So I'm sitting here with Dr Jordan Peterson.

We're gonna talk about the weird overlap between our books.

There's a sort of met affection aspect of it because Jordan had written the rules for I was a Koran entered it started to rules.

And on core of this rate, 42 rules got pared down.

So there's gonna be like, 19 Sequels, right?

That's right.

Rolling him out.

And, um and I thought they were amazing.

And so I was writing orphan acts.

I was writing the first book in the series and an orphan axe.

My main character is an assassin, and he has these sort of 10 Commandments that air the operational rules for an assassin.

And I wanted something offset that for a kid who's in his life, who lives downstairs from him, who's being raised is a good human instead of his assassin.

And I wanted to set the rules that were kind of counterbalance.

That and at the time I was reading Jordan's rules that he listed and so I started uses as a counterbalance is sort of positive masculinity to use to use this horrible frame, the well trod in term but to actually show how somebody might be raised properly instead of as an international assassin.

And at the time, you know, you were a mirror professor, you drone.

I thought, what could possibly be controversial about this?

Yeah, right.

And so So that's how it sort of started.

Yeah, well, it was fun to see, You know, when you create something like those rules I wrote them for Cora and I had written, like, 50 Cora answers, and some of them got disproportionately popular, which is exactly what you'd expect because something's get disproportionately popular.

And and the core rules attracted a lot of attention by core standards or by the standards of what I was writing on core.

And then you would put you pick them up.

And I thought, It's one of the things that's very interesting about doing something creatively is that you sort of launch it like you launch a note in a bottle on the ocean and you have no idea where it's going to end up.

And so that was the first interesting manifestation of those rules outside of the kora container.

So and then, of course, part of our discussion about the rules also led to their encapsulation and 12 rules for life, and that was much later.

And it's been interesting to see how that overlap has developed as well.

So it's also weird to see what connects like It's so funny with orphan acts when I was first adapting, and the big thing with that is that my character kind of interacts.

He's an archetypal character, like a Jack Reacher Jason Bourne, but lives in the real world with you and me, you know?

So it's like he's not.

You never see James Bond go Home is what an archetypal characters should do, right.

It should exist in abstraction and also be embedded in the real world.

Yeah, but usually you have, like the high Plains drifter who's like off feeding his horse and like moving on to the next town.

So I thought I'd be so fun to have them like interacting with the annoying Jewish woman who lives upstairs and having an awkward confrontation with the woman who lives downstairs who has chemistry with So it's an archetypal character wrestled into the real world.

That's what the Spiderman people did really well, the marvel with Spiderman extraordinarily, where he has to like re stitches cost.

No one thought about that, you know?

And he's like, late for school and all those problems.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So that was.

That was sort of the motif that is also the problem of.

It's a more complex psychological problem of of integrating the archetypal with the real world because there's an element of everyone's psyche that's that's trans personal.

That's architect, right?

Because to some degree you should manifest the mythological hero in your life.

But the the critical issue there is in your life because your life is like your life is like the bottle, that lamp, that genie is it like the genie is God for all intents and purposes.

But it's in this little tiny container.

It's like, Well, that's what your life, because you have this archetypal element to your personality, which is your capacity for heroic endeavor.

But it's all constrained by the hypothetical or the trivialities of your life, and you have to you have to mediate between those well, and that's the weird thing.

Like you were saying.

One of the things when you write is you don't always know what's gonna connect right.

You never knew that those rules would become, you know, number one best selling book everywhere in the world.

What was so interesting is there's this one scene at the opening of Orphan Acts where he's in the elevator and he's got a cut on his arm.

We don't know what it's from, and he has to fake to kind of pass as a real person among all the people, and he's kind of covering it up.

But he's got suppressors and he used a sock is a tourniquet.

So he's missing a sock, and he's kind of trying to pass his secret identity among other people that seem connected unbelievably with readers.

With it would it would be like the last scene that I would have thought.

And when I adapted the book initially for Bradley Cooper as a feature, and I remember I was like, Well, if I have Bradley Cooper let me open with some big action you show offy thing, and both his production company and the head of the studio were like, we need the elevator scene like this elevator scene became the iconic thing.

Of course, because it does what you're talking should be some music playing in the back just like there is.

Yeah, from something.

Something?

Yeah, if you get caught between the buried in New York City, right?

But it's weird because I never would have thought that would be the thing.

So the stuff that you send out have any idea why that was so attractive to people?

Well, I think it's exactly the thing that we're talking about is like You don't see James Bond in that circumstance.

It's so it's like this archetypal guy has a mission, is a knife cut the tourniquet his arm with and then he's in the elevator that you and I have been in and everyone's nagging him that he's, you know, miss the H Away, meeting the homeowner's association meeting where they're voting on like the new carpeting in the lobby.

And he's just trying to get out of it and he's covering.

So there's this wish fulfillment fantasy aspect to it, but it's almost like our own lives and like everyone knows what it's like to be dealing with annoyances of logistics.

But then he gets to go back to his life is like a super secret assassin who helps the helpless well There's another element of it, too, I would say.

