it beyond just an intellectual idea? More valuable than just going, “Ah, there it is.” Because what comes out of AI incredibly impressive. My hunch is that yeah, we can use it for signpost to help us. Oh, that’s good. Thank you for helping me organize. But There’s a value to us going through the sweat equity of learning something. How do you feel about it?

The Value of Struggle in Learning

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, exactly what you’ve said. But the studies have just that they’ve just come out using different things like ChatGPT have actually proven what you’ve just said to be true, that when people use AI to produce a piece of work, not only can’t they recall what they’ve made, but they also start speaking in language more like the AI. So they start to lose their own voice.

But I mean, yeah, I mean, through history, people like Richard Freyman, the physicist, has said the best way to learn something is to learn it and then to go through the pain of writing it, condensing it down to a simple truth, like you do so often in your new book, Poems and Prayers, and then sharing it with the world and then getting the feedback. And if the world understood it like you meant it, like that poem you just shared, you understand it. That’s evidence that you get it right.

So I think AI is going to be great for me saying something to you, but not learning something myself. And I think if you want to defend creativity and innovation and the ability to think, you actually have a huge opportunity, which is to go left when everyone’s going right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And it goes to what you were saying that you were talking about. Be careful when you mess, mess with incentives. Be careful when you choose the easier road. Be careful of the unintended consequences. And AI is a prime example of an unintended consequence of you taking the easier road today.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And you know, I just actually made a video about this, funnily enough, just, just warning my audience about when something appears to be like a short term friend, it’s usually a long term enemy. When you know, when you choose easy today, you choose hard tomorrow. And there’s always a trade off.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right. Do you think if you choose hard today, you usually get easy tomorrow?

Choosing Hard Today for Easy Tomorrow

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, there’s obviously a ton of nuance to this, but in many contexts, yes. So for example, my, I think of. I was thinking of my father. My father would never have. He would avoid conflict at all costs. He would avoid the difficult conversation. And when I zoom out over the decades of his life and marriage, I go, “Man, that costs you big time.”

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You caught up with him.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh my God. And me inverting that in my own life and continually just confronting it head on has had the complete opposite effect. You never, you know, when you were talking about being a young man and making that decision because you had that voice in your head saying, “Law might not be my thing.” And you made that phone call to your father. What I hear you did is you realigned yourself to you. Now if you hadn’t made that call and you’d let a couple more of those bad habits, you would have got to 40 and been like, “Who the fuck is this guy?”

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right?

The Art of Striving for Perfection

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is this life? You would have looked around and said, who is she? Who are they? What is this job? And that’s that course correction that I think requires you to do the slightly harder thing today. What do you think?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I agree with you. That’s the resistance that you’re choosing. You know, look, I still got to learn how to take a vacation because, you know, there’s sometimes when the wind’s at our back and we’ve earned it. There’s sometimes when it’s easy street and it’s like, yeah, don’t interrupt this, man. This is a sweet song. Trust that the hill’s coming again. Don’t be so impressed with this and don’t fall into it.

When things are going really well, I go, “Ah, there it is. That’s the main.” No, it’s not. Not with any ambition, it’s not. Or not with life happening, it’s not. But my hunch, I want to see what you think about this theory is rather you shoot for an A and make a C is better than shooting for C and making an F now. So go for perfection. Reality always comes in under it.

But in that moment when you see the inevitable reality, the outcome, the result, how quickly can we go, “Okay, but I got so much more out of it. The job, the person, myself, because I went for perfection than if I’d have just gone for. Nah, dude, just pass class.” It’s again that little bit owner’s renters mentality.

But what can be hard for me sometimes is it can take me too long to come down from when, oh, it didn’t hit perfection. And maybe it takes me a week to go, “Dude, now do you finally realize that of course you weren’t going to get perfection, but you got so much more out of it because you went for perfection.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So be pleased with reality because you got a good grade on it. Man. That word, that was good. That piece of art was. Wouldn’t have been that true if you wouldn’t have been. I don’t like I say this all the time, and I never mean this in a disrespectful way. I’ve never done a movie or a performance that lived up to what I thought it could be, because I’m thinking it can be divine. Comes out maybe majorly inspiring, may speak to masses, even have some magic to it, but only it’s divine.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s resist, that’s tension.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, yeah.

The Unclosed Gap

STEVEN BARTLETT: Unclosed gap. And I think everything that’s ever been built that’s great or creatively brilliant has come from someone who has a big expectation gap. And of course the very definition of that, you’re never going to close it. And actually probably the reason you then are motivated to move to the next thing and pursue divine again is because it wasn’t divine last time. Maybe there’s still something left on the table and that means you never arrive.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You talk about arriving a lot in the poems and prayers as well. I also was reflecting on your mother’s words where she, at a very young age to you positioned life as a dichotomy of being humble. But like, know that you’re the…

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And all those things you went through and it’s the same thing. It’s like strive for perfection. But also know that nothing will ever get there. And can you be okay with that dissonance.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right. That. And there’s a moment and I think it’s for the one of the arts of living is if you are going to prescribe to go shoot perfection, there’s that moment when reality comes in when you had to declare and the cards speak for themselves and it’s under but you because you oversaw it theory. I got called oversee because you oversee expect the best this divinity out of people and art and of yourself. And then it always comes in under how quickly can you go, “Ah, nice reality.”

The Perfect Outcome Question

STEVEN BARTLETT: Can I ask you a question about that then? If you had aimed for something to be perfect and then it delivered itself as perfect exactly how you had imagined, if at all possible, would that have made you happy? Would you have been?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I don’t know. Yeah, right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What made you scared?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Both, probably.

