EPISODE 27: ZACHARY LEVI
ZACHARY LEVI
On loving yourself, being a beautiful speck, and how to do less shitty things.
Our last guest of the season Zachary Levi. Zach just starred as Shazam in the DC Universe film, Shazam! Before that, you likely knew him as Chuck from the long running and critically acclaimed series, Chuck. Or you may know him as Fandral from the thor movies, Thor:The Dark World or Thor: Ragnarok. Or you may know him as the lead in the Alvin and The Chipmunks movie. Or maybe as the voice of Flynn in the Tangled movies. And in the unlikely event that you don’t recognize him from any of those things, you’ve probably seen him on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Heroes Reborn, or Less Than Perfect. Along with all of his on screen work, and off screen work - he’s been the voice of so so many animated characters - Zach has also starred on Broadway in the musical First Date and then more recently in the revival of She Loves me, for which he received a TONY nomination for Best Actor.
QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE
11:13 ~ "You're always trying to push [feelings] away.... You're like, 'I don't want to feel that, so I'll go and distract.' But it's so important to go, 'oh, this sucks, but I'm not going to try and push it away. I'm going to try and understand it."
13:29 ~ "The term God is a really small word for an infinite concept."
20:14 ~ "I can't bring my head around on the idea that there is such a thing as God, if that thing doesn't know all... Is all... Is through all... is connected like the Force in Star Wars."
24:31 ~ "People aren't sitting around, evil, twirling their mustaches, with piles of dynamite on train tracks, with damsels in distress like, 'I can't wait to do the bad thing.' Every bad person throughout the history of humankind, if they're doing something that we look and go, 'I can't believe they did that...' I can. Because they were fucked up."
26:02 ~ "If we can get [out of] our egos. If we can get out and let that die. Thank it - it was an incredible vessel that helped us survive for so long - but then get rid of that. Then [we can] journey into what is a far deeper, far more meaningful life that also... helps you to come to the realization that it's not about you."
41:38 ~ “I believe that we are both infinitely valuable and entirely unimportant.”
42:16 ~ "You belong here simply because you are here. And if you can you can accept that, and accept that you haven't failed anything - that you are here and you are learning and you are growing and you are suffering, perhaps, and growing even more through that, that's enough!
That's a pretty good place, I think, that to start that journey of 'oh yeah, I'm a speck and that's a beautiful thing.’ What a beautiful speck."
56:04 ~ "That's why we treat each other the way we do right. Yeah we're all secretly already just nailing ourselves with critique and stuff. So then we say, 'well, if I'm living by these rules then everybody's gonna live by these rules.' The rules shouldn't be about all that. The rules should be about fucking love. The rules should be about seeing people and having empathy for people and going, 'Oh God, you're fucking screwing up. You're making some bad decisions in life, not because you're evil, because you're wrong, [but] because you're ignorant, because you don't know. You just don't know better.'"
1:15:41 ~ "We have such an amazing opportunity to break every chain of abuse, to break every chain of trauma, to break every chain of shame and fear and insecurity and ignorance and lack of understanding and all of it. Every single bit of it. We can do it."
1:18:11 ~ "We have an opportunity that's unprecedented in human history to put ourselves in other people's shoes." - KF
1:26:06 ~ "The very thing that gives me the worth in me - The love and the light and the life that is in me - recognizes that in you, whether you are acting well or not... self-love. It's got to start here... you've got to love yourself... If we can do that, then we can all genuinely love each other. And if we can do that, this world is going to be fucking awesome. It's gonna be so fucking awesome."