Best Of: Matthew McConaughey

I'm opening up crossplay. I've been playing against Dan, my colleague at the New York Times. Kat's played another move. Ugh, she played stoop for 36 points. I've got a Z, which is 10 points. I'm guessing tanga is not a word. Let's see. Tanga is a word. Oh. Dan played his last turn. Let's see who won. It's so close. But I did win. New York Times game subscribers get full access to Crossplay, our first two-player word game. Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games. I'm Kara Swisher and you're listening to Sway. Today I'm playing you one of my favorite Sway episodes, my conversation with Matthew McConaughey. I talked to him in October of 2021, back when he was considering a run for Texas governor. He decided not to run, and I like to think that was only partly because of our conversation. But we didn't just talk politics. He also told me about his multi-stage acting career, his decision to write a very revealing memoir, and his obsession with bumper stickers. And I got to hear how McConaughey responds to unkind book reviews because, of course, I read some of them right to him. Take a listen. howdy all right i want to start with your book green lights um you published this memoir at 50 can you tell me why you decided to do it it's also an unusual memoir yeah so i've been keeping journals and diaries since i was i don't know 12 13 14 about 15 20 years ago i thought about oh oh, maybe I should write a book or should I publish this in some way? And that was as much as I could say. It scared the heck out of me. I was like, oh, yeah, blah, blah, blah. And I just kept the journals in the treasure chest and that's where they stayed. I always took the treasure chest with me wherever I went, whatever location, because I was like, hey, you're going to get time off one weekend. You're going to get the courage to open that up and see what's in there. Never opened it up. Finally, about five years ago, I got the courage to say, I got to do it. Sure, sure. My favorite two words you've written in this book is I partook. It's not a word people use that often. I partook. I love the word partook. I love the word partook. You know what my other favorite one on that is? What? I purchase. I purchase. Oh, okay. Why? Well, you say something to me and I love the affirmative ways. Like the Rostas have a great way. If they say something and say, like, I say something to you. And if I want to know if you understood, I go, cite. And if you understand, you go, see. And I'll say, like, times I'll say something to my friends. and I go, I'll say, you hear me? And they'll go, heard, hear, heard, sight, seen. Yeah. Purchase, purchase. Partake, I partake, I partook. Partake, partook, right, exactly. It's the two, that's the best sentence, the whole book. Thank you. So let's talk about process. You went to the desert for 52 days with no electricity to write. Is that what I should be doing? I'm working on a memoir about Silicon Valley. It isn't quite as pleasant, but they're not quite as interesting. Look, it's what I had to do. Why? I needed to go to a place where I had no other excuse. I needed to go put myself in a position with no internet, no friends, no car, no communication, where when I got bored, when I needed entertainment, was looking for stimulus, I only had one place to go. And that was who the hell I've been on those journals. I knew from my travels before that I needed to put myself in that sort of position, that monastic place. Right. So you just sat there and typed, essentially. sat there type wrote danced sang wrapped bongos did you bring those oh hell yeah so that that was my soundtrack yes exactly so one of the ways you wrote it was uh journal entries you kept and it's kind of a patchwork of these journal excerpts with your story and personal reflections mixed in and you're kind of philosophizing i guess right why did you construct it this way well when i started off i really thought the material in the book was going to be quite academic. And maybe to some extent, that was me thinking maybe I wanted to be more academic. When I looked at everything, I ended up having these stacks. It was a stack of these themes of the last 50 years of my writings were stories, people, places, prescribes, poems, prayers, and a whole lot of bumper stickers. There's a lot of wisdom. There's a lot of, here's some cool things to do. You could call it self-help, some motivation, et cetera. But I know first person doesn't like to be told what to do is me. So how do I put it in a form that is more digestible and fun? The stories. So I said, let's look at it like a movie. The stories I tell will be the main narrative. When I pop into a prescribe, a poem, a prayer, or a bumper sticker, let that be like a flashback or a flash forward. It needs to either hark back to the story I just told you, hey, here's how I looked at it or propel you into the next story. One of the first scenes in the books is a scene from your childhood. It's a fight you witnessed between your parents. Your mom hit your dad with a telephone. Broke his nose. He swung a knife at him. He fought back with a ketchup bottle. Then they had sex on the floor. Why include that scene? Why did you think it was important? For all my life, when people ask me, hey, this love that your family had, tell me a story. I I always, there's always those stories where there's a fight. And mind you, we had lots of hugs in our family, much more than the fights. But I realized that that's, the reason I tell them is that's when the love was tested the