Matthew McConaughey: The Silent Crisis No One Is Talking About! The Harsh Truth About Living Without Faith

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Steven Bartlett: I think too many people quit too early. And we give ourselves the options and the parachutes and things like relationships and work, self-help. And we pull that something when we could still be flying, even though maybe a rocky flight. We pull it early. And okay, it's a safe move. Got down to the ground. What I was building didn't last. But most of the time, it could if you'd have hung in there. But if you have any ambition, resistance is going to come. And so own that.

Steven Bartlett: Matthew. Matthew. Matthew McConaughey. You've been able to climb to the very top of the mountain again and again. And again, is this natural talent or is there anything transferable?

Matthew McConaughey: First, look at what's in your DNA. Like, I wanted to play basketball, but no matter how hard I worked, I was not the fastest nor the biggest. So look at what do you have an innate ability for. Then, what are you willing to hustle for? And this is very important because some of us have innate ability, but we don't work for it. We grew up hardcore on hustle, hustle, hustle. Sleep was sin in my household. No TV. Mom would always say, why are you going to watch someone doing something when you can go out in the world and do it yourself? And then number three, endurance. I remember this one time when I told my agent, what I want to do is dramas, no more rom-com. And this $8 million offer comes in comedy. I read it and I said, no, thank you. Come back with a $12 million offer. No, thanks. $14.5 million offer. I said, let me read that again. Ultimately said no. I just wrote myself a one-way ticket out of Hollywood. But 20 months after the offers came in, would those have come if I'd have never stepped out? No. Now, number four, if you do this, you're most likely going to have some success in life. And that is you.

Steven Bartlett: And what about Admiral Bill McRaven? So he shared great wisdom with me when I was seeking out male mentors. We reached out to Bill and he wrote this letter for you. He said, Dear Matthew. Wow. Are you able to share what you were seeking guidance from him about?

Matthew McConaughey: Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. Means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.

Steven Bartlett: Matthew, you're a particularly surprisingly artistic, creative, wise, yet materially successful individual. And it wasn't until I dove deeper into your story that I started to understand why that was, why you are to me in my mind, such an anomaly. Because you are, you seem to be several things that don't often appear in the same place. So my first question to you is, what do I need to understand about your earliest context to understand who you are, the values you have, and the perspective that you view the world with?

Matthew McConaughey: Fun question. Earliest on. Basic values of respect yourself, respect others. Give a damn about yourself, give a damn about others. Combined with a mother that wherever we went in the world that we might have been a little nervous to take a risk at. She was like, don't walk in there like you want to buy the place. Walk in like you own it. So a sort of boosting up of what you could say is massive ego, but also you were not allowed to walk on your proverbial toes in our family. You were brought down. And if anyone in our family, if anything, I would say going back, I think mom and dad maybe could have been a little more lenient with the successes that we had. And when we did parade, when my brother did win the track meet and walk through the house like this, to allow him to do that, you weren't allowed to do that. You were immediately humbled, no matter if you were coming right off a victory or a win or a box office hit. You weren't allowed to. At the same time, you were raised up once you were humbled. That balance. We were taught resilience, heavy, heavy-duty resilience, baseline gratitude. Quit asking me for new shoes. I'm going to introduce you to the kid with no feet. Whoa, okay. Like sobering. These were these aphorisms from my mother. Yeah, but they were pounded into us, all right? At the same time, I went 36 years thinking I was little Mr. Texas because my mom told me I was. Until 36 years later, I look at the trophy and it says I was runner up. And I go, oh, mom was like overselling us to ourselves at the same time. You better be humble. So it was almost like that. Anything exterior should not give you your identity. Even though my mom's malpropping, fibbing to us, going, you're little Mr. Texas. Or here, write this poem. I know you didn't write it, but it's really good. So turn that in for the seventh grade poetry contest. Okay. And I win. It's a true story. So this outlaw logic of my mom and my dad, also with work ethic, hustle, hustle, hustle. Sleep was sin in my household. Sin. I saw my dad asleep one time in my life. I got up at 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning and went through the kitchen and peeked, and I saw him sleep. And I woke up my brothers like, dude, what, dad's still asleep? He actually died two and a half months later and connected that idea that, oh, if he slept in that late, he must have not been feeling well. If it was daylight, you couldn't be inside. There's a fierce sense of independence. Hour, 30 minutes of TV a night, max. Mom would always say, why are you going to watch someone doing something when you can go out in the world and do it yourself? Turn that damn thing off. Get outside. You had to be outside. Like, get out in the world. Go hustle. Figure it out. Be home at dark. That was just the understood rule.

