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0:30
[Music]
0:48
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:53
Let's get into it.
0:53
All right, guys.
0:55
They've got a special guest on the podcast.
0:56
His name is Greg Hurwitz.
0:58
So he is a novelist, screenwriter, and comic book writer.
1:00
And he is the number one New York Times best-selling author of 23 Thrillers,
1:04
if not 24 by now, which includes the wildly popular Orphan X series.
1:08
And today we're going to be talking about his newest title in that series.
1:11
It's the last Orphan, which, guys, if you were listening to this right now,
1:14
it is out right now.
1:15
You can pick it up wherever you want to go.
1:16
And the thing about this that I found very, very interesting is when you're preparing an interview,
1:21
you're looking at their titles, you're looking at the stuff they produced,
1:24
you're looking at the stuff the publishers sent you,
1:26
and you're trying to piece all this stuff together.
1:28
But you never really know exactly what you're going to get into.
1:30
But when he and I hopped on our recording software beforehand,
1:34
we probably had 10, 15 minutes of conversation before we hopped into the interview,
1:38
and it really didn't have to do anything with the work that he did.
1:41
So, of course, we're going to talk about the Orphan X series and the last Orphan,
1:44
and whether or not it's going to be a television show or a movie at some point down the line.
1:48
But we talked a lot about his relationship with Jordan Peterson.
1:51
He was actually a student of Jordan Peterson's
1:53
whenever Jordan Peterson was a professor at Harvard.
1:55
And he was studying at Harvard.
1:57
So, we talked a lot about that, but then we just talked about really,
2:00
and this is why I want to name today's episode,
2:03
the Eternal Power of Story, because we went everywhere in this conversation.
2:07
And we went into some definitely some ethereal levels and some philosophical areas,
2:11
where we talked about just the power of story and what that looks like in modernity.
2:15
Because this is a guy that probably aligns more so with the liberal side of things.
2:19
He talked about that. He's really high in trade openness,
2:22
and I'm obviously more on the conservative side.
2:23
But just talking about how do we get society back to where those two sides
2:27
can talk to each other, to where it could lead to an overall level of human flourishing.
2:32
And so, we really went a lot of different areas in this conversation.
2:35
Yeah, we talked about the books and kind of where he got the ideas for this,
2:40
and kind of how he's able to use some of his influences from writing,
2:44
and from reading really early on in his life to where he goes today.
2:47
You know, the explosion of audiobooks and what that's done for him.
2:49
But this is not like really any other episode or any other interview that we've done on the show,
2:55
because I just kind of let it ride.
2:56
There was even at one point, I think I ended up leaving it in there.
2:59
But at one point, he's like, "Wait a minute, can we actually edit that?
3:01
Can I go back and restart that answer?"
3:03
I don't know if I was making any sense.
3:05
And I was like, "No, man, let's keep it in.
3:07
Let's just keep this going."
3:08
Because it's like he and I were just saying things.
3:11
It was almost like he and I were just sitting down having a conversation
3:14
over a couple of whiskeys, because it's like we're just trying to figure it out.
3:17
And we're just kind of like putting it out there. It's similar to the forging table.
3:20
You're just trying to figure it out as you're saying it.
3:22
And you're just trying to coalesce all your thoughts into something that makes sense to you.
3:26
But it's also applicable to a wider audience.
3:29
So I really, really enjoyed my time with him today, guys.
3:31
So I'm not going to keep him from you any longer.
3:33
So without further ado, let's get into it.
3:35
Greg Hurwitz, welcome to the Don't To Life of Man's podcast.
3:39
Kyle, thanks for having me.
3:40
Okay, I say this sometimes on my shows, but I literally was just like
3:43
chomping at the bit to hit record because I feel like we did an entire interview
3:47
before I hit record. We got a lot of great stuff to talk about.
3:49
But we do need to talk about the whole reason why you were a book to come on here in the first place.
3:53
So let's try to find a soft place to land, at least.
3:56
So you're obviously a professional writer, a very prolific writer,
3:59
will certainly get more into your career.
4:01
But I guess what drew you to that as a career?
4:04
And I guess, did you ever think it would be a career?
4:06
Because there's a lot of kids that enjoy writing, enjoy reading,
4:08
but they never really kind of formulate that and say,
4:10
okay, I want to do this for a living. So how'd all that go down?
4:13
My brain was wired this way.
4:15
I mean, my parents didn't want me watching TV growing up.
4:18
They thought it was the plug and drug, right?
4:20
In my house, I grew up in California.
4:22
I could only watch, though, if there was a Hitchcock movie on or Red Sox.
4:27
Because Red Sox is like religion. My dad's from Boston.
4:29
Okay.
4:30
And so I read all the time. I just did sports during the day and read all the time at night.
4:35
And my brain was, I loved it. I loved it.
4:38
And I thought that everybody who loved reading eventually wanted to be a writer.
4:42
Like, you know, when you're young and your mindset is you think everybody thinks like you.
4:46
Right.
4:47
And then you grow up and you're like, wow, people are insanely different.
4:50
But look, man, I mean, I wrote a mystery illustrated with crayons when I was in fifth grade.
4:57
Like I was on this trajectory and I, it's a great thing because it's a hard,
5:01
it's a hard profession in a lot of ways.
5:04
But at least I figured out what I was aiming at really young and just did everything kind of,
5:10
I just loved it. And then I followed everything that I loved and interested me the most.
5:14
Rather than limiting it early and like going and studying creative writing and then getting
5:19
a master's in creative writing. And then like, I was like, what am I going to write about?
5:23
So I was very, um, varied and explosive in the kinds of things that I pursued and tried to
5:29
engage in.
5:31
Well, so great. The people that are kind of in your vein, you know, whenever I talk to,
5:35
you know, a painter or a musician or something like that, everyone kind of has influences.
5:39
But you don't necessarily see those influences in their writing every time. Like I know guys that
5:44
were influenced by jazz, but they play heavy metal like like drums. And it's like, it's not
5:48
exactly the same thing. So were there, I guess favorite writers of yours or are people that kind
5:52
of influenced your, your modern style or, or is there someone that you really, really liked,
5:56
but you just can't emulate their style and what you do now?
5:58
Well, what's cool. Look, I'm 24 books in now. And so what's kind of cool about that is I have,
6:05
I feel like I have a handle on the nature with which I'm writing. You never master an art form.
6:13
You just don't. It's like you should always be trying to go further than you are and
6:18
failing at it and then trying to pull yourself forward with it. But look, I loved Stephen King
6:22
growing up. Um, I was reading him in fifth grade, like under the bed with a flashlight. Okay. Um,
6:28
and I studied Shakespeare. I got a master. So I studied English in psychology when I was an
6:32
undergraduate. Jordan Peterson was my professor and my thesis advisor. We go back a long ways.
6:38
Him teaching young was amazing for me. So I studied English in psychology because I just thought
6:44
those are the two things I was most passionate about. And you look back on it. It's like, right,
6:47
all Freud's case studies are like short stories, right? They're like projected contents of the
6:52
unconscious of the subconscious. And then young only wrote about story and narrative.
6:58
And then I did my masters and actually my undergrad stuff too. But my master's degree was Shakespeare
7:02
and tragedy. And it's like people like, well, why would you study Shakespeare? And then now you're
7:07
thriller writer. And it's like, well, what did Shakespeare write? Tales of like lust, murder,
7:12
war, ambition, right? Highly structured, narrative driven, designed to sell out like the Globe
7:19
Theater every night to the widest cross-section of society. And so story and the way I was interested
7:25
in it. And the other thing that's really interesting with Shakespeare, I mean, obviously this goes back
7:28
to the Greeks, but like the tragic flaw embedded in that is always embedded in the character,
7:33
right? That's what distinguishes narrative from real life. Like real life is you get
7:37
pancreatic cancer, right? And acne, save falls on your head. We can't see as clearly as in the
7:42
symbolic realm, right? That something that you do opens the door to unforeseen consequences.
7:48
That's the structure of tragedy. That's a structure of a thriller. That's what I'm writing about with
7:52
Orphan X. Because there's something inherent in him that he's trying to kind of go up against,
7:57
and it's represented in the mission or the next mission that he gets pulled into.
8:02
And so it all kind of fits, but it didn't fit when I was doing it. I was just saying,
8:06
what do I love? What do I get into? And then I look back in hindsight, and it just falls,
8:10
it pulls together like a tapestry.