The Wrestling Match in Mali

Because, look, I’ve had moments. Let me tell you one in Africa, I’m in Mali. Africa. Dogon country. Me and my guide, who’s a buddy now, Issa, we’re hiking from village to village in the Bandiagara. Each village is 10 to 15 miles away. I went over there, needing my anonymity under the name of David. And I said I was a writer and a boxer. Well, they called me Daouda.

Anyway, they didn’t give a damn about the writing part, but they were very interested in the wrestling part. So each village I would go to start to catch up to me. Strong white men named Daouda. And they love to wrestle over there. They love to wrestle. It’s kind of a form of entertainment. The boys just walk up and start wrestling.

I get to this one village one night, Bandiagara Mato, and I’m laying there. It’s a 14 mile hike to get there. I’m laying on the ground stretching. The village is all kind of come up around. They’re talking and chattering and all of a sudden I hear this chattering that’s sort of at me. I can just hear it. And I look up and it’s these two boys, they’re about 18, and they’re boom, boom, boom, popping at me.

And I can be like. And I know enough in the tone, I don’t know what they’re saying because they’re speaking in Bambara. I’m like, are they talking to me? And he goes, “Yes. They are the wrestlers of the village. They say they are the best wrestlers of the village. And they are challenging you to wrestling.”

Oh, they are. I was like, “Well, they sure are talking a lot.” I go, “I don’t know if they mean it. Y’all have this thing over here. We have a thing in America where if someone talks too much, they really don’t mean.” He goes, “Yes, we have this. We have this.”

And just as that happens, you hear the crowd. Wha. Scream. And I look up, and the two boys, bam. Run off. Why? Because the real champion wrestler of the village, Michel, 5 foot 9, tree trunk, legs about 220, burlap bag wrapped with a rope around his waist, he showed up.

He doesn’t say a word. He just stands over me, points to me, points to himself, and points over here. I look over where he’s pointing, and there’s a big dirt pit. My heart starts racing. There’s the challenge as my heart’s beating, going, “Oh, no.” I start to get up because as this year saying, “Oh, no.” I’m hearing in this ear, “If you don’t, you will regret this for the rest of your life. You’ve got to go do it. This would at least be a great story to tell.”

So I get up. Village goes crazy. About 80 people have gathered now. The Chief comes out. I’m standing in the middle of pit, going, “I’m not sure how this is supposed to go. What are the rules?” Chief puts his hands on our heads. Michel grabs me by the waist, mimics to me. I grab him by the waist. Then he burrows his forehead down into my clavicle here, and I burrow mine into his. So now we’re like two bulls like this.

And the Chief puts his hands on our head and then raises them and goes, “Stop.” And the crowd goes wild. Ding, ding is what stop meant. So we start going around, man. And I’m thinking, “Okay, I get some leverage on this guy.” The legs are like tree trunks. I’m like, “Oh, I ain’t getting him down low.”

So we’re scrapping. Grab a boom. I get him over, bam, flip him on his back. He flips me back over. I backflip him off my back at somersault, and he comes in, gets me in a freaking leg lock that I can barely breathe. I’m almost got to tap out from. I shimmy that thing. All of a sudden, sheep comes in, separates. I’m hyperventilating, man. Crowd’s going crazy.

He’s got a split. Michel on this side, me on this side. I had these talismans that were in my beard. Two of them got torn out during the wrestling match. I got blood running down me here. My knees are bleeding, my ankles are bleeding. I’m hyperventilated and covered in sweat. I look over at Michel, who’s just staring at me going, barely a glisten on him.

And that’s when the Chief goes, “Dup.” And I go, “Oh, shit, here we go.” Boom, boom boom. Grabs my waist. Bop bop. Barrels his head. I burrow my head. We’re off, Goes around again. Pretty damn good match. Strong. I flipped in me, pinned me. We got up, got moving. All of a sudden chief comes in, separates us, raises both our hands. The crowd goes crazy.

As soon as he lowers our hands, Michel runs off. Everyone sees him go and they come in and grab me and put Demi on the shoulders. “Daouda da da da da.” I go over. Now I’m a big man in the village, which means they give me the best chair that has the least broken sort of, you know, straw on the seat. Which means the village boy finds me the biggest chicken and plucks it and they cook it for dinner for me, which means they take me to the cleanest spot in the river.

I come back at night, we eat. I get on the roof of the hut. What a magical day. I lay back, I see the Southern Cross for the first time in the sky. Like it was in neon light on a black backdrop. It was, you could not see it, it was so bright, staring me right in the face. I laid there 30 minutes, saw 29 shooting stars. I’m going, “I might have a direct line. I might be the chosen one. Wow.”

Just as I’m about to shut my eyes, I got a little in my throat. So I sit up, going to spit out over the off into the off. The top of the roof, loogie plastered to my face. I forgot I had put my mosquito net on and I was like, “Oh, perfect. Just when I was thinking I might have the direct line, I just spit a loogie in my own face.” And there became the humor.

Now to finish off that story. The next morning when I left the village, remember Michel who ran away? I got to the edge of the village, about to make the 14 mile walk to the next village. And there behind the first tree, passed off the property, popped out. Michel, not a word, looked at me, bowed, grabbed my hand. He walked me the 14 miles to the next village, got to the village border, the next tribe bowed and walked home.

I went back unannounced. Six years later, did the same trip, ran into the same people. The kids had grown six years older. Everybody, we get to Bandiagara Mato. There’s Michel. He’s had five kids and he broke his hip, so he’s got a limp, right? So we all agree, not another wrestling match. We have a great dinner that night. We talk, we tell stories. They’re speaking Bambara, I’m speaking English, but we’re just understanding each other’s sort of charades.

