Healing Core Wounds & Finding Authenticity | Ira Israel | Captivate the Mic

Are you tired of making the same mistakes in your life or business over and over again, but you just can't seem to find your blind spots? Trust me, you are not alone. Today on Captivate the Mic, I am bringing you an absolute mind-expanding conversation with the brilliant psychotherapist, best-selling author, and master storyteller, Ira Israel.

Ira has an unbelievable backstory. After a near-fatal car accident in 1985 left him with massive physical trauma, he spent decades relentlessly searching for the meaning of life. He spent eight years studying philosophy in Paris, eight years studying Eastern spirituality in Thailand and India, and another eight years studying deep psychology. When he brings all that aggregated knowledge into a room, breakthroughs happen fast.

In this episode, we tackle the raw truth behind why relationships and marriages are so hard in our modern world, how our early childhood core wounds dictate our current behavior, and why we naturally default to meaning-making machines. We even dive into some hilarious, star-studded stories involving Landmark Forum breakdowns and accidentally sitting next to Madonna in a New York Kabbalah class! If you are ready to face your blind spots without judgment and show up authentically, you need to listen to this.

Key Takeaways:

- The Core Wound Reality: Why your deepest childhood emotional wound will stay with you your whole life, and how to turn it from a victim narrative into your personal purpose.

- Why Modern Relationships Fail: A look at attachment theory and how our cultural obsession with power, independence, and "fixing" things actively blocks intimacy.

- The Landmark Revelation: How changing the language you use to describe your personal tragedies alters the baseline of your actual reality.

- Overcoming Intellectual Control: Why high-powered, brilliant people often suck at building intimate partnerships, and how to cultivate genuine wonder instead.

- The Power of Everyday Impact: How small, intentional acts of loving human connection—like a hand on a shoulder—can literally save a person's life.

Guest Intro:

Ira Israel is a licensed psychotherapist, licensed professional clinical counselor, author of How to Survive Your Childhood Now That You’re an Adult, and creator of the best-selling video series Yoga for Depression and Anxiety. He holds graduate degrees in philosophy, psychology, and religious studies, and spent years teaching mindfulness and meditation at the legendary Esalen Institute.

Connect with Ira Israel:
Website: https://iraisrael.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ira-israel-449364/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iraisraelofficial/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ira.israel.5
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iraisraelofficial

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Captivate the Mic with Elaine Williams, where I talk to fascinating people who are great storytellers, and you're in for such a treat. This guy, Ira Israel. I'm so excited that you're here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

It's a pleasure. It's an honor. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

So I found Ira on social media, and I started following him probably a couple years ago. And the more I followed you, Ira, I was like, oh my God, I love what this man has to say. You give me hope for humanity. And I love so much of your philosophy. And you're a lifelong learner. You're a therapist, an author. You do so many things. So do you want to say, just give us a little mini intro of your of who you are or who young people to go back to the question we were talking about?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

I was catapulted onto this path in 1985 in a near fatal car accident. And I had my face blown off my head and my femur shattered and all these terrible things. And during the two years of surgeries and convalescence, I just started asking these questions. What's the meaning of life? And why do we think the things that we think? And why do we want the things that we want? And so I ended up after school moving to Paris. And uh I found a whole other way of being and a way of living and a way of appreciating things, and people just uh reading books and going to the movies and communicating in a and an interesting manner that we can talk about more later. But I studied philosophy for eight years, aesthetics, again, just revolving around what's the meaning of life. And then I was in Thailand in 94, and I, because I'm so smart, I walked into a doorframe. And but the crazy thing is that the there was no, it was Koh Samui, there was no, there were no there were no roads or fax machines. It was a little island in '94. And uh a woman healed me with her hands. And so for my eight years of studying philosophy, I was like, maybe all this is not uh the most uh interesting manner of seeing the world. And that got me studying Buddhism, Hinduism, and Kabbalah. And then I studied that for another eight years, and uh I took a graduate degree in those subjects and did my yoga teacher training and studied meditation and mindfulness and all these things, and then I got into a highly dysfunctional relationship and been there, done that. Yeah, yeah. The line forms down the hall, and um, and uh that got me interested in psychology. So for eight years I studied philosophy, for another eight years I studied spirituality, for another eight years I studied uh psychology, and then I was teaching uh yoga at Rodney Yee studio in Oakland while I was doing my psychotherapy uh internship in Berkeley, and uh it just all came together. The also went to film school and I studied parapsychology at Duke University, and I've been studying all these things for 25 years, and I just knew I had to start teaching. So in 2009, I made the DVD Yoga for Depression and Anxiety. In six months, it was number one on Amazon, bestseller, and uh then that allowed me to make Mindfulness for the for Depression, Mindfulness for Anxiety, got me teaching at Esseline, and then that that got me my book deal, and then I've been just uh seeing patients teaching, and I have my vocation is writer. I love words, I'm a wordsmith, and I always try to be uh precise, but I think in our discussion, what you will find is that there are ways of expressing ourselves that enroll other people in seeing the world differently, and that's my job as a psychotherapist, and that is how I help uh people engender the loving relationships that they really want.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Wow. Oh my gosh. Esalin, that's one of my dreams to go there. It's for people who don't know, it's a like summer camp for adults in a way.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