8:12
One of the thing is, as you're reading your novels, you're obviously not reading them in
8:16
an iambic pentameter. But whenever you go back and look at Shakespeare, you have to realize that
8:20
nothing else was happening like that at that time. And so it's like, when you look back on a band,
8:24
you're like, oh, that band's terrible. It's like, no one was making noises with their instruments
8:28
that sounded like that at that time in history. It's like, go back to that time and your mind would
8:33
have absolutely been blown. But you know, it seems like in your writing style, Greg, that you pull
8:37
from all these other different places. So you mentioned that you used to be a student of Jordan
8:40
Peterson's, I believe that's whenever you were completing your degree at Harvard University.
8:44
But I don't know if you know this or not, but he's persona non grata. You know, this is a guy that
8:48
you're not supposed to be friends with. He's the worst person ever. He's somewhere between Hitler
8:51
and Satan, those types of things. And so I'm sure you're not, is it unique, I guess, that you're one
8:57
of his former students and you claim that you're one of his former students? Yeah, people that are
9:00
kind of like a little bit touch and go with you because you're a big fan and you know,
9:05
I guess a student of Jordan Peterson, even to this day.
9:07
Look, Jordan, I go back forever, right? Like, he officiated my wedding, you know, it's like,
9:14
we're, we're close and I'm, I'm very much from a more liberal background in tradition.
9:22
And from day one, when all that went down, I mean, look, Jordan's in the, in the first book
9:27
of Orphan Acts. Like, I have some of his rules for life when it was off Quora, which is really
9:32
funny because I was like, Oh, you know, here's my brilliant yet little known Canadian professor.
9:38
Like, let me reference a few things he's saying. This should be uncontroversial,
9:42
especially in like publishing in Hollywood and like all these other circles, right?
9:46
And then, you know, when 12 Rules for Life came out, you know, he and I were talking a lot
9:51
about that around it. And, you know, so from day one, I just made a choice that was like,
9:56
I'm not that's a relationship. It's where we're really close. You know, he's, he's, he's guiding
10:05
his way towards something that's making a lot of sense. And like I stood by him, you know,
10:11
publicly and privately from day one. It's like, that's my friend. You know, that doesn't get to
10:16
be negotiated in court of public opinion, which isn't even a court of public opinion.
10:20
It's like algorithm screaming at you that have been maximized to freak you out through dopamine.
10:25
Right. And so, and look, Jordan, I disagree on a lot. We agree on more and more the more that
10:31
we can talk. And that's, I mean, maybe that's how it is with all of us, right?
10:36
Right. But Greg, isn't that the key though? Because like, I got an email the other day,
10:40
you know, funny enough, it was about Jordan Peterson. They're like, Hey, you talk about Jordan on your
10:43
podcast a lot. But he said this about this particular subject. So do you regret, you know,
10:48
telling people to read his book? Something like, well, no, like you don't get rid of somebody
10:53
because you disagree with them on one thing that you've never talked to them personally about.
10:56
Oh, you know what I mean? Imagine being liberal and friends with Jordan Peterson,
11:02
and you're so dumb that you want to agree with him on everything. Like imagine the limitations of
11:07
that mindset. Like that the benefit of him as a friend and go, Oh, well, let me just follow
11:12
everything you say. Let me not argue or figure out or and look, we've been doing it for decades.
11:18
And it's like, and my friends are, I have friends all the way around the wheel in that regard.
11:23
I have friends from a pretty liberal background. Like my own, like sort of cultural orientation in
11:29
my own life is actually further liberal than where I morally and strategically think the country should
11:35
be even. And that's another thing we've lost. It's like your own viewpoint for the world,
11:41
like good for you. I'm glad that works for you in your community. You can't make that what the
11:46
entire governing ethos is of a whole diverse society, really diverse society. And like,
11:52
where did we think that that we're going to elect politicians and political parties that
11:55
agree with everything we say on every issue? That's impossible. And that we're not supposed to be
12:00
talking and engaging constantly with people who disagree with us vehemently, who are brilliant
12:05
articulators of the opposing viewpoint and play fair. And it's up to you also to set the conditions
12:12
where you play fair. You can't go on Twitter and like scream at Tucker Carlson and then feel like
12:16
no one will listen in the world's not fair or Rachel Maddow, like pick your thing.
12:20
And so a lot of this is it's like, of course, we need disagreement and we need, I mean,
12:26
look, I learned so much more from my friends who are from different backgrounds. And I got,
12:30
I've been fortunate. I, you know, one of my closest friends growing up was the son of a
12:35
missionary. He's staying with me right now. One of my buddies borned in Christian Navy Seal sniper.
12:40
And it's like, we've had arguments like you wouldn't believe, right? That like shut down a bar where
12:45
they're like being in the bar schools next to us that, you know, two in the morning loudly and
12:50
but that's where you learn anything. That's where you learn anything. And you know, anyways,
12:57
well, Greg, I, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Like, but isn't that where that's where growth
13:01
comes from? Because there are times when I'm so brain dead, I just want to be around people that
13:06
think exactly like, like I do and don't want to challenge me whatsoever. But it's when you're
13:10
engaged with somebody that has a fundamental disagreement on what the opinion of a certain
13:15
situation is or what you should do. The thing is, is when now we're kind of in this postmodern
13:20
moment to where truth is what's being debated, right? Where it's like, what we should be debating
13:25
is how we can go about fixing this thing to lead to the most amount of human flourishing. But here
13:29
we are trying to pretend like two plus two equals something different than what we've known for
13:34
the rest of time. And it actually reminded me of something I told you this off air. I was like,
13:38
I'm halfway through your book before I realized I've heard you talk before. Then it was a conversation
13:42
between you and Jordan Peterson, I believe is on his show. And you said, I think the quote was
13:47
everything foundationally is moral. That was the quote, everything foundationally is moral.
13:52
And you essentially learn that from Jordan, you know, from your conversations and some of your
13:56
interactions with him. And you talk about that, how that particular understanding affected how you
14:02
write, but also how you see the world. And so I don't know if you remember that quote, but of
14:06
all the things that I heard in that conversation, that that stuck out like a purple hat with a
14:11
yellow bill. Like I was like, okay, I couldn't really quite get past that. So did you remember
14:15
saying that? You kind of remember the context of that? Yeah, I do. It stuck out like a Lakers hat,
14:19
man. Oh, there you go. That is ridiculous colors. Yeah. Well, look, I mean,
14:25
it's not the thing with Jordan is is obviously he's a leader, right? But Jordan's also like,
14:36
he should, he should be a, it's a piece of it, a bigger educational picture, let's just say,
14:43
right? So it's like, that's Plato, that's faith, that story, that's what you can learn in the
14:47
Great Gatsby. That's what you can learn from Dostoyevsky, right? That's what you learn from great music.
14:52
Like what we're talking about is, is if you, if you purify yourself, right, if you rank your
14:58
priorities the right way, then all these things sort of start to align. And so that is something
15:03
like Jordan said at one point in the lecture, way back when like there are only moral choices.
15:09
And it's like, well, that sounds sanctimonious and silly, right? Like you can do stuff and kind of
15:13
get away with it and be fine. But it's like, hmm, everything that you're doing, right? Everything
15:18
that you're doing less than perfect, everything that you're doing that's less than optimized,
15:22
has some impact. And so one of the things that's funny with Orphan X is I wrote, he grew up my
15:28
main character with the 10 assassins commandments. The one that gets quoted more than any other one
15:33
is the second commandment, which is how you do anything's how you do everything. That's had like
15:39
tons of resonance. There's like soldiers will have that people get tattoos rings like that.
15:44
That's really hit a note. And in my, in, in Orphan X series, Evan is a trained assassin from the age
15:52
of 12, right? And he's kind of grew up in the orphan program, fled the program at some point.
15:58
For me, the series coalesces around a line that his father figure and handler, C.I. Handler,
16:05
told him when he was 12, he was taken out of a foster room as the smallest scrawniest kid
16:09
who got knocked down the most, but always got up the most. And Jack Johns, his father figure
16:14
picked him and says to him when he's young, first of all, always remember how vulnerable that you
16:19
feel right now, because I'm going to arm you, you know, you're he's going to be trained with like
16:22
the power of the, like the furies as an assassin. And the other thing is for you to know the hard
16:29
part won't be making your killer. The hard part will be keeping you human. And that's what the
16:34
series has been about for me. Like one of the things I say early on is that Evan never learned
16:38
to speak the strange language of intimacy. And so he's on the outside, he's raised outside,
16:44
he's committing all these missions. And then at some point, those two things Jack set him up with,
16:48
that's attention. Those are two trains that are going to collide, right? And when they collide,
16:53
he leaves the program and basically, so here's a guy's got unlimited resources and insane skill
16:59
sat and nothing to do. And so he basically becomes a pro bono assassin for people in desperate,
17:06
desperate need, who have nowhere else to turn. But he can try to align that with his own moral
17:11
compass and see what he can learn about the world. And in doing so, see what he can learn
17:15
about being a human being. And so that's the arc of the series and what I was writing about.
