The episode features Ethan Hawke, acclaimed actor, director, and writer, discussing his unconventional path through Hollywood and the philosophy that shaped his career.

Hawke shares the story of how his first film Explorers (1984) flopped spectacularly when he was 14, an experience he credits with saving him from child stardom's destructive effects.

The conversation explores Hawke's return to acting years later with Dead poets society, his work with directors like Peter Weir, and collaborations with actors including Denzel Washington, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and River Phoenix.

Topics range from the dangers of social media and celebrity for young people, to the nature of hypnosis in great acting, the importance of maintaining beginner's mind, and finding meaning through creative work rather than status or wealth.

The Blessing of Early Failure in Hollywood

At age 12, Hawke's mother enrolled him in acting class at the Paul Robeson Center of Performing Arts simply as winter childcare, where a theater director spotted him and cast him in George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan at McCarter Theater in New Jersey

"Are you an alcoholic?" - the first question Hawke remembers from his professional acting debut, asked by the director who wanted to know if the boy understood the commitment required

At 14, Hawke starred in Explorers (1984), a $30 million film directed by Joe Dante (who had just done Gremlins), alongside River Phoenix. His grandmother, who had always dreamed of being a movie star, served as his guardian and smoked Eve cigarettes in the van driving through Paramount's gates saying "my first time in Hollywood as a fucking guardian"

"The movie came out, and I remember River and I go into the bathroom at the premiere, and we'd grown a lot from the time we shot the movie to the time it came out. And nobody in the bathroom really recognized us. And they were all talking about what a turkey the movie was" - Hawke

The film's failure sent Hawke back to high school where he "put away my dream of being an actor" for four years, an experience he now considers critical to his development and ability to handle later success

Dead Poets Society and Permission to Fail

At college, miserable and hating his studies, Hawke heard about auditions for Dead poets society and made himself a deal: "If I get the part, I'll do that. And if I don't get the part, I'll join the Merchant Marines and be like Jack London"

"There's seven parts. If I don't get one of those, I must suck" - Hawke's naive reasoning at the time, though he did land one of the roles and dropped out of college

Director Peter Weir, who had just directed Witness, "talked about acting and performance in a way that I hadn't" heard before, treating it "like we were making art and like we were on a mission beyond success or failure"

"I didn't take it seriously at all" when Dead poets society succeeded, because of the first film's failure. "Everybody's saying, oh, the movie's so great. I'm like, yeah, they said this last time. This doesn't mean anything"

The film itself became "a guided meditation on Carpe Diem" that planted seeds about commitment to craft rather than success, though Hawke "wouldn't have told you that on the day I wrapped Dead poets society that my life had changed"

The Poison of Early Fame and Social Media

"I've never met a person who became famous at 14 who came out of it okay" - Rogan, with Hawke citing Jodie Foster as the sole exception he studies through interviews

Hawke compares childhood development to concrete: "When you make concrete, there's a bunch of very specific ingredients. You put them with very specific mixture. If it's off, it's never fixed. You can't add water after it's cured. It's done. It's fucked forever. This is bad concrete now"

"Celebrity is like a tiny drop of mercury. It's poison. It's poison for your brain" - Hawke, explaining why he got fame "in slow increments" which allowed him to develop resistance to it

On Julia Roberts after Pretty Woman: "Two days before no one had ever heard of Julia Roberts. Two days afterwards, she's the most famous woman in America. I think that's a huge thing to absorb. I wouldn't wish that on anyone"

Regarding social media and children, Hawke discusses not restricting his daughters' phone use but having open conversations, citing Richard Linklater's advice: "The most important thing is to be your own best friend. And that this is a slight obstacle to it. That boredom, boredom and sitting still with yourself is a membrane you kind of have to pass through"

"I find my own powers of concentration are suffering. I'll be reading a book, which I used to do all the time, and every 10 pages I take a break to look at my phone" - Hawke on how social media affects even mature adults

