The Empathy Academy & Engineering Morality: Can We Genetically Edit Evil Out of Humans?

Dustin Grinnell - 1 (00:00:00 --> 00:01:29)
I'm Dustin Grinnell, and this is Curiously.

It's a point of pride for me as a podcast host that I let my guests talk most of the time. I don't like to use my platform to deliver my own ideas or ask questions that just try to get my points across. I like to let my guests talk. I'm there to listen and hear what they have to say about what they do and who they are. So you don't often hear that much from me apart from me asking questions and delivering some ideas and orientation in my intros.

So in the spirit of hearing a bit more from your host, I decided to share a podcast episode I did as a guest on the Anthony Thomas Podcast, in which I joined Anthony to discuss my 2022 sci-fi novel, The Empathy Academy. It's probably no surprise that I was destined to create a podcast of my own when halfway through this conversation with Anthony, I turned the tables on him and asked questions about his craft. It was a real vibe shift in the interview,, and Anthony revealed insights about his craft as an actor, model, and a coach. Anthony is such a solid guy, and I admire him for his entrepreneurialism, talents as an actor and model, and general positive and humorous outlook on life. It's a fun conversation we had, and I hope you enjoy hearing a bit more than usual from your humble host.

Anthony Thomas (00:01:29 --> 00:04:23)
What does your What does your favorite author do for a living? That's a question that we get answers to in this episode, as well as many others like talent. Is that something that we're born with or is it something that is built over time? It takes effort and energy and focus and drive and many other things that we have to actually build ourselves. Or is it a combination?

We dive into those. We dive into the creative process of building a character for a book. We dive into the creative process of getting into character and acting. There's so much in this episode with Dusty. And we did go over an hour.

I try to keep these things under an hour, but there's just so, so many golden nuggets from Dustin this episode. I couldn't cut it short. So we've got author, writer Dustin Grenell on the show for you today. And if you aren't pursuing a passion outside of your day job, whatever's paying the bills right now, if you aren't making time for your passions outside of that, whoo, I hope this one wakes you up. I hope this episode, when you get done, this before it even ends, that you stop and you make a plan, you take action, you call who you need to call, you set up something, an appointment you need to set up to get started with giving time to whatever your passion is, and then we just grow.

All right, let's get into it. Please welcome Dustin Grenell, Boston-based marketing writer and writer of essays fiction, journalism, creative writing. You've been all over the place. Honestly, your work, you've shown up quite a few places, easily Googled. You are Googleable.

Boston Globe, Washington Post, New Scientist, Salon, Vice. That's just a shortlist of quite a few of these things. Let's see here. We've got some science fiction is kind of— this is what I'm gathering. Science fiction is just your jammy jam.

That's what you literally like. I feel I feel like you have your day job, but science fiction is where you're seeing the world almost like overlaying reality in everyday life. So you've written 3 novels. Those include The Genius Dilemma, Without Limits, and The Empathy Academy, which was published in February of this year. Atmosphere?

Atmosphere Press? Atmosphere Press as a publisher. And you've also won some writing awards and been featured exhibits, creative writing workshops that you've taught. You are a writer. When I think of, when I think of somebody that's like, hey, you know, what's a, what's an author like?

What's a writer like? That's you. This, this is the intro right here, which doesn't even have all your accolades. That's a good picture, but doesn't even have them all. Welcome to the Anthony Thomas Podcast, Dustin Grenell.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:04:23 --> 00:04:25)
Well, thank you.

Anthony Thomas (00:04:25 --> 00:05:30)
Happy to, happy to be here. Yeah, I'm, I'm excited for this one, partly, partly because you did a lot, like hosting a podcast especially interviewing people, there's work that you should be doing kind of before the episode. You do a little research, do a little digging, kind of episode formatting. And I woke up one day to a fantastic email with an attachment that was like, hey, man, this is, you know, here's some of my thoughts. And I'm like, like, this is, this is the best thing as a host. This is the best thing because I'm a one-man show more or less over here, right? Like I have an editor and But overall, I'm a one-man show. So when I have somebody putting in effort like this, I'm like, dude, this is fantastic. So not only did I love Empathy Academy, which I made a little post on Instagram recently, we'll dive into this. But not only did I love that as a reader looking at like, man, this author is solid, but you're just a solid dude all around with the work that you put into things that, I mean, I'm not paying you for this time here. I don't know if we—

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:05:30 --> 00:05:32)
This is pro bono.

Anthony Thomas (00:05:32 --> 00:05:34)
This has been pro bono time.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:05:34 --> 00:05:36)
No. Honestly, this is fun.

Anthony Thomas (00:05:36 --> 00:05:42)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is fun time for sure. So, uh, you want to— you want to give the people a little, a little background how you and I met?

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:05:42 --> 00:07:39)
Um, I work as a copywriter for Bose Corporation, and, uh, this year I was, uh, the lead writer on some, uh, earbuds that Bose, uh, just came out with this, this week actually. Uh, And, you know, the whole, the whole year from January until the summer, we were coming up with ways to talk about this product and creating storyboards for videos. And we needed to create like a, like a commercial, a 60-second spot. And so we went through casting and we found, we found you. We found Anthony Thomas, and you just jumped right off the screen for one of our characters.

It was a business manager character who would be kind of moving and shaking out there in the world and scouting venues and such. And we, we picked you for the, for the spot, and you really shined right through in all of our materials. The video that we made with you and two other characters came out this, this week, and we're super excited. So we just ran into each other on, on set, on the shoot. One day while we were in Seattle shooting in a music venue.

And we just started chatting. And man, we were kindred spirits, I think, like really interested in personal development, philosophy, psychology, literature. I think you were reading a book on set. I was like, that's the dude right there. I was like, just, just yeah, like, we started chatting, and we ran into each other a couple times on set, and I was like, I want to stay in touch with this guy.

Anthony Thomas (00:07:39 --> 00:09:21)
I do auditions even before COVID but especially post-COVID. Most auditions are remote. So we hop on a Zoom call or you record something at your home or wherever. And this was one of those things where I had a— I did the audition and it worked out. I could fit it into my schedule for when I would record.

But the callback, it actually fell on— it fell on a day I was, I was, I was playing in a golf tournament out in Idaho with— it was the True Links. True Links, where they're like golf shoes out of Tacoma, Washington. Killer shoes. Love that. Love, love the brand.

Love the people. Love the shoes. They hosted their very first tournament. So I'm out there playing and it was absolutely dumping rain. So I'm already scrambling.

I'm like, my callback when I'm supposed to be on Zoom is in the middle of my round of golf. It's dumping rain. So I'm soaked. I mean, my partner and I, Taylor, we're drenched and I have to run back in, into the pro shop, try to get wifi, which I'm hoping there's wifi. So all of this stuff's going on, and then I hop on the Zoom call with, you know, director and everybody else on production that was on there, and it was like, I'm scrambling.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:09:21 --> 00:09:27)
Yeah. And just to give you some context, because we— for your character, we saw 50 other people.

Anthony Thomas (00:09:27 --> 00:09:28)
50.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:09:28 --> 00:09:37)
Yeah. We saw, you know, those are our original cast, and then we winnowed it down to like, I think, a half a dozen. Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell - 1 (00:09:37 --> 00:09:37)
Callbacks.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:09:37 --> 00:09:47)
And so there was like stiff competition, and, you know, and you were under the— you seemed to be under the most like challenging circumstances.

Anthony Thomas (00:09:48 --> 00:09:51)
So you were— that's not—

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:09:51 --> 00:11:06)
you did it. So I was on the call, and the director, uh, you just jumped on, you had to switch times, and, um, you were in a hallway, people were walking by, um, you were soaked, and you, you know, you apologized for the, for the circumstances. No big deal. And you just, you just hit a home run, you know? It was like effortless.