It's a fact. Let me just say this. It was started by uh Stanford and Harvard guys, Ram Das was there in 64, 65. So it has this intellectual component, but at the same time, these people were getting out of LSD, and then they all, the people who I know went to India in 69, 70, 71, and they learned that they could do the same things with drugs through meditation and yoga. So for me, the beauty of Eslan was always that it was just people who were seeking psychologically and finding another way of looking at the world and why things happen and why we think the shit that we think and why we think we want the things that we want and the things that, if you study Buddhism, bring about suffering inadvertently, and how you can remedy that.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

I love it. I love it. Yeah, and I I was we were chatting before we started recording. I'm in this chapter where I'm I lost my father last year.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

He's there at the end. Thank you. It was profound and beautiful and horrible. And I I thanked my sister. I said, I'm so glad you asked me to come and let me come live with you. And now we're going through you know, a chapter with my mom, and it's made me really question. I've been so driven for so long to be in the arts, and and I've been really seeing how much my life has been about validation, seeking validation, which is sobering and nauseating and freeing. And I think what attracts me so much to your work is you are a great storyteller. Your vocabulary is amazing. Just I've been driving around listening to your book, like wow, wow, oh, I love that word. I don't know that word. And one of the things you said, we were talking about when you've done therapy, and then when you also are a therapist for people, show me the blind spots. Can you speak to that, please?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Absolutely. One of my favorite subjects. Everybody has a paradigm, a perspective, a way of seeing the world. And what I think is that it's formed much earlier than we think it is. Uh, and that's why I study, and we can talk, we can circle back to attachment theory because we kind of have this belief that the world is a dangerous place, uh, or we'll always be the victim, or people are out there screw us, or we're narcissists and we're heroes, or but the interesting thing is no matter what our perspective or paradigm is, everyone has blind spots. What they don't know, that they don't know. The reasons that subconsciously they're manifesting these patterns over and over again. And essentially, there's a wounded child in all of us. I don't know if that's trite or not, but we all want to be loved unconditionally. And as soon as we learn language and grow up in our capitalistic society, we subconsciously learn that we'll only get breadcrumbs of love through speaking well or being famous or being rich or being sexy or being something. And then what happens is we end up resenting the people who love us because we're sexy or rich or speak well, blah, blah, blah, because we know that they don't love the unseemly inner self that only we see. So you come to therapy, and hopefully at some point in time, I can help you link from whatever traumas in your childhood through the patterns that are uh coming about in your present relationships so that you can tweak your responses and make healthier long-term decisions. That's one of the reasons that I taught meditation at Esselin for so long, because it helps you cultivate non-reactivity. Essentially, I could do about 10 trips right now that would show you that your thoughts, feelings, and actions are maladaptive. Nobody likes to say, if you just came into my workshop and paid $10,000 and I said, you're your own worst enemy, half the people would be like, fuck you, I didn't pay $10,000 to hear that. I already knew that. And the other half would just run out. But the fact of the matter is that if you take responsibility for your way of being in the world and can do it without an emotional charge, without, oh, I suck and I'm terrible, or oh, I'm so great. Just this is the way it is. I am like this because of this. And when I show up in this reactive way that pushes people out of my life or just is not great, then I can make changes.

SPEAKER_02 9:27

Yeah. Wow. It's and I I know for me, sometimes I can catch myself and I'm triggered, and I'm like, okay, how old are you right now? And I'm like, oh yeah, I'm five. And that's something I struggle with. I'm very creative, so I'm not very organized, and I don't like structure, even though I know it's good for me. And I feel like I'm making the same mistakes in my business. And yeah. So do you ever think we ever obviously I think we are always evolving?

