Every question, and what they said

1Why poems, and why now?

Asked by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey The daily news was not giving him much to be optimistic about. He was not cynical, he said, just frustrated. His usual habit is to find the magic in what is real. This time he turned it around: start with dreams and poetry, then ask how to bring that down into ordinary life. Putting an idea in rhyme, he added, makes it easier to take in.

Ryan Holiday Told him the poems read as if he wrote them for himself first, working something out and enjoying it, with no audience in mind.

2Were these written to be published? Have you always kept notebooks?

Asked by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Written for himself over many years, then gathered up and sorted by theme, with very few changed. Some in the deluxe edition are new. He has kept a journal most of his life and now uses the notes app on his phone, which means his wife sometimes has to explain at dinner that he is not texting, he is writing down what someone just said. Once a month he reads back through the notes to see what he keeps circling. Before Greenlights he went through about thirty-five years of journals.

3When you read the journals back, what do you keep returning to?

Asked by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey How to be a better man, and how to enjoy the work of trying. How to live so there is less to regret later. The surprise in rereading: he used to think he had engineered most of his good fortune, and the journals showed him how much of it was being in the right place at the right time.

Ryan Holiday His own notebooks repeat the same few instructions: calm down, let it go, be present. He is not sure if that shows a lack of progress or how much those things matter.

4You love a proverb. Which ones stay with you?

Asked by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey He likes a short saying with consequences in it, one that marks the lanes and leaves you to drive. His favorites came from time in Mali. In Timbuktu he stepped into an argument between two men and was corrected by the one he had sided with: it is not about right or wrong, it is about whether you understand. Africa is also where he found his working definition of happiness: having something to look forward to.

Ryan Holiday Offered Seneca's: he who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.

5People think you are laid back. What is really going on?

Asked by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey “Because I do my best to be prepared.” If he finds himself raising his voice, he asks what he failed to deal with earlier. He keeps watch on the main accounts of his life (family, work, health, faith) so none of them goes into the red. A team that knows the playbook can change the play at the line.

6How do you handle what you did not plan for?

Asked by Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday Seneca said the unexpected blow lands heaviest, and that a leader is never allowed to say “I didn't think that would happen.” Acceptance is not passivity: you accept that it is raining, and the fight is in what you do next.

Matthew McConaughey Expect five to eight things a day that were not in the plan. Whoever gets fastest at saying “this did not happen to me, it happened for me” is going to come out ahead.

7Do you have regrets?

Asked by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Yes. The aim is not to wallow in them and not to pretend them away either. Own it, say that one is on me, wish you could do it again, and stay above it.

8What are your thoughts on AI?

Asked by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Excited, and clear that jobs will be lost. He described loading his own notes, books and interviews into Claude as a second brain, then asked whether what comes out is him or “me-Claude.” He wants a “standard” rather than “regulation,” and expects it will take a catastrophe to get one. He has trademarked his own likeness.

Ryan Holiday Told the story of a chatbot calmly explaining that his spare room was too small for 15,000 rats. His view: “I do think you need the human for art to have the meaning.” The full exchange is on the recap page.

9Will you give us the tuna salad recipe again?

Asked by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey It is thrown together, he said, but the order matters: the vinegar and lemon go in before the mayonnaise, then it rests in the fridge like a pasta sauce. Red onion. Apples late and in big chunks, because the sweetness fades. Something crunchy right before serving. Go easy on the peas. It is better the next day.

Ryan Holiday Said the recipe, from an earlier event the two did together, is the most popular thing he has ever posted.

10What part of your day gives you the most satisfaction?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey After dinner. Phones away, whatever is not done waits until tomorrow, music on, and the kids start telling stories they would never offer if you sat them down and asked.

11Do you believe in God?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey “I do.”

12Advice for someone going into law and public service who wants to keep a creative side?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Every lawyer had better be a good storyteller. Facts go to the head. They only reach the heart when they sit inside a story people can see themselves in. Persuasion is the order you put the facts in.

13What was your favorite thing about filming A Time to Kill?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey It was his first lead in a studio film. The director, Joel Schumacher, kept telling the nervous young actor that he had been cast for a reason and already was the character. He knew the closing argument had to work or the film would not, so he rewrote it to eight pages over three months and ended up back at the screenwriter's original, which he then understood far better. On the day, the close-up was shot first, and what is in the film is the first take. “Everything after take one is acting.”