17:19
And that first part, how you do anything, how you do everything. That's his training. But you can
17:24
also see he's got aspects of OCD that all rear up like he lives in a 7,000 square foot apartment,
17:32
like Polish steel Scandinavian, there's like a weapons locker up in a residential tower in LA,
17:37
he lives among ordinary people kind of hiding and integrating with them like anthropologically
17:42
almost. But if that OCD starts looping, that's perfection. It's, it's ossifying into rigidity.
17:51
That's where it'll start to shut you down. So he's trying to figure out how all this balance
17:55
and integration, right? He doesn't just want to be a robotic killer, but intimacy letting other
18:01
people in his life, figuring out in some ways, even helping them on a mission from a distance.
18:05
People are messy. People are really messy. And so, you know, it's great. So I wrote Batman
18:12
for a couple of years, right? And Batman for DC and Batman is amazing because I always love
18:18
Batman because Superman can fly Green Lantern as a ring. He's just a guy. He's a guy who represents
18:24
the pinnacle of what can be accomplished. If you align yourself spiritually, remember he
18:28
went into bat and study with monks. Physically, we all know technologically, but he's, he's just a
18:36
man. But part of why he's a man is he's alone, like a superhero is a man. His parents are killed,
18:41
Robin gets killed every five minutes. There's a new Robin, he gets killed. And so Batman,
18:45
when I was writing Batman, I was thinking a lot about this opposition of intimacy and perfection.
18:51
And then something for a lot of men, that's a hard balance to figure out, right? Because you
18:56
feel like the more intimate you get, the more kind of relationship you have, especially with a woman,
19:01
the more out of whack you start to get about your like routine. And we talk about our freedom,
19:07
like we have all these other things. So orphan X, you know, I wanted to write a character who's
19:12
starting from this position and trying to figure out what it means to engage with the messiness of
19:16
being human and still maintain his code and still integrate it as very much with the last orphans
19:22
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19:52
Okay, so I want to kind of back up a little bit and kind of, you know, go into the initial stages
19:58
of orphan X, but you said something there at the end, kind of the coalescing of intimacy and
20:02
perfection. So one thing that I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of men that are in varying
20:07
stages of their lives and their families and their businesses and whatever, and they always
20:10
feel like there's at least one more force pulling them somewhere than they have capability, right?
20:17
So it's like, if you're really crushing it at work, you're probably not spending as much time
20:21
with your kids and kids spell love T.I.M.E., right? Maybe you've got a very deep and fulfilling
20:27
relationship with your wife, but you're not really doing well at work. Or maybe you've got both of
20:31
those things going squared away, but you're about 45 pounds overweight because you basically have
20:35
neglected your body, you know, so that you could take care of these other things. So is that almost
20:40
like the eternal cry of the man's heart to where it's like, look, I've got to check all these boxes,
20:46
even though inherently, I know it's not even possible. Does that make sense?
20:49
Yes. And the thing is that's important is everyone, we all have our private shame
20:55
about what the thing is we're falling short on, right? So like, I've had some success right now,
21:03
right? In the material world and books, like, thank God, it's been really cool.
21:08
I have a friend come by and stay with me, maybe where he's having trouble financially,
21:14
right, in that arena. And that's a source of kind of pain and shame in different ways, right?
21:19
But nobody has everything wired. We're always, always working on it and trying to maximize it.
21:24
And you can see when somebody really gets integrated that more and more those things are in balance,
21:29
but like maybe somebody else is overweight, right? The things that I'm dealing with right now are
21:34
in a different bucket, but we all feel like we're alone in that. And if our thing's the worst thing,
21:39
it's a millstone that's dragging us down, right? And everybody else can see this and see the
21:44
disparity between us and them. And it's like, you don't know what you have, right? Maybe for
21:47
great relationship with your wife and your finances aren't figured out and you can't, you can't have
21:52
kids for some reason and you're trying to figure out which way to move into the future. Maybe you
21:57
kick ass at your job and you're just hardcore and everything squared and you don't have time for
22:02
a relationship or you only have like superficial relationships. And that's something you want to
22:06
figure out. We try to expand ourselves in every direction. It's funny, because that's part of
22:11
why I love Batman. It's part of why I'm writing Orphan X. But the key is trying to balance so many
22:18
different opposites and to try and close that loop between. Peugeot said something really interesting
22:24
when I was talking to him, Jonathan Peugeot, I'm sorry, he's Greek Orthodox thinker. Amazing mind.
22:33
And we were having this conversation and we were talking about the differences between shaming guilt.
22:37
Actually, Shapiro was saying this too about this that like guilt is how you measure yourself in
22:42
relation to other people and shame is your lack of what you feel in comparison to when you're
22:49
falling short of striving to a higher ideal, right? And so you don't want to have your guilt
22:56
slash shame, no matter what you call them and you can flip the terms with different meanings,
23:00
but you don't want it to be in relation to everybody else. You want to be it between
23:04
yourself and what you could be, right? And that's hard to do because a lot of times if you're if
23:08
you're 40 pounds overweight, you feel terrible everywhere you go, right? And everything you see
23:14
people are like, do this diet and do this workout and sit in a freezing cold plunge pool. Like,
23:19
there's all this stuff that's working for everybody. Yeah, but okay, like work on it. All those people
23:24
have a bunch of stuff they're working on. That's the, that's the very nature of being human.
23:29
And going up against those things and trying to sharpen your biggest flaws to figure out what
23:36
they are, it's like, it's like a, it's a tool that you're working on to cut yourself open and see
23:40
what's inside almost. Well, even to, sorry, go ahead, Greg. Well, and it's, you know, you just,
23:47
you keep at all these things and you keep setting them in order and you keep looking at all your
23:51
decisions and you keep trying to move forward and figure it. And so it's interesting that I chose
23:55
a book that's trying to integrate a lot of these ideas, not just a book, but a series,
24:00
that's about him trying to figure out how to assimilate and become a human being. How do you
24:06
bring different parts yourself into existence without compromising your excellence? He doesn't
24:10
have room for excellence. If he screws up, he's going to get shot or groaded or stabbed. Like,
24:15
there's no compromise on the perfection he has to bring to operational missions, like none.
24:21
But then people are involved in their messy. They require compromise. They require mediation.
24:27
They script your schedule, they script your time. They have their own needs. They're different
24:31
than yours. Their flaws are different than yours. They see your flaws too. That's another problem
24:35
with them, right? So this process of kind of navigation, and of course, with the books, when
24:41
I'm writing the books, I'm not thinking about any of this. I'm only thinking in story. My only
24:47
job is to deliver what's the best hardcore thriller that feels integrated in story level.
24:52
That's just you're going to read it like a thriller and not trying to distill philosophy
24:56
into little meat puppets and have them chat on the page. But if you can do that right and you can
25:02
figure it out, you're trying to align whatever you're doing all the way as best you can.
25:07
And then it can come out and maybe be something that resonates beyond even what it is.
25:14
And the orphan X series is obviously resonating. It's been wildly, wildly popular. As you said,
25:19
it's led to personal success for you. But I feel like it's almost a description of the mosaic of
25:24
humanity in that we're all broken. And then we bring different pieces of our brokenness to whatever
25:30
relationships that we're in. And the thing about it is, is you may have the friend that is like,
25:35
you know, the Jim bro, right? He's like literally like measuring out how many grains of rice he's
25:39
going to be eating for lunch that day. And that's just not who you are. Well, guess what? You can
25:43
lean on someone like that to help you in that area. And but it's the same thing. It's like,
25:48
don't take workout advice from people that are overweight. Don't take financial advice from broke
25:52
people. It's kind of one of those things where it's like, we're all broken in different ways.
25:57
But it's when we come together as a mosaic just to kind of, you know, send that through a little
26:00
bit even further. That's whenever the picture becomes beautiful again. But that's what you see,
26:06
even in the novels and even in the writing that you're doing is there's something there.