SPEAKER_00 9:53

But uh I'm gonna answer your question right now. Ready?

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Ready?

SPEAKER_00 9:57

There's no there. Yeah, there's no state of enlightenment or perfection. You just it's uh your core wound will be there on your death bed. And the best, I think, okay, we can make we could flip this into a whole weird place, but I'll do it. I think that core wound could be a part of your karma and dharma. And if you see it like that, then it could take out the woe's me, why was I killed in a car accident? Why do I have to walk around with these scars on my face? Why do I have this lymph? Why do I have this pain? Blah, blah, blah. I'm just saying, obviously, John Wellwood famously wrote, there's no spiritual bypass. But for me, having an understanding of how reality is occurring and why things happen and what your place in that is and what you did to bring those things into existence is helpful.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Wow. Yeah, I tried that phrase life is happening for me to me.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

And I can forget that in two 2.3 seconds. So is Irish, do you think that's why relationships and marriages are so hard? Because most of us haven't done work to deal with ourselves, much less be able to communicate.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

There are multiple reasons. The first is uh biologically, uh, and now going into attachment theory. We're supposed to be on our mom's breast and sleeping with them and form a healthy, secure attachment, not for six months, but for like three or four years. And we're trying to make these babies into productive members of society and get them to whatever school and so that they can get letters of recommendation and go to Harvard. So that one of the things is that biologically, I think we're all avoidant. Um, Mary Ainsworth in 1969 did the test the strain situation, and she posited that 33% of people had secure attachment. But I I really think it's much, much less in this day and age.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

So do I.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

So biologically, I think we have a problem. Go back to your question one more time because and now I'll answer it in another way.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Or just like, why is it so hard to be to create healthy, intimate relationships? I guess that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Let me see, let me, I'll go, I'm gonna segue from the biological to the cultural, in that we're taught to be not vulnerable, to be strong. And I mostly work or with really high-powered smart people, and we suck at relationships because we we think in our head that we have the best way of doing things. We've thought it all out because we're fucking geniuses, and I know that to get to the Hollywood bowl, I should take the 101, the 405 to the one, and I got this thing. So if someone's in the car with me, I'm like, I've got this. I'm in control, I'm the smartest person in this car, and I will make this happen. But what that does is it usurps the other person's agency, right? They don't feel like their partner, they're people like being a part of the solution. And you'll hear a complaint from many women in particular, that in the beginning of the relationship, I love when he ordered for us at the restaurant, and then when they get divorced, she'll say, He was so controlling. And you're like, what the hell? It's the same thing. So, what I teach people is how to I have this phrase. So a woman comes home from work, and listen, this is sexist because I in irrespective of how woke I am, I do believe that there are gender distinctions for basketball, let's say, or other things. So I'm just gonna speak authentically here. So a man, I think men are wired to fix stuff.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

And so if I hear you complaining about your microphone, I'm like, Elaine, did you try this? Did you try that? Did you try this? Did you try this? And what that basically lands with you subconsciously is he must think I'm some sort of idiot. Of course I tried that. I'm sitting here trying to be helpful, and it's landing with you as he must think I'm stupid. He must think I'm incompetent. So what I teach people to do is to say, as opposed to jumping in with a solution saying, How can I support you? And so it's a buy-in, and then they give you the answer, and then you do it. And so it's a it's teamwork, it's agency. We're working together to solve Elaine's microphone problem.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

I love it. I I did the landmark forum in '97, and it saved my life.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

I did the landmark forum in 1997.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Oh my god, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

I did it in New York.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Where did you do it?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

I did it in New York.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

Okay. So cool. It saved my life. It helped me get sober and take responsibility. And I had a spiritual awakening and I was able to forgive my family. And one of my favorite things is what are you making this mean? And do you want me to just listen or do you want me to coach?