Now get up next morning, go to leave, find that same tree. Out pops Michel, bows, reaches out his hand, holds my hand, and 14 miles to the next village. Stop. Bows, turn around.

I asked Issa back then, the first time in 99. After that night, when I wrestled Michel and he walked me the first time I got there, I was like, “What? Tell me about what happened last night. I do all right.” He goes, “Oh, no, no, no. You do very well. When you accept the challenge, that is, when you were big man in this tribe, it was not about the win or the lose. You accept the challenge, and then you wrestle Michel, who’s not only champion of Disney Village, but of this village and tree village back. And you handled Michel. Handled was the word. One of those. It’s handled.”

He goes, “You come back, we make money.” That’s what he told me then. And I went back six years later and had that experience and that experience with Michel, the respect. We had him. He walked me, broken hip and all the 14 miles to the next village.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You accept the challenge.

The Challenge of Accepting Challenges

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You accept the challenge. That is when you were a big man in this village. Because I was like, they put me on the shoulders, man. What was it? Oh, you were a big man when you accept a challenge. He said, “Whole village think Michel going to have strong white man named Douda on back in 10 seconds over. But you handled Michelle. Not win or lose handled. But you were big man when you accepted challenge.” Beautiful.

And then he’s there six years later and walks me the same way. I mean, I think your question was on, you know, when we know or how confident, when we’re feeling like we’re on the right path, which that was a time when I thought I was so much. I was like, I think I might be the, you know, loogie in my face. And that to me was God going, “You’re doing good, but not that good, bud.”

The Silent Crisis Among Young Men

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s so many young men that are struggling. When I looked at the stats around suicidal ideation and suicidality, the biggest killer of men under I think the age of 45 is themselves. And it’s funny, you said earlier on about to be a young man, you have to feel like someone depends on you.

And it reminded me of someone on the show that told me when they analyzed suicide letters, the prevailing sentiment across all of these suicide letters, I think it was an Australian study, was feeling like people didn’t need you, or even worse, they were better off without you. In suicide letters from men Japanese almost. And it goes. It was when. So when you said earlier that this, you know, we need someone to depend upon us. It made me think about that.

And then you talked about challenge. We need a resistance and challenge to aim for. And life is removing that, that challenge.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It’s.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s removing the.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. What are the new challenges?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Being on the Internet, TikTok social. Like social. Social media.

Finding Immortal Challenges

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So if those challenges though, for now, and I’m going to just paraphrase this, if those challenges may not be the ones that hopefully we find ways that they can actually pay us back in a qualitative way, don’t we need a challenge that’s immortal? Like belief in God or belief in our better self and how we are as a human and our own character and our own dignity and our relationships in tomorrow, in our past and our kids that are not measured and paid for with a local mortal currency, but are a pursuit that keep us having qualitative and valuable experiences that mean something to us and give our life meaning while we’re doing whatever it else we’re doing in life that may not be giving us the meaning or making us feel.

Science and Faith: A Practical Pursuit

STEVEN BARTLETT: I want to ask you something because as I started to read poems and prayers, you sort of confront a lot of my previous rebuttals to faith, which I imagine a lot of young people have, which is around like the science of it. Like what about the science? What about proof in evidence? You confront this head on. And how do you think about that? Because you’re someone that understands the science and the studies and all those kinds of things.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: But I think one, I think science is the practical pursuit of God. And like we’re talking about perfection, it ain’t ever going to get there, but bravo for it. I believe God loves a scientist. I believe he does. Going, “Thank you again, like hands on the wheel. Thank you for being agnostic and going, you can only believe in your science. Thank you. You’re turning your way towards me. Not going to get here. But thank you for that pursuit, that independence to bring up the word again.”

It’s. I don’t know. That’s the point. I can’t not conclude those are nouns. Belief is a verb. Faith is a verb in God or any of those other things that we were talking about our better selves, each other, those are scientists. Doesn’t necessarily doubt science just says I can’t believe in something that until it’s proven and if it’s unproven, my craft says I cannot believe. I believe that’s what a scientist looks at it.

So I cannot believe in or maybe as I must doubt that which cannot be proven. I understand that that does not again contradict a scientist. Or if that’s your vocation, if that is your philosophy and your life creed of how you behave and believe, that does not contradict belief and God, even though you can’t conclude that God exists. I know plenty of scientists that are also believers.

A Practical Approach to Faith

I don’t know. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s. I got a poem in here. And this is, this is not a lowest common denominator, but also just a. Another practical way of thinking about it. If you’re like man, I don’t. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not for it. Let’s just go practical for a second. Heaven or not. All right? Tomorrow is not today’s measurement. When the misery is bad enough to the suffering. Consideration is a privilege.

And that’s part of what faith and religion are for. To help those in misery hang on to a hope that will most likely not be served them in this life, to sell them belief and faith that they will be served in the next. And what if there’s nothing there, man? What if there’s nothing to hope for? No next. I don’t know either way, in misery here or without a heaven there. Not having any hope or faith in anything is a certain way to remain where you are forever.

But if you can find something that can keep you going, something no matter how small, to look forward to and continually have faith in and chase, well, then your life here will be better than it is now, heaven or not. It’s not an argument for faith. It is saying, though what I think is true, what I believe is true is that to pursue that divinity, even if you don’t believe in the author, it’s not anonymous.