The director was like, oh, can you do some things? Can you do some activities that we may eventually see in the spot? And you did. And I was like, I said to my team, I was like, this guy's a pro. Like, he's just a pro, you know?

If he can do this soaked in a busy hallway while he's on a golf tournament, I mean, and you were, you on the shoot, like you're just a professional, you know. And you even said at the end, I hope you guys have all the assets you need. And I said, damn, like that is a professional, you know, it's like, yeah. And so that was immediately obvious. And sorry to interrupt your story, but, you know, it was.

Anthony Thomas (00:11:06 --> 00:11:30)
I appreciate it. That— yeah, that was— that's one of the most— I have a few of those stories and that, that's, that's one of the top, I'd say top 5 of my experiences in this world that it's like, man, how wild is this? That to actually book it just makes it even better. So I'm forever grateful that you guys, you know, that I, that I landed the spot. You guys trusted me and Here we are, it's released as of what, 2 days ago?

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:11:30 --> 00:12:04)
Pre-order on Wednesday, they start shipping on the 15th. And yeah, we're gonna kind of go head-to-head with Apple here. We had events on the same day. Yeah, Apple and Bose. So there's a bit of a— the press is creating a narrative around that, you know. Yeah, we'll move from Bose. So yeah, you're associated with a very big time for Bose in terms of like changing the brand, like upgrading the brand and coming up with this new next generation product. So it's a cool time to be involved. And, you know, yeah, we can talk about this experience for a long time.

Anthony Thomas (00:12:04 --> 00:14:21)
It's awesome. Yeah, yeah, easily, easily. Okay, so we met serendipitously. We're on set, I get to talking to you, and, you know, we, we just kind of strike up simple conversation. At this point, we didn't know who was who.

I mean, obviously, you knew, yeah, hey, he's the actor and everything, but we didn't know each other. We didn't— and there's For context, for listeners, there's, I would say, probably 30 people on this production, something like that. There's a lot of moving parts, a lot of— it's fast-paced. There's people going here, going there, and conversations get cut off real quick because they need you instantly, right? So it is kind of an art in itself to maintain conversation through a shoot, right?

But we did it. And the way we did it, I think, was because of genuine interest. It came up, you know, hey, what do you— what do you do when you're not doing this? What do you do in your free time? And you— yeah, you know, I like, I like I do some writing, and you were kind of humble about it.

Oh, cool, like, what sort of writing? And then comes out, you just published a book, just literally February, and The Empathy Academy. I ask you what it's about, you start to talk about it, and I'm sitting there like, there's no way that everything that I'm interested in is bundled up into this random guy I just randomly met who happens to be an author. I haven't met many authors serendipitously. So I'm like, I gotta be honest, like, okay, he wrote this book, it sounds awesome.

But what are the odds that it's an actual enjoyable read? You know, those, those odds aren't very high when you meet a random person. And, you know, it's not like I'm pursuing an author, you know, book talk or anything like that. So I'm like, cool, you know, you tell me a little bit about it, tell me kind of what it's about. And I'm hooked.

So order the book, fast forward, I read it, I couldn't put it down, it literally like 3 days. I have a baby at home, you know, family, work, all these things. And I could not put this book down. I was genuinely like, this is such a good read. It's such a good read right here.

I still, I still got it. I got a couple markings right here. I'm curious though, before we dive into this, because you published so far, you've published 3 books. Genius Dilemma was 2014, Without Limits 2015, Empathy Academy 2022. What happened between 2015 and 2022?

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:14:21 --> 00:15:58)
Oh man. I mean, I did get an MFA and went and studied, you know, fiction for 2 years. And during that period of time, I wrote this book, The Empathy Academy. I, you know, I know I don't just write novels, I write essays. And so I was working the past 10 years, I've been writing personal essays.

And I've written about 23 or 24 of them, and most of those have been published. And so I've collected those up into an essay collection. So I was writing all that nonfiction, and I write journalism here and there. If I find a story that I'm interested in, I'll usually just pursue it. I had a coworker once talk about something called the Mustang Makeover because she's a horse rider.

She's a equestrian, she's interested in these things. And she said there's a competition where people get a horse and they get 100 days to break it, to go from a wild mustang to a domesticated horse that can be ridden. And so these are the types of things that writers become interested in. Wow, that sounds really, really interesting. So I just, I reached out to the winner of the previous year's Mustang makeover, and I just interviewed her, and I wrote a story and published it in Horse Illustrated of all places.

Anthony Thomas (00:15:58 --> 00:16:03)
I didn't know this is a thing, but I'm so glad it is. Right.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:16:03 --> 00:16:38)
Horse Illustrated. Horse Illustrated. I've done that. That's why 7 years went by, because I wasn't just working on that book. I'm a really curious person.

I think I should have been an anthropologist or something like that. I just hear something that piques my interest and I just get into it. And so, yeah, I kind of bounce from project to project. There's no idle time. I'm always working on something every single morning, usually, right?

Anthony Thomas (00:16:38 --> 00:17:52)
What is it? It's Mustang Makeover. Yeah, it's called— Okay, that's fascinating to me. I genuinely think that's very, very fascinating. You take a wild horse, you have 100 days to break it.

That's correct. Yeah, that's a piece I would love to read of yours. So I'm definitely making note of this. So 7 years go by, Empathy Academy, as I understand it, while you were in your master's program, you were working on this you know, you had some help, which we could dive into, and folks that were, you know, bouncing ideas and helping edit and so on. I'm very curious, what was the moment that this book was written?

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:17:52 --> 00:20:44)
Honestly, I was darkly inspired by that, his Ponzi scheme and the wreckage that he caused as a single individual economically. And I thought to myself, how— why, why did that happen? Right. How does someone go from this kind of, quote unquote, master of the universe to crossing all ethical and moral boundaries? How do you go from one pole to the other?

Why do good people do bad things? What is the origin of evil, so to speak? And so I launched into a kind of quest to figure these things out. And some of the work I read was like Philip Zimbardo. He's a psychologist.

He wrote a book called The Lucifer Effect, and he really looked at why good, well-intentioned people go wrong. He looked at circumstances where atrocities happened and scandals happened and sort of decoded why these things happened. It very rarely was a bad apple situation. It was more like a bad barrel. Or bad barrel makers, as they call them.

So I started to look at what are some of these organizational pressures that cause people to cross moral lines? What are the psychological pressures? What are the economic pressures? And it turns out why people do bad things is really, really complicated and really nuanced. And I thought to myself, science fiction writers get to ask what-if questions.

So I thought, why couldn't we predict this type of unethical behavior? Why couldn't we? And if we could, why couldn't we get ahead? So I imagined a tech entrepreneur who figured out a way to test for future, for like a predisposition to unethical behavior. And this test could be given to adolescents in order to like kind of get ahead of future problems.

Anthony Thomas (00:20:44 --> 00:22:24)
Yeah. So the moment, the moment this book was written, more or less, was Bernie Madoff. And for listeners who, who aren't familiar with Bernie Madoff, essentially he was a guy that managed people's money, and he had a very successful business legitimately for years and then kind of went dark and started cooking the books like Enron style. And he basically— the Ponzi scheme, this is where in our generation I think is probably the most well-known person to introduce what a Ponzi scheme is to most people, which is basically if I take from Dustin a bunch of money and my next client is saying, hey, I need to withdraw money, well, I'll just be able to pass it over, but so that it looks like their returns on their money is way higher than what it is. So he's moving money around illegally, horribly, and a lot of people lost their entire life savings.