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Now, sometimes that's you can forget that in a nanosecond, but and to go back to what you wanted me to start this conversation with right before I started that program, I would go out to bars and restaurants and people would say, How'd you get that scar on your face? And I would say, You're almost, I was almost killed in a car accident. And so when I did the uh the advanced course, you had to tell the story of your life. And so I I do my shtick, my like, like, I was almost killed in a car accident. And the leader goes, No, you weren't. And I'm like, actually, my femur was shattered. Like normally, like you bleed out because of the femural artery. I had no skin on my face. I had this problem. They didn't notify my parents. I was almost killed in the car accident. And he goes, No, you weren't. And so now I'm pissed, and I'm like, listen, this is what happened. These are the facts. I was almost killed in a car accident. He goes, No, you weren't. There was a car accident. Everything else you added.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

So again, language creates reality. You can either be the hero of your story or the victim. And we all just need support in showing up authentically yet compassionately.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Wow. And I it's interesting. I coach a lot of women how to get comfortable on camera, how to speak on stage. And how am I doing? You're doing awesome. You're I you're a great storyteller, which is anybody who's listening, I want you to go follow Ira Israel on TikTok and Instagram because Ira, you are a fabulous storyteller.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

You're so authentic. You're like, hey, let me talk about blah, blah, blah. I just, it's so great. And I love your content. It's very digestible. And you talk about big things, but in a way that you can really grok them.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Try.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

I love philosophy. I went to the Kabbalah Center. I was the only non-Jewish person in New York at the Kabbalah Center, but I thought it was super cool. I know Madonna studied it, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:03

I swear to God, so when I took Kabbalah class with Aitan, only twice. Madonna was in the next row, but I knew you were gonna go that. I because when you said non-Jewish person at Kabbalah, I knew the sentence had to have the word Madonna in it.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

They were so cool though. I love I just went to the this Hindi uh temple yesterday in Dallas. It has this famous vegetarian restaurant, and it was so cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

And they invited us into that it's yeah, every year I go to Houston for uh Thanksgiving, and at 11:15 we go to the Arte ritual at the Hindu temple there, the big one that's made out of ivory from Italy that was like it's like hundreds, it's 200 tons of ivory that was I'm so sorry, marble, my bad. Marble 200 tons of marble that from Italy that was shipped to India and then shipped back, and it's very ornate Hindu temple, but I but yes, I I love going for the arte ritual and then having a lovely vegetarian meal.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

That's so cool, and you made a video about that because I was like, where is he?

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Anyway, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

The people were so welcoming and it was such a beautiful building, and I was laughing because I've driven by it for years and didn't notice very close to it. Where were we going to go for it thoughts, communication? Oh, how you're a great storyteller. Oh, I know what I was I was gonna say how what I have found with working with women as a coach for 20 years when a woman has a challenge, a lot of times she internalizes it. Like if they have a tech issue, they'll say, Oh, I suck at tech. And when I found for a lot of men, they're like, Oh, this thing is broken or this thing is stupid. And I I don't know if that you have found that to be true in your in your practice, but I think a lot of times we internalize things that aren't ours.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

So Nietzsche has this quote don't add more unknown to the already unknown.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Ooh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Don't add and but and then from whether it's landmark, but I think that Werner Earhart got it from Heidegger. We are meaning-making machines. So what but don't add more unknown to the already unknown. Just it's say, yeah, my microphone broke. Does that mean I'm an idiot? No, I don't the microphone broke. I now I'll try to fix it.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Okay, no, I love that. Okay, I want to go back to attachment theories because I I feel I know I'm anxious attachment. And I've done some therapy on it, I've done EMDR. But I also think I'm avoidant too. Can you be both?

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Yeah.

unknown 20:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

It depends on the situation. And again, I feel as if the main thing for all of us is to lean in, meaning that the the priority is healthy, loving relationships. So somebody says something you don't like, and you sit back and you make a decision. Our first instinct is like, I didn't sign up for this. And then but no, that's a defense mechanism, right? And then say, you know what, and I'll tell you, because you wanted to ask about dating. And here's the conundrum. We're all looking for our tribe, so we're building rapport and trust, but we're also looking for authenticity. So if someone's authentic before trust is built, they scare the person away. So that's why dating or getting to know someone. Yeah, they're too they're mutually exclusive. So you if you're too authentic, then you scare the person off. So what we need to do is When I have people who are starting to date, I always say, okay, first date, museum. Do not sit at Starbucks or a restaurant interviewing the other person about their fucked up childhood or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

