#250 | What Is a ‘Death’ Cookie?—Phil Stutz’s 3 Absolutes of Human Life and How to Create Real Magic in Your Life
Quick SUMMARY:
Douglas Vigliotti dives into Phil Stutz’s self-help book "True and False Magic,” unpacking Stutz’s core philosophy—embracing pain, uncertainty, and constant work—as keys to personal growth and creating the life you desire. Douglas reflects on the book’s powerful yet practical advice, the importance of faith, and the distinction between competing and creating. The episode offers actionable insights for living a more meaningful and authentic life.
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TOPICS COVERED IN the EPISODE:
Introduction and Book Promotion (00:09) - Douglas introduces the podcast, promotes his new book, and sets up the episode’s focus.
About Phil Stutz and His Work (01:13) - Background on Phil Stutz, his career, previous books, and his unconventional approach to therapy.
Overview of "True and False Magic" (02:22) - Description of the book’s style, co-author, and introduction to Stutz’s three absolutes: pain, uncertainty, constant work.
Stutz’s Core Philosophy and Creativity (03:34) - Explains Stutz’s philosophy on action, creativity, belief, and the importance of creating something from nothing.
Faith, Belief, and Spirituality (05:00) - Discussion on the necessity of belief in something beyond oneself and the role of spirituality in Stutz’s approach.
Facing Avoidance: Fear and Laziness (06:26) - Explores avoidance, its roots in fear and laziness, and the concept of “eating the death cookie.”
Proactive Therapy and Taking Action (07:40) - Contrasts Stutz’s proactive therapy with traditional psychotherapy, emphasizing motion and directness.
Universe One vs. Universe Two (09:25) - Introduces Stutz’s concepts of universe one (competition) and universe two (creation), and their implications.
The Need for Constant Work (10:37) - Discusses the illusion of comfort, the necessity of ongoing effort, and the infinite nature of meaningful work.
Pain and Self-Deception (12:02) - Addresses the inevitability of pain, self-deception, and the importance of building tolerance for discomfort.
Uncertainty and the Power of Faith (13:27) - Explores uncertainty, the limits of logic, and the value of choosing faith over doubt.
Conclusion and Listener Reminders (14:48) - Wraps up the episode, encourages feedback, and provides information on how to connect and learn more.
READ THE TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to “Books for Men”, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this week I am turning back to a work of nonfiction. It is a self-help book, I guess it is short. Around 160 pages or so came out this year, actually in 2025. So it is a new book, and it is titled “True and False Magic” by Phil Stutz. So before I jump into the work at hand, I did want to quickly remind you about my new book that is out, “Aristotle for Novelists: 14 Timeless Principles on the Art of Story”. And if you are a novelist or an aspiring novelist, or maybe you're just trying to tell a story of any kind, whether it's on the page, the screen, or perhaps even in your life, we are all telling a story in some fashion, then I think that this book will be a pleasant surprise, and you will find that you will get a lot out of it. So if you are interested in learning more about that, you can visit the website AristotleforNovelists.com.
01:13 - All right. So now let's pivot into the book that I'm sharing with you today. And of course, I like to start with the author. He's a psychiatrist based out of LA, originally from New York. He received his MD from NYU, and he first worked as a prison therapist at Rikers, which is pretty interesting. And then he went into private practice before moving his practice to LA in the 1980s. So he's also the author or co-author of four books starting in 2012, “The Tools”, which is his most prominent. And it shares his unconventional and proactive approach to therapy. And I will share much more about that unconventional, proactive approach momentarily. But I also wanted to note that I read another book of his “Lessons for Living,” and shared it on the “Books for Men” newsletter. Earlier this year, I came across that book shortly after watching “Stutz”, which is a documentary on Netflix done by Jonah Hill, who is one of his patients. Again featuring Stutz, his unique approach. So he's famously a doctor to the quote unquote stars.