26:10
Because if it was straight thriller, then basically it's a bad 80s movie, right? And that's going to
26:15
get old. You're not going to be eight novels into a bad 80s movie. You know what I mean?
26:18
That's right. That's right. And what's interesting is when you're getting advice from that,
26:23
from people, the other thing is, is you don't know fully, like, let's say you have your like
26:28
buff dude, bro, former spec ops guys, measuring the cups are right. Believe me, I got plenty of them
26:33
come rolling through the house here. Amazingly squared away, right? That's where like, if the
26:39
discipline is there and it's calm and it's confident, then you can really rely on that. But we also
26:44
don't know like maybe somebody who's that rigid about everything is rigid in other areas of their
26:49
life. So we're trying to borrow that as they're trying to maybe borrow and engage with you about
26:54
other ways they see themselves so they can learn to de-rigitify or de-discipline is the top thing
27:02
in the hierarchy, another aspect of their life. Maybe it's how they're parenting their kid. Maybe
27:06
it's how they're moving and work. Maybe it's how they're handling the people under them at work,
27:09
right? Whereas for you, maybe you do all those things really well, the other things, but you're
27:14
having trouble with your diet, right? So you can borrow and integrate with people. And when you're
27:20
talking about the mosaic, the thing is, is the engagement often should change both ways. Like,
27:24
if you approach any engagement like that with gratitude and openness and a real awareness of
27:30
like what you're missing and doing wrong, often in that spirit, it's not just that you're changed,
27:35
but you're changing the person who's engaging with you too, because they're seeing, I mean,
27:39
maybe they're developing greater empathy too. Like, let's say you're overweight and you're
27:43
engaged with somebody who's like super jacked, right? And you're earnestly trying to figure it out.
27:48
That's going to give them also a lot more empathy for the ways people struggle and have other
27:53
arenas of their life that maybe they're really good in or have a lot of depth in, right? And so
27:58
every time that you approach something with, I think it's like gratitude and competence,
28:04
such a key combination, right? Gratitude and respect, gratitude and humility. That's hard,
28:09
because you're in all these different situations all the time where you're more of an expert,
28:13
they're more of an expert, right? You figured out the meat diet, they figured out their vegan diet,
28:17
like there's a hundred things that go on all the time, but it's about being transformational,
28:24
and we're not going to be able to do that online in mosaic fashion if we're all in different
28:28
information streams. The only way we can do that is in community. And being in community
28:33
requires a lot more humility than we're prepared to have right now. Well, we're learning it. I
28:37
shouldn't say that we're prepared, but we're learning it. It sounds like you're figuring it out in
28:41
places like this podcast, like I'm seeing shoots of this everywhere. But if we don't do this and
28:47
everyone has their right answers and everyone who doesn't agree with you is vilified and dehumanized
28:51
into a monolith, we're just screwed. Because it's like, we'll just take more and more obscene,
28:57
ridiculous positions with our in groups and pull further and further apart until we just
29:03
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when you subscribe at prolonlife.com/now. Well, and our default mechanism will be constantly
29:36
straw manning the other side, whereas steel manning being much more difficult is obviously much
29:40
more valuable as well. But I think one thing that that is very important and I don't want to veer
29:45
off too far into the philosophical, but I'm enjoying this is there's an authenticity and an
29:50
earnestness that someone should see when they're giving you help. And so if someone's like,
29:54
yeah, man, I'd really like to be 40 pounds lighter, but they have no will or desire or
30:00
or discipline to even do step one of that process, you're not showing me that you authentically want
30:06
that because it's like, yeah, it's good to say that you want it, but you don't want to do what it
30:09
takes to get there. The same thing. And this is what you and I were talking about off air is we're
30:13
getting to this moment in culture where everything's very, very hot and everyone has a side and I
30:19
certainly have a side you certainly have a side and we happen to be on different sides of what
30:23
people would call the political spectrum, right? But they're losing the ability to even engage
30:29
with the other side about what they want to talk about because it's one thing for me to bust into
30:33
some family's house and be like, this is what we're having for dinner and this is what we're
30:37
talking about. Like that's probably not going to be very well received. But if I accept an
30:41
invitation to go to dinner in someone else's home in a subject matter comes up that's in their
30:45
backyard, like literally their backyard, then then you should be able to discuss it without leaving
30:52
with your blood pressure going through the roof. But we've lost that as a society. So screw the
30:56
rest of the interview. Let's talk more about that. Let's dig in there because that that is
31:00
killing us as a people group, right? We can have disagreements, but man, it's just it's getting
31:06
completely out of hand at this point. Yeah, I've done a great deal of work in this
31:11
category and arena and trying to figure out what to do about it. Jordan and I went one time DC and
31:18
we took 10 Democratic Congress people and 10 Republicans and just had them together to dinner
31:25
and started from a different point of like, how'd you grow up? What were you about? You know,
31:29
what was interesting to you? What's hard for you? How'd you get into politics? At the end of that
31:33
dinner, it was like 20 exceptional people. You just arrived at it through a different starting point
31:40
and it's interesting. You're talking about sides and it's like, I don't even think I have a side
31:44
anymore. I think I'm just on side human human human, right? It's I've spent so much time in so
31:52
many different corners. I mean, I've really done a I have a pretty full 360 exploration with some of
31:58
the you know, first of all, with my readers who are awesome, right? And half of my book tour is in
32:03
blue state, half of them is in red state. It doesn't matter. It's like I'm I'm everyone come on in,
32:08
right? But also a lot of kind of political, I've been in a lot of different corners of people who
32:14
think different ways politically. And it's like, none of that's going to get anywhere, like none
32:18
of it unless we move the culture through individual communities, communities are so key and responsibility.
32:27
And if the culture, the society, not just the culture, the country, the nation, whatever you want
32:33
to say, built of little communities, moves ahead, the culture will move properly to follow it and
32:40
chase it, whether that's, you know, Hollywood that's varying one direction or whatever the
32:44
next iteration of Hollywood's going to be, or politics will move that way too. And maybe then
32:48
our politicians will go, Hey, you know, it's being rewarded for me and fundraising. It's not my stunts,
32:54
like if I pull a political stunt, if I pull a big outrage, if I get another good ad that needles
32:58
somebody. And I've, I've, yeah, I mean, but what's going to get me somewhere is showing straight
33:07
intentions and outcomes and using minimal possible force. And that's another thing that's really
33:12
important, right? I have a perspective. Pejo is amazing with this, right? So one of the things
33:18
that we've been talking a lot about is that right now, I think we're having a separation of the
33:22
secular world from the symbolic world, let's just call it, right? That's an easier way to think of
33:27
that. So people are up in the secular world and they're like, wait a minute, let's say you're from
33:32
team, team liberal or liberal meaning, everything that Donald Trump seems to do makes no sense to
33:38
me, right? Like he, his ethics is this is that everything else. Here's the numbers, here's all the
33:43
stuff. But there's a function that he's playing symbolically that's doing different stuff that's
33:48
beneath the surface. It's like the, the symphony and Wagner, like a Wagnerian opera, right? Where
33:54
Ziegfried and Ziegmund will be singing at the surface and just talking about the weather and
33:58
the light motif will play beneath it stands for love. So it's telling you what's happening. We're
34:03
having these very different levels. And in case you feel like the world is turning upside down and
34:07
going insane between like, I mean, pick an image, pick a headline and then rewind yourself 10 years
34:14
and then 20 years and then 30 years. And we're living in a time of absolute insanity. Makes no
34:20
sense. Yeah, it makes no sense. And it only will make sense if we can combine the secular with the
34:26
symbolic. That's it. Because they're unhooked. And so if people are reacting symbolically,
34:31
they're hearing secular chatter of like, here's my experts, here's my studies, here's my statistics.
34:36
And they're looking at symbolic people who are having a very different relationship with everything.
34:40
And there's not a connection up. And the two sides are moving like streams on top of each other.
34:45
And they're not comprehending each other. And if they pull too far away, they're going to snap.