I love it. That's brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Go to a museum, see what he thinks about that painting, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Go to a jazz club, see what he knows about Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Go just you go take a walk. It's just something besides interviewing. You need a third thing. If the two people together, it's a recipe for disaster. Because you'll no, you'll trauma bond. You'll be like, oh my God, I had a fucked up child. You had a fucked up child? I had a fucked up child. And that's not a good that's not a good start, right? You need you, but that's what the problem was, and I wanted to develop, I have this all written out. A date, there are no dating apps, there are matching apps. And what I think what you you need is you need to commit to three dates, let's say, or whatever you want to call them, three adventures. And you go horseback riding together, or go to a sushi making class, or go do something that is this other thing that you're both experiencing. And then you don't you just you learn. You're there together and you're seeing what interests the person. And that to me is what makes marriages thrive when each person has their own passion that they come back and share, even if the other person doesn't understand it. They're like, I love needlework or needlepoint, I don't even know what it's called. And they just describe it, I can't do it, or I'm terrified, I can't paint, or whatever. But if someone paints and can tell me, do you see that shadow there? Do you see that thing?

SPEAKER_02 23:48

The relief, the nuance, the mastery.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

I'm like, oh my God, I never saw that. That's great. I can't do it, but I love that you're passionate about it. So couples should have things individually that they're passionate about that they share their passion. Then they should have something that they're both passionate about. They're like, they both like to go to yoga on Sunday morning and then go to brunch, or read the same The Economist or something and share that. And we we we really suck at building loving relationships because in my courses and in my book, unfortunately, in our culture, we conflate sex and love, and there's really no relation. Like you have to in this day and age, you have to speak, which also has a problem, but you have to communicate how do we create a loving experience rather than oh my god, I saw the way Julie Roberts kissed Richard Gere in that movie, and I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_02 24:46

And I remember my advanced course leader, Doug.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

He said, Hold on, was it that was he a minor league baseball player, like a Ken doll?

SPEAKER_02 24:55

No, it was Doug Plett, who had been around since Werner, but he said, I went, I wanted to go to the beach and roll around and kiss like the the way they do in the movies, and it was horrible. I got sand in my suit, and I was like, I love that he said that.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

I'll tell you something that I use that okay, so that you that that just blew my mind. So I did have, and I don't know the gentleman's name, he looked like a Ken doll. And the way he sat in that director's chair, he was a minor league baseball player, I don't know what he did for work, but the way he I I this is uh I've already been vulgar, but the way he sat in his director's chair, he was cocksure. That's the best word. Yeah, so some a guy comes up to him at the break, and I'm about to try to ask a question. And he goes like this He goes, Hey, listen, you've been married for 25 years. What's your secret to a lasting relationship? And he goes, I have no idea who my wife is. And the guy goes, wait a second. I'm married, it's not going so well. What's the secret to a long-lasting loving relationship? The guy goes, I have no idea who my wife is. And the guy's like, getting very frustrated now. He's like, Listen, I need to know. I came here for one thing. What's the secret to a long-lasting relationship? And the guy goes, I have no idea who my wife is. I have no idea who my wife is because 25 years ago, I made a commitment to living in the splendor of getting to know that woman every day for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Wow. That's so powerful. And I think you can apply that to sometimes we have this automatic listening for people and we don't give them the space to be who they are today.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

It's fascinating what you do because and I really like Chris Voss, who wrote Never So What the Difference, his masterclass, because it's a little bit manufactured, but if you research NLP, it's essentially um it's mirroring and matching. And you yeah, I would say fake it until you make it. But the thing that people really love is a sense of wonder. If you're genuinely curious, when someone comes into my office and I'm just insatiably curious, I want to know things, right? So being able to phrase questions that again enroll people in expressing themselves in a new way so that they hear themselves breaking the patterns. You ask them to say more about this, or wow, it's very curious. You mentioned that this thing happened when you were nine, and now um you're getting divorced. Like you think there's any relation? But I just said it in a kind of like condescending, snarky way. So I I didn't mean to say it like that. But you see the way your um sense of wonder helps them uh create a narrative, and then they can tweak the narrative and make better decisions.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

I love it. I love it. That's what I do with my I'm always like, okay, what's the story behind the story? And so many people discount, oh, I cured my cancer and I got over it when I was 16. I'm like, wait, what? So many people that I've worked with are discounting, and I always say, look, you had to discount stuff to get through your childhood because it was painful and you couldn't leave. So you we you we do whatever we do, it's not so bad, keep it moving. But then you do that as an adult, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Like no, that that what that's probably that's not so bad. Keep it moving. When I what I the way I say it is, don't be a pussy, walk it off. That that that's what co that's what the baseball coach in Little League said. You would sprain your ankle, be on the verge of death, like like amputation. He'd be like, Don't be a pussy, walk it off. And what were your phrases?