02:22 - And I think that more than that title or any of his other credentials or pedigree, his work has a certain tonality and directness that I appreciate, something that just really resonated with me. So when the book I am sharing with you today got released this year, I wanted to read it instantly. And obviously, I'm happy that I did because I am sharing it with you today. So what is it about? So this book is more like a workbook than any of his other books, I would say, but it doesn't read like one. It was ghostwritten or co-authored by Elise Loehnen. And I hope I'm not butchering that last name too much, but she is a writer of narrative nonfiction in her own right, so it makes this book a very effortless read. But more specifically, the core Stutzian theory is what this book is all about, and it is revealed as a three-prong approach, or the three absolutes of life, as he might say. And that is pain, uncertainty, and the need for constant work.
03:34 - So he has this great quote that comes in the introduction that sort of sums this up. And he says, “The three domains in combination unlock real magic, not fake power. Once you learn to move through pain, you will gain the ability to expand. Once you develop faith, freely chosen to contend with uncertainty, you will gain the ability to decide and create. And once you embrace constant work, you will gain the ability to be infinite. The height of this power is the ability to turn nothing into something.” And for so many reasons, I love this philosophy. But at the end of that quote, he gets at what I would consider to be the lifeblood of this routine approach, and that is action, creativity, and belief. And later on in the book, he has this great quote where he says, “The most valuable thing you can do is to create something out of nothing.” And when I read this, it really just felt like a godsend to me because it fortified this idea that I have been stuck on for such a long time, I would say, and that is the power of creation in one's life.
05:00 - I mentioned it in a previous podcast when I talked about what I wrote my first novel about, and it's just this idea of emphasizing the creation aspect of life, or as he puts it, going from something to nothing, and that being the lifeblood of living a meaningful existence. So you've heard me mention the word faith and belief a few times, and that's because his approach does more than just detour into the spiritual. But even though he is asking you to embrace a higher power, so to speak, and most times calling that higher power. God, I think if you get what he is putting down, you realize that God can take many forms, but it is the actual need for belief in something beyond yourself or unexplainable. And not coming to grips with that is actually more debilitating than it is helpful. I mean, if we zoom out, we can see that this is something that modernity has stolen from us in the name of progress or enlightenment. And I think that does a great job at being practical with his and our relationship to spirituality and a higher power in the necessity of it in one's life.
06:26 - And I'm speaking about Stutz in general, of course, but this book specifically is refreshing because he's so upfront and frank and willing to share his opinion. And most of the time it just makes sense to much sense. And this challenges you in a real, honest way to make sense of your life. Like when he references what he would say, core avoidance, and he talks about the two primary drivers of that being fear and laziness, and he references his teacher or person that he looked up to Rudolf Steiner, who said that the reason why it's so hard for people to change is because their default position is fear and laziness. And this is the thing that informs our reasons for avoiding. And then we'll go on and extrapolate to the idea that one has to eat the death cookie in their life, and that is the things that we avoid doing the most or the things that we most need to do. So it doesn't matter if you are afraid or you're scared because we're all afraid and we're all scared. It just matters that you don't stop taking action, because that is the thing that matters.
07:40 - And it actually relates back to his philosophy and unconventional, proactive approach to therapy. Even in the introduction of this book, he has this quote where he's trying to explain how he came to utilize these tools and methodology, and he says, “Let's say that you're anxious. A psychotherapist might say that your anxiety comes on because your father used to beat the shit out of you. They latch on to what they decide is the cause, and then use it as a generative stem to explain every misfiring in your life. They might be right, but they certainly can't prove it. For me, doing this felt like a psychoanalytic jerk-off. Patients would leave these sessions with nothing. I couldn't accept it.” And then he goes on to say, “This book isn't about symptom amelioration. It's about getting you in motion, really into motion in your life.” And I used this word moments ago, but I think that it summarizes the way that I feel about reading his work and hearing him speak. I've heard him in a bunch of interviews, and like I said on that documentary as well, he's refreshing because there's something about an individual who has been in practice for so long, speak so frankly and so honestly and directly about what is troubling us humans and what is preventing us and keeping us from the things that we want in the lives that we want.