most. Those are the stories that you think, oh, here, oh shit, here it goes. It all breaks down now. It's all gonna fall apart now. And it doesn't. So it's a wild way that my mom and dad loved each other, a wild way that they communicated. I put that story in the beginning though, to give context, let me set the table. Let's blow the big firecracker first on the 4th of July party, okay? Because you see the humanity in that story. But on paper, what happens in that story is an X-rated, horrific, violent, you know, violent tale that you're like, this is it. Oh, my God, this is drama. But I've never heard this story. And I knew it was original, wild, but also full of love. Right. So you said I come from a loving family. We may not have always liked each other. We always loved each other. And yet violence, too. Yeah. That's how, as I said, my mom and dad communicated. They're divorced twice, married three times. And he died having sex with her. At 630 a.m. on a Monday morning, which he had called his shot for 20 years, telling us his sons, boys, when I go, I'm going to be making love to your mother. And damn if he didn't do it. Okay. That's true. Damn if he didn't do it. There's nothing to say. There's nothing to say. So the book is also, there's ultimately a concept of green lights, which I think most people can get, but can you explain the concept? Sure. Green lights on the road of life we're all living. We love green lights. They say, yes, affirm our way. More, please carry on. Attaboy, way to go. We like them. Yellow and red lights, yellow slow us down. There are pause, there introspection. We don't really like those because they make us think a minute. And then you got red lights. Oh, a crisis, a hardship. I got fired, a death, bad health. Something happens that stops us in our track. We don't like it. Well, if life was all just the green light, we'd just be dizzy running in circles and we never evolve. You got to have the yellow light and the red light to evolve. And so once we see the lessons in the yellow and the red light in our life, that's when they actually turn green for us. Do you think what you're saying is relatable? I mean, obviously, you're a famous movie star. You've been lots of leads, leading movies. You can go, you know, one of the reviews in the Washington Post, which wasn't as kind, said, might I too refuse lucrative romantically roles till better scripts come along or hike through the rainforest on ecstasy and float naked down the Amazon River because of an erotic dream slash nightmare. Told me to. But it's been on the bestseller list. I know, it's funny. It was funny. I know. Oh, that's excellent. You did all those things, by the way, FYI. But one of the things is that not precisely relatable to most people floating down the Amazon on ecstasy naked. But what do you think is appealing to people here? I think that people are seeing themselves in me. I think they're seeing their own stories in my stories. I think that they're enjoying how it was delivered. It's selling unconditional love. It's selling people to go, hey, let me have some more belief, trust in myself. Hey, let me forgive myself here. Let me push through the problem, but also let me forgive myself. I think it says, hey, we got angels and we got devils. And it's not only should we admit we got devils, it's necessary. And I think that's what some people are getting from the book, is those stories and they're seeing their own humanity in it. one of the things you talked about was bumper stickers. And some of the reviewers have talked about that. One of them says a fortune cookie might have written green lights if a fortune cookie had starred in Interstellar. So I'm just going to read you a bad review. These are great. Yeah, I know they are. But tell me the importance of these bumper stickers. I like fortune cookies. Yeah. Me too. Yes. Bumper stickers. Ah, one of the last bastions of free speech. I mean, that's what's great about them. You look at a bumper sticker and you know what someone religion is you know who they voted for you know these things And it just from an impression That what I love about a bumper sticker They easy They don tell you nothing Do you have a favorite bumper sticker One of the funniest bumper stickers I ever saw which got me really loving bumper stickers, was way back in 1988. I think I was a senior in high school. And I was driving down this back country road home from school. And it was a 55-mile-an-hour two-lane highway. And this car in front of me was doing about 30. And it was an old 70 Bonneville and the damn bumper was hanging on the street, throwing sparks up. And through the back window, I see this balding head of a man who looks to be about 35, bald and early. And there's these three kids just climbing all over the bench seat, pulling on his head and everything else. Two of them don't have shirts on. One of them has a baby blue singlet and it's ripped. They're dirty. Their hair's all over the place. And he's just driving, leaning over with his head like this happens every single day. And he had one bumper sticker on his bumper that was hanging, throwing sparks off the road. And it said this. My kid whooped your honor student's ass. I was like, that is perfect. That guy is going home right now and just going to open up a beer on a Tuesday afternoon and go, whoo, just going to hang in there for one more day. Hang in there. That was one of the funniest ones that I ever did. And my first bumper sticker that got me loving bumper stickers. So I want to get on to your acting career because you, your