SPEAKER_02 29:17

It's not so bad, just keep it moving, just keep the party moving.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

I love that. And it's yeah, these are all these things that we do to survive, but they don't serve us in a this is very interesting, and this is why we what you're going through is fascinating because our culture, because of this underlying thread to be uh productive, doesn't allow us to grieve or to have a sprained ankle for six weeks if you are working something that you have to be on your feet. It's very interesting. The subconscious, the assumptions that we make about health and mental health and all these things. And look at the epidemics that we're going through right now, because we're we're nobody wants to work 60 hours a week anymore. Nobody wants to, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

Yeah, I love that, Ira. And do you work with individuals and couples or only couples?

SPEAKER_00 30:13

I work with both. Uh just uh adults. I'm really so I'm 60, I play the role of I do cameos of uh in the role of the cool father for a lot of 30-year-old tech guys who is astonishing to me. All of them earn a lot more money than I do. They're half my age, and they don't know how to live life. They live behind a screen, and they don't know how to go up to a girl in a restaurant and say, Hey, I'm I you're there, I don't know what it is. Um I'd love to get to know you. Or like they don't know how to interact with people, they don't have the what you would call emotional intelligence. So I support them in going to Barry's boot camp and to trying we have four different dinner clubs in Los Angeles. So I get all my guys to like show up for dinner with six strangers and just figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

I love it. I love that so much. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting times we're living in. I yeah, so do you have any new projects? Are you working on another book?

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Are you you know it's so interesting? I have really I had a an article go viral this week on psychology today. Congratulations! Yeah, I saw it had it this morning it hit 10,000 readers uh in five days. Uh and so I to you because I have these four degrees and ten certificates, I'm a dilettante. And we live in this culture, I'm sorry, dilettante. It means what's it called? Uh the Benjamin Franklin cult master of none.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Oh, Jacobell Trades, Master of Nothing. That's how I feel about myself.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

But and it's funny because I went to go see a lecture by David Epstein last week, and he I don't I won't get the name of his book right now, but it's about my way of aggregating from different disciplines will be rewarded in the future, or it's rewarded now when patients come in and I can talk about Buddhism and parapsychology or mystical experiences and things like that. But also, you get a lot of Harvard, Wharton, MIT Stanford people who are not woo-woo. And so I can go both ways, put it that way. In terms of new projects, I'm waiting to I have a bunch of book proposals, but I think that how to survive your childhood now that you're an adult. I was influenced by Michel Foucault, who talked about systems of thought. So I think that democracy is a system of thought, and our pharmaceutical companies are and our agricultural, those are all their systems that are underneath our belief systems as individuals, but they're undergirding our society. And the myth of romantic love is chapter four. Yeah, chapter four in that book.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

Disney.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

It's funny because I love Esther Perrell. And when she was the same age that I was when my book came out, her book came out, Mating in Captivity. And then she worked with this young person to make her the world's leading expert in infidelity. And she's a genius. I I love her the death. I've spoken to her. I spoke to her in French. We texted back and forth. It was like, yeah, so I love her the pieces, and I'm looking for that person to say, you're the world's leading expert in authenticity. This is what you believe it is, because everybody supposedly wants to express themselves creatively now, but they have these golden handcuffs because they have these kids, and so now they're the lawyer or doctor, they hate their job, they hate their practice, but they can't quit it because they have this monthly nut that they have to meet. So I don't know. I would may I'd like to work with somebody so that they think they show me where my breadth of knowledge can be most applied, and then I can go do these crazy lectures that I do, which uh basically deconstruct our belief system. I've been studying Lacan for the past 12 years, Jacques Lacan. So it's very similar to what you learned in Landmark. There's something called subjective destitution, and and it's like deconstructing your belief system so that you start from a point of creation rather than a point of like assumptions. Heidegger said, we're thrown into language. So again, it either you can have it drag you around like wild horses, saying, Oh my god, I'm codependent. I have to go to these meetings every day, and my while never have a healthy relationship, or you can use language in a way to create uh to create tools that keep you at the higher end of your happiness spectrum.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

Okay, cool. I love it. I will I always I keep thinking it would be fine to if you did tours or trips. I would sign up in a second, like go to India with Ira or go to Paris, or I'm like, oh my God.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