Steven Bartlett: What about love?

Matthew McConaughey: We always knew we were loved. There's never a question that we were loved as loving each other, loving mom and dad, being loved by mom and dad. And mom would always keep on to make sure you're loving yourself. I remember breakups, heartbroken. She'd let us mourn. She was a great ear, very sensitive ear to that kind of pains like that, broken hearts. But only for a day. After a day, she'd crank up the ACDC, man, and go like, now, skid up. You're worth it. Her loss. Come on. Get out of bed. Uh-uh. Come on. Uh-uh. Quit moping. Lift your head up. Come on. Come on, buddy. We got this. Uh-uh. Her loss. Give you the day. No more than that. Our love in the family was physical. My mom and dad married three times, divorced twice to each other. They fought. I got a great story in Greenlights of them fighting and my mom bashing and breaking my dad's nose with the phone. Him getting angry, her pulling a chef's knife out. Him dancing around, dodging these blades and then grabbing a ketchup bottle and like a matador going, touche. And splattering her with it. She's getting it out of her house, just getting so dim. I'll cut you from your cock to your gullible. Touche. Touche. And finally her getting so frustrated, throwing the knife down, crying, both of them crying, coming together, embracing, going to the floor on the linoleum kitchen floor and making love. No grudges, no grounding. You get in trouble, which we did. One, we were always guilty when we got in trouble, but it was corporal. It was take your licks. Get it over with, take your licks. We're not going to ground you because that'd be taking away your time, and your time is the most valuable thing you got. So 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. 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 it started. 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 mow. 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 at me. 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 could make 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 brother, 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 she says, what did you say? You don't ever use that word, especially to someone in your family. Gave me licks on the side of the house. And then went around. She said, dry your tears. Resume. Birthday party's back on. Don't ever use that word, especially to someone in your family. So what did I learn from don't say can't? That if you're unable to do something, even if you can't pull it off, you can go find help, which means you were just having trouble. What did I learn 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. Those were the values, how I remember them getting instilled in me. And to this day, I still have them, trying to transform them to my kids as well in a different way than my parents did. But I still not even intellectually have them. They're in my being now. So the love was tough. The love was physical. We hugged 990 times, nine times more than we, more than the hands soothed much more than they hurt. 999 times out of 1,000. 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, gotta 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, after that story I told about my mom and dad with the knife and the ketchup, people come and they, oh my God, I'm so sorry about your childhood. Oh my God, have you had therapy? I'm like, no. And before we, please, if you don't mind, I feel like you're trespassing a little bit 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, divorce twice, married three times is a pretty good example of can't live with you, can't live without you. The one thing I remember being crystal clear to me when I was eight 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 eight-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 eight-year-old, that was the math I did in my eight-year-old mind. And it stuck with me. So the one thing I always knew that I wanted to be was a dad. I meet Camilla, fall in love. We make three children. I got to 17, 15, 12. There's nothing that I can put ahead of it. Let me 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. I longed for that. I thought that was when you made it. Outside of wanting to be a father at eight 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 Redskin 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. Who I would win over arguments with the family when it would be like where to go or, if I could go out and why, I would have a great presentation. My parents were like, geez, and they'd give us the floor. Go ahead. Take the floor. 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 be a lawyer. Be the family a lawyer, man. Dang, man. You're a really good argument. You make great arguments. And if 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.

Matthew McConaughey: Yeah. So I just, I graduated high school at home in Longview in America. And at 18, I just turned 18, 18 in my family was freedom. 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. And I suppose Australia because I said, speak English and maybe L. 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 the outskirts, but it was three and a half hours from there. And it was a very small town, a population of 305 people of Warner Vale. And I remember pulling up that gravel driveway with that host family. And when the brakes, they're like, welcome to Australia, mate. I was like, all right. Not what I thought, but I can make this work. All of a sudden, I don't have my car. I ain't got my girlfriend. I want 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 10 p.m. 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 of my year with what would become seniors. So I'm going, I feel like I'm going backwards. Socially, no one's got a car. Their interests seem to be different. The teachers are not, I'm failing. They're giving me Fs and everything. So I start skipping this class, going to the library. I 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 I had an INXS album, which was an Aussie band. Hutchinson is 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 the worldly things that Bono and U2 were talking about were like, oh, making sense to me. I'm outside of my home. I'm on a little island. You learn to have a first 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 going, I miss 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, very awkward relationship with the family. They even wanted me to call them one night, said, from now on, you'll address us as mom 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. It was six months into my trip. It's the first time I went, no no no no no no no no no no i'm not doing that it was clear it's the first time i had clarity remember this time i'm reading lord byron in the in the in the the 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 work 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. I'm running six miles a day. I've become vegetarian. I'm eating fricking lettuce head with ketchup on it. I'm down to 135 pounds. I'm pretty doggone sure that my job is to go to South Africa. 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.