first break was a character, Wooderson and Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. What do you think it, when you look back on that role, it sort of set people into you as an actor, I think, in a lot of ways. Oh, well, the movie became iconic. Yeah. It was a great piece about a specific day and time that we all know. We've all been there. We all know all those characters. They were under different names in our own high school, but we know every one of them. Wooderson was one of those characters. We knew that guy. We kind of looked up to him, but kind of were like, what's he going to do in life? You know? The character had great identity. I came in. I had the instincts for it. I turned three lines into three weeks work. And it struck a chord with a certain kind of cool that people were like, Aha. Okay. Who's the guy playing Wooderson? Matthew McConaughey. This guy's got some stuff. So you moved on from that. You talk about this in the book to Ron Combs. What did you like about doing them? Okay. Here's what I liked about doing them. They were Saturday afternoon characters. They were, where are your flip flops to the beach on Saturday afternoon characters? They were light, not lightweight. They were light on purpose. There was a buoyancy, a lack of responsibility, a lack of earnestness. They were not, go be sincere and hang your hat on humanity. What do you really mean that dramas are? They were, no, boy meets the girl, get together, pull a little snafu on each other, break up, catch her at the end, roll the credits. Hey, let's have a good time doing that. The lightness was fun. They also paid well, especially after they got successful for me. I was leaning into the joy and I did enjoy the ease of them. I had times where I tried to make them harder than they should be. And it was not constructed. They're built to be buoyant. And I was enjoying the, hey, they're Saturday afternoons. Sure. Is there one that you liked over another? Look, I still think How to Lose a Guy is a great example of a rom-com that works. One, Kate and I had great chemistry. Two, we had a director, Donald Petrie, who was pushing us to improv in situations. And so our back and forth banter, it had a rhythm and a dance and a rock and roll to it. Three, what worked in that movie is as an audience member, you're in on the hijink. So when you cut to me talking to my guys, like, hey, I got this girl, watch this. You're laughing because you know what I don't know. And you're going, look at him, he thinks he's got this under control, but we know what she's going to do. So you're in on the joke. Then you watch her say she's going to get me and you're laughing because she doesn't know what I'm up to. So it's a three-way relationship on the hijinks that the audience, I think, has an interactive, fun relationship with, going, oh, I can't wait to see. My favorite thing to do in romantic comedies is, okay, how am I going to get out of this situation? In the scene, trying to act, how are you going to get it now? Okay, come in, like you got everything handled, you're all on balance, you got the world by the tail, and the rug gets pulled out. Now watch it, let's see you try and find your balance again. See you try and get out of this. But one of the things you wrote in the book is I've been going to bed with an itchy butt, waking up with a stinky finger long enough, which was how you described moving on to the reconnaissance, which is an interesting metaphor. I felt I got it immediately. So can you explain what caused you to do that? You moved on to Dallas Buyers Club for which you ran an Oscar. Yeah. True Detective, et cetera, et cetera. Talk about that movement. The reconnaissance. Are you in it still? So all the, I don't know. Sure. Don't think it has a period behind it. All the Renaissance did end. Go ahead. Did it. After the plague comes the Renaissance. I think we got a new one coming. All right. Okay. So, look, I was feeling like, at that time in my life, all of a sudden I meet the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, Camilla. We have a child. One thing, the only thing I ever knew I wanted to be is a father. My life has just gotten real. My life has just gotten vital. I've got dependence. I've got responsibilities. I'm becoming a man. This is like, that's not light, buoyant, Saturday afternoon, flip-flop material. Life is vital. I get angrier. I know what I'm for. I know what I'm against. I cry more. I'm laughing louder. But I'm going to do the rom-com, and I got to squeeze the threshold here. You can't have all those emotions. just stay up there on the clouds. And I was like, man, I wish my work could challenge the vitality I'm feeling in my life. And it wasn't. So the work I wanted to do, where could I find that kind of work that could challenge the vitality in my life? Dramas. So I call my agent, hey, I want to do some dramas. Studio in Hollywood saying, no, well, no, thank you. You stay in your lane over there as a rom-com guy. You're not doing dramas. So when I couldn't do what I wanted to do, I decided I'm going to quit doing what I've been doing, which is the rom-com. So I stopped, checked on with my money manager to make sure I had enough money saved because I didn't know how long I was going to go with that work. Checked with my agent and talked a long time, shed many tears with my wife, Camilla, about the decision. And once I made the decision, I said, that's it. We'll see how long this goes on. How long do I go with that work? And for the first six months, nothing but rom-coms came in as offers. I