09:25 - So I've been going on for long enough, and you probably get the point of what this book is about. I have so many notes and quotes from it. In fact, it's a book that I plan to read again, probably annually. It's short enough and powerful enough to do that, but I've grabbed a select few that I will share with you now and close this episode out with. So my first is probably one of my favorite ideas. It's something that has left an indelible mark on me, and it is around what he calls universe one and universe two, and he writes: “Universe One is a way of thinking that gives you the feeling that you are either winning or losing. Universe One is a way of looking at the world where people tell themselves they can be God. Universe Two is a way of looking at the world where you no longer have to compete to discover who you really are. Universe Two trains you in a way of looking at the world where value lies in your ability to create.” And like so much of his work, it all ties together.
10:37 - So as this idea comes back later in the book, he writes, “When you are engaged in infinite creation, you are in Universe Two. When you are convinced that work is finite and you've done enough, you are back in Universe One.” And again, this gets at that need for constant work. The idea that he says is one of the core truths about life. But he goes on to say, “The material world. Universe One is a fake world. If you pursue your career and think there's going to be an endpoint, that you'll get a degree and then a certain job, you're fucked.” And he goes on to extrapolate why this is the case in the book. And that's basically because the universe is infinite, and the world we are living in is not a finite world that is static and standing still. So you have to learn how to move with it. And his approach definitely does that, building off of that idea and the need for constant work. He has this great little one-liner that I love, and he writes, “The whole human race—certainly in the West—is convinced that it can have magic and simultaneously be comfortable. But it doesn't work like that.”
12:05 - And this brings in all of the things that we've already talked about doing, the things that we avoid eating the death cookie. The need for constant work. Why being afraid doesn't matter. Because we all are. And you just need to keep taking action anyway. And building on that idea of another undeniable truth about life in pain. He writes, “The stupidest thing you can do is lie to yourself.” Sadly, this is something that we do and anesthetize with multiple modalities. Pick your favorite depending on who you are. But he would probably say this is only temporary, and learning how to constantly move through pain and make yourself able to tolerate greater degrees of it is how you are going to live a more meaningful existence, one that you are satisfied with. And lastly, I will close this, talking a little bit about that final absolute of life, which is uncertainty. And he writes, “There is no cure for uncertainty: Working with reality requires taking actions and making choices without proof.”
13:21 - And I want to harp on that because I think it's become increasingly more popular to live a doubtful life, one that favors doubt over faith. And I think his approach will remind you of the power in choosing faith over doubt. Or, as he writes, “Egotism insists on proof of correctness, which rests on the presence of doubt. This is a cake in a terrible way to live. You either end up as a know-it-all or you're mostly wrong.” And he goes on to write. “Faith is higher than logic and thus can't be proven by logic. Plus, people who think they're doing everything logically are idiots.” It does get at something that is really important, and that is faith is about not knowing how something is going to turn out, but doing it anyway. And that is life. We don't have all the facts. We never know how something is going to turn out. If you live your life in doubt of everything all the time, not allowing yourself to step into that void, you can most certainly live without doing that. It will just make your life incredibly small.
14:53 - Or, as Stutz might say, pulling it back to the title of this book, it is no way to create magic in one's life. Okay, so that just about does it. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and if you did, I want to remind you to please click subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on, because in doing so, that will help more listeners find the show and, in return, inspire more men to read. If you want to tell me what you thought about this episode or the podcast more broadly, there are two ways to reach out to me: either on Instagram @DouglasVigliotti. It's the only social media that I have or via my website DouglasVigliotti.com. As I mentioned at the top of this episode, I have a new book out. It is titled “Aristotle for Novelists,” and you can find out more information about that book at AristotleforNovelists.com. Last but not least, I wanted to thank you so much for listening and remind you that if you want more information on this podcast specifically, which includes signing up for the monthly newsletter, then all you have to do is visit the website BooksforMen.org.