I mean, 60, 70 years of them saving up money and thinking that they have millions of dollars, and now all of a sudden they have literally $0. And goes to prison for it and everything like that. So he basically broke bad, right? The Breaking Bad, it's like you're going well, everything like that. Philip Zimbardo, Stanford professor, uh, psychology.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:22:24 --> 00:23:06)
Yeah. And you know, he, I think he stopped the experiment after 6 days because the participants basically devolved into their most base behaviors and it became completely unethical. And his wife, Philip's wife, actually was the one who said, you need to stop this. You need to put an end to what's happening here. And yeah, that for him was I think that's a very important lesson that just regular folks can do some really bad things if given the right circumstances.

Anthony Thomas (00:23:06 --> 00:24:01)
Right. And yeah, one of those circumstances is authority, right? When you're given authority without guidance and without some sort of parameters for which, hey, you have authority, yes, but also, Here's your parameters from which you can exercise that. Because they started doing— I mean, the ones that were just very randomly assigned to be the prison guards started acting like aggressive prison guards, and they were doing a lot of, like, torturous things to the other students who were just randomly assigned to be the inmates or whatever. So, right, uh, incredible work from that man in the world of psychology, for sure. And, and so To bring us back, you, you see the Bernie Madoff scandal, see him in the news, everything that's uncovering about what he did to so many people in his pursuit of his grandiose life. And, and who knows why, because he was already pretty successful, which is— that's what's fascinating to me.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:24:01 --> 00:24:32)
I think the— yeah, sorry, the thing that I explored is like, I think potentially there's also multifactorial why he did what he did, but one of the maybe deep-seated psychic things was that he just couldn't fail. He, he had won at everything in his life. Yeah. And he could not admit failure. He could not admit that his business was on the rocks. Right. Just accept that he may have failed at one thing in his entire life.

Anthony Thomas (00:24:32 --> 00:25:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So enter Empathy Academy, and you explore a lot of these similar things where You know, the individual is, you know, hey, I just can't fail, you know? And I think you dive into— I think you dive into succinct moments without giving anything away from the book. I'm recalling the encounter in the driveway. And I think those little moments, it's like, man, this is so real.

This is so accurate. And I studied psychology and sociology in college. And it's moments like that that I'm like, damn, this is the moment that— it's like, okay, somebody's doing— like, I'm doing something that's kind of bad and everything, but we do pretty well. I mean, humans by nature, we're pretty good at ignoring things or intentionally not making eye contact with the problem. But the moment that it's made front and center and we have to face it, that's where the real challenge is.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:25:50 --> 00:28:05)
It's either to cook or not to cook, essentially. That is the question. And, you know, there's a phrase called moral hazard. Luck. And it's this idea that, like, a lot of us are lucky in the sense that we don't have to come face to face with a very morally complex issue.

Yeah. And kind of, you know, choose one evil over another or something. And so we get sort of lucky there. And but I put this character— this is the father of the protagonist— he is what I thought of sort of the the Bernie Madoff of medicine, if you will. He was— some of his inspiration was based off of Andrew Wakefield, who is a scientist who linked essentially in one paper autism to vaccines, which has now been widely discredited.

And so I really thought, why not put a character, sort of a fraudster, if you will, in the world of science and medicine. And in that scene, he essentially tells his toxicologist to omit data that would be, you know, would make his future drug fail, essentially. You know, it's like, it turns out that the science showed in his biotech company that his drug, which has just come on the market, it's a billion-dollar drug, and he's faced with data that essentially says it's not only ineffective, it may be toxic. And so he makes the decision to give a directive to his toxicologist to kind of cook the books, to omit data. And that's called scientific fraud.

Anthony Thomas (00:28:05 --> 00:28:56)
Yeah. I think you did it fantastically. So this brings me to some questions about character building. You as a writer, this is fascinating to me. I'm really curious how— because I feel like most people have experience, whether through television, film, or through books, I think we've— almost everybody's experienced that moment where you're like, this sucks. Like, what happened to my guy? Or what happened to my lady in this book that was, you know, she was so— like, what is even happening here, right? Where the development of the character seemingly falls apart, or, you know, it's just some wild thing that doesn't actually make sense in any sense. You know, I feel like every character you built into the Empathy Academy was so well done. Super curious how you even go about—

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:28:56 --> 00:31:12)
So, um, I in fact like went and got an MFA because I felt like my earlier books, my first two books, were just too, um, too commercial, and I didn't have a good handle on the literary devices that I needed to have a handle on in order to take the next step.. And one of those is character development. On those first two books, I hired an editor. He used to work in a big publishing house, and you pay him a certain amount of money and he reads the manuscript and then he gives you this 3-page analysis. And the thing that kept coming back was the characters were not complex enough.

They were either too good or too bad, right? Part of this is the genre that I write in, which is science fiction. It's kind of like, you know, you've got, you know, an antagonist and a protagonist, and one is fighting for evil and one is the force that pushes against them. And like, but also you don't want to go too far. And I felt like my bad guys were too bad and my good guys were too bad.

He, the editor, said that my protagonist in my second book, Without Limits, was almost Christlike. And that just means he was always like the good guy. And so as a reader, you kind of, you don't, you get kind of bored, right? You kind of can predict what they're going to do and they don't change. In any story, a character must change.

And whether they become good to bad or from bad to good. Good to bad would be like, you know, Breaking Bad. Walter? Yeah, just the classic degeneration plot, you know, just a science teacher who becomes like a, you know, drug lord essentially. Yeah, yeah, Heisenberg.

Anthony Thomas (00:31:12 --> 00:31:12)
Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:31:12 --> 00:33:02)
Family man but also drug lord. He's like, um, he's like science teacher but he's also like an entrepreneur. Um, but he's, he's not pure evil, right? Yeah. And so one thing I really tried to do in grad school was study books with a really good antagonist and then, you know, figure out how to make bad guys a little bit good and good guys a little bit bad.

Yeah. So The real key is to kind of give the reader a reason to say, oh, you know, when they're reading the bad guy's behavior, to say, oh, I kind of understand why they're acting that way. Maybe, you know, maybe I see that someone hurt them in the past, or I see these certain circumstances have made them the way they are. And as you're reading, because it's fiction, it's made up essentially, you get to have this judgment. You get to say, "Oh wow, you know, I wonder how I would, you know, react in that situation." And sometimes you identify with the bad guy.

You say, "I've actually been there before and they're worse than I am." So I get to kind of compare myself there. And so, yeah, I tried to make, I tried to add as much complexity as possible, but just to give a motivation. Not just the bad guy being the bad guy, because that's sort of like the classic hero films, the superheroes, and they have their— they're very entertaining, but yeah, they lack the kind of reflection of the human condition that I think makes literature, like, so rich and worth reading. Wow. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Anthony Thomas (00:33:02 --> 00:34:00)
No, no, no, no, that, that, that wasn't an exasperated like, man, this guy is talking his ass off. No, that was a wow of like, there's so many things that are, that are overlapping with, uh, with acting, with, you know, character development there. There's also, there's also a fascination for me in trying to see how much of you, Dustin, the author's life is exposed in the Empathy Academy or your other writings, right? How much of this is, you know, let's say, the ability to write and put yourself in others' perspectives versus the ability to connect from your own perspective? And, you know, it makes me think, like you said earlier, your Bernie Madoff, like, dark fascination is what led to the Empathy Academy, you know? And I recall I even— I had it. I had it earmarked in here. This is, this is a— I'm going to read. Can I read this a little bit?