said no to all of them. It was that one I write about in the book that was a $14.5 million offer. When I said no to that, I think that sent a bit of a signal through Hollywood. Oh, McConaughey's not bluffing. And so just about that time, a year and a half into no work, I'm starting to think I wrote myself a one-way ticket out of Hollywood. And I better think about another vocation, another career. And as life can go, as soon as I got okay with that being a possible new future for me? Well, guess who's been gone for two years and who now in their anonymity and unbranding, because we don't know where the hell he's been. He hadn't been in a rom-com in our living room theater and we haven't seen him shirtless on the beach. We don't know where he's been. Well, since we don't know where he's been for two years, he's now become a new novel, possibly really good creative idea to play Wink and Lawyer, Killer Joe. Mudd, Bernie, Magic Mike, True Detective, Dallas Buyers Club. And then I went on a run with just, just the things I wanted to do. The things, so the sacrifice had paid off. And if I would have taken that time off or gone and said no to the rom-coms. Taken the 14 million. Taken that 14.5, I would not be sitting here talking to you right now. Right. So what are you looking for these days? And obviously we're going to get to the role of Dex as governor in a second. But what are you looking for now when you think about that? in Hollywood? Well, I mean, look, right now, I think for me to go take a role right now, it's got to make me sweat in my boots and really inspire me. I'm really alive in my own life right now, working on my own character, mine, Matthew, who's going to take a hell of a character to make me go, whoa, let's go step in this guy's boots for six months. And it also needs to be in a story. What's its purpose? You know what I mean? It's got to be more than just entertainment. Hopefully it can be educational and enlightening and have something to say and have a life of its own after it's gone and after we make it. Characters that have a true identity, that they're not pandering to manners and graces of the way the world's supposed to work. I like those ones that walk on their own path over there by hook or by crook, and they're not afraid of death. And maybe not looking for it, but not afraid of it. Bring it on. That's my favorite kind of characters. More with Matthew McConaughey after the break. I'm Judson Jones. I'm a reporter and meteorologist at the New York Times. For about two decades I been covering extreme weather which is getting worse because of climate change And it becoming more important to get timely and accurate weather information That why we send these customized newsletters letting you know up to three days in advance about extreme weather that could impact you or a place you care about. At The Times, you can be confident that everything we publish is based off the most accurate, scientific and vetted information available to us. Because we want you to be able to make real-time decisions about how to go about your life. This is the kind of work that makes subscribing to the New York Times so valuable. And it's how you can support fact-based independent journalism. So if you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com slash subscribe. Texas Governor, you said I'm measuring it. I'm sorry, what's measuring mean? What are you measuring? Measuring. Measuring is a great word, isn't it? Yes, but it doesn't mean anything. Well, you got to measure. I like to. What does that mean? I like to. I like to measure things before I partake. And you got to partake before you partook. That's a bumper sticker. That's your motto. What are you measuring? What is precisely measuring length with who am I going to be? No, who am I going to be? Where can I be most useful? Is politics an embassy for me to be of the most use to myself, to my family, to the most amount of people in my life moving forward. Right. So how do you measure that? Well, I'm studying, not studying, I'm learning about politics. I'm also noting where I'm going, eh, don't know about politics. Ooh, is that a place to make real change? Or is it a place where, hey, right now it's a fixed game. You go in there, you just put on a bunch of band-aids in four years and walk out and they rip them off when gone. I'm not interested in that. Does politics itself need such repurposing right now that it's like, don't get into that game. They're lost. That is broken. You've called it a broken business. Yeah, it's a broken business. And it's getting dangerous now, you know, when both parties on their own would claim themselves to be democracy itself. And parties identity is more based on invalidation than any vision or validation of what they're about. And, you know, Right now, they've run to such extremes. I love that colloquial little metaphor someone said. I said it's such a great time, a necessary time, I think, to be aggressively centrist. And this friend of mine is very smart. Southern boy goes, yeah, you know, that middle of the road stuff, ain't nothing in the middle of the road, but yellow lines and armadillos. I was like, hey, bud, I'm over here in the middle of the road right now. I walk in these yellow lines and the armadillos are running free. You know why? because the left and right traffic is so far to the edge. Their tires are not even on the pavement, you know? So you should be in the center. They're not even there. They're not riding the road is what you're saying. No, no, not riding the road of democracy. I don't