34:50
And so I think a lot of the stuff that we are talking about in Exodus, the Exodus seminar,
34:55
for instance, are in a lot of the conversations that people like you are having with this community
35:00
is how do we not come on and see like, right, like, how do we not have a be like, you know, Kyle
35:07
destroys Greg Hurwitz, like, right? All like, but how do we start to have open-hearted entries to
35:16
start to understand how we stitch together the symbolic with the secular? And we're like,
35:21
condition with this roar of insanity all the time, right? Like, I went undercover to a mind
35:27
control cult once to do research. And mind control cults, one of the rules of it is you have privacy
35:32
deprivation. If you're a cult, you don't go anywhere alone, because you don't want time with your
35:36
thoughts or to think for yourself. And you want to be surrounded with people who are signaling,
35:40
not that you act like Kyle Kyle, but you act like cult Kyle. So privacy deprivation. Well,
35:45
what else is privacy deprivation? This is privacy deprivation. We carry a tool willingly around
35:51
with us. And I'm not like some what I think we should smash phones and like go back to being
35:55
chimpanzees. But we're carrying something that's a curated environment of who we like and don't like,
36:01
of what books algorithmically we're more likely to like that are going to be more like the other
36:05
things that we've read. What entertainment? What are our friend groups who are we angry at now?
36:10
And it's curating us into these separate slices, right? And unless we can figure out ways to have
36:16
real face to face engagements, we're going to be in a lot of trouble.
36:20
I would agree that we're going to be in a lot of trouble. And this has ramifications for every
36:27
person, regardless of if you believe in God, don't believe in God, you're you're involved in the
36:31
political sphere or you're not, you've never voted, like it's going to have ramifications,
36:36
because it affects us at a societal level. And regardless of your society, we all kind of have
36:40
these agreements as to okay, we want society to lead to human flourishing. But now we're having to
36:45
debate as it to what even a human is. So we can't even get to the debate about the flourishing.
36:51
And there's so many tendrils that come off of that. I want to put a pin in that maybe we can come
36:55
back around back to the to the end here. So there's something interesting that came up in your novel
37:00
that I think is at least tangentially tied to all this, because again, we're here talking about this
37:04
one. We're talking about the last orphan. This is the eighth novel in the series. Obviously,
37:08
you've kind of teed up what the series is guys. If you're like me and you hadn't read the other
37:12
seven, you can get who Evan Smok is because of the interesting way that you've kind of worked in
37:17
some of this writing, because that was going to be my biggest. Oh crap, I'm not going to know what's
37:21
going on, because this is, you know, the eighth iteration of this, but you can definitely follow
37:24
along. But without giving anything away, there's certainly a focus in this novel, the last orphan,
37:31
about the bond between a father and a son. And that that's part of the orphan X series. And that's
37:36
certainly, you know, feature of the last orphan. You are the son of a father. But as I understand it,
37:41
you are not a father of a son, I believe that you have daughters. I guess how do you think that
37:46
affects how you write about the dynamic of the longing that a son has for the father? Because
37:51
I think this also ties into what y'all are probably going through with the Exodus series. And for
37:56
those of you that don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about the Exodus series that's
37:59
on the Daily Wire, that's being, you know, ran by Jordan Peterson, you know, I think half the
38:03
episodes are out right now and then the other half is coming out later. But that desire, that longing
38:08
for the father, that that's, that that is not just a kid that, you know, is longing for his dad to go
38:17
play catch in the backyard. But it is that it's, it's something at our core level that we desire
38:23
a father, which in the Christian sense that we desire a heavenly father that is more than anything
38:27
our earthly father could be. So I don't want to draw too many lines of connection here that aren't
38:33
there. But I feel like that has a lot to do in a society that has a fatherlessness problem, right?
38:38
All these affected groups, whether you want to base them on race or base them on, you know,
38:42
social economic status, a lot of the negatives that come from those are because dad's not around,
38:47
right? Or adds around be sucks so bad. So to save me from getting off on the soliloquy any farther,
38:53
hop in here because I feel like a lot of that's coming through even in your novels.
38:57
Well, so the biggest thing is, so here's where people freak out in the secular world, which I'm
39:01
saying nonjudgmentally as somebody who moves with great love and affection through a lot of parts
39:07
of that world. But people mistake the masculine and the feminine when we talk about those things
39:12
as differentiating factors with men and women. So if you talk about something being masculine,
39:17
they're like, they don't understand that you're not saying that that feature isn't something that
39:23
women embody and could be a great CEO or could be a president or could run a studio. If that's
39:29
what she wants. So it's like if we're losing the ability to talk about terms, doing different
39:35
things or having different functions, then we lose an ability to kind of talk about everything.
39:39
And that's often not what people mean when they talk about the masculine or the feminine, though,
39:42
of course, it's it is overt and embodied in a lot of ways in the world a lot of the time.
39:48
But it doesn't mean that it's something that it's a straight, strict claim of these different
39:52
categories, right? And so the masculine, the masculine, not the male, I'm talking in a Jungian
39:59
sense, organizes and orders in like strives. And the feminine is like unbelievably powerful
40:06
in a different way, right? Like the embodied feminine is so powerful that it's it's almost like that
40:11
the embodied masculine trembles in awe before it because it's it's like evolution is judge,
40:20
right? And creation and decorator of everything. And so there's these two roles that are really
40:26
important. And with Jung, the masculine, right, has to integrate the feminine. That's the animus
40:32
and the anima and vice versa. The other direction, we want both parts of these, we want both ethics
40:38
of these, right? So it's very interesting. I think a lot about this with my youngest daughter
40:44
is told me she goes, you're you're a total girl dad, which is so great. Like I love having girls,
40:49
you know, and it's really it's just really comfortable for me. But obviously there's all
40:55
sorts of complications and problems and issues with anything that's ever going to come up around
41:01
parenting. It's so complicated. But part of it is that there's a there's a way that you want to reach
41:10
out that's for me being from a society where a lot of ways there's like a lot of strong women
41:16
around me, they're always have been, right? Not just my wife and my mom, but like my agent is a
41:22
woman, my manager's a woman, like I have a lot of like powerful women in these positions. And
41:27
they're they're unbelievably powerful in a whole bunch of ways. And the modulation with that isn't
41:32
one where you want to, this sort of societal conversation that's being had is like, well,
41:39
it's toxic or you're domineering or it's a patriarch or it's all this stuff. You want to have an
41:43
engagement all the time that's working where you're having like a respect of how people are
41:48
are figuring out their own integration is you're figuring out your own, I guess is the best way
41:52
to say it. And so there's a striving for something that's like, or organized and orderly. Hang on,
41:58
we're you're editing, right? Yeah, yeah. Let's cut that answer back. I'm getting lost.
42:05
Let's reset that just that one last one about the father. Can we can we pick that up again?
42:10
Yeah, you you roll however you want. I was following you just fine.
42:13
So like, yeah, like, I feel like a little like abstract and abstract never good.
42:19
No, to be honest with you, Greg, like with any of this, like, I'll let out this little side bar,
42:26
like we've had you would not imagine some of the conversations we had with some people that get
42:31
really off into the ethereal. It's totally fine. Like, I think the guys are following it. Yeah,
42:36
we'll bring it back around here. Then I don't care. I'm just I feel like I'm getting a little loose
42:42
because it's a it's a really interesting question. Well, we're working out. We're working this out
42:47
real time. And maybe it's good that we just leave this too, because it's like the process of trying
42:52
to work out something that you're thinking and screwing it up. Like people should see that. It's
42:57
hard to figure it out. It's hard to figure out kind of what I'm trying to say. So you're asking
43:01
about the striving for the masculine and it's like the masculine not men, like for secular people,
43:07
we're going to misunderstand that is the aspect that kind of organizes and creates order, right?
43:12
That's the hero myth. That's the shield on the cross when the hero goes forth this way,
43:16
the dragon of the devouring feminine unconscious, right? And that striving right now is, I think,
43:22
for like an order and setting things in a particular place in our society right now,
43:27
because we've had what I call definitional collapse. Like, how can we even talk about what
43:32
sides we're on? Like, what does liberal mean right now? What is conserving right now? Good luck.
43:36
Like the definitions are no longer even making sense. So it's really so I think the striving
43:43
right now for the masculine is we need order, we need structure, we need to figure out what
43:49
things go and what buckets, what things are and what categories, how do different parts of our
43:53
community have stand in relation to each other. And the thing that was really interesting for me
43:58
is somebody who comes in from a more liberal secular, whatever you want to call that side,
44:03
by which I don't mean to imply that I'm purely liberal and secular because I'm not.
44:09
Is the organizing factor within the symbolic world, in this instance, we can talk about faith,
44:16
for how to integrate and process what the center of a culture is and what is at the fringes of
44:24
that culture held in a proper balance and integrated towards the center through the proper process
44:30
so that society can function. It's not the strict thing of like, here's the rules and here's the
44:36
church and it's a man and a woman and if you're not, you should be outed and shunned from the community.