Steven Bartlett: About what?

Matthew McConaughey: Existential, huge existential questions mixed in with, oh, everything's going great, trying to talk myself and keeping my head up. But I chose, in hindsight, everyone's like, why didn't you come home early? And I remember it very clearly. When I said, yes, I'll go become an 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, the 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, well, you could go home. Uh-uh. 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, near as 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, it's just not easy, but this is how it is. We got it. We got it. I'm writing first poems in there that I wrote.

Steven Bartlett: And then life brings you back to Texas to study law. Which doesn't end up working out for you because in your sophomore year, you start questioning yourself. I think it's 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?

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've 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, oh, I like sports. I like women, too. Let's check these out. 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. 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 it out loud. I go, who's that? I pick it up. And I start reading. First chapter is 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, and you're just going to say, well, 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. Simply because the book mentioned that having the habit of doing something just because you think you should or can, it's not good enough. I even, that part, I verbalized that. It 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?

Matthew McConaughey: Bad habit 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. Ah, law school, home, the 20s, 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. Filmmaking, you can tell my— 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. He said, no, no, no, Monday, back from work. It's a stressful day. Tuesday night, 7.30, second day of the week. He's end of the work week. He'll have eaten dinner. He's on the couch having a beer with mom. Called him at 7.36 p.m. I remember the number. Hey, Pop. Hey, what's up, Monkey Man? So, listen, can I talk to you about something? Sure. I said, Dad, I don't want to go to law school anymore. I want to go to film school. And I'm like a little beat of sweat starts go down the back of my neck I'm like here it comes you want what I thought he was going to go into other stuff about like my ass you think I'm you know that can be a hobby but you know that's not a drill 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 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 Get 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 how I just—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 in that moment is what I think any father, any parent loves, is you raise your kids in 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 then when we do it that way, we can be proud parents. But what do we really want to happen when our parents, when our kids are out of the house and they're on their own? We kind of want them to call one day and go, I'm breaking out. I'm going my own way. 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.

Steven Bartlett: 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, it's become more than intellectually important or more than something, I don't need to put it on my fridge to remind me. It has become important in relationships. It has become important in work. It has become important in self-health. 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 it. What that turned into me is another sort of theory I have and I call it Own, don't rent. Go in with an owner mindset. Into relationships. Most relationships that we make hire an 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 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 the 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 a couple months. You're not going to get the most out of that person.

Steven Bartlett: Well, it was like you in Australia. You went in committed to owning that full experience and not leaving.

Matthew McConaughey: Yeah. And there's something really people tell me all the time, especially married people, because I ask them, I say, why do people get married?

Matthew McConaughey: 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. Like 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. You know what you do? Something happened. You're like, "Oh, this is a sign of things to come." "Oh, this is the only gig at work." No, when you get married, you're like, "We're owning this." My alarm, 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 like to do what they're doing more than I don't like them doing that. It's another good measurement, you know.

Steven Bartlett: I guess it begs the question about the role or the benefit of having plan B's, 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, and E.

Matthew McConaughey: 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? And 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. But I think there's more divorces because someone had a little, gave themselves the out, had the renter's mentality. "Ooh, first time to smoke. I'm going to say there's fire. Be easier to get out of here." Path of least resistance. Sorry. I think too many people quit. I think that's more of a problem than the divorces that are ones that turned out to be good.

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. And I just want you managed to make that change, which is quite rare. 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, "Ah, 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. Uh-uh. Bam." Easy to put him down. "Hey, everyone just laughed at my joke. See, it was easy." That was a lifelike party. I think less respected once you leave that situation, but 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 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 son of a bitch. Okay, it's 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.

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 an abundance of choice kind of links to that might be leading people astray. Because 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, like a picture of independence. Skyrise apartment, single, no kids, freelancer, so not going to a team, working from his home. And then, 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 a 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. 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 men.