The Craft of Disappearing: Acting as Hypnosis

"When you're acting with Denzel Washington, the power and strength and completeness of his imagination" creates an invitation to collective imagination where "you're not fucking thinking about Al Pacino or James Kahn or you think about Michael and Sonny and Tom and Vito"

Hawke's experience filming White Fang with a wolf taught him the essence of presence: "If I'm actually talking to the dog, the wolf, if I'm actually in, if I'm present with this animal, the animal interacts with me." He spent 11 hours on an island with the wolf to build genuine trust

"Bad acting for me is glib. Bad acting is commenting on the song. Bad acting is slightly the feeling you're talking about. It's when somebody's slightly outside of it" - describing the difference between genuine performance and self-consciousness

Philip Seymour Hoffman's approach to scenes: "What is it? Something smells bad. What is it? Is it you, is it me? Is it the cup? Is the cup wrong? Something's fake. What is it? What's fake?" - constantly searching for authenticity

"Your body doesn't know it's fake. And if you do it right, you trick your body into believing that I'm begging for my child's life. I'm not acting. I'm begging Kevin Bacon for my child's life" - Hawke on the scene in Leave the World Behind

Steve Zahn's Zen approach: when asked if a performance went well, "I never remember" because he's so present in the moment that he doesn't form opinions about it

Training Day and Working with Denzel Washington

"He is probably my favorite actor" - Hawke on Denzel Washington, describing him as "always listening, always listening, talking, asking, thinking, curious, so present, so commanding"

The famous "King Kong ain't got shit on me" monologue was completely improvised on the last day of shooting: "He's just supposed to yell, fuck you, or something as I'm walking away. And this monologue flew out of his mouth"

"When people say improvised, they think, oh, just some magic lightning bolt happened. It's months of work" - Hawke explaining how Denzel accumulated lines and moments throughout production that he unleashed in that scene

During ride-arounds with real cops researching the role, "they would say something really funny, you know, and I would just see Denzel" taking mental notes. "And then it would come out, you know, in a scene two months later, that line that that guy said"

"If you take responsibility for your own work, you can have a great experience. And if you don't, he'll run you over" - Hawke on Washington's commanding presence on set

Denzel visited set for a scene he wasn't in (the bathtub scene with the gang) and told Hawke: "This is gonna be the best scene in the movie, and I'm not in it. I hate this scene" - showing both competitiveness and graciousness

Beginner's Mind and Learning from Mentors

A director once told young Hawke: "I need you to say, I've done nothing. I need you to say, I don't know. And if you can say, I don't know, I can teach you. And if you can't say, I don't know, then I really can't teach you"

"See, now at 55, I always say I don't know what I'm doing. It's so easy for me to say it. One lifetime is not enough to know what you're doing. There's so many more rooms. There's so many more layers"

Hawke pursues projects outside his expertise deliberately: "I'm going to write a graphic novel. I'm going to make a documentary. I've never done that before. I have no idea how a graphic novel works" - to maintain beginner's mind

"When I was young is I thought there was a right way to be an actor. And I was obsessed with somebody doing it wrong" - describing his early rigidity and unrealistic expectations that everyone should work like Peter Weir

On learning piano as an adult: "I know it rattles my brain and makes my brain see things differently. Take a new language on, learn how to play chess, do something" - advocating for constant learning

Hawke's mother joined the Peace Corps in her mid-40s after he was established, spent 25 years in Romania getting thousands of kids to college, demonstrating "it's never too late" to follow your path

Fear, Anxiety, and Peak Performance

Mike Tyson's mindset: "All during my training, I've been afraid of this man. But the closer I get to the ring, I'm more confident. Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god. No one could beat me" - showing how fear transforms into confidence

Rogan on fighting: "If I did" get to a place where I wasn't afraid, "I didn't perform well. There were a few times where I was overcome" by complacency from having fought so many times

"You have to be scared. It's critical to your performance because it keeps you on edge. You have to be nervous" - Rogan's realization around age 19-20