44:40
Pedro said something that was really fascinating to me. I was talking to him and he was, well,
44:47
you know what, I should talk to Jonathan to make sure that that's an okay story for me to tell.
44:51
He's mind-blowing Jonathan Pajell. He's really interesting. And when he explains about community,
44:59
he's done the best job that I've seen about explaining how within a world of faith,
45:03
everyone can have different idiosyncrasies and everybody can have their variations. As long as
45:11
when they show up to his church, which is Greek Orthodox, the church is the primary thing that
45:16
everybody is joining together to define that community. And so you're not going to lead with
45:21
your identity, you're not going to lead with your politics, you're not going to lead with
45:25
your sexuality, but like nobody does, right? Everybody joins in the community under some
45:31
established set of higher values. And so it's not about judgment and it's very much turned into
45:36
judgment. And so I've been thinking a lot about the fact that like we have so many institutions
45:41
right now that feel like they are corrupt at the base of it, right? And people tend to talk
45:48
about that about secular institutions, right? Like the education system, higher education,
45:53
certainly we know politics, right? Certainly we know like Hollywood, like people are looking
46:00
at all these different fields that feel like they're not working. But the other thing is that
46:04
the institutions within the faith community also, of course, are going to bear responsibility
46:11
and have not maintained themselves with a perfect lack of corruption. I mean, nobody would argue
46:16
that they haven't been to some extent captured, of course, not all, of course, not all, any more
46:22
than anything is everybody. But it's not like church has been the shining exemplars over the
46:27
last, you know, half century of morality and righteousness and humility and, you know, proper
46:36
navigation. And so, and we're going to need the faith communities I really believe to help bring
46:43
the symbolic into alignment with the secular. They're going to be there's a key aspect of that.
46:49
And for me, it's going to start with the people who embody the faith, their faith really purely.
46:54
And so, the example I'll give is Justin Pajoe. Another example I'll give is my colleague in
46:59
a lot of the community building work I do, Samara Ali, who's a Muslim American who's
47:06
very, very, very pure in her outlook and her orientation and in embodying the values that
47:13
she's espousing. And so, once that sort of happens, we're going to see a lot of growth. And I think
47:21
around those people who feel like they're special, who they're embodying the right aspect of their
47:26
feel, the right aspect of their institution, if those can clean up and get set in order and
47:32
we can get them into kind of alignment where everybody's telling the same story, everybody's
47:36
figuring out a foundational story, everybody's figuring out what categories we're going to agree
47:40
on so that we can align the symbolic and the secular, right? Then I think what's going to happen is
47:46
we can start to bring into alignment and define which sorts of engagements go where. And it's
47:53
really interesting. I was asked a question about this, about politics or culture, because I do a
47:57
good amount of discussion around it in a seminar I was doing. And I said, "Look, the top thing in
48:05
my hierarchy value is that I'm a writer and I have to create a compelling story. If I subvert
48:10
that to the political, then all of a sudden I'm writing propaganda. I don't want to write propaganda,
48:15
right? I'm a novelist." And knowing that that toggle has to hold in place, right? And then knowing,
48:21
okay, well, let's say there's this rash of, let's call it sensitivity readers, right? I don't want
48:27
a sensitivity reader. What I want is somebody who's from one of those communities who's a blazing
48:33
genius in writing to take a look and tell me what I miss the same way that when I'm writing about a
48:39
Benelli Combat Shotgun, I call one of my former Seals guys or an NRA instructor and go, "Hey, man,
48:45
what am I getting wrong? Because believe me, everyone's going to let me know if I get a gun
48:48
right?" But it's like, I don't want to screw up some aspect of Hispanic culture, Mexican culture,
48:55
that I live in and love and grow up. I grew up in California. I have like family. I mean, I'm all
48:59
of it. But I don't want somebody from outside to assess and pick to pieces what I'm doing, but
49:05
like, I could go out and get, like, one of my friends is a brilliant, brilliant Mexican American
49:11
writer, Luis Urea. He wrote a book called Devil's Highway about border crossing that he reconstructed.
49:18
It was shortlisted for the Pulitzer. He's so good. You can't believe how good he is. He's like,
49:23
he's a genius writing. And he's so charismatic. And he happens to be a buddy and he happens to
49:29
love thrillers. And so if I can have him look at this and go, "Hey, man, tell me what I'm getting
49:33
wrong." It's not like, "Hey, I want to be told all the things that I need to be sensitive to so that
49:39
I don't have to make..." It's not that. It's, "I want the craft right." And part of getting the
49:43
craft right is I got to get the guns right. I want to get people's cultures right. I don't want to
49:48
flatten them into two-dimensionality. Now, I'm a pretty good judge of that. I have a really crazy
49:53
community. I have a lot of relationships. I can think for myself when writing characters who aren't
49:58
white Jewish dudes from Northern California. I really can, right? But I want to go out and make
50:03
sure that I know what I'm doing. And if I do that in the spirit of having the balance right,
50:08
that I'm creating a story, I'm creating art. It's art craft entertainment, right? It's not
50:14
that I'm leading with the political. And we've lost some of these distinctions where the political
50:20
is creeping up above science. The political is creeping up above faith, right? In some instances.
50:25
Absolutely. Political is creeping up above entertainment. And it's like, "Wow, well,
50:29
all of us need to do the thing that we do and get the connections right in our own alignment
50:36
right with our value structure and then go and show up to figure out how we can organize under
50:43
unifying principle that will then let us order everything in our institutions and our values
50:50
within ourselves and have them come into concert again." And of course, for that piece of the
50:56
integration, we need the faith communities for that piece. That's what they do, right? They figure
51:02
out, "I don't agree with all of them, right? I don't even know which ones I might agree with more
51:06
or less. But I do know when I talk to people from faith communities who are not hypocritical,
51:18
who are pointed the right way and who are doing the right things, and who are embodying what
51:22
it is that they say." And that's like Summer Ali and Jonathan Pajav to give two examples.
51:28
And it's when you see that, it's amazing. And then it's like, "Okay, if you're not hypocritical
51:34
and you're lying to a higher value and you're also having relationships across your whole local
51:39
community in a way that even me coming from a more liberal mindset, meaning my genetics,
51:45
my big five personality structure, I'm super high-end trade openness, right? My environment,
51:50
my personal community as a writer, I tend to live in this space that is further in this direction.
51:56
But if they're aligned and can bring all those communities into concerts,
52:01
well, that's one of the things that is a requirement for what we need to find in
52:05
from the faith leaders. That's what we need. But we also need to say, "Hey, how are you taking care
52:11
of the whole community then?" I don't want to just hear about why, you know, anyone who's an
52:16
immigrant is like all that nonsense that happens. It's like, "Right, like grateful immigrant? Great.
52:22
That's who's going to rebuild a ton of, right? That's what you want, right? But you also want
52:28
people who are community leaders, right? You want people who can figure out how to integrate
52:33
and build the best and pull the best out of everybody, including people at the fringe,
52:39
right? Including people who don't make as much sense and who may be, you know,
52:42
I said something in the Exodus seminar towards the end, we were talking about this and it's like,
52:46
"What's the role of an artist?" And Jordan was talking about how some people can integrate
52:51
the famine and the masculine, right? And so I was saying that's like David Bowie or Prince, right?
52:56
Like Prince is amazing. Prince is like beaming with light. Like he's an incredible super genius.
53:06
But you don't want everyone to be Prince. Like then Prince isn't Prince anymore, right? Like so
53:12
we want to have all these different things that are important to us. Like someone who's a smart
53:17
statistician or virologist who's like mind-blowingly sharp and competent and really looking at data
53:24
properly, that's spectacular. Of course we need that. We just need it in its place with other
53:29
things, right? How does that skew with when we're approaching let's say a worldwide pandemic? Yes,
53:36
we need virologists. Yes, we need doctors. Yes, we need all of that stuff. But we also probably
53:41
want to talk to evolutionary biologists and psychologists and sociologists, right? And people
53:47
in the faith community and people who see this symbolically and people by the way who are supply
53:51
chain experts. Also, like that's kind of important to think about, right? Because if this might
53:56
get screwed up, then all of a sudden like we're in a whole other kind of trouble that could cause
54:03
more suffering. So it's what you were saying is that it's like it's not about that one side's right
54:08
or like let's not believe experts or it's the death of expertise and everything should be 2.0.