Matthew McConaughey: 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 relies on us? How much do we need to rely on others? There's another question, and I don't know that answer. It'd be fun to discuss it. How much do we need to depend on others? Self-reliance is at the top of my value system, and I don't think it is contradictory to faith. I actually think that free will and faith, 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 faith." Too many people doing that, man. I've had my agnostic years where I was not a believer at all, fully in self-reliance. It's on me, everything. And I think it was such a valuable few years because I did need to call myself on some shit. I did need to say the buck stops here with you, McConaughey. I did need to quit becoming such a repeat offender. You know, I was sinning, which means to miss the mark, have bad aim, literally, comes from an archery term. To sin means to miss the mark. When you think about it like that, it becomes more practical, especially for 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 to 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 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, I needed 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 20s where you started to drift? Because at that time you'd had your first success as an actor.

Matthew McConaughey: I think I was living, I gave myself the luxury of living that fully independent top of the penthouse. I got money. I decided to go check into Chateau Marmont. I laid down a $120,000 tab and said, "Let me know when that's out." Me and my dog. A couple of years. Bought a pair of leather pants and a motorcycle. Told myself, "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 a double." I exercised it in as healthy a 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 is a Saturday and every night is a Saturday night, I started looking for a little, "I need to break a sweat here. 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?

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 took my mother to kill him, as you know from the story. They made love on a Monday morning. He had a heart attack. That's not a bad way to go. He called it. He told me and my brothers, "Boys, when I'm going to go, when I go, I'm going to be 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 kind of enact in light, 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, wow, 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. Be less impressed and more involved."

Steven Bartlett: More involved, yeah. What did you mean by that? And where did that come from?

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, 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, I can't have, we can't have this conversation. I'm not, 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 be only the pretty stuff and not the ugly stuff or, "Oh, don't want to be me." 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, and I've had these moments. When I met the Coen brothers, they were my favorite directors. I revered them. I had dinner with them. I blew it. And I fumbled over my wife. "Oh, damn it. I jumped 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. What's the hiring person want to see? Someone who's respectful. But if you hold them in reverence, they're like, "I don't need my ass kissed, man. I want to hear it. I want to meet you. Don't agree with me on everything. I want to hear you. Buck back." And they had a reason behind it. They weren't being negative or cynical or they weren't just trying to be contrary for contrariness. They actually thought about that and it was challenging. Look at that, relationships. Girls, guys, what do we like? Not the one that's like, "Yeah, whatever you want to do." You want someone who goes like, "Oh, how about this? I got this other idea." 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, "By the way, I think you should completely change this particular company who's 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 like, "How dare you," and that is the best thing you have said 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, picture here. I mean, this picture said a lot to me.

Matthew McConaughey: Maybe it's just the way that you're all gathered around. Ah, yeah. I know 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, 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 holding court. He was a ham, man. 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. I remember I had more than 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. A big rite of passage. To defend him.

Steven Bartlett: Do you miss him?

Matthew McConaughey: Yeah. I miss him creatively the most because I found out later, and I didn't know he was doing this. Like, 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 had collected art and he loved charcoal paintings and 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 to Dad and go, '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 base a lot of my characters off of people that I met through him. There's been 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 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, premiering *The Lost Bus*. My mom was in it. She's 93. My son's in it. That could have been four. He would have come to Santa Fe with mom. You know? He didn't. 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." 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 hearing, "What's your opinion on that? Hey, watching movies with me?" We never watched movies. I miss that. In his hands, man. He had these healing hands. And we'd have been buddies by now, right? I would have 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 it 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 you 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. It wouldn't have come. They don't disrespect or love me any less for it. It's just like, "Man, we know you though, brother." There's something beautiful in that.

Steven Bartlett: Do you remember these? [Holds up a piece of paper] Yes, 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 it was a few days off after my birthday. Yeah. 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, I wouldn't change a thing about it. 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 mom and family, win an Oscar for best actor, look back and enjoy the view, just keep living. I don't know what I'd add to that.

Steven Bartlett: One of the things that you've talked a few times about is this idea of needing resistance. You've 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?