believe. So why would you see a lot of people do? They throw up their hands and they say, this is just a mess, which of course keeps the sort of the bad business going, presumably. So what's the measurement? Are you doing polls? Are you doing like just going, this sucks? No, no, no, no. No, I'm not doing polls. I don't. I'm not. Forming committees? No, no. Yeah, I'm trying to form a committee with me. I mean, I have people and mentors that I've talked with. Who is that? Seek counsel from. I'll keep those to myself. All right. Okay. So I'm, you know, and people that know me well, that helped me, you know, get a true reflection of myself in the damn mirror. As I said earlier, in which way can I be most useful? I could arguably have more influence as an informal leader than a formal leader. You raised $7 million for the We're Texas for relief. Someone said that you've done more for Texas than Ted Cruz has, for example, by doing that. That said, you said politics needs redefinition, so why not redefine it? Who? What's that? Right? Yeah. I mean, please help. I'd love to hear some definitions. I'm working on what I'm trying to understand politics to be. I think we've got to redefine politics. If each party is only about preservation of party, well, I'm almost arguing that's undemocratic. If you're only there to, by hook or by crook, preserve your party, you're leaving out 50% of the people. So I think politics needs a redefining. Look, are the parties so extreme right now that they're going to walk their way into extinction? I don't know. What our fear is, you know, great nations aren't taken over from the outside. They implode. Civil war. That's the big fear for me, for the country, is this path we're going. It's not constructive. I don't see the way out right now through politics unless it redefines itself and repurposes itself. So but when you're thinking about it, it's because you think you might be able to fix it or just, well, someone's got to get in here or this is it's a good question. No, it's a good question. That's I mean, because one side is all everything I just said. One side of the argument is McConaughey. Exactly. That's why you need to go get in there. The other side is that's a bag of rats, man. Don't touch that with a 10 foot pole. There's another you have another lane. You have another category to have influence and get done things you'd like to get done and help how you think you can help and even heal divides. Maybe it's much better outside politics. So do not grab the bag of rats, for example. Well, again, I'm just I don't it's part of that's part of my measure. Is it the right time as well? I'm not a man who comes at politics from a political background. You know, I'm more of a statesman philosopher, folk singing poet. Yeah, you've called yourself this. I don't really talk politics. I talk people. One could say, that's why you should be in politics. That's what it's about. The other side is, is it a fixed game enough? Like I said, you just go in and put on a bunch of band-aids, and four years later, they rip them off and go, all right, see, now you're glad you're out the door. I just interviewed Andrew Yang, and he was talking about the need for a third party. Do you think we need a third party? I don't even know what party you're in. Do you? I think people want a third party. We've got one. It doesn't have a name right now. And it is the majority. It is 60% of the population in America. The Armadillo party. Let's call it that. Yeah, there we go. That's great. There's already songs. Jerry Jeff Walker, I think, has got songs already written about that. Yeah. Gonna go down the Armadillo. Is it a third party? What's the name? I'm hesitant to throw labels. You throw a third party and make it and give it a name. It all of a sudden becomes something that is divisive. But there is a sleeping giant right now. And it's the majority. So the silent majority that Nixon was talking about is actually in the center. That's what you're saying is people are sick and tired of politics the way it's been done. Yeah, people don't even want to talk politics anymore. They got no trust. America's got no trust right now. and with a lot of good reason. What's also, you throw in this last couple of years with the COVID, we were forced to go on our own and look out for number one only. We got extremely individualistic and protectionist and man, we're all just kind of hunkered down over here trying to hold onto ours. That's not the way forward. Third party centrist, I think it's necessary to be aggressively centric to possibly salvage democracy in America right now. Okay, well, that suggests you should be running. Now, a recent poll had you up nine points against incumbent Greg Abbott. You're still ahead. Other rumored contenders like Beto O'Rourke were trailing him. I actually talked to Beto recently. I asked him what he thought about your possible run and whether he was surprised how well it's going for you, even though you haven't declared anything. Let me play the clip, and I want your reaction to it. He's a really popular figure whose political views have not in any way been fixed. I don't know, for example, who he voted for in the most consequential election since 1864 in this country. I don't know how he feels about any of the issues that we brought up. I'm looking forward to listening to your interview. So I think that might explain part of it. And he's a good guy. He's done some good work in this state. And he's a great actor on top of all that. So no surprise there. I believe that was shade, but