Yeah, it's a uh we live in a very interesting culture. The people who have popped, like Brene Brown and even Elizabeth Gilbert, like her first TED Talk is genius. Yeah. The latest book. It's a very weird thing. You know, listen, let I the main narrative thread of the first book is that power corrupts. And if you read Robert Reich's work, that's what we had in the 1950s in America. We had 93% taxes on high income people, and we had this like middle class structure. And ever since Ronald Reagan, uh, we've had this mistrust in government. And so what we're seeing with Elon Musk and all these people, even Bill Gates now with the Jeffrey Epstein and the Hookers and things, it's like power corrupts. And when people get a certain amount of power, look at all the gurus, all the yoga teachers, all these people, all the Catholic priests. The fact is that we need a regular regulatory system. Nobody likes this, everyone's gonna throw tomatoes at their screen. But if you look at our society from a 40,000-foot view, the reason it worked, I'm not gonna say better, but the reason I don't know the how to describe this, but since the internet we've splayed apart and it's democratized things in a very good way. As I said, that first DVD, I made Yoga for depression and anxiety. There's something called the long tail. So I just I put it up on Amazon myself and it just went. And it didn't have to go through Warner Bros. or through Universal. That's the long tail, the benefit of it. On the other hand, if you sit at a cafe, one person's looking at TikTok, the other person's looking at Facebook. I had a young woman in the office yesterday. She's like, I'm on, she said, I'm on Instagram, and um she called me an old person. It was beautiful. She said, Instagram is like Facebook for old people or something like that. It was really funny because but it's it's it was great. Yeah, I love stuff like that. But we're living in this in time where everything's splayed out and we don't have a common thread anymore or canon or something to, you know, we're just getting further and further apart. And unfortunately, I feel like there will be a revolution against these billionaires. And it's I find it, I think there was a shift in time when newspapers were reporting on the quality of a movie, and then all of a sudden they started reporting on box office income on a Monday morning. And it's it's a very interesting thing psychologically. I want to see interesting movies. I don't care if they've made $50 billion. I want to see yes.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

A lot of times that turns me off. I yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay, I could talk to you forever. So hopefully we'll get to do a part two. If people, I'm gonna have all your stuff in the show notes, but if people want to find you, is there one particular place you like to send them to?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Iraisrael.com is a portal, and there are it's like the best of my articles, and the books are there. And I'm giving a lecture up in Malibu. I did a book signing at the Los Angeles Public Library two weeks ago. Wow. And I cut everything up and I put them into little things. That's what you do on TikTok. And I what you just said, as I said, Brene Brown and uh there's a couple of people, Elizabeth Gilbert, and they do great work or Esther, and they go on these tours, and there's a there's a philosopher, Slavo Zizek, or uh Scott Galloway, or then they do these tours. Yeah, if you can get uh a couple of people together in a yoga studio in Dallas, I'll come down.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

I would love to help you create a tour because I I I think one of the things I really love about you, Ira, is you're you have a sense of play and love and fun, and it's just delicious. It's and I love Scott Galloway too. He's his energy is so different. Um I also just want to say I've been in recovery for a long time and I've seen a lot of men struggle with emotions and feeling free to express themselves. And so I think you are such a powerful example to to all of us, but especially men. So I love the work that you're doing. And is there any super tip you want to say the last thing to?

SPEAKER_00 40:07

Yeah, I was teaching in Boston. I tell this story, you've seen it before. But a gentleman who from an addiction specialist came up to me and uh he told me the story. He said he got a call a couple months ago, and someone said, Hey, uh, you saved my life. I I want to take you out to lunch. So he goes and he meets uh this person, this other guy, for lunch, and the guy tells him what he's been doing since he got sober 30 years ago. And uh addiction specialist, he says, That's so wonderful, all these things you're doing, but I'm so sorry I'm an old man now. I don't even recall ever meeting you. Like, how did I save your life? And uh the guy said, 30 years ago, I went to my first meeting, and you put your hand on my shoulder and said, You're going to be alright. So we're gonna go out to Whole Foods and interact with people all day, and we don't realize our impact. So making eye contact, showing up as your highest self, working to not be an asshole, to not be controlling, to not be a narcissist, to just show up and be loving could save someone's life.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Thank you. Thank you so much, Ira. This is profound goosebumps. All right, everybody, thank you.