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:34:00 --> 00:34:00)
Yeah.

Anthony Thomas (00:34:00 --> 00:34:35)
So the, the key point I want to get to here is this, this one line, which is, let your curiosity be stronger than your fear. And yeah, so this little quick paragraph: start to think in these terms— not what you want for life, or what you want from life, but rather what life wants from you. "As you read and think, write down your thoughts in this notebook. Write freely. Don't self-edit. Write about your family. Write about your father. Write about memories that seem difficult to bear. Let your curiosity be stronger than your fear." Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:34:35 --> 00:36:03)
I mean, that— there's a piece in there actually from Viktor Frankl, the— Man's Search for Meaning. Psychiatrist who wrote Man's Search for Meaning, and his field that he invented was called logotherapy. And it's this idea that man cannot live without meaning in their life. They need a reason to live, they need purpose. And he does say that— I learned about this a few years ago when you're in your 20s and you're very willful in terms of finding what you want to do and you make a lot of choices to get where you want to go.

But in Frankl's point of view, he says, you know, what is the world actually asking of you? You know, you're asking things and you're putting your desires out there. But is there a place where it seems like your interests and temperament fits with the needs of the world? And so that passage is really directly geared to the protagonist. The protagonist is 18 years old, so he's finding his way.

Anthony Thomas (00:36:03 --> 00:37:15)
Okay, and how much of this, I mean, it sounds like you resonate with this from your 20s, that kind of experience. So how much would you say of your writing is really, "Let me dive deep into myself," or like, "Explore the dark side of me to find the antagonist," or, you know, how much of this character creation for you is actually just you looking internally, you going, "Man, what about myself?" 'Cause we are so multifaceted, right? We are able to feel intense rage. We are able to have the thoughts of like, "Man, I would murder that person." person with the edge of a coin very slowly, you know, or death by a thousand lashes, you know, that we are able to explore and go into dark areas of ourselves. And, you know, like the story, the Native American story of which wolf do you feed, right? That's right. And so we are able to dive into all these different areas. How much of your character building is you observing other people, observing the world around you, versus you looking internally and sitting at home in a room by yourself and going, okay, I gotta make this guy— this antagonist is going to be a bad guy, but there's got to be 'Some good in there,' and how, you know, 'I'm looking inside myself.' How much of this is exploring internally versus externally?

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:37:15 --> 00:40:17)
And then you know yourself better. And I think by virtue of knowing yourself better, having a good storehouse of self-knowledge, you're better able to understand others because we're a lot more alike than we give ourselves credit for. We're all human beings and we all have these complex emotions and psyches. And so, yeah, I basically— sometimes fiction writers are kind of thinly disguised and others aren't so much. And so for me, there's a lot of myself in all of these characters.

Of course, the villains are sort of exaggerated, right? I don't have a lot of personal experience with like multi-million dollar scandals and interactions with the FBI and things. So that's all made up. That's, you know, but there is a shadow self to all of us. Yes.

And part of— I know one of your guys is Jordan Peterson, and I follow him as well, and he's big on this, right? It's the integration of the shadow. We don't often like to look at our negative or dark qualities. We don't like to look at atrocities in the past and say, like, oh, I could have been a part of that given the right economic and sociological conditions. We don't like to implicate ourselves.

And so I think part of the writer is being a little bit like a psychonaut, you know, you kind of go into your own soul and psyche and try to figure out, well, you know, I'm not all good and I'm not all bad. And it's exploring that tension between lightness and darkness. I happen to think these types of people who are willing to go and explore their shadow side and understand who they are, all facets, tend to be some of the most psychologically healthy folks out there. You know, they're not denying certain strong feelings, and there's a health that can come from actually exploring the darkness. And that's why I like writing villains, is because villains aren't villains in their head.

Anthony Thomas (00:40:17 --> 00:42:36)
They think they're doing good. This is— it's visible throughout history. And if you just take a snapshot of where we are right now in history, I would say look to any mass murderer who has a manifesto. They all think that they're doing, you know, whatever your creator that you believe in, they think they're doing God's work. You know, there's actions that are atrocious in society, and they are genuinely being driven by what they feel is the right thing.

You know, they feel, I'm doing good. And it's also historically East and West. Like, you look at Eastern philosophy and the yin-yang symbol, right? That's half of it is dark, but there's a little bit of light in there. Half of it is light, light and there's a little bit of dark in there.

And that's representative throughout— I mean, how many different dynasties, how many ages upon ages that this has been known, that we all have that inside us. We all have a bit of this and a bit of that. And this is one of the things I think— I agree with you, by the way, when, um, you were saying, yeah, Dr. Jordan Peterson, who— it's so funny, he's receiving so much, so much flack and so much hatred in so many ways present day. And it's fascinating to me because it's pretty representative of just socially where we are that I think is unhealthy, which is to latch on to— first of all, latching on to all the negative and projecting that across the entirety of a being. Right.

I don't think that's good at all. And that's what's usually happening. There are things that I strongly disagree with that Jordan Peterson speaks about or talks about or positions he holds. And to me, you know, like when I'm coaching people one-on-one, we go into an exploration where it's like, what do you believe? Why do you believe it?

Where did those beliefs come from? Where did they originate? And it's— you actually talked about it earlier, exploring good and bad. There's Friedrich Nietzsche has a book called The Genealogy of Morals where just literally diving into where does good and bad originate? Where if we trace the family tree You know, like, I'm drinking tea and it tastes good.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:42:36 --> 00:42:43)
A psychonaut. Oh yeah, so astronaut explores space, the psychonaut explores the interior world.

Anthony Thomas (00:42:43 --> 00:42:44)
Yes. Yeah, and I love that.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:42:44 --> 00:42:59)
I'd never even heard that before, but I'm like, yeah, a lot like the groups that are experimenting with psychedelics, they refer to themselves as psychonauts because they're going inward and yeah, trying to explored themselves, right?

Anthony Thomas (00:42:59 --> 00:44:51)
And I'm like, how, how bold, how brave of you to go in and face yourself. You know, it's that shadow self that Jordan Peterson talks about, Carl Jung, like that shadow self or shadow portion of ourself. Life holds so much information and so much wisdom. And I happen to think this is one of those things where it's like, oh, they're going to take an audio snippet and it's going to be used against me. This is one of those moments.

But I happen to think that even people that are committing completely atrocious, heinous crimes, like you said, oftentimes they think that they're doing good. I think that if they just sat with and maybe dove in a little bit more, right? You were talking about therapy. If they dove in a little bit more and asked deeper questions to pursue it further, that they would absolutely be so far from committing anything like that. And they would actually probably end up going the complete opposite way and finding the most helpful thing to society, the most loving thing that they could find.

Because that's my experience anyway. The further I explore the darknesses of me, The further that I explore, like, man, I have this hatred for this individual, and it's like, okay, cool, why do you hate him? I just fucking hate him. You know, like, that just— whatever it is, unconscious. Yeah.

And the more that I ask questions about that and dig deeper, like, well, what is it specifically that you hate about them? And then it's like, oh, you know, I just— it's their voice. Like, okay, well, why do you hate their voice? Like, what is it about the voice? Because it sounds like And then you'll have— you might have a moment where you're like, oh man, it sounds like, you know, like my ex-girlfriend that broke my heart.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:44:51 --> 00:45:33)
And it's interesting because you're, you're doing the work of self-therapy there. Oh, um, that's actually really important. But I find the role of a therapist, um, what they can do is see the things that you're not seeing because we are remarkably capable of seeing the things we don't wanna see. So yeah, you might be able to make those threads in your own mind or while through journaling or talking with friends and things. But a lot of times you're gonna need some help. You're gonna need a guide in order to look at it a different way. And that's where you can be helped, yeah.