54:14
It's about knowing how we're going to order all this so that as a culture we're playing
54:19
together like a symphony instead of having every section playing its own tune that's just clashing.
54:24
And that's so much of like go on Twitter for an hour and just scroll. And that's what it feels
54:29
like. It feels like clashing. So you brought up so many things there. I was just shutting down a
54:35
ton of notes. This guarantees that we're going to have to have you back on to talk about some
54:38
other things because I do have a couple of questions actually about the book, but I wanted to throw
54:41
out a couple of things that you pointed out that I thought was fantastic. We have elevated the
54:46
political above everything else, right? So we've elevated like our faith cultures and our faith
54:51
communities are downstream of politics. Our entertainment is downstream of politics. Our
54:55
education is downstream of politics and it's causing some issues. Obviously we've seen that.
55:00
We've seen organizations that went a little bit woke and then their finances went down. They
55:05
went the opposite direction. They're like, oh crap, they're trying to scramble to fix that. So
55:09
that's one of the things that everything when it's in its right and ordered place, it does lead to
55:13
more human flourishing. Another thing going back to at the beginning when you were talking,
55:17
it's the Jungian struggle of the feminine and the masculine, the eternal feminine and the
55:22
eternal masculine and how that manifests in each individual person, which creates a greater society,
55:27
which leads to the point about Prince. If we were all Prince, we wouldn't know what the
55:32
feminine and the masculine are. My first thing from my world is I'm like,
55:38
that would be amazing. That's my first reaction. I'd love to be in a room with 50
55:45
princes and it's like, no, no, I wouldn't. You absolutely wouldn't. Well, next thing,
55:49
if we don't have, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, like, I think that when we have to have these
55:54
categories, I think what all that can kind of be almost put a bow on is a lot of ideologies and
56:00
worldviews, they have their feet planted firmly in mid air, right? So I forget who who said that
56:05
quote initially, I would love to be able to give them credit. But that's the thing that most people
56:09
when they're trying to find a way to operate in the world, if they're conscious enough to
56:13
actually strive for such a thing, they realize at some point that they're looking at the ground,
56:17
they thought they were firmly planted in their ideology, but there is no foundation to what
56:21
they're saying. And you can't build a society, you can't build a home, you can't build a family
56:25
on anything that doesn't have a foundation. So this is going to be like a top 10 worst segue
56:31
in the history of everything ever. But the person that booked this interview is going to kill me,
56:35
if I don't ask you this question, because it's a very interesting question. So I, I like to admit
56:40
this from time to time. But if my intellect were a toaster, I don't think I could lightly toast
56:44
a piece of bread on both sides. So I struggle with reading fiction, because I get lost in the
56:49
story. I forget where I am. I forget who the characters are. So I listened to the last orphan.
56:54
And the explosion of audiobooks, Greg, I think has been tremendous for people that do what you do,
57:02
because you're writing movies. I mean, you're writing Netflix and Amazon series is in putting
57:06
it in a few hundred pages. And it's enthralling to a guy like me that struggles with the reading
57:11
side on fiction specifically that whenever I would have never accessed this book, if I had to read it,
57:18
you know, by candlelight or something like that, it would have just never been there for me. But now
57:22
I'm like, holy crap, Evan Smoke in this entire universe is opened up to me so that when it becomes
57:27
a movie or a TV show, which I do want to ask you about as we wrap up, but talk to me a little bit
57:31
of how the audiobook revolution has in some ways given new life and new fuel to what you're doing
57:38
with the the orphan X series. Hmm. Well, you know, people, people have been listening to stories forever,
57:47
right? Forever, right? Way before we started writing them down. And so for me, I feel like I'm,
57:54
I love, I'm a teller of stories, right? And I don't care how people get them. I don't care
58:00
if you snored it or read it or listen to it. I don't care what your intake valve is, you know,
58:04
but I'm delighted in my audiobook readers, a guy called Scott Breck. And so when I started this,
58:11
I'll tell you a story when I first wrote the manuscript for orphan X, I hadn't even sold it yet.
58:16
So orphan X has this phone number. If you're in the US, you should call it. It's 1852 nowhere,
58:21
the normal two. And that's the line people call if they're like serious trouble and have nowhere
58:27
else to turn. And he'll answer it now and you have this off the grid encrypted assassin who's
58:32
going to go in and try and set things right in back and order is basically it. But I went to Scott,
58:38
Scott's local great audiobook reader. Like a lot of people consider him like the dean of the
58:44
thriller in a lot of ways. And I was like, Scott, he has his own booth in his house. Can you record
58:49
a message for me on this one 855 to nowhere number before I even sold the book? And so I put it in the
58:55
book, I bought the number, he recorded it for me. And then when editors were reading the book to
58:59
buy it, they'd call the number just because why wouldn't you? And there's Scott Breck on the other
59:04
end. And when I sold the series, I said, I want in my contract, I think it's the first time this was
59:08
done. Scott Breck is my audiobook reader, like ingrained in the contract. He's so talented. And so
59:15
what's really great is that he's, I can reach so many more readers through audio. The book sales
59:22
are great. You know, I'm out in hardcover. I'm an ebook. I mean, I'm in every arena. But audio
59:27
is great for people like for you. If that's how you take in a story that's going to hold your focus
59:32
and have you leaning forward, great. Let's get it to you that way. Well, and the thing that I love
59:37
about it is it takes away another excuse because I was the kid in high school that did everything I
59:43
could did not read the book. I would read the spark notes before the test and that type of a thing.
59:47
And now here I am. Last year I read over 50 books, which is a lot for a guy like me that does all the
59:51
things that I do. And it's like, yeah, so at 53 books, that's my new record is probably going to
59:55
stand as my new record just because I do a lot of active things. But I made sure I kept coming back
1:00:00
to books. But probably, I think two of those were fiction, maybe three. And it was like,
1:00:05
part of it is because I want to, I want to get something out of the story. And I don't,
1:00:09
I don't want to risk not being able to get something out of it. And so the audiobook format has been a
1:00:14
game changer for me in terms of fiction. Because if I'm on a long drive from Oklahoma City to Austin,
1:00:18
Texas, I listened to everything at two times speed anyway. So I can knock out a book probably just in
1:00:22
the drive down there, right? You know, I was listening to your book as I was walking the dogs,
1:00:26
as I was cleaning stuff around the house, as I was just chilling, waiting to fall asleep at night.
1:00:31
But it's something that will capture attention. So do the guys out there, they're like, I don't need
1:00:34
to read. I don't not in high school anymore. It's like, okay, then don't read. Don't call it reading,
1:00:38
call it flue. I don't care. But it's you're putting in your headphones and you're getting a story and
1:00:43
you're going on a ride. And we'll make this the last question the day, because I think it's very,
1:00:46
very important. As I was researching this, I saw that very early on, and you mentioned it,
1:00:50
you sold the Orphan X thing that it's, it's going to be a movie or a TV show or something at some
1:00:57
point. And I couldn't find like tangible like, Hey, is this in production right now? Does, you
1:01:02
know, Bradley Cooper's organization just have it to where they're going to release it when you've
1:01:06
finally written the last Orphan X novel or something like that. So to people out there that are like,
1:01:11
okay, the books are great, but I can't wait to see it in person. I can't wait to see it on the big
1:01:15
screen, whatever that looks like. Is it a movie? Is it a TV show? Is it in production? You know,
1:01:18
where are we at on the set? So right now, it's neither. Right now I adapted it once for features.