But if you say no, when you say that’s, that’s God, I don’t believe in that author. Fine. Okay. Find principles, ways of living and approaching life, yourself, others, neighbor and self. Call them ethics, whatever morals, whatever you want to call them, paradigms and sort of law markers out there. That’s kind of helps in this life. Now.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s what the science and the studies show, that people that are, do have a faith are happier, healthier, and people can argue as to why that is.

Restoring Religion’s Original Meaning

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know, hey, that’s what I’m. Oh, I try to be clear in this, that I’m not only. I’m not trying to convert people to go, “No, you should believe in God.” There’s plenty enough to go, I get it, with religion that excludes a certain amount of people that I cannot go there. I cannot go. I cannot purchase the belief that some people of faith have, which is, “Well, if you don’t believe Jesus is the only son of God and that’s it, then you’re going to hell.” I got too many friends, a lot of them over there in Mali and around the whole world. I’m like going, I can’t go as far to believe that they’re all going to hell, if there even is one.

But it’s when religion has become exclusionary along the way that let’s remember we bastardized it. You know, religion comes from the word, you know, I love, like I talked about sin earlier, to miss the mark. Religion is from the Latin root re legare. Legare means to bind together. Re means again. Religion is about restoration.

Got a bunch of spiritual friends who say they’re not religious. And know what they’re telling me is they want unity. That’s what religion means. We bastardized it along the way. We made it a business. I don’t believe that the original creators of religion and Muhammad and Jesus and God are going, “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.” No, there’s even stories in the Bible about going, “No, that ain’t fine.”

But so we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, I just pose the question to us to say, maybe it’s not religion we’re mad at. Maybe we need to restore what that means, restore its original meaning and live that way instead of just accepting what it’s become. In so many places, in so many ways.

Poems and prayers comes to me because I started getting a little cynical myself. I started to, you know, default objectify. Found myself objectifying people. Kind of looking down my nose at them upon on hello. Thinking they’re probably not going to make the cut at what they do without any reason to be thinking that way.

I started looking, listening to the news and leadership, and I’m going, “Why wait a minute now. So we’re saying if success, success is the key, success is the measurement, and you can get it by lying, cheating and stealing and still be rewarded the gold medal. That’s what’s happening. Are we ready to say that’s okay? Are we ready to say that’s just how it is.”

We have leaders in positions now that are saying, “Yeah, just win, just win, just succeed. But yeah, I don’t care. You get there, you did it. Congratulations. Come to the front of the line.” So what are the ethics? I don’t know what the winner do? Well, but they wait, what about. What about rules? “Oh, yeah. By the way, the rules, if you follow them, you’re a sucker.”

I started to find myself going, “Oh, wait a minute. I’m not ready to say. That’s just how it is. I’m not ready to wave that white flag.” Are we ready to wave that white flag and go, we can see that’s what it is. Because there’s many reasons to do so. And so I’m looking around at people and going, I’m not finding things people to believe in, and I’m finding it harder to believe myself.

Reframing Success and What Really Matters

STEVEN BARTLETT: One of the things that I learned through your writing, in poems and prayers, but also in greenlights, is that although those people might get to the front of the queue and be awarded the medal, the medal that you’re awarded or the queue that you get to the front of might not actually give you what you want.

And you start by sort of reframing success, which I think is a really important thing, especially for a young generation, especially for men who are, you know, the first to want to get to the top of the pyramid in certain pursuits in life. And actually from thinking about what your goal was of being a father and how that’s a lost pursuit, if you look at, you know, the amount of people that are having children.

And I think that’s a big question. And actually, that’s what your writing does for me. It really confronts me in a way to go, okay, you can get to the top of the pile, or you can get the gold medal. But be careful what that medal represents. And a medal in what, right.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Relevant for what we all want to be. Relevant. Okay, like, relevant for what we want to succeed. But when we succeed, do we act? Is it worth it if we don’t profit?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, you said.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If more we’re. We’re trained to go. The quantity is the. Is the. Is the goal. That’s it. Well, then, if that’s sacrificing quality.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Or value what we actually value, what are you really winning? You’re winning one of the Mortal Games. You know, and mind you, I also think it’s worth talking about, and I don’t know, the answers is I’m sitting over here in a privileged place to be able to say that, yeah, someone’s in misery. You don’t talk to them about projecting and sacrificing today so you can have more tomorrow.

Those people are looking at you going, “Trying to pay my rent, but food on the table. Well, lucky you Matthew, you get to talk about that.” I’m not saying, I’m not saying that I changed my mind, but I am conscious and I still need, I still have more learn from talking with people that are going like man, I don’t have the luxury to think about tomorrow.

The Failure of Independence

STEVEN BARTLETT: The other thing that is particularly front of mind for me and has been for about three to six months now is just this idea of independence which has increasingly been sold to people. Whether it’s be your own boss. More people are lonely than ever before. Less people are choosing to have families than ever before. This idea of independence might have failed us.

And like all of my friends that are most happy have the most dependence and my friends that are struggling now are in therapy, are having what I would describe as an existential crisis, have the most independence. No one depends upon them and they depend upon no one.

And the other sort of adjacent idea to this is I’m writing this book at the moment called I Can’t Find God, which is kind of a reflection of my own religious curiosity that maybe we do need to ladder up to something. So me, my family, my community, maybe the planet then met something transcendent, something higher.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And people that don’t ladder up seem to be lost.

The Power of Divine Pursuit

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. If you go from who we are and make the North Star God or the proclivity to imitate and be more divine, those things happen naturally through the humility, through the courage, through the sort of peace of mind, wrong or right, that “oh, this isn’t all there is, let’s play the immortal game.”