Matthew McConaughey: I think it's just a necessity for having more than just an individual life, the top of the high rise with money, if you're successful, do that. I mean, I'm supposing that whether it's different words, your friend went to Christianity for a very similar reason. It's like a certain amount of guilt is very healthy. It helps us, keeps us, it's boundaries. Without any shame, without any embarrassment, without any guilt? You're telling me it's all just four-dimensional? Where's the form? Where's the art? It's four-dimensional. It has no form. You've got to have gravity to have form. You've got to have some resistance to have some form. You've got to push off of something to go somewhere. 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 it's like in *Greenlights*. If life's just nothing but green lights, if you've got no yellows and reds, no reasons to pause or crises that stop you, resistance? What, are you just going to go in circles until you run out of gas and 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, 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, "What the shit? Why me? I don't deserve any of this." I fucked things up on purpose just to say like, 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, it's 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's sake because I've come to learn, and I think we all are, no, when things are going really well, resistance is going to come. If you stay with, if you have any ambition, resistance is going to come.

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 like people building families or even, you know, many people consider that we're living in a bit of a comfort crisis. This is a slightly different sort of analogy, but most of the diseases that we have today, whether they're diseases of the mind like people feeling lonely and isolated, or 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 to opt out of.

Matthew McConaughey: It's a choice, too. I mean, can I hit a little poem that's 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 as not enough. How we all need good fortune, good fate, and charity sometimes, but we shouldn't rely on that. Okay? It's called "Tips Included."

When extra credit's included, credit doesn't get us due. When more gives us less, the exchange rate's 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 for 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 is quite a fluffer Because when the tip's included, the service will suffer.

That's so good. But it's about that. The conveniences, the long lenses, everything's like, "Oh," and we've out-convenienced ourself. 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, it's not our X word. Oh, no, this is what I really mean in 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 like 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?

Steven Bartlett: I mean, exactly what you've said, but the studies that have 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, through history, people like Richard Feynman, 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. 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. And it goes to what you were saying there, you were talking about, be careful when you mess with incentives. Like 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. And I just actually made a video about this, funnily enough, just warning my audience about when something appears to be like a short-term friend, it's usually a long-term enemy.

Steven Bartlett: Like when you choose easy today, you choose hard tomorrow. And there's always a trade, right?

Matthew McConaughey: Do you think if you choose hard today, you usually get easy tomorrow?

Steven Bartlett: I mean, there's obviously a ton of nuance to this. But in many contexts, yes. So, for example, 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." You caught up with him. 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, like 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? 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?

Steven Bartlett: I agree with you. That's the resistance. You're choosing... look, I still got to learn how to take a vacation because 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 ass song. Trust that the hill's coming. Again, don't be so impressed with this.

Matthew McConaughey: And don't... what I have to do is don't fall into when things are going really well, I go, "Ah, there it is. That's the mean." 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, rather than shooting for a C and making an F. 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, 'No, dude, just pass class.'" It's again that little bit of that owner's versus renter's mentality. 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, 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?" Yeah. So be pleased with reality because you got a good grade on it, man. That was good. That piece of art wouldn't have been that true if you wouldn't have been.

Steven Bartlett: 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. It comes out. It may be majorly inspiring. It may speak to masses. It may even have some magic to it, but it's not divine. That's resistance, that's tension. Yeah, the unclosed gap. 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 is 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, right? You talk about arriving a lot in *Poems & Prayers* as well. I also was reflecting on your mother's words, where at a very young age she positioned life as a dichotomy of being humble but knowing that you're the shit. 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: And there's a moment, and I think it's where the art 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 because you oversaw it—it's a theory I got, "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."

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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?

Matthew McConaughey: I don't know.

Steven Bartlett: Would you have been...?

Matthew McConaughey: You're right.

Steven Bartlett: Would it have made you scared?

Matthew McConaughey: Both, probably. Because, look, I've had moments. Let me tell you one. In Africa. I'm in Mali, Africa. A doggone country. Me and my guy 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 Doda anyway. I didn't give them about the writing part, but they were very interested in the wrestling part. So each village I would go to started to catch up to me, like strong white men named Doda. And they loved to wrestle over there. They loved 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, Benji and Montu, and I'm laying there. It's a 14-mile hike to get there. I'm laying on the ground stretching. The villages all kind of come up around. They're talking and chattering, and all of a sudden, I hear this chatter, and it'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, bump, bump, popping at me. And I can tell by the tone. I don't know what they're saying because they're speaking in Bombada. I'm like, "Are they talking to me?" And Issa goes, "Yes. They are the wrestlers of the village. They say they are the best wrestlers in the village, and they are challenging you to wrestling."