I couldn't tell when I was talking to him. What do you think? You know, coming from Beto, I don't take that as shade. He called me a good man. I say he's a good man. Maybe he believes in what he's selling and his heart is in the right place. And he's got the right kind of compassion that a liberal-sided politician needs. It's necessary. Why are you not doing that? Letting anybody know who you're for, who you're against. room for issues where i'm standing on this and bills and laws and policies etc yeah on purpose i figured it's on purpose right now taking sides on a political issue right now to me precedes the discussion of something larger and much more important like the questions we were asking a minute ago definition is what the hell it's politics but you got to read before we start saying hey this is where i stand this is where i stand which creates already a divide or some 50% of the people are gonna come at you. Let's answer these other questions about purpose of democracy. All right, what is progress? How about this question? Do we really wanna be a United States of America? And I don't say that with arrogance or condensation. It's a question we gotta answer. What is leadership? Why is our nation trust level so low with our leaders with ourselves with each other That more interesting to me before we start hopping in the middle of politics going well this is where I stand here and this is where I stand here Everybody needs to be in the conversation to answer the questions that I was just bringing on. There's a lot of questions you're raising here that are very important. And people want to have answers. But there's also day-to-day life. You're having Texas abortion issues there, voter suppression or election integrity or whatever side you're on. you can walk down the center of the highway and not be in trouble in any way. I don't know if you can walk down the center and not be in trouble. It can be very hard down the center. I'd say it's the right kind of hard work. I mean, my center's position is not necessarily as a policy platform. It's a common sense relational position with respect to the left and right. Right. So whatever you say, like if you had an opinion on the abortion bill, the battle over voting rights. SB8, Senate Bill 1, masks in schools, vaccine mandates, immigration. Well, I can tell you about, look, this one I will step on because it was in the past and I already said it. The mask. Look, Texas all over. I get it. No one likes being told what to do. We are all more afraid of the word mandate than we were the damn mask. And I think our pride trumped and stamped down our honor there. I think we chose privilege over principle and this small inconvenience of the mask, small investment we're asking everyone to have for long term freedom we should have taken. I would have said mandate mask. And I said it way back when, in the very beginning, put out PSAs about it. I said, come on, we're taking one. This is not a big deal with the mask. That one seemed easy to me early. Yeah, no, the abortion. This new SBA, you know, six-week abortion ban. I'm not going to come out and tell you right now on this show, here's where I stand on abortion. We've been trying to figure out that, how to play God with that situation since the beginning. But this latest move by Texas, it's a little bit of a, feels like a back-to-front sort of Roe v. Wade loophole that they're trying to get into. It feels a little juvenile in its implementation to me. Like, hey, we'll pay for bounties if you call in and see somebody going in there. And also, you know, how it deals and doesn't really, isn't responsible for rape and incest. I got a problem with that. And also six weeks. Six weeks? If you're saying that your discussion of abortion is even on the table to consider, six weeks does not really make that a honest consideration. So you're not liking this bill the way it's being implemented. You don't like, no, I don't, I don't think it's going to, not really. Okay. All right. And voting rights. How do you stand on that? Voting rights. How do I stand on that? What, what do you mean? I think SB one. Well, and what, and what part of that do you mean? How do I stand on that? I mean, the Republicans legislation to restrict voting, to restrict the vote. Yeah. You know, I don't know enough about that to be able to discuss the details on how I feel about that. It should. I think it should be easier to vote. I think everyone should. If you're an American citizen, you're of age and don't have your criminal record, you should be able to vote. I think that it should be, as I said, accessible to go vote, you know, but they argue. What's the GOP Republicans argument right now basically against that? What I just said. People are cheating. There's no data suggesting widespread voter fraud, just to be clear. cheating. Well, okay, let me say this. And I know we've been chasing this down. A lot of folks on the far right have been chasing these things down for a while. This little move we made where Texas hopped out on a national level and said, you know, that was a bit of a trespass, in my opinion, as well. You know, Texas is about independence. And when we did that, we stepped out on a national scale and try to say our brand is Republican. No, no, that's the party that's an office right now. Our brand is independence. And we kind of in doing that, I think, belittled ourselves, our own identity of independence. You know, when Texas is its best, I like to say this, we're here to lead, not secede. We don't like people messing with our