Which is that that that that scene and and that that context also suggests that one of the ways that you one of the things that you have to do in order to put up with those mundane daily elements of life, is also to have your adventure along with you.

Yeah, so I mean, one of the things that I've been talking to my audience is about continually is that you need to have a meaning in your life that's of sufficient Grandier.

Let's air sufficient power so that the petty sufferings of life become not only justifiable but acceptable in the broader context and so insufficient risk and sufficient rest.

Because all that in that and that's what puts the adventure into it right?

It's like in the elevator scene, it's It's not only that everyone can relate to the mundane.

It's also that everyone can see that what transcends the mundane is also fundamentally necessary.

Because otherwise you are nothing but a collection of trivialities and life has so much suffering that if you're just a collection of trivialities, you're not going to be able to bear it So you need your heroic adventure, which is what's animating you.

Literally.

Anna is the sole right.

That's what Adama means.

So that's literally animating you while you have to put up with being trapped in this little tiny converted right.

I thought about this a lot when I was writing Batman, ever a Batman for two years for D.

C.

And I was fascinated by the sort of seesaw tilt between perfection and intimacy, which is so Batman, you know, he doesn't have a magic ring.

He can't fly.

He just represents the pinnacle of human discipline and achievement.

It's because his parents died when he was young, right?

He's alone in Wayne Manor.

There's Robin always dies.

There's always a Robin and he dies.

He's a playboy.

He doesn't have anyone intimate.

And if there's no one in your life, you can maintain perfection.

But the more you inch into intimacy a dog, a spouse, a partner, Children, the more that you get this sort of conflict and complication that starts to take over and detract from that version of perfection like you could be perfect without intimacy.

But then you're not perfect cause you have no intimacy And so the more that you integrated, it's almost like the more that you're accepting the realities of life.

But also, I think it's also one of the things that's interesting in the Batman reference, because one of the things you see in the Batman Joker dynamic especially the one with Heath Ledger, was the Joker was always pushing at Batman because of the evil of his perfections.

Like you're this far away from me and that perfectionistic drive, there's something totalitarian and single minded about it, right?

And then it's the encapsulation of that, an intimacy that that humanizes it.

And it's insane, right?

And so so that unit dimensional perfection could go very, very badly when it goes.

And to be contextually constrained like that is actually like a definition of sanity.

It's something that Young talked about when he was commenting on nature, and people like nature is that he believed that nature would have been able to maintain his sanity for much longer, assuming no physiological degeneration had he been able to incorporate himself within a profession and a family.

But you nailed him to the earth rail and an unhealthy one stilts down.

That's right, That's exactly right.

So I thought we'd just talk briefly about the editing process for 12 Rules.

Was a lot of fun, cause I got to read it all early, which was which was fun.

So I had it featured in the orphan X books, like, two years before came in, right?

Which is why I always like to remind you that I'm mostly responsible for yours.

Yes, well, I do appreciate that a lot.

Well, I sent all the chapters to Greg.

I had an editor at Penguin, Craig Pyatt, who is very, very helpful.

So I had to editors, really and other people commenting on it.

But I sent each chapter to Greg, and he would just shred them.

He's really, really good at that.

And while I'm very comical and so he just be absolutely brutal in its criticism.

But it was also also always extremely funny, was a founder.

Yeah, well, and then I was also absolutely staggered by Have rapid that you could do that and to point to what was working and to tell me what wasn't working, and that was exceptionally helpful.

And you're very, very skilled at that.

So there's the compliment you're gonna get for me, it was very others.

Now the insult first you lied.

You soften me up with a compliment.

And now no.

But I think what was helpful is so I mean, I took three courses from using undergraduate.

So it's like we've been swimming in the same water is for a long time.

So it was really interesting for me to see, you know, through the process.

You know, I have it.

I have a sense that goes kind of all the way down of the ideas you're going back to before maps of meaning, right?

Going back Thio the source, book articles and stuff you lectured amounts.

It was really fun to see them take hold and move from the abstract into the evermore accessible in specific.

Yeah, well, it was useful to because you're you've developed this intense skill in producing commercial, widely publicly accessible fiction, and and you have a sense of what works in terms of narrative flow.

And that was very useful to have that perspective on the way the the stories were laid out in each of the rules to make them to give them that narrative punch which is necessary to add an additional dimension of what would you say quality to the writing.

So I'm glad, But it's it's good working with someone like your learning curve was like this.

So he's like the 1st 1 that we went through.

You know, if there was something that is that the speed with which you could sort of implement some late new information and reflect that in writing is unbelievable, well, that's fun for the benefit of being sort of experience in multiple dominant arc is anything because there's so many things that you've done at such a high level that when you add a new one, the learning curve is like this.

So it's also really fun because it's like, you know, we'll we'll have a chance to do it again.

Yeah, I would, I would expect when I write the next book will be an extension of 12 Rules for Life, I presume so.

It's funny bumping into you here because we just bumped into each other at this studio today, actually, halfway around the world, in one studio part.

But so that's great.

So we'll work on the next one, and I'll work on the next orphan axe and go from there.