So I was like, "Oh, they are." I was like, "Well, they sure are talking a lot. I don't know if they mean it. Do you all have this thing over here? We have a thing in America where if someone talks too much, they really don't mean it." He goes, "Yes, we have this. We have this." And just as that happens, you hear the crowd scream. And I look up and the two boys, bam, run off. Why? Because the real champion wrestler of the village, Michel, five foot nine, 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 ear's 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. Whoa, whoa, whoa. About 80 people have gathered now. The chief comes out. I'm standing in the middle of the pit going, "I'm not sure how this is supposed to go. What are the rules?" The 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 that meant.

So we start going around, man, and I'm thinking, "Okay, I get some leverage on this guy." His legs are like tree chunks. I'm like, "Oh, I ain't getting him down low." So we're scrapping, grabbing, boom. I get him over, bam, flip him on his back. He flips me back over. I backflip him off my back and somersault him. He comes in, gets me in a freaking leg lock that I can barely breathe. I almost got to tap out from. I shimmy out of that thing. All of a sudden, Chief comes in, separates us. I'm hyperventilating, man. Crowd's going crazy. He's got to split Michel on this side, me on this side. These talismans that were in my beard, two of them got torn out during the wrestling match. I got blood running down my hair. My knees are bleeding. My ankles are bleeding. I'm hyperventilating and covered in sweat. I look over at Michel, who's just staring at me going, barely a glistening on him. And that's when the chief goes, "Boom." And I go, "Oh, shit. Here we go." Boom, boom, boom. Grounds my waist. Bop, bop. Burrows his head. I burrow my head. We're off. Goes around again. Pretty damn good match. Strong. I flipped him. He pinned me. We got up. Got moving. All of a sudden, Chief comes in and 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 me on the shoulders. There's "Da-da, 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 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 that 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 a neon light on a black backdrop. 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 hurt in my throat. So I sit up. Go to spit out over the edge 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 past 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 Benji Amatu. There's Michel. He's had five kids, and he broke his hip. So he's got a limp. So we all agree, not another wrestling match. We have a great dinner that night. We talk. We tell stories. They're speaking Bombada. 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 did all right." He goes, "Oh, no, no, no. You do very well." He said, "When you accept the challenge, that is when you were a 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 this village, but of this village and three villages back. And you handled Michel." "Handled" was the word. It wasn't "win," it was "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, he walked me, broken hip and all, 14 miles to the next village. You accept the challenge. 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 the challenge." He said the whole village thought Michel was going to have strong white man named Doda on his back in 10 seconds over, but you handled Michel. Not "win," "handled." But you were a big man when you accepted the challenge. Beautiful. And then he's there six years later and walks me the same way.

I think your question was on when we know or how confident we're feeling when we're on the right path. That was a time when I thought I was so much. I was like, "I think I might be..." A loogie in my face to me was God going, "You're doing good, but not that good, bud."

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 this 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. That's very Japanese almost. So when you said earlier that 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 challenge. It's removing the...

Matthew McConaughey: Yeah, what are the new challenges? Being on the internet, TikTok, social media.

Steven Bartlett: So if those challenges, though, for now—and I'm going to paraphrase this—if those challenges may not be the ones that 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, in 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 else we're doing in life that may not be giving us the meaning or making us feel.

I want to ask you something, because as I started to read *Poems & 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 the science of it. Like, what about the science? What about proof and 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: I think, one, I think science is the practical pursuit of God. And like we're talking about perfection, it ain't never gonna 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 churning your way towards me. I'm not gonna 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. Believe 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. A scientist doesn't necessarily doubt. A scientist just says, "I can't believe in something 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 it is 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 in God, even though you can't conclude that God exists. I know plenty of scientists that are also believers.

I don't know. I got a point here, and this is not a lowest common denominator, but also just a practical way of thinking about it. If you're like, "Man, I don't... 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 God, I don't believe in that author," fine, okay. Find principles and ways of living and approaching life, yourself, others, your neighbor and self. Call them ethics, whatever morals, whatever you want to call them, paradigms and sort of law markers out there that kind of help in this life now, get you out of the rut. That's what the science and the studies show—that people that do have a faith are happier, healthier. And people can argue as to why that is.