So therefore risks are much easier to take. Are much more courageous down here because you’re like, “I’m not looking forward to dying, but I ain’t that afraid of it.” That’s a very life affirming feeling to have.

Where I think selfishness and selflessness are in bed together in that place, or humility and confidence are hooking up. They’re not even this. I think they’re that when the idea of God or God literally, or that pursuit of just being our more sacred and divine selves, well, there’s a lot of power, I think that comes.

Finding Your Natural Abilities

STEVEN BARTLETT: When your children come to you Matthew, and ask you, they say, “Dad, you know I want to be a success in my life,” defined in whatever way I define it. You’ve been able to climb to the very top of the mountain that you aim to climb. In terms of your professional achievements, is there anything transferable? You talked about hard work earlier that people might miss when they see such a remarkable career.

Because I look at your career journey on paper and I go you’ve you did it. But then you did it again and again and again and again and again and again and again at the very very highest level. And I’m wondering is this was this natural talent? Was were you given something in your DNA? And I know it’s hard to sometimes self analyze but what is it? What is that?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So I think that and what I do try to say some version of this to my kids when we talk about their futures is look and I talk to a lot of young people about this. If you first if start with what do you have an innate ability to. What’s in your DNA?

I wanted to play basketball for years. I wanted to dunk and ain’t my DNA, bro. I was never. I’m never going to dunk. No matter how hard I worked at it. I was never going to dunk. That’s what I wanted to do. To look at what do you have an innate ability for? Wanting to be Washington Redskin running back. No. Too slow. And not powerful enough. Well, I didn’t have the innate ability.

So what do you have the innate ability for then? What then are you willing to pursue an education? For work, for hustle, for that for which you have an inability for. And if we’re going to talk about making a living is that which you have an innate ability for. And now I’ve educated yourself. Your talent to have a talent for is that. And how can that be something that the world demands? Because it’s supply and demand, boy.

You can end up doing something you got an innate ability for. Plus you become really good at it and you learn the craft and the world demands it and you can supply it. There you go. But we don’t always. Some of us have innate ability, but we’re not really. We don’t work for it. We don’t improve our skills. We kind of rely on what we got. And it kind of come middle of the field and it.

Sometimes I don’t have the ability for it, but I’m going to learn a new craft and I’m going to hustle at it. And actually when we get good at something, we kind of can start to go on. I didn’t know I loved it. I didn’t like this anymore, but I like it now. It starts to feel good to do over and over.

Breaking Free from the Rom-Com Prison

STEVEN BARTLETT: And you aimed at becoming a. You know, it says it here. It says win an Oscar for Best Actor, etc. Etc. You accomplish so many of these goals that you had and then there comes this point in your life where you seem to step back from being this rom com star and it’s almost as if a dream you once had failed you and you reorientate yourself once again to something.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Of more substance.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: So the decision to make. To maybe to answer a little more of the last question I. I have when something’s not feeling like I’m completely in the pocket on it. On the skitting it on the screws. If it’s. And also maybe I am, but it’s not translating. We talked about earlier art that translates and you hear the same thing back. You’re like, “ah, that’s it. That’s the communication of good art.”

Maybe I’m feeling like I’m busting my tail at something, but I put it out there and it just goes, “huh.” I don’t know. Sometimes it’s bad timing. Sometimes just I was chasing the wrong. I was chasing up the wrong tree there. At least maybe I chased it for me, but no one else gave a damn. That can happen.

I’ve been fortunate to. If something’s not sitting well in my soul, even if I’m pulling it off and I’m like, “dude, you’re the rom com guy. You are the, you’re the go to guy, man. You’re number one on the call. You’re the. You took the baton from Hugh Grant and ran there. You love doing. They’re fun. Geez, they pay great too. I can line them up.”

I was getting quantity, but I wasn’t getting the quality. I was like going, kind of feel like I could do it tomorrow. And I was like, “oh, nothing wrong with that. You’ve worked to get to that point to where you feel like you could do it tomorrow.” Yeah, but I don’t. I need some resistance. I need. I want to find something that scares me.

Mind you, at that time, I’ve fallen in love with Camilla and she’s pregnant with her first child. What’s the thing I always want to be in life? Father. So my life is like, “oh yeah, the roof is raised and the basement is lowered and the width is wider.” Man, I’m feeling more crying, more laughing, louder, feeling more pain. All of it. My emotions are. Life is vital.

And I said, “okay, what I want to do is dramas, but Hollywood won’t offer me, not one, no matter how big of a pay cut I take.” So I said, “all right, if I can’t do what I want to do, I’m going to quit doing what I’ve been doing.”

So chose to, boom, go to the ranch in Texas, Camilla’s pregnant. Told my agent no more rom com. Don’t know how long that’s going to last. Made that decision with Camilla. And we said, “look, you know, going to make this decision, there’s no telling how long we’re going to go with that work. But if we’re making a decision like Australia, it’s non negotiable. We’re not going back on it.”

The $14.5 Million Test

STEVEN BARTLETT: You get offered a lot of money in that time.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, it’s a great story. So nothing comes in for months. And I’m starting to think, like, “oh, my gosh, I might need to become a teacher. Might need to go back to law school. Got to find a new vocation. I just wrote myself a one way ticket out of Hollywood.”

This offer comes in for this action comedy, $8 million offer. I read it and I said, “no, thank you. That’s the stuff I’m not doing.” I come back with a $10 million offer. I’m not reading that again. “No, thank you.” Come back at a $12 million offer, guys, tell him I said, “no, thanks.” Come back at a $14.5 million offer. I said, “let me read that again.”