Anthony Thomas (00:45:33 --> 00:48:12)
Because, uh, there seems to be a limit to self-analysis. Completely, completely agree with you. And this is exactly why— so this is, this is largely why I, I just recently kind of opened up coaching, um, coaching people like coach one-on-one. I chat with you a little bit about it when we're on set, but I coach people one-on-one. And this— I only recently opened it up to like kind of the public, right, as opposed to only word of mouth.

I'm only dealing with people that I specifically, you know, that I know or know somebody who knows them, whatever. I kind of open it up to where people can interact, find me, and show interest, and then maybe we can explore if I'd be able to be helpful or not. Right? Sure. And this is the exact reason why I have— I still have a coach and I plan to have a coach for the rest of my life.

I don't have— I haven't— I actually, I did go to therapy in middle school. I went to therapy. It just clicked for me. That's so funny. 'Cause I had to go, I did anger management in middle school.

And then with that, I had to go see a therapist. That was part of the whole process, assigned by the school and everything. So it just clicked for me. So I have gone to therapy as well, but I absolutely will have a coach for the rest of my life because of exactly what you're talking about. We all have blind spots and it doesn't matter how good you think you're sharpening your vision.

It doesn't matter what it is. We all have blind spots. And I can't tell you how many times, even though I coach people and I can coach myself as best as I possibly can with the same tools tools and the same skill set, the same everything that I use to help other people, I will always still have a blind spot. This is why the top performers in anything— I always cite Tiger Woods, well, best, one of the best athletes of all time, best golfer in all of history by far. His reign that he carried is so far from being touched.

And he still to this day has a coach. He still has a swing coach. He still, you know, it's It's not about the ego that I used to think this too. I used to think like, oh man, I spent so much time, all the books on my shelf, everything, studying psychology, all these things. I feel pretty good about this.

And I'm just like, how stupid was I? That was a blind spot of mine is to realize how many times have you had a conversation with somebody where there's an epiphany that comes out of it? Coaching is literally specifically targeting those repeatedly. What can we uncover here? It's not like, yeah, maybe this conversation we talk about our friends, family, or what we did last week for a trip.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:48:12 --> 00:50:41)
Or, you know, stop being so negative. Like, just focus on the positives, right? And I don't know, I just like, through therapy, through writing, through maturity, I just became more actually interested in the negative, in the ability to improve. Like, think about that for a second. Like, focusing on the negative, I found, allowed you to kind of level up more effectively.

So it's less kind of, of always reading the books that make you feel good and instead, like, having the tough conversations that don't make you feel so good, that kind of expose weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and just kind of trying to get acquainted with those and doing the best you can to, like, maybe shore them up or just completely accept that you kind of suck in that category. And I think that makes you That is like humility, right? Yes. Because you talk about things when you see in other people that you don't— you just say, oh, man, I don't know. I don't like that person for some reason.

We all have that. And sometimes I think for me, it's inauthenticity. If I detect inauthenticity or hypocrisy, same. I generally am going to have a negative reaction to that. Same.

Sort of bound up up in delusions, I don't necessarily judge it. I'm not like, oh man, you got to wake up or something. It's more just like, that's not— yeah, I'd rather we kind of got more real about this situation right now. And so kind of BS is not something that I react to very well. Right.

Hard for me to turn the TV on and watch mainstream media or listen to politicians, sometimes interacting in corporate America. These are triggering experiences for someone who's looking for authenticity. Yes. The mask is always on. And somewhere along the line, and I'm probably hated for this, I just decided to take the masks off.

Anthony Thomas (00:50:42 --> 00:50:43)
That's it.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:50:43 --> 00:50:43)
Yeah.

Anthony Thomas (00:50:43 --> 00:52:07)
And tell me if this is the same experience that you have, because this is something I still present day, I'm still working on. I'm still practicing is like removing more of the mask and revealing more of me. And obviously we get to curate what we put out into the world. And one of the best compliments that I've received when I meet people that I've never met before, but they may come across my, you know, social media or whatever. One of the best compliments is like, dude, you're so— you're authentic, you know, like, this is you.

This really, you know, that's one of the best compliments to me in a world where people are so extremely falsifying their, you know, representation of self and things like this. Is this the case for you? Because this is how— what I found, the more that I become authentic the greater the bonds that I have. The more hatred I do feel and the more people that are just like, eh, you know, not really my cup of tea sort of thing. And also the other side of that is the people that do connect, the connection is stronger.

It's more instant. There's, because I vibe with you on that. I don't like small talk. I don't like the, hey, how's the weather today? How's your day going?

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:52:07 --> 00:52:27)
You did that on set too when we met. You asked— I think we said hello and then you followed up with a penetrating question about how I write. And I was like, 'Oh, wow, this guy.' But that was my cup of tea. I was like, 'This guy kind of cares. He's kind of—' I'm just not full of crap, you know?

Anthony Thomas (00:52:27 --> 00:53:29)
And that's it, right? Like, I try to— it takes exercise, it takes practice. I was chatting with my nephew about this too, because he's like, how do you just talk to everybody? How do you do it? You could just talk to anybody and then you can create bonds.

And I'm like, you know, he just started college and I'm telling him it takes practice. It's something that I wasn't born with this, right? Like, for you writing, you went back, you wrote 2 books, and then you went and got your master's in writing. It takes practice, it takes skill, it takes time to learn and develop these skill sets. It's the same thing with talking to people.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:53:30 --> 00:53:47)
And so, yeah. Yeah. And have some patience with yourself and your own development, you know? Like all the good things take time and how you develop does as well, whether it's, you know, your own personality or, you know, your work.

Anthony Thomas (00:53:47 --> 00:53:47)
Yes.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:53:47 --> 00:55:25)
Everybody wants to be CEO and wants to be an entrepreneur like overnight, you know, and like a published author overnight. But we forget that there was like 10 years of darkness, uh, of really figuring out depths of despair. Comes in close to the camera. Um, no, 100%, like, it's not, uh, you know, I'm here to like say that I wish people were more forthcoming about how hard it is to do what you really wanna do. Yes.

You know, it just, it takes a long time and it takes a lot of like course correction and a lot of experiments and a lot of failures and a lot of like just thinking, I don't know, I don't know if I'm cut out for this, right? Is the world just kind of constantly rejecting you. And I get a rejection for submissions that I send every day. I'm getting rejections. I probably just got 3 during this conversation.

And I'm not going to sit here and say, yeah, use those as fuel and stuff. Stephen King said he did print all out all his rejections and paste them on the wall. He put them on a nail. He wrote about that in his memoir. And like, do whatever you want to do, right?

Anthony Thomas (00:55:25 --> 00:55:36)
Not just financially, a lot of, a lot of stress, a lot of time, a lot of— yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot that goes into pursuing your dream, especially in the creative In the creative world.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:55:36 --> 00:55:50)
Yeah, for sure. And at the end of the day too, it just takes some luck. And that certainly helps. But what's the quote? You know, the harder I work, the luckier I get, I think.

Anthony Thomas (00:55:50 --> 00:56:15)
Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So this actually brings us to a good point here. I know you wanted to kind of explore a little bit on the creative path. You had some questions. This is a first as well for me. For a podcast guest that had questions for me, which was, which was interesting. So you want to talk kind of, kind of about the creative path and the myth of talent, right? As well as, uh, maintaining a day job.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (00:56:16 --> 00:57:14)
And that can, like, I can, like, predetermine people, uh, a lot. And From my perspective, writing is a skill. It's a learnable skill. We have certain temperaments and sensibilities that maybe predispose us to making better sentences than others, but it's a learnable skill. And storytelling is a learnable skill, and you can get better.

