William Shatner - Yes, I Am Trying to Win This Podcast - Think Again Podcast

Hi there! I'm Jason Guts and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast. Since 2008, Big Think has been bringing you big ideas in small concentrated doses from some of the most creative thinkers and doers around. On Think Again, we take ourselves out of our comfort zone, surprising my guests and me, your host, with unexpected conversation starters from our interview archives—ideas that we didn't necessarily come here prepared to discuss.

I'm very, very happy to be here today with William Shatner. William Shatner created the role of Captain James T. Kirk on the original Star Trek and won two Emmys and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Denny Crane on The Practice and Boston Legal. He's also written nearly 30 best-selling books of fiction and nonfiction and released two awesome albums of music with the artist Ben Folds and others, including Henry Rollins, who's been on this show.

His newest book, Zero-G, co-authored with Jeff Rubin, is a science fiction terrorism thriller set in the year 2050. It begins with an unnaturally powerful tsunami that destroys most of the coast of Japan and follows FBI field agent Samuels Lord as he attempts to unravel the mystery. Welcome to Think Again, William!

Thank you, that was a long introduction but very, very well done. Good, thank you very much! I want to talk about your book, but before we do that, as I am a long-time Shakespeare fan and I know you started out in Shakespeare, I wanted to come out of left field and ask you whether you have a favorite character, play, speech, etc. of Shakespeare—any of any favorite thing of Shakespeare? I wondered if we could start there—a favorite Shakespeare character, play, speech, moment?

Um, you know, I guess I have to point at Henry the Fifth, in which I understudied Christopher Plummer, who was playing Henry the Fifth at Stratford many, many years ago. In repertory, especially this repertory at Stratford, you open a play and then the next morning after you've opened, you start on a new play. Then you do that for four weeks and then open that, and maybe a third and a fourth.

So, the understudy rehearsals would be delayed until you finished opening new plays. About the third or fourth day, I was asked to go on stage as the understudy because Chris was ill for a moment, and they asked me to go on. I had never— not only had I never rehearsed it, I never said the words out loud. But I had been drilling myself for some reason. I speculated about this in my one-man show: Why did I drill those words so, so emphatically?

Because nobody ever goes on for an understudy, right? No, I've never been in an understudy relationship where somebody went on for me or I went on for somebody else except in this one instance, in which I had never spoken the words out loud. Then, I went on stage in front of 2,500 people and critics and all that.

And how did it feel? Was it terrifying? How did it—?

No, I was on a wave. I don't recall being terrified. I recall I looked at pictures of Laird Hamilton coming down a wave that, you know, 70-foot waves, okay? And I've got to think that he had the same feeling. So, I did this—this thing, pursuing, you're riding, and you can't lose your confidence because the moment you doubt yourself, it's over.

So, that's how it is for you? You feel that you mustn't— you must keep self-doubt completely at bay?

Because I've often thought that, you know, for me anyway, you can feel the self-doubt and then say, "Oh well, you know, there that is," and still do your thing, you know? Just having acknowledged that— that's good if you can say, "Oh well, there's self-doubt, there's fear, and there—oh look at that, there's a stereo coming behind me," right?

And then, you know, somehow deal with it and press on. For me in life, denial is perfect. Just deny the impending experience—denial. "Oh, that hasn't happened, it's not going to happen, I don't even want to think about it, and I'll die before I experience that." And eventually, it all goes away anyway.

So, I'm half Jewish and, so for all semi or fully Jewish—

But yeah, yeah, go ahead, Jason. You should be in denial about—

Well, I was g...