business. And I don't think, I think in that position, we stepped out and we trespassed a little bit trying to get in their business purporting and posturing on the, hey, because Texas is our brand is republic. Well, no, it's not. Psychedelics. A lot of states are starting to move into this area. And Oregon just passed a new law that will create mental health treatment programs using psilocybin, a psychedelic experience called magic mushrooms. Experts in the state believe magic mushrooms could be effective in treating anxiety, depression, and certain substance use disorders, among other conditions. Now, I'm not using psychedelics as the one thing because I don't I see the headline Matthew loves magic mushrooms. But this idea of doing new and fresh things to bring states up to speed instead of arguing past debates. How do you look at that? Because that's somewhere where a new fresh voice can bring new ideas into states. Well, let's see. We all know progress is not saying yes to everything, every new good idea. Is that interesting? Absolutely. Have I met people? Yes. Actually, you remind me of this friend I met in Australia. He's got his life together, been in and out of mental homes and stuff. And I was asking him, I was like, how'd you get on track, man? You got a job now? You got a wife? He's like, mate, it's magic mushrooms. It was like, before then, it's like my whole life was just digits, digits, digits. And I did these mushrooms. It's like all the tentacles in my brain just reconnected, mate. I'm glad Mel Gibson is doing well. Sorry. And I said, do you do them every day? He goes, no, I just need to do them that one time. And I go, when was that? Was that like last week? He goes, it was like eight years ago. And it changed his life. Look, I'm still interested. And I don't know the data, but let's look at things like Colorado, who were out of the gate saying yes for marijuana legalization. Where's their economy? Are marriages lasting longer? Is there less divorce? What's the crime rate? What's it done? So I'd like to measure these things. And I don't know that data, but like with Colorado steps out and does that. I'd like to see information to say, hey, is there some science behind whether this was a good idea or not? Right. Do you think Texas and our country is in a good place? Because this is why you're thinking of this, presumably. I do not think we're in a good place. I think we're in a place where it's an amazing opportunity right now. I think we are. Do I think it's doomsday? No. Am I an optimist? You're damn right I am. Do I think that there's opportunity for the renaissance after the plague? Yes. Do I think that what we see when we feel like we understand how much we've lost and we're losing? Will that bring us a greater appreciation for what we have in the future? And we're going to damn well hang on to it. We're going to not be so damn lazy with the privileges that we have. Yes. But the growing pains we're going through right now are really dangerous. And the pessimistic side would be, we're going to sit here, possibly the Civil War, take ourselves down. And you look at America and who we are to ourselves. There's not a national understanding. There's not a collective meaning that we have anymore. You want to talk about land of the opportunity and a place to Declaration of Independence to pursue happiness. That's the idea of the American dream right now. More people than ever would probably call that an absolute illusion. And we call that a propagandized idea. I don't think it has to be, nor do I think it should be. What I think the role of government is to help lay out paths to be able to pursue that happiness. I go to the individual. How are we going to change things? You and I got to look in the mirror. That's where it starts. And enough of us do that. That's how collective change happens. It's not going to happen by a policy. No, it's going to have to be a personal choice that more of us are going to have to make on our own. And that collectively will build the army that will get us out of this, not just to survive but thrive. Well, I do wonder whether you will partake in politics. We'll see if that happens. If I do, you know what I would say. I partook. Okay, I have a very last question. You talked about how your father died and he predicted his death. He called it spot on. Do you ever think how you're going to die? Yeah, I had dreams about it. All right, what is it? I got a feeling I'm going down as part of the food chain. What do you mean? A bear eats you? It was, the dream was gators. Oh. There's been one with the bear. There's been one with the grizzly. Oh my God, that's terrible. I think, no, I don't think so. I'd much rather go down that way than getting shot down in a drive-by. You know, I'll take one where it's part of the natural order. There's some grace in that. It may be ugly and painful and bloody, but at least it's part of the natural order. And for that, I'll purchase. And after I'm gone, I hope to say I partook. I partook. Matthew, thank you so much. You've been incredibly thoughtful and I really appreciate it. Well, I enjoyed talking to you too. Sway is a production of New York Times Opinion. This episode was produced by Naeem Araza, Blake Nishik, Caitlin O'Keefe, Matt Kwong, and Daphne Chen. With original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Isaac Jones, Carol Saburo, and Sonia Herrero, and fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Kristen Lynn. Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Kristen Lynn, and Mahima Chablani. Thank you.