I have gotten better and will get better. And so I am curious about acting. I'm curious about, you know, what— I'm sure you hear that all the time, talent thing, right? Because I know when I saw you audition, I said, "That guy has talent." I said, "I just, I don't know what that is. I don't know what to call that, but you've got it.

Anthony Thomas (00:57:14 --> 01:03:32)
It's your creative work. You don't know how things are received, you know, on the other end, you know how they feel for yourself. And a lot of times, a lot of times I'll do something, I'll perform and I will feel like, dude, I killed it. And then it's like, yeah, you don't hear— phone's dead. You don't hear callback, you know.

And a lot of times I'll tell my lady after I did the audition, got the callback, and then I do the callback and I go and I tell her like, oh man, that was trash. Like, honestly, it didn't go well. And they're like, hey, we want to book you. And I'm like, oh man. So hearing feedback like that, that's something that I genuinely appreciate because it is something to be worked on always.

As for talent, do I believe in talent? What's my stance on talent? I wholeheartedly believe that people are born with talent. What I absolutely do not believe is that that's enough for them to be successful. I think that talent is the same as, as financial resources.

Some people are born with a lot more, and others are born with a lot less. Some people are born with the knowledge of how to use it. Some are born without the knowledge of how to use it. I think that that what should be focused on in the world of talent is development. I think there's going to be people who naturally have this gift or something.

And I could point to this for me specifically in modeling and even in acting as well. Because you think of old school, pre-audio actors where they literally didn't use words, they only just kind of mimed their actions and things like that. They're very good at communicating with just body language, right? And there's subtleties to things. If you watch an incredible actor on the shots where it's literally just here, they emote so much and they capture so much emotion accurately.

That's the key thing, is accurately capturing it just from here, right? So you have back in the day, just really physical actors, and then you have really fine-tuned actors. And what I feel is key is developing your skillset in whatever level that is. But where there is a differentiation and where I feel like this kind of served me and having talent is I come from a sports background and I played a bunch of different sports. I, I played baseball, basketball, football, track, a bunch of different events in track and field, uh, you know, Muay Thai, kickboxing, golf.

There's all these different things that I've done physically, and a lot of them require very fine movements of certain parts of the body. I did this literally from 3 years old until present day. I'm still competing, right? So for me, when it comes to modeling and they— the photographer and the art director know they need just the slightest movement it. But if I move too much, it's gonna screw the whole thing up, right?

I watched for so many years, I watched models where it's like, okay, you know, they'd say, okay, now turn your head just an inch to go an inch clockwise. And they would literally shift their entire body. They would move, you know, 5 inches rotating. And it's like, that just killed everything, right? We're worse off now than before we were trying to make the adjustment.

What I'm getting at here is I had these things from my history that actually work in favor of me modeling or acting where I can literally, I can just move just muscle by muscle that a lot of people can't do. They just physically haven't trained that over the years. They don't know how to just literally flex one bicep but not the tricep or whatever it may be. To make the product look better or to communicate and get the message, the brand message across more accurately what the directors and art directors want. That to me, it lives in so many different spaces.

The same thing with writing, I'm willing to bet. And I think Malcolm Gladwell does an incredible job in Outliers in exposing exactly this. It's not a talent that does it. There is talent and there is a differential, a differential of talent that we're born with. But it's literally everything that you do with it.

And sometimes it's just, it's just like, accidentally in the right place at the right time. And then boom, you got Bill Gates, you know, it's stuff like this. So I do believe there is inherent talent. But I don't think that that's any part of the story that's worth writing about at all. I think we can connect the dots looking back.

I'm willing to bet if I sat here and asked you questions about writing before you actually decided I'm going to be a writer, I'm I'm willing to bet that you were, you were doing something, you were consuming something, you were interacting somehow with things that made you become a better writer. Maybe you're a person as a reader who actually, you focus less on what's the story of this book and you focus more on like, what's the story of this individual? And you just having that mindset, you might be, you might be paying more attention to character development than I would, whereas I might be reading and looking more at story development, you know, as opposed to individual characters. So you might be really, really talented in this thing just because of what your interest was. My interest was sports and moving my body, and therefore I'm able to move my body in ways that other models that are competing for the same job or other actors that are competing for the same job, they're not familiar with.

They're not as acquainted with and able to actually execute it when And, you know, they say action. I think, I think that lives in everything. It doesn't matter what it is. There's talent, but it's really about how did you develop it and how are you applying it? You know, that's the key in my opinion.

There's definitely gonna be, you know, discrepancies. There's definitely people who have a head start for sure. But what are you gonna do with that? You just gonna make an excuse or you gonna figure out how to be more efficient, more effective, and learn how to develop better? Right.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:03:32 --> 01:04:06)
Use what you have, you know? Full-on strengths, you know, as well. Exactly. Now it's funny, you, you talked about, you know, uh, an actor's ability to, to just communicate something, uh, on their face. This is some of my favorite parts in film, like, um, the end of Zero Dark Thirty. You have, you know, a woman who spent the better part of a decade on one mission, and she got exactly what she wanted. And then what?

Anthony Thomas (01:04:06 --> 01:04:07)
She had nothing else.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:04:07 --> 01:05:35)
She didn't know what to do next. And so when she got on the plane at the end of the movie after her team had killed Osama bin Laden, she— the camera came up right on her face and it stayed there for, I don't know, 20 seconds or more. And someone asked her, where do you want to go? And she didn't— there's no dialogue. There doesn't need to be any dialogue.

She just stared, not down the barrel of the camera, but she communicated her sense of relief, her sense of, like, who actually am I now and what should I do next? And it's a triumphant moment because she got what she wanted, but it's also a moment of feeling very lost. And her eyes swell up. It's like, how do you— to me as a non-actor and probably like a horrific actor, if I— I just don't know how you get there. Now, I know as a basic person, it's like method.

Anthony Thomas (01:05:35 --> 01:06:50)
A good inquiry. So the one of the best quotes that I've had that I've come across to describe acting is to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. So basically, actors are really good liars. But to be a really incredible liar, you actually have to believe. And that belief, it shows up, right?

When you see stuff and it's like, oh, they broke character. —right? You see those moments where they're like, they broke character. That belief is gone in that moment, right? Whatever it may be, when you break character, that belief is gone.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:06:50 --> 01:06:55)
Yeah, I think that happened with Jim Carrey and his portrayal of Andy Kaufman.

Anthony Thomas (01:06:55 --> 01:06:56)
100%.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:06:56 --> 01:07:32)
He never left. He never broke character day in, on set and off set. Yeah. And I think what happens is what's called identity diffusion. Who you are sort of spreads out. And I think that is a real cost. It's a cost for writers too, journalists especially. You constantly work with so many different subjects and who you are sort of spreads out a little bit. I think what you're articulating is a sort of fear of like, man, I really get this so well that I can almost slip.

Anthony Thomas (01:07:32 --> 01:07:52)
Stay attached to me a little bit. Yes. And part of that is because I am very cognizant of paying attention. Like you said yourself earlier, you don't watch mainstream media, you don't watch politicians because you know that falsification or non-genuine communication is a trigger for you.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:07:52 --> 01:08:13)
You know that about yourself, right? I still watch it. And my girlfriend sometimes says, Why do you watch it? I watch the nightly news every night, and within 2 and a half minutes I'm already— because it's so biased. And yes, just the correspondence and the way they talk, it just gets to me every single time.