I read it again. It’s the same words that were in the 8 million dollar. No to. But it was better written. It was funnier. Man, I could see myself in it. This is. Could be. I could make this work. Anyway, I ultimately said no.

And I think in my theory, I don’t have any proof of it, but I think that me saying no to that $14.5 million offer a year into me leaving and saying, “no more rom coms.” I think me doing that sent the message, got around kind of through Hollywood. “Oh, McConaughey’s not bluffing. What the hell is he up to?”

Something about that was like, “oh, he didn’t just recede. He’s got a plan. But he’s just. He stepped out of Hollywood, he’s turned up 14.5. Oh, he’s not rent. He’s not for rent.” Which, that’s interesting. “Oh, maybe a little more attractive. Well, you know, it’d be a. Who might be a novel. Great idea for this drama thinking lawyer for this killer.”

Killer Joe for mud for Dallas Buyers Club. Magic Mike, true detective. 20 months after I stepped out, I didn’t know how long it would go. That’s how long it went. All of a sudden those offers came in and I was off and I grabbed a hold of all of them. I could and did them and love doing them.

And yeah, would I. Would those have come if I’d have never stepped out? Not even going to say maybe. No. No, they wouldn’t have.

Success as Prison

STEVEN BARTLETT: So. Interesting how success can become a prison. It goes back to that sort of marginal, slow.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And then you had to do something drastic to realign.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Turned down $14.5 million, which, and trust.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Me, my brothers were like most people going, “what is your major malfunction, little brother?” But I remembered how I felt that night when I had. When it came to me and it settled and it came up and I made the covenant and I prayed and swore on it with Camilla. And we said, “the decision’s made. No matter how long this goes, we’re not going to go back on the decision.”

So a lot of these stories, I think, come out about endurance in a way. The Australian story, this story are two that remind me of, like, I could have pulled the parachute at sensibly at any time after the first three months in Australia. If I tell you the details of that, you’d be like, “dude, why didn’t you come home after a year out of the business, maybe?”

And my days just tell me, “I haven’t even heard your name in four months. Shit. Why go start a new job. Just go back. Those jobs are waiting for you. The rom com jobs you were doing, they’re waiting.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: The through line for me as well is just in these moments, you knew who you were and were not, which a lot of people don’t. And you have to kind of know who you are and are not in order to turn things down or to accept things that are for you.

The Power of Certainty and Commitment

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right. I’m going to go one step previous to that. I don’t know if I could say I knew who I was. An easier place for us all to begin. And I think what’s more true for me is that these were times when I go, I knew who I was not, and I don’t know what. I kind of know what I want to do.

Roles that can challenge the vitality in my life, you know, stereotype, we could say we call those a drama, but wasn’t like, I had the script written. This is the one I want to do, and no one let me do it. You know what I mean? So I said no to that.

In Australia, I knew that I couldn’t be the guy who goes, “I’m out of here, man.” Because I shook on it and was having a sneaky suspicion that the longer this penance went on, the greater the gift would be on the other side. Did I trick myself on that? Probably. Was I telling myself that here as a. Was I posting that on my proverbial fridge and repeating it like a mantra? Yes. It took a while to get down into no. I actually believe that to be true.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You have a good relationship with uncertainty, with not having the branch to swing to perfectly.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I hope so. My wife’s out there if you’re seeing this. She’s probably like, “He needs to work on his relationship with uncertainty.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: At least in a professional context. I mean, most people end up stuck because they just wait for 100% certainty about the escape plan or the next.

The Dallas Buyers Club Story

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, maybe that’s because there are every role I’ve ever done. I went into it at some point and felt like I was 100% certain that this is going to be great. And not all of them were great. So I’ve had been a part of things that had the best laid plans and turned out to be like, “Oh, that’s all we did to that.” I’ve been part of things that had the best laid plans and turned out to be like, “Damn, all right.”

I’ve been a part of things that were under financed and didn’t seem to have the foundation, but boy, we turned them into something. Dallas Buyers Club. $4.9 million in 25 days. Shot that movie quality on the screen for that much money in that many days. Jean Marc direct. He turned it into that, we turned it into that. We went into it.

But even that, that’s another fun story that was never real. I just. We just said, the producers and myself, once John Mark came on, the director and the producers of mine, we got in a room and said, “We got to just say we’re doing this in October.” And so we left out of there and started telling me, “Yep, do it in October.” There was no money. My agent was like, “You keep saying you’re doing it in October. You’re not doing it in October.” Like, “Yes, we are. Yes, we are.” “Dude, there’s no money. You’re not buying us.” “Yes, you are.” Just kept saying it.

Other scripts were coming in. He’s like, “Will you read this? It’s going. When’s it going?”

STEVEN BARTLETT: October.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I’m not. Why? Read it. I’m not doing. I’m doing Dallas Fire. “Dude, you’re not doing Dallas Fires Club. There’s no time. There’s not a date set. There’s no movie. Would you please read something for that time slot?” “No, because we’re doing Dallas Buyers Club.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why were you so…

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: We just kind of. I’m not going to. What’s the word? We didn’t manifest. We just didn’t flinch. We didn’t stutter. And we were all in alliance and saying the same thing. So all of a sudden people started to believe it.

The Power of Intent Over Words

STEVEN BARTLETT: Has that proven to be really important to believe what you say and to say it with a conviction because it goes back to what you. The phone call with your father.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You didn’t flinch. Something seems to happen when you don’t flinch.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah, I mean, it’s different than fake it till you make it. You know, words are momentary. Intent is momentous. Amen on that. Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Intent is momentous.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Yeah. There’s a comment around that same thing, and I think it’s where I write that in response pushing off of where I think sort of a woke cancel culture overcompensated, where we bam, hammered you for the word and didn’t give the people to go. “Wait, do you understand my intent?”