I try to be clear in this that 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 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, "I can't go as far to believe that they're all going to hell, uh-uh, if there even is one." But it's when religion has become exclusionary along the way. But let's remember, we bastardized it. You know where religion comes from? The word? 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 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 & Prayers* comes to me because I started getting a little cynical myself. I started to default, objectify. Found myself objectifying people, kind of looking down my nose at them, upon hello, thinking, "Ah, 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 going, "Wait a minute now. So we're saying if 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 how you get there. You did it. Congratulations. Come to the front of the line. So what are the ethics? I don't know. What'd the winner do? Well, but they—wait, 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 for people to believe in. And I'm finding it harder to believe myself."

Steven Bartlett: One of the things that I learned through your writing in *Poems & 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 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 the amount of people that are having children, 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."

Matthew McConaughey: Right. Relevant for what? We all want to be relevant. Okay, like relevant for what? We want to succeed. But when we succeed, is it worth it if we don't profit? Yeah. You know what I mean? If more—we're trained to go, "The quantity is the goal. That's it." Well, and if that's sacrificing quality 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. Someone's in misery. You want to talk to them about projecting and sacrificing today so you can have more tomorrow? Those people are looking at you going, "I'm trying to pay my rent, put food on the table, bro. Lucky you, Matthew, you get to talk about that." I'm not saying I'm changing my mind, but I am conscious and I still need—I still have more to learn from talking with people that are going, "Man, I don't have the luxury to think about tomorrow."

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 something transcendent, something higher. And people that don't ladder up seem to be lost.

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. You're much more courageous down here because you're like, "I'm not looking forward to dying, but I ain't that afraid of it." You know, that's a very life-affirming feeling to have where I think selfishness and selflessness are in bed together in that place, you know, or humility and confidence are hooking up. They're not this. 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.

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Steven Bartlett: When your children come to you, Matthew, and they say, "Dad, 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 did it, but then you did it again and again and again and again and again, and again, at the very, very highest level." And what, like, is this was natural talent? 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: I think that—and when I do try to say some version of this to my kids when we talk about their futures—is, look, and I talked to a lot of young people about this. If you, first, start with what do you have an innate ability to? What's in your DNA? You know, I wanted to play basketball for years. I wanted to dunk. It ain't my DNA, bro. 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. So look at what do you have an innate ability for? Wanted to be a Washington Redskins 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? And what then are you willing to pursue an education for, work for, hustle for? That for which you have an innate ability 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?

Matthew McConaughey: Because it's supply and demand. Boy, you can end up doing something you've got an innate ability for, plus you become really good at it and you learn the craft and the world demands it. You can supply it. There you go.

But we don't always, some of us have innate ability, but we're not willing to, we don't work for it. We don't improve our skills. We kind of rely on what we got and it kind of becomes middle of the field. 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.

And you aimed at becoming a, you know, it says in it here. It says, win an Oscar for best actor, et cetera, et cetera. 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 of more substance.

So the decision, maybe to answer a little more the last question. I've, when something's not feeling like I'm completely in the pocket on it, getting it on the screws, 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 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're the go-to guy, man. You're number one on the call sheet. You took the baton from Hugh Grant and ran. You love doing it. 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, I 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. I was like, yeah, but I don't. I need some resistance. I want to find something that scares me.

And mind you, at that time, I've fallen in love with Camilla and she's pregnant with our first child. What's the thing I always wanted 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 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-coms, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. Don't know how long that's going to last. Made that decision with Camilla and we said, look, you know, I'm 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. And you get offered a lot of money in that time.

Yeah, it was 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. I 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 them 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 offer that I said no to. But it was better written. It was funnier, man. I could see myself in it. This 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, with, oh, McConaughey's not bluffing. What the fuck's 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 for rent. Which, oh, that's interesting. Oh, maybe a little more attractive. Well, you know what might be a novel? Great idea for this drama. I think a lawyer for this killer, Killer Joe, for Mudd, for Dallas Buyers Club, Magic Mike, True Detective. McConaughey. 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 loved doing them. And, yeah. Would I? Would those have come if I'd have never stepped out? I'm not even going to say maybe, no. No. They wouldn't have.

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. Turn down $14.5 million, which. And trust me, my brothers were like most people going, what is your major malfunction, little brother? You know, 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, that's the decisions 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 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, right?