Anthony Thomas (01:08:13 --> 01:08:16)
It's a little bit of— it's a little masochistic.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:08:16 --> 01:08:23)
It's like, I like this pain. It's kind of like hate scrolling. Yeah, I'm hate— sort of hate watching the nightly news.

Anthony Thomas (01:08:24 --> 01:09:14)
I don't know, but Yeah, that's true. So, yeah, we do things like this, right? Like, anger feels— it feels nice to express anger sometimes, right? Like, when you get really angry and you can express it, it's actually quite relieving. So when you can yell at a television and you can get angry with your friends and all that stuff, and then there's some relief there. And even what you were talking about earlier, and I know you have an interest in study, a lot of biology and anatomy and things, the way the human body is affected by things. And Dr. Gabor Mate, he has loads of information on how— what's this book called? It's not his, but The Body Keeps Score, I think it is.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:09:15 --> 01:09:15)
Oh, yeah.

Anthony Thomas (01:09:15 --> 01:09:18)
Vessel Vander Kolk, I think. Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:09:18 --> 01:09:53)
That's a book about trauma and PTSD and how traumatic experiences stay in the body. Right. They stay in our nervous system and they can change hormonal systems. And yeah, I think it was like one of the— it's a major, major work on how traumatic experiences actually change our biology. And it made that connection between the head and the body. Very concrete for war veterans, but also people that had very traumatic experiences. Right. Big book.

Anthony Thomas (01:09:53 --> 01:11:10)
I've heard plenty of people talk about it and things like it. So there's some aspect where I'm conscious of what I consume intellectually as well as food-wise, I try to eat well and all these things. So what am I exposing myself to? What do I choose to watch and things like this? But there's some times where you're just like, it is a little joyful to feel a little bit of rage at something.

It is like that. That's kind of the dark side where it's like, it does feel nice a little bit, but it's also, I try to be conscious of this. So going into acting and playing a role and everything, I love— like, I've had moments in acting class. I've had moments where I would end up in tears full of rage, like rage-filled tears during an acting exercise. It's all fun and games, and then it's like, all right, good job.

It's great. We're done with that, whatever. But that lives in you still. We're 5, 10 minutes after that moment, after that scene. I'm not up, you know, there's other actors that are exercising.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:11:10 --> 01:11:11)
What did you act—

Anthony Thomas (01:11:11 --> 01:14:04)
She's down in LA now, but she's in Portland. So what's funny is it wasn't necessarily— a lot of these things would come up without intending for them to come up. So she would organize an exercise that it's all about— I'm acting based on— I'm just reacting to you. That's it. I'm literally— I'm trying to connect with Dustin right now so much that I'm reading and I'm like, oh, he's pensive right now.

He's thinking, oh, he's kind of— he's amused now. Right, exactly. And it's moment to moment. It's the Meisner method of acting. So a lot of times it's literally, I'm so engaged with you that it just pops up.

It's not like, let me try to access something, right? So there would be times where I'd be in there and do the exact same exercise that I would do with you. I might end up in a 60-second span, I might end up in tears of deep gratitude. Or I might end up laughing. You and I would be laughing like hyenas.

Or I might just get so filled with rage that I want to break something, you know? And it's literally without even doing anything, without cueing up anything, you explore the full range, the full spectrum of human emotion, right? For me, part of it, I do have a fear of going there because you got to think, when you're shooting a film, when you're shooting, you know, scenes for something, if it's not live acting, when you're shooting scenes, there are some times where you have to do the exact same scene 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 times, right? So let's say in the whole span of a movie, there's that one moment that's like the darkest moment. You have to access that deep sadistic, like think Joker, you know, Dark Knight, you know, it's like if it's the darkest scene that gets the deepest to the depths of your darkness, and you have to replay it and you have to relive it and you have to do it over and over and over.

That wears on you. That's something that can really— it can really consume you in a way, right? If you are really diving in, if you're not holding back and you're really letting these emotions come up, because you should as an actor, you should literally— you want to live truthfully. So in order to do that, you have feel those things. You have to really genuinely feel it.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:14:05 --> 01:15:33)
Did he not? And people have said, I'm not sure if I believe this, but it's a cautionary tale of going too deep into one's character because he died not that long after, did he not? And he gave a performance of insanity, of pure, like, just kind of like explosive insanity. Like, yes, you're right. He, he as an identity disappeared, and what came up in its place was someone who was insane.

Um, and that's a really interesting cautionary tale about kind of what you were talking about, is you're afraid— you could be afraid that you could go too far, that you could lose yourself in the process of your art. Yes. And I, I feel you there. I I think that's a particular, like, a risk that I think is for actors more so than the writers. Writers can kind of be heady about the whole thing or kind of, you know, you're in the body, you're in, you're giving everything.

Anthony Thomas (01:15:33 --> 01:16:29)
Yeah, it's a trip. That's why, like, when you, I've shared screen time, I've shared set time with some actors that I look at and I'm like, man, I'm so impressed. I'm fascinated by this individual because they have zero limiter. They're like, I will go all in on the insane. I will go all in on the— And to me, I'm like, there's a fear of the dark side of myself. You know, there's a genuine fear of feeding that, of letting that live more and more. But then there's also like Dr. Gabor Mate, like I was addressing earlier, where that's actually healthy to express it. If you can choose healthy ways to express the dark side of you, that's actually healthy because then your body isn't going to keep score as intensely. You're actually letting that out. You're not harvesting it and keeping it with you and taking it with you forever and ever.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:16:29 --> 01:16:55)
Oh yeah, I'm all about kind of transforming pain into art. Yeah, this is very Friedrich Nietzsche. You know, this is kind of turn one's suffering into something of value for others. Yes. That's the pro-social, the positive way to deal with pain and traumatic experiences if you can. And that's— that is the role of artists in society, I think. Yeah, I completely agree.

Anthony Thomas (01:16:55 --> 01:17:03)
I completely agree. All right. We're gonna— we went, we went overboard here, and I'm, I'm not mad about it one bit. No, man, it's fun.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:17:03 --> 01:17:08)
Definitely. Um, we just block out the whole afternoon. Yeah, we just keep—

Anthony Thomas (01:17:08 --> 01:17:49)
yeah, we cut, we cut mics and then we just stay on for the next 7 hours. Um, before— it was a good time. Before we, before we go, I want to at least make space. We didn't even get to all the bullet points that I had, you know, to address and everything like that. But I definitely want to give space for you, anything that's been on your mind, anything that you are like, this is my message to the world that you haven't been able to share yet. Whatever it is that you feel you would like to put out into the ether and you haven't yet, or any questions or anything like that, this is the time. Let's let loose as we have a gentle wind down from a wonderful conversation.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:17:49 --> 01:21:56)
And sitting in that space of, I'm not sure what this is yet, or I'm not sure where this is going to go, or like maybe I should cut this and add that, or maybe I should go left instead of right. These are uncomfortable experiences, actually. Like I'm someone who who really likes an outline, used to use an outline, and used to know exactly what scene I was going to write when I sat down. But in my MFA program, I met a playwright actually who just writes by the seat of her pants. She doesn't outline.

She just goes for it. She just jumps in page 1 and just writes a play, or she writes novels. And I used to think that was crazy. How do you, like, engineer the story, right? You need to know, like, you need to, like, build in twists and you need to know what's going to happen at the end before you kind of get in the middle and all the rest.

But then I started to do that too. I started to write short stories from the seat of my pants. I used to just launch into the story, not really knowing where it was going to go. And it did kind of reinvigorate my love for writing, I think. There was something that was getting a little stale about the experience of writing my first two novels by outline at a 70-page outline, you know.