STEVEN BARTLETT: Intent is such a lost.

Forgiveness and Course Correction

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Especially. Especially with people who are ignorant and didn’t know better. I’m writing here about I wish more not I don’t want more crimes, but I wish more the crimes were about from ignorance because it’s the ones. It’s the bad agents that are going, “Oh, I know good from evil, and I’m down to do the evil.” Well, that son of a. I’m sorry. Maybe we do need to go in an alley and work it out.

But the ones could. I didn’t. I got to know that person needs some amnesty. Go. “Well, okay.” Or given the chance to talk about it when we’ve forgotten how to say sorry. “Dude, I didn’t. That’s what I mean. I did not know that’s how you were going to. I didn’t mean for it to land on you. Like, that’s not how I. How I meant it.” Have we forgotten to do that?

And aren’t we getting tooled by the lawyers in the world to say, “Just litigate it, dude.” Tool. Whoa. What happened to “Hey, man, my bad. Stuck my foot in my mouth, man. I bogeyed. Sorry.” Now, if I come back and do it to you next week and the next week after, shame on me. Repeat offender, man. You can forgive me, but don’t trust me. Go. I need some. I need some reparations. I got tomorrow I need some rehab. All right.

But my first job on talking about forgiveness and the words and intent. My first job. If I’ve done you wrong and I’ve come asking for forgiveness, you’ve opened. If you’re going to lie, if you’re going to forgive me, you’ve opened it up first. And if you forgive me and you believe that, I mean, I’m truly sorry. I’m doing my best not to ever do that again. If you believe that and then you forgive me, first order of business is for me to change the behavior that I have so I don’t have to come say sorry to you again that I think we miss sometimes.

That sometimes people go, “I’m sorry.” “Forgiven.” “Oh, cool, we’re even. All right, back to it.” And all of a sudden, you’re like, “You did it again, dude. Have a little room. I thought you were going to course correct.” You know, I’ve got a course correct the offenders for the first order of business, for the offender to go. I’m going to do what I can not to have to say I’m sorry to you again.

The Incentive to Misunderstand

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think there’s a more obvious incentive to misunderstand people now, especially when there’s likes and follows and retweets. Misunderstanding someone. There’s huge incentive in that. And I think maybe that’s created a culture of that being the default is to miss. Trying to misunderstand.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You trying to misunderstand. That’s interesting.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because there’s an incentive. I think all human behavior can be tracked to incentives.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: And that’s not the resistance we’re talking about.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You know, that’s. Come on. Trying to misunderstand people. A real want and need. Yeah, I think you’re right. I’m asking this out to the world and myself. Trying to misunderstand, to be controversial. What to be.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It makes me significant.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right. Because you owned something and you. Yeah. So you trumped my gesture. Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What about. What about. Yeah, it proves, you know, I’m almost piggybacking. You talked about structure. I’m pushing off your.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Right, right, right, right, right. Dude, we. We’ve got to compare before we contrast. Double down on somebody’s affirmation. Make a point in the back. Make the point. Make the positives plural, and the singular is negative, black. Then you can block evil in the negative’s path to prophecy.

If we can double down. I’m not saying be foolish and say there’s no negatives in the world. There’s no pain, there’s no evil. No. Let’s admit it’s all out there and then choose to go. I’m going to talk about bad shit in my past in the past tense, because that’s going to block its path to prophecy. And the positive things that are working the truth in my past, I’m going to talk about them in the present and the future tense because we’re going to keep that ball going. That’s going to be a verb. Let’s make those a verb.

Embracing Fall: A New Season of Life

STEVEN BARTLETT: What season of life are you in now, Matthew?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Season of life. Well, the last eight years, I really come to love fall.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I grew up.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I was a summer guy. No shirt, no shoes, bright lights, extrovert. It’s all good. Everything. Don’t bitch about no shoes because somebody out there with no feet come to, like, fall because I think I need. I. I don’t. I’m interested in so many things that my hunch is to not take on more campfires, but to keep putting logs on the fires that I’ve built.

And to do that, the clouds that come with fall just nip ambition in the bud. Just a little bit. They put a little bit of a roof. I kind of like, I’m not as big of a fan of the 30 foot vault ceiling right now. I like that 10 footer, that eight footer. I feel ambitious looking laterally instead of God, the four dimensionally. I’m looking for the dreams and the poems and the prayers to become the reality. And I like a little bit of shade.

Greatest Weakness, Greatest Strength

STEVEN BARTLETT: Matthew, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they’re going to be leaving it for. And the question that has been left for you is, what is your greatest weakness? What is your greatest strength?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Well, let me talk on this walk because a lot of times they seem to be the same damn thing. A lot of times people are like, “Dude, your greatest asset is risk.” And I’m like, “I think that’s why I got to work all more. I think I need to be taking a lot more risks.”

STEVEN BARTLETT: You think you need to be taking a lot more risks? Yeah, that’ll surprise a lot of people. Give me the context there and the color.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I’m successful. I got a home, it’s got a gate. I got a security guard, I got three kids, got a wife. All right, secure this. Keep that log on those fires going. That’s the main thing, man. If you do that. If you do that, there’s nothing better you can do.

Hang on a minute. You can do that, but you still need to engage. What are you going to become? A live in father, no kids. Need to see you go to work, need to come with you go to work. Need to see you and your mom going places without them. Engage in the world. Go find out some new things, learn some new things. Whether that’s the physical frontier or the mental frontier, take more risk there to learn.

