EPISODE 1: JOSH RADNOR
JOSH RADNOR
On outsourcing our belief in ourselves, the one disadvantage of “dreaming” big, the surprising benefit of LA traffic, and much, much more!
Josh Radnor is an actor, a writer, a director, a singer-songwriter, and musician. You likely know him as Ted Mosby from the super-long running, How I Met Your Mother. But he also starred as Dr. Jedediah Foster on the PBS American Civil War drama series Mercy Street, and most recently, as Lou Mazzuchelli in the musical series Rise. He was in the Tony Award nominated Broadway play, Disgraced, and more recently he did a very quick run as Seymor in the Kennedy Center’s production of Little Shop Of Horrors. He also starred in two feature films, which he also, wrote, directed, and produced, titled Happythankyoumoreplease and liberal arts, the former of which won the Audience Award at Sundance. He’s also making and performing music in his band called Radnor and Lee.
QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE
5:58 ~ “I feel like if you’re gonna have a sustainable acting career (and I’m coming up on 20 years)... I don’t think that there is an actor who has a career let’s say that lasts over a decade that doesn’t have some sort of guiding philosophy... maybe they couldn’t even articulate it, but they find a way to stay sane through feast or famine, because also... the feast can be as destabilizing as the famine.”
41:41 ~ “Isn’t much of what drives us in life almost entirely unseen? Whether it’s love, need, hunger, shame, fear, envy, all these things. You can’t measure them in a laboratory, but you know they’re true... There are evidence-based people that’ll only believe a laboratory, but we’re running experiments on ourselves all of the time.”
42:59 ~ “There’s something about the poetic dimension of life that I wanna preserve... I like mystery… I don’t believe in a big grey bearded man doing or not doing anything, but I certainly believe in an unseen dimension that is contactable. I believe that something’s going on here that’s very huge and amazing and mysterious and terrifying. I don’t know what it is. I just know that you can either sort of partner with it or you can ignore it or violate it but there seem to be some sort of cosmic laws that are true and have always been true and will always be true.”
56:28 ~ “I don’t think that there is such a thing as a life absent struggle. Even what you would look at and call a blessed life... First of all, it’s hard to have a body. It’s just hard. Upkeep is hard. Your body changes as you get older and it’s annoying... I always think it’s so weird that we celebrate birth so unanimously and we mourn death. What if it’s the reverse? … First of all birth is hard and you’re looking at your child like, “this is hard here, and we’re gonna do the best that we can to provide for you, but it’s hard.” You know, even if you live a beautiful life, your body’s going to betray you at some point. If you live long enough, you’re gonna bury a lot of your friends… you’re going to see tragedy. If you’re empathetic person, you’re gonna suffer on behalf of the world, you’re gonna see things that really upset you… On top of the fact that you’re gonna get your heart broken… things hurt. If you’re an awake person, you’re going to hurt... Now, I could make just... as big a claim for how brilliant and beautiful one of these things is… But, I think we have to eradicate the fiction that there is something about life that should be frictionless, that should be easy.”
59:51 ~ “I’ve been behind the velvet rope of fame, success, money. It’s still hard here… I’ve seen a lot of miserable Academy Award winners. I’ve seen a lot of fantastically depressed wealthy people. It does not inoculate you against a kind of human despair… You have to curate your thoughts. You have to be a good steward of your mind.”
1:00:01 ~ “Your first thought is gonna be ego. Pay attention to the second thought… What’s the (perhaps) more sane and measured thought... People who are just led around by their fears or their hungers, they’re just in the grip of ego... It’s almost like a drunk person. You’re actually hypnotized... Your consciousness is asleep… You can tell people who are just more in touch with the witness, because it doesn’t bother them - there’ll be another parking spot… There are so many ways to use your life to awaken spiritually - traffic in LA being kind of the best one we have at our disposal… Can I stay sane in the midst of this? And then just remembering the basic fact… All the traffic is in your way, and then remembering... I’m also part of someone else’s way, you know, I’m an extra in someone else’s movie. I’m not always the protagonist.”
REFERENCES MADE IN THIS EPISODE
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
“Know, O beloved, that man was not created in jest or at random, but marvellously made and for some great end. Although he is not form everlasting, yet he lives forever; and though his body is mean and earthly, yet his spirit is lofty and divine.” ― Al-Ghazali
“Falling Upward” by Richard Rohr
“The ordeal is part of the commitment” - Philip Roth
E.M.D.R. - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
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