And then, um, uh, I started writing short stories where I just let it rip, and, um, that gave me a feeling of discovery, like a feeling of like, oh, you know, I just surprised myself there, and oh, that was kind of fun. And, you know, it kind of brought the fun back and And I think the whole key to it was like, I'm not sure what I'm doing here. And that creates this big tension, you know, this tension of like, oh, it's kind of fun, but it's also just like no idea what to do next because I haven't thought it up yet. So my thing that I want to talk about in response to your question is like dealing with uncertainty, you know? I've had this addiction to certainty my whole life.

I know exactly what I'm going to do today and tomorrow and in 5 years. Right. But I think, no, that's not how life works. It's like, what's the Mike Tyson quote? He's like, everybody has a plan to get punched in the face.

Right? Yes. It's just that's it. Trying to be comfortable with the uncomfortable aspect of that and moving, rolling with the punches, so to speak. It's what a poet called negative capability.

Anthony Thomas (01:21:56 --> 01:23:13)
One of those is we have this— I can recall literally middle school, Mrs. Wright She was my English teacher. And I still remember the writing guideline to outline your writing. And here's how a paragraph is formed. You make your statement. For example, this shows that this is because as a result, I still have that literally locked in.

And I'm thinking to myself, as you're saying this, I'm like, yeah, I always, if I'm going to write something, I outline first and all this. And then I think I'm big on challenging our assumptions, challenging our beliefs and everything, because whatever is true, whatever is right, whatever is accurate will stand true after any scrutiny. Right. And you make me think, what's wrong with writing half of a book and then doing an outline when you're halfway through a book? What's wrong?

What if we just reordered things? What's wrong with that? What would be wrong in doing that? And the reality is there's nothing wrong. The outline doesn't have to come first necessarily.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:23:13 --> 01:24:11)
And some books don't. Some books you just let it rip. And so not being rigid with your creative process is the part of developing as an artist. To stay flexible with every project in order to bring a beginner's mind, so to speak, to everything. You know, to not have your cup be full when you start something, you know?

To say like, ooh, what I know now does not, is not gonna work. Make this project. Yep. And I'm gonna have to kind of relearn how to do what I do. And I think that's the thing that is— you can only learn by doing.

Anthony Thomas (01:24:11 --> 01:24:25)
You just have to make stuff. Yeah, yeah, I love that, I love that. Just get out there. And but it also points to an aspect because you didn't start just writing all willy-nilly like this until after you had a couple books written and after your master's program, is that right?

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:24:25 --> 01:24:31)
That's true. And so I may have internalized a lot of things like structure. And yeah, totally right.

Anthony Thomas (01:24:31 --> 01:25:32)
It's be able to identify a pattern. So we start out, who's somebody that has done the thing that you are trying to do? Who's someone that's successful in what you're trying to accomplish? Which identify what patterns they've used, right? So you identify the pattern first and then you repeat a pattern.

So do what they're doing, right? Repeat the pattern, whatever it is. So if they're outlining first, start outlining. If they don't outline, don't outline. Just repeat the pattern, right?

Identify the pattern, repeat the pattern. And then the last part of this, which is what you're doing, create your own pattern. Once you're able to identify patterns well, and once you're able to repeat patterns well, you were talking about this with your writing too. You were like, yeah, you know, there were authors that I wrote and I love them, and so I would just kind of try to recreate that stuff. That's, that's the flow.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:25:32 --> 01:26:50)
You create your own pattern, whatever that may be. Totally. And yeah, I mean, I would also say there may be a step between like 3 and 4 of like having a mentor who, uh, looks at your patterns and say like, these patterns are solid, but these patterns are not conforming to certain craft elements that, that should— that's the— I think Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital, he has a, there's a good like 5-minute TED Talk and it's about the role of a mentor. Yeah. What they do is they help you say, that's wrong, do this, that's wrong, do this, that's okay, but go a little bit like this. And they're slowly making all these micro adjustments so you become an expert eventually. Yes. You don't wanna just go it alone and sort of develop all these habits that are gonna lead to a poor outcome. So someone who is, it's one thing to study things and take them apart and then try out, but it's also good to have someone look at that and say, here's what you're missing, right? And to be like humble about that and be like, oh yeah, that's right. Really blowing it there. And then, you know, kind of looking at the darkness, looking at the negative. Yeah.

Anthony Thomas (01:26:50 --> 01:27:47)
Yes, that's it, man. That's, that's, that's why, that's why I'm like, I'm gonna have a coach for life. Like, I, I don't ever, I don't ever want to stop growing. I need someone to point those things out. I need someone to show me my blind spots.

And the— and every, every time we level up, there's new problems we have to solve.. And so it's, you can't expect to just like, oh, okay, I've made it. I don't need help anymore. I don't need, you know, assistance, guidance, and oversight. I don't need any of that.

No, you definitely do. If you want to keep growing, if you want to keep improving. And the reality is you need to do this for everyone else. Don't do it just for yourself. I mean, you serving your purpose in life to serve others, whatever that may look like, whether it's writing books that get people excited.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:27:47 --> 01:28:17)
I think that is a good fourth step. Yeah. Yeah. And then again, just patience, right? You know? Yes. Just, you know, it doesn't happen overnight and, you know, live your life and find joy in things other than your passion in order to, you know, you don't get much time here, right? So you don't want to be just kind of like mindlessly going after your goal at the expense of everything, right?

Anthony Thomas (01:28:17 --> 01:28:22)
Right. Enjoy the process. Figure out how can I, how can I pursue the goal and enjoy the process of doing it?

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:28:23 --> 01:28:27)
That's a great question to ask. Yeah, for sure.

Anthony Thomas (01:28:27 --> 01:28:31)
For sure. Beautiful. All right. Author Dustin Grenell.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:28:31 --> 01:28:50)
I'm gonna give you a hype button. Oh, let's go! Well, thanks, buddy. This is, this is fun. Yeah, um, I really appreciate, you know, you, uh, like my book and asked me to come on and have this conversation. Definitely. For hours.

Anthony Thomas (01:28:50 --> 01:29:07)
So appreciate it. Yeah, big time. I appreciate you. I, um Man, I'm excited for this. You're inspiring me to start writing and not like, oh, let me write a book, but just write some stuff.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:29:08 --> 01:29:08)
Yeah.

Anthony Thomas (01:29:08 --> 01:29:30)
Do a one-act play or something. Yeah. Or just write a poem. A little scene, a poem, something. We'll see. But I appreciate it. And I hope anybody listening gets some inspiration as well. And man, I don't know, maybe, uh, maybe I'll have to dive into a couple other books here. We've got Genius to Lemon Without Limits that I have not yet read.

Dustin Grinnell - 2 (01:29:30 --> 01:29:48)
Yeah, well, I've got some more coming for you, uh, looking for a publisher for the next one, and, and it's already done. And I, uh, you know, working on the, uh, I guess the next one after that. It's— I have a first draft, so— oh, I love this. This is gonna be a whole lifetime. Yeah.

Anthony Thomas (01:29:48 --> 01:29:49)
You to dig into it. And if—

Dustin Grinnell - 1 (01:29:49 --> 01:30:24)
in it for the long haul. Thanks for listening to this episode of Curiously. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Anthony Thomas, actor, model, coach, and host of the Anthony Thomas Podcast. If this episode challenged you or helped expand your perspective or satisfy your curiosity about the world, please consider sharing it with your friends and family and use it to have a conversation of your own. If you want to support Curiously, please consider leaving a review.

They encourage people to listen and help attract great guests. Thanks again for listening and stay tuned for more conversations with people I meet along the way.