As Mark Waters, director of Ghost Girlfriends Past, told me one time, “McConaughey, you’re never wrong.” I was like, “Thank you.” He goes, “But there’s more than one way to be right.”

My. My greatest. One of my greatest assets is that when I am certain on something, I can commit to it. It can be an engine and a momentum to take me a long way. At the same time, I can leave unnecessary shrapnel with people I care about from my own certainty. Because I’m so committed and obsessed with this truth that I’ve crossed that I can block out an alternative approach to it because I don’t have the confidence to go, “Oh, yeah, let me see that.” Because I still think, “Oh, but if I see that, I’m going to lose some of this.” And I’m still working on that.

The Impact of Poetry and Prayer

STEVEN BARTLETT: It was so beautiful to read poems and prayers. It was surprising and beautiful at the same time. And I said to you before we started recording, it’s one of the first times that I felt like I went somewhere else in a while. And I. It’s funny because it was three or four days ago that I read the first couple of poems and then I went back a couple of days later. And I think in part because things had changed in my life in those couple of days, the meaning of the poems were different. The meanings of the prayers seemed to be entirely different.

You also have this incredible book which has been one of those smash hit bestsellers of the last decade, Greenlights. And I know that one of your good friends, Bill McRaven. Yeah, Admiral Bill McRaven.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: I always make you call him Bill, but I always go Admiral Bill McRaven.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And he was somewhat part of the inspiration or he inspired or was the catalyst moment you seeing him speak.

A Friendship Built on Wisdom

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: It’s a friendship that he and I have started to build at a time when I was seeking out male mentors after my dad had passed. Well, this is more in the last five years, six years, seven years. And I think I wrote that four years ago, something like that.

And he always took my call, always took time with me, always just without judgment, shared great wisdom with me and without even knowing he shared it. I think I’ve just… If you ever get a chance to speak with him and spend time. He’s really got it going on. He’s got it. He’s really got a wonderful perspective.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Are you able to share what you were seeking guidance from him about?

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: No, the main thing I would keep private. But then it was also we talked about, you know, fatherhood, husbandry, you know, and he’s got a great sense of humor, a lot of that stuff too.

And how, you know, making plans and seasons of our life and how much to rely on those and how much are they just like… No, that’s just an old parable, man doesn’t really go like that. You know what I mean? And I’d give details, but I wouldn’t. I feel like I might be speaking out of school if I did.

A Letter from Admiral McRaven

STEVEN BARTLETT: I actually… We reached out to Bill McRaven.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Oh, he did?

STEVEN BARTLETT: And he wrote this wonderful letter for you. He said:

“Dear Matthew, I remember clearly the first time we met. I’d been told that Matthew McConaughey was going to be in the audience at my talk. I’d long been a fan of your movies, but candidly, I wondered more about the man than a movie star.

The man I met that day, the person I’ve come to know over the past 10 years, has exceeded all my expectations. You are as genuine as any person I know. There are no airs about you. There is no pretense. There is no Hollywood ego. There is just McConaughey.

You treat everyone with respect. I have watched you with your league of fans and never once have you failed to shake a hand, give a hug, take a picture, and thank them for their kindness.

I have watched you on the sidelines with your beloved Longhorns. When you are there, the entire burnt orange nation feels better than the game. In victory, your enthusiasm is infectious. And in defeat, you are gracious and respectful, representing all that is good about the university and about Texas.

I have watched you give back to your school, teaching the next generation of actors, writers and poets. I’ve seen your work as the Minister of Culture bringing fun and a Texas flair to everything you touch.

I’ve watched you after the tragedy in Uvalde. It tore your heart out. And while others stood on the sidelines wondering how to deal with those unspeakable horrors, you headed straight to Washington. Few people I know could have brought both Democrats and Republicans together to make a difference, but you did. And then you stood in front of the entire nation and pleaded for sanity. Through your compassion, your determination, and your love, you have truly made a difference in so, so many lives.

I have watched you with Camila and your children. You’re as fine a father and a husband as any man I know. Every child should be as lucky as your kids. I know your mother is exceedingly proud of the man you have become.

Finally, I want to thank you for your friendship, your unwavering support, and for making my hometown of Austin someplace special to live. Take care, Bill McRaven.”

Gratitude and Reflection

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: Wow. Thank you, Bill. That’s something else. You know, I did speak to him before I went to D.C. back to Uvalde. And just the wisdom with the context, the setting, D.C. politics, but also in that, being aware and understanding those things… go your line, man. Go your line.

And that’s beautiful to hear. You know, I did not know that he thought all those things about me and that makes me feel good. I look forward to giving him a hug over our next cup of coffee or sip of tequila, whatever it is. Good man. Good, good, good, good man. Bill McRaven, thank you.

A Role Model for Modern Times

STEVEN BARTLETT: And everything he says in that letter is what I’ve had reflected to me by everybody you’ve met and known. We’ve got some mutual contacts and those words ring true.

And this is why I think you’re a great role model for me, but also for young men like me who are aspiring to figure out all this stuff with all the modern temptations and, you know, different paths we can pursue and all the options, more options than ever and a less clear clarity on why we should pursue resistance and family and faith and all the things described in this letter… the empathy, the grace and the kindness and the respect of others.

But you stand forth as an example for why all those things are the most important things. And thank you for that, Matthew. Thank you for being a role model to me and so many young men like me and so many people, not just men like me.

And thank you for writing a brilliant book, “Poems and Prayers,” which everybody can go and get now. And just like me, when I read it, it might just take you to somewhere else, somewhere else you might rather be and somewhere else you need to go. Thank you.

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