14A couple here is celebrating three years. Your top three marriage tips?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Be each other's fan, and when you disagree, do it because you want more of the person you know. When one of you is moving faster, remember to wait up. Keep your sense of humor: the first one to take offense loses.

Ryan Holiday Added a line he credits to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that it helps to be a little deaf, and the old man who said he and his wife never fought, but he took a lot of walks.

15Favorite restaurant in Austin?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Still Uchi. He likes brisket but it is not a religion for him; if he is eating red meat out, he wants a thick ribeye off the grill.

Ryan Holiday Put in a word for Sam's on 12th and Chicon, and for Store House in Bastrop.

16Best advice for a new dad?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey A man is never more lined up, head, heart and gut, than when his first child is about to arrive. In the months after his first son was born, his hunches all proved right and his careful logic kept proving wrong. So for the next six months: “quadruple down on your hunches.”

Ryan Holiday Said his youngest recently told him that for someone who writes about Stoicism, he does not have much patience.

17Your parents banned “can't” and “hate.” What do you ask of your own kids?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Still no “can't,” no “hate,” no lying, and answer to your name. The main rule is about effort: do not do it halfway. He cares less about the test score or the final score than about whether they gave it everything.

18Someone here came from Altoona, Pennsylvania. What is your mother's story with Altoona?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey His mother was born there, he said, but has always told people she is from Trenton, where she won a local pageant title. He thinks she just liked the sound of it better.

19Do you believe everything happens for a reason?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Looking back, you can connect the dots and call it reason. In the moment, no. He cannot see a design behind random violence; he puts that down to free will. What matters is how soon you can move from “it happened to me” to “it happened for me.” Is that a trick you play on yourself? Maybe, he said, but “the alternative sucks.”

Ryan Holiday Read the shortest poem in the book back to him: give thanks in all circumstances, not for all circumstances. Marcus Aurelius buried half his children and still got out of bed. Viktor Frankl's phrase was to say yes to life in spite of everything.

20What is your breakfast taco order?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey He does not have one. Scrambled eggs and avocado, no tortilla.

Ryan Holiday Could not believe it: no barbecue devotion and no breakfast tacos, in Texas.

21What would you tell your fellow Americans to do with all this chaos?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Laugh first. Then see it as a thermostat: one side runs too far and the country swings back. He hopes both parties move toward the middle of the field. Look for common ground that sits above politics, and start by asking another parent how it is going with their kids. No leader will do it for us. A lot of people, himself included, got off the couch but never off the porch.

Ryan Holiday “Chaos is contagious, but so is calm, so is decency.” The question is what small difference you will make, and he pointed to Matthew's work after the shooting in Uvalde.

22If you could relive one ordinary day, what would it be?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey Heard it as “redo” and told the story of his worst day on a set: early in his career he decided not to read the script, arrived, asked for the day's pages just before the cameras rolled, and found a four-page monologue in Spanish. He asked for twelve minutes. He has out-prepared everyone since. He wishes people still felt a little embarrassment.

Ryan Holiday Chose a drive home two weeks earlier: windows down, the sun going down over the Colorado River, the kids hearing Explosions in the Sky for the first time. A few minutes of it is enough, he said.

23What has been your favorite greenlight since writing Greenlights?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey His kids starting to leave home. He had thought you were a parent and then, if lucky, a friend. He has found a stage in between that he loves: being a big brother, hearing a story without judging it and saying “me too.”

24Barton Springs?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

From the stage A quick one near the end. The answer from the stage: it is not why I live in Central Texas, but it is why I have not left. Our recording does not make clear which of them said it.

25You have such a zest for life. Have you ever lost it, and how did you get it back?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey He is not that way around the clock. His mother made every day summer, which gave her kids resilience and also meant stepping in the same hole again and again. At thirty-five he learned to take some winter: stop, walk back, look at the hole. Some warnings deserve a full stop. Others you drive through, because not every crisis has earned your attention.

Ryan Holiday Read him his own line, that every trunk and branch seeks light, and added Seneca: we suffer more in imagination than in reality.

26Final score, Texas and LSU?

Audience card, read by Ryan Holiday

Matthew McConaughey He said this team had gotten past the hype and found ways to win through injuries. The evening wrapped up before our recording caught a number.