Matthew McConaughey: 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 where it's, 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 of 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 I 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. Did I, 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. 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 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 been a part of things that had the best laid plans and turned out to be like, oh, shit, 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 underfinanced and didn't seem to have the foundation, but, well, 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, director, we 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 there and started telling me yep doing it in October there wasn't no money my agent was like you keep saying you're doing it in October you're not doing it in October I was like yes we are yes we are dude there's no money you're not buying it yes you are just kept saying it other scripts were coming in. He's like, can you read this? When's it going? October? I'm not. Why read it? I'm not doing it. I'm doing Dallas Spires Club. Dude, you're not doing Dallas Spires 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 Spires Club. Why were you so? We just, we just kind of, I'm not going to say, what's the word? We didn't manifest it. We just didn't flinch. Don't have access. 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.

Steven Bartlett: Is that proven to be really important to believe what you say and to say it with a conviction because it goes back to 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.

Steven Bartlett: Amen on that.

Matthew McConaughey: Yeah. Intent is momentous. Yeah. There's a, I put them here on 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? Intent is such a lust. 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 of 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 going to do the evil. Well, that son of a bitch, I'm sorry, maybe we do need to go in an alley and work it out. But the ones going, I didn't 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 meant. 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 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 them. 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. I need some reparations. 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 forgive me, you've opened it up first. And if you forgive me and you believe that I mean I'm truly sorry, I do 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. Sometimes people go, I'm sorry, I'm 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. I've got to course correct. The offenders, 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.

Steven Bartlett: I think there's a more obvious incentive to misunderstand people now, especially when there's likes and follows and retweets and play. Misunderstanding someone, there's huge incentive in that. And I think maybe that's created a culture of that being the default is to trying to misunderstand you.

Matthew McConaughey: Trying to misunderstand. That's interesting.

Steven Bartlett: Because there's an incentive. I think all human behavior can be tracked to incentives. And that's not the resistance we're talking about.

Matthew McConaughey: No, no, no, no, no. You know? That's, come on. Trying to misunderstand people? A real want and need?

Steven Bartlett: 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? It makes me significant.

Matthew McConaughey: Right, because you own something and you, yeah, so you trumped my gesture. Yes. what about what about it proves I'm almost piggybacking you talked about structure I'm pushing off you right right right right dude we've got to compare before we contrast double down on somebody's affirmation make make the positives plural and the singular is negative then you can block evil and the negatives 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 truths 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.

Steven Bartlett: What season of life are you in now, Matthew?

Matthew McConaughey: Season of life. Well, the last eight years, I've really come to love fall. I grew up, I was a summer guy. No shirt, no shoes. Bright lights, extrovert, it's all good. Everything. Don't bitch about no shoes because there's somebody out there with no feet. I've come to like fall because I think I need, 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 8-footer. I feel ambitious looking laterally instead of, my 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.

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 one, 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've 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?

Matthew McConaughey: Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: That will 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. I 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. 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 Girlfriend's Pass, told me one time, oh, McConaughey, you're never wrong. I was like, thank you. He goes, but there's more than one way to be right. But 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, if I see that, I'm going to lose some of this. And I'm still working on that.

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 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, Green Lights. And I know that one of your good friends, Bill McRaven.

Matthew McConaughey: Yeah. Admiral Bill. Admiral Bill McRaven.

Steven Bartlett: I always make you call him Bill, but I always go, Admiral?

Matthew McConaughey: Yeah, Bill McRaven. And he was somewhat part of the inspiration or he inspired or was the catalyst moment you seeing him speak? It's a friendship that he and I have started to build and is at a time when I was seeking out male mentors.

Steven Bartlett: After your dad had passed?

Matthew McConaughey: Well, this is more in the last five years, six years, seven years. 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 if you ever get a chance to speak with him and spend time, he's really got it going on. 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. He's got a great sense of humor. I love 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. It doesn't really go like that. You know what I mean? And I'd give details, but I feel like I might be speaking out of school if I did.

Steven Bartlett: I actually, we reached out to Bill McRaven.

Matthew McConaughey: Oh, you 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 the 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 heirs 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 Lockhorns. 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've 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 Camilla 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 some place special to live. Take care. Bill McRaven.

Matthew McConaughey: Wow. Thank you, Bill. Ah, that's something else. You know, I did speak to him before I went to D.C. after Ubalde. and just the wisdom with the context, the setting. Do you see? Politics. But also in that being aware and understanding those things. Go your line, man. go your line. And that's beautiful to hear. 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 McCraven. Thank you.

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 clarity on why we should pursue resistance and family and faith and all the things described in this letter of 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 we're done beautiful

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