1:01:25
That was the mention that was the deal with Bradley Cooper. And then he next went and did a
1:01:28
stars born, which he as you know, wrote, produced, directed, saying acted, got the rights back. And
1:01:35
and then there was there was a bunch of stuff happening with TV. And basically what happened
1:01:39
was I realized as this process was happening, I was adapting it. And I was going to either show
1:01:43
runner do the screenwriting, which is a very different kind of muscle than when you're writing
1:01:47
a novel. Right. But initially, I was like, I can do this, right? So I adapted Orphan X right now is
1:01:53
writing the nowhere man the second one I was writing hell bent. But what's a little bit tricky with
1:01:57
Evan is, as we talked about, right, it's about his sort of evolution. And what I realized at some
1:02:02
point was I was like, I can't manage these two parallel universes. Like I can't be writing the
1:02:08
last orphan, which again, you can pick up as you said, if you've never read Orphan X book,
1:02:12
start there, see if you like it. And it's also very much about the abstract and theoretical versus
1:02:18
what's grounded in the real world. Right. It's very much about that tension, which I didn't really
1:02:23
think of till I was writing it. And then it's like, Oh, of course, that's what it's about. Right. But
1:02:27
I can't manage to because the universe, the parallel universes are too huge. So for me to jump back
1:02:34
now and try and reset as a TV show. And so basically, I've just sort of kept on the
1:02:41
I got the rights. I'm waiting to see we get inquiries all the time from, you know,
1:02:47
actors and directors and producers. And I'm waiting to find the right point of connection
1:02:54
to know that it's somebody who's read it, who gets the DNA of it. And then I can be there
1:03:00
as a sort of producer in support as a database for the series. But I got to give it to somebody
1:03:06
to make it their own because I can't manage both of those universes. Right. So it's a really weird
1:03:11
thing to figure out how to give up a piece of creative property that's this meaningful,
1:03:15
like, right, this is going to be I'm going to be writing this for a long time. And so I'm really
1:03:20
just now that I've decided not to be the driver, be the creative primary creative driver on the
1:03:27
Hollywood or television front, I have to wait until I have the comfort level of somebody else to know
1:03:33
the DNA to then give it to them for them to be able to make it their own thing. So that's, that's
1:03:38
a hard thing to figure out. But we're, you know, I have a lot of conversations. And when I figure
1:03:42
it out, I'll figure it out. When it's so unique, the position that you're in, because you've kind
1:03:46
of worked on both sides, you mentioned writing for DC, writing your own novels, doing those types
1:03:50
of things. And we've all seen adaptations of our favorite series of our favorite novels that just
1:03:56
were absolutely atrociously bad. Or as we've seen, one prominent one that comes to mind is Game
1:04:01
of Thrones. When you listen to people talk about Game of Thrones, everyone that talks about it
1:04:05
talks about how it was amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. And then the people that were
1:04:09
in charge of writing the television series, it seemed like they got distracted. And then they just
1:04:12
tried to like diarrhea dump the entire last couple of seasons of the show into this like macabre
1:04:18
nonsense, you know, in anyway, so when you talk to people like that, you don't want that to happen
1:04:23
because to in a large degree, this is your baby, you know what I mean? That's right. That's right.
1:04:27
I'll say the Game of Thrones guys, Benioff has also written a couple of novels. I mean,
1:04:34
they're so talented with what they accomplished with that series, I can barely believe it. Like,
1:04:38
when I was watching that, I was like, life isn't fair that I can't have a Game of Thrones episode
1:04:43
every night for the rest of my life. Right. So going back to our AI conversation, pretty soon,
1:04:48
they'll be like, you can. And then guess what? Then it wouldn't be special, right? Because it's
1:04:52
not community where we're, it's like appointment viewing. We're all seeing the same episodes,
1:04:57
even if look, I got to it late and I know that, but you know, you want to get to something that's
1:05:02
hitting the culture the same way, but it's really hard to manage all that. And I know that George
1:05:06
R. Martin, who's obviously just incandescently brilliant talent, he wasn't written down to that
1:05:12
same extent. And so I think the ending, there was a lot of creative negotiations. But yes, I mean,
1:05:17
what you want is the feel that Game of Thrones had when it was cooking, because I just couldn't
1:05:23
even, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe how Shakespearean it was in its scope and
1:05:28
they accomplished that from the books. And the other thing is, is it's got to be different from
1:05:31
the books. Think about the best adaptations, right? Like Jaws, Clockwork Orange, Godfather,
1:05:37
Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now, they really moved off the marks of the books and interpreted
1:05:43
them in different ways. So you're moving across a medium, right, that needs to be
1:05:48
different from what it was and how it functioned, because it's so much more as visual. And so
1:05:53
it needs to be filled with the art of that medium, not just a like slavish interpretation or devotion
1:05:59
from the source material. So that's a complicated relationship. It's like trying to find a dance
1:06:04
partner, you know. And in the depth, I literally, as you're writing that, as you were talking about
1:06:09
that, I wrote down the word depth. Part of the reason why some of these shows speak to us in a
1:06:13
certain way. So, you know, Breaking Bad is one of my favorite shows that I've ever watched all the
1:06:16
way through. There's depth to the characters that you don't get from a movie, right? Like that you
1:06:22
had to see them play out in 45 minute chunks over years and years and years. And then it coalesces
1:06:28
into an understanding of who a person is in their brain, because the same thing reading one novel
1:06:33
versus eight in a series, you're learning things about Evan. But then you're also seeing some things
1:06:39
in Evan that you recognize in yourself and that attaches you to the protagonist in a way that is
1:06:44
very interesting. Or you see some of yourself in the antagonist that you bring in from time to time
1:06:49
into the books, which gives you a little time to really have that internal dialogue. But Greg,
1:06:53
we're out of time. I know you got a lot of things to do today. And we opened up a whole can of worms
1:06:58
on this podcast that people are going to be like, God, why don't you ask him this? And why don't you
1:07:01
say that? Guys, I did it to make you mad. That's why I didn't ask to follow up questions. But I really,
1:07:05
really enjoyed this conversation. But that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off
1:07:08
your chest? Look, I'm I this was fun. It's good and rangey. You know, I'm going I'm heading out on
1:07:14
book tour. I'm going to be in, let's say I'm in Northern California. I think I'm in the Bay Area.
1:07:19
I'm in LA. I'm going to be in Austin, Houston, Dallas. I'm hitting Texas hard this year. It's
1:07:25
going to be good. I'm going to be in Scottsdale, Florida. I got some stuff. So, you know, come on
1:07:32
out and say hi. If you if you want to come, I got all the details about my tour schedule or on my
1:07:36
website, it's gregherwood.net. And I'm, you know, come find me on social media. I'm there. I'm easy
1:07:41
to find. But, you know, it's cool. I like talking, I like talking about this kind of stuff. And it's,
1:07:47
it's been really interesting. I feel like I've been doing nothing but talking about and thinking
1:07:51
about story now for like this acute period the last couple of weeks, which has been amazing,
1:07:57
right? Between kind of figuring out that the Exodus seminar and figuring out getting this book
1:08:03
ready and up on its feet. And, you know, we got a lot of work to do in terms of those things we
1:08:08
were talking about, about trying to get all of our story right from the top level, whatever you
1:08:12
want to call it down, secular, symbolic, if you want to call it faith, if you want to call it
1:08:17
differences politically and culturally, if we can get the story right about who goes in what place
1:08:23
where and how we have that relationship with each other, one another or communities with one
1:08:29
another and also within ourselves. It's the same process of integrating all the stuff between
1:08:33
ourselves and integrating all the different groups in a community. And it's a blast. It's a blast
1:08:39
talking to you, thinking about all this stuff, right? And talking to a lot of other people
1:08:43
we're thinking the same way. And it's exciting. I mean, that's, there's a lot of stuff that we can do
1:08:49
if we can start to have these kind of real conversations. So I appreciate you having it with me, Kyle.
1:08:54
Absolutely. The eternal power of story is something that is very, very integral to how we're gonna
1:08:59
operate as a people group. And also guys, just so you know, in the show notes, you can check out
1:09:03
Greg's website and his Amazon page and all the other stuff. So if you want to make sure you want
1:09:07
to go out and see him on tour, all that will be on there. Greg Hurwitz, thank you for coming on
1:09:11
Don't To The Life of Man's podcast. Kyle, it's a pleasure. There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed
1:09:15
my time with Greg Hurwitz. But before I let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
1:09:19
Add on Don To The Life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that
1:09:22
for just spiritual, mental and physical resilience. So I've got a few links for you today. I've got a
1:09:26
link to where you can buy your own copy of The Last Orphan. I've also got a link to his entire
1:09:30
Amazon page to where you can check out all of his other titles and then also a link to his website.
1:09:34
So you can check out an event that he's got coming up again, go see him on his book tour
1:09:38
or anything else that will be right there on his website. Thank you guys for listening to this
1:09:42
episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star
1:09:45
of you. If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an email to
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1:09:55
check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming
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your way. Just go to www.andonton.life. And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red for
1:10:04
allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is our song, Cutting the
1:10:08
Tides, which is off their 10th anniversary re-recording of their album Leveler. The links are in the
1:10:13
description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual,
1:10:20
mental and physical resilience, keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
1:10:43
Live!