Sarah Bernhardt story: When a young actress said "I'm never nervous when I act," Bernhardt replied "When I'm not nervous, I don't act" - illustrating that anxiety is essential to great performance

Before shooting Blue Moon, Hawke "got so nervous, I got sick. I woke up in the middle of the night just in pools of sweat" despite having confidence, because his body was preparing him for the challenge

Cus D'Amato's teaching to Mike Tyson: "Fear can cook your food or it can burn your house down. It depends on how you control it" - applicable to ego, money, and all powerful forces in life

Critics, Comments, and Managing Opinion

"My mother will send me a really nice review of something, something positive about me, right? I'll look at it, and my brain goes, what are the comments?" - Hawke on the destructive pull of negative feedback

"Over time, it will make you stronger to realize, of course, people don't like you. Half the people every party you went to didn't like you. Okay? But they're also not thinking very much about you. They're thinking about themselves"

Actor friend's experience: "I went down the rabbit hole last night. I just read what people are saying about me on the internet" - took him weeks to recover his confidence for stage performances

On Quentin Tarantino's criticism of Paul Dano: "Anybody that knows Quentin knows he just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks. Anybody that knows Paul knows he's a great world-class human being" - showing that even harsh criticism from legends doesn't define reality

"Critics in particular, I do not think they want to be critics. Most people who become critics become critics because they don't have anything to contribute. They're not great writers, or they never developed the ability to be a great writer"

Rogan's confrontation with a critic about Fear Factor: "You say horrible, hurtful things about all these different people, and the course of their career is dependent upon your opinions to a certain extent. You just do it because you don't have anything else to contribute"

Art, Meaning, and the Pursuit of Excellence

"If I say to you, I really want to make $100 million, nobody says I'm pretentious. If I say, I'd really like to make something beautiful, it really moves people. What a pretentious ass" - Hawke on society's twisted values

Paul Schofield performing King Lear at his local church instead of the West End: "I really like walking to work. And I realized that I really have always only performed for whoever it is that made me. And I can do that anywhere"

What I'm chasing is moments of grace on set: "The crew's losing their lunch, and everybody's so happy with the take that we got, and it's kind of moving. And oh, it was perfect. And the light came through the window at the right time"

Augie Garrido (UT baseball coach) on why he didn't coach the Yankees: "The problem is with Pro Ball, the object of the game" changes. "In college sports, my job is to develop young men. And if I do that right, we will win"

"An expensive vacation with my kids is not better than any vacation with my kids. Romance, same thing. You can spend a fortune on a romantic weekend. It's not as great as it is to get stuck in a car when it's a blizzard out"

On billionaires: "In the rooms that I've been in with a lot of money, compared to the rooms I've been in where there isn't a lot of money, if you compare the laughter. It's no contest. There's so much pressure involved in that kind of laughter"

Nature, Perspective, and the Cosmos

Rogan's experience at Keck Observatory in Hawaii: "It changed my life. It changed my perspective on the universe itself because it felt like I was in a spaceship. There wasn't a spot in the sky that wasn't filled with stars. The Milky Way was clear as day"

Hawke filming White Fang in Haines, Alaska for six months in 1989: "I saw the Aurora Borealis by myself, night after night. It actually made me laugh. It was like the cosmos was teasing me, going, Oh, you think all this is real?"

"I think we're being robbed of that because of cities. Light pollution has robbed us of what I think all of our ancestors always inherently observed" - the nightly reminder of being part of the infinite cosmos

"It's so hard to be in a bad mood when you're looking at the stars. It's so hard to be in a bad mood when you're riding a bicycle and you feel the wind" - simple experiences that ground us

Comparing gym workouts to running outside: "I walk out of the damn gym and I hate myself" versus running through nature where "I see a hawk and I see the wind blowing through and I pass a farm with sheep" - returning home "high"

"When you look at the stars, it feels great" despite making you feel insignificant - the paradox of how disappearing into something larger brings peace rather than anxiety