Podcast Summary

Your Next Listen: Author Charlie Sheen on Fail Better with David Duchovny

Date: November 10, 2025
Host: David Duchovny
Guest: Charlie Sheen
Location: Recorded live at the 92nd Street Y

Main Theme

This episode features David Duchovny in conversation with Charlie Sheen about Sheen’s new memoir, The Book of Sheen. The discussion explores themes of personal transformation, memory, addiction, creative ambition, and the process of writing a deeply honest book about a tumultuous life. The tone is candid and self-aware, blending humor with sincerity as both men reflect on artistic growth, recovery, and legacy.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. On Enthusiasm, Persona, and Love

• Duchovny opens by sharing his admiration for Sheen’s unapologetic “life force” and the idea that audiences react to Sheen’s unfiltered enthusiasm (“the root of which is ‘to have God in you’”) (01:36).
• Sheen responds with humility and humor, navigating Duchovny’s philosophical musings with self-awareness (02:29).

2. Why Write the Book Now?

• Duchovny: “Why now for this book? What made you feel like this was the time?” (03:00)
• Sheen: Says he needed distance from addiction and past versions of himself, describing the necessity of “perspective” that only years of sobriety could bring. He humorously notes that after getting sober, his kids literally “showed up” (03:31–04:36).

  “I couldn’t have written this at a year clean... when I finally put down the bottle, it’s like all my fucking kids showed up... not symbolically, metaphorically. No, like in my fucking house.” (03:31–04:36)

3. The Puzzle of Memory

• Duchovny introduces the idea that memory is reconstructive (“not remembering the event, but the last time you remembered it”) and asks Sheen about excavating memories for the book (05:45–06:36).
• Sheen: Explains switching between “author and journalist” to confirm details, often consulting his parents and others for factual accuracy. Most notably, he needed help remembering the details of his own birth (06:36–07:22).

4. Opening Line and Worldview

• Sheen: Shares he carried the book’s first line for years:

  “On September 3, 1965 in New York City at 10:58pm I was born dead. That’s how this thing starts, you know. Welcome to the book of Sheen.” (08:03)

• Duchovny: Reading the memoir, interprets Sheen as having "played with house money from the beginning"—surviving against the odds (08:35–08:53).
• Sheen: Attributes a stutter in childhood to the “umbilical strangulation” at birth, and frames the book as his truth, not a “tell-all” about others; “There were no scores to settle.” (10:17–12:00)

5. On Style and Storytelling

• Duchovny: Praises Sheen as a “stylist” with a “Rat Packy” voice that feels authentic and conversational (13:45–14:49).

• Sheen: Admits he “winged it” stylistically, drawing inspiration from his father’s lingo and the rhythmic narration of Apocalypse Now (15:22–16:45).

• On wordplay and linguistics:

  • Sheen spells "fucking" as “fukken” (F, U, K, K, E, N) “because it hits harder” and feels right in his head (22:31–23:34).
  • He uses “dood” instead of “dude” for the same reason (24:26–24:58).

• Memorable quote:

  “I wanted it to feel like the reader was kind of in the room with me or at the small dinner party hearing this story.” (15:36)

6. Creative Upbringing and the Malibu Circle

• Duchovny and Sheen discuss the unique neighborhood in Malibu that produced talents like Sean and Chris Penn, Rob Lowe, and others. Sheen’s close friendship with Chris Penn is evident, and his early forays into Super 8 filmmaking were shaped by their parents’ careers (27:18–30:38).
• The home movies—violent, crime-revenge-themed—were partly a reaction to seeing his father often killed off in film roles (31:03–31:59).
• Sheen: Some films will feature in an upcoming Netflix documentary directed by Andrew Renzi (32:03–32:18).

7. Acting, Naturalism, and Parental Influence

• Sheen tells a story where, as a teen, he read lines for an audition with his father, Martin Sheen. Martin, recognizing his son’s naturalism, told him, “Just do exactly that,” marveling that Charlie had achieved at 19 what took Martin 30 years to learn (34:20–34:47).

  “If it took him 30 years to learn not, you know, to do nothing…” (35:42)

• Discusses the idea that true acting is about not acting, a lesson Martin Sheen tried to instill early (36:00-36:40).

8. Failures, Competition, and Ambition

• Duchovny: “This podcast is called Fail Better. You didn’t fail.”
• Sheen: “But I failed my way out of high school... and I failed my way out of...out of...baseball.” (37:04–37:22)
• Ambition for Sheen wasn’t fame or awards:

  "I wanted to be consistently employed...to be in films I’d like to watch." (38:08–39:34)

9. Addiction, Sobriety, and Fatherhood

• Duchovny raises the Gabor Maté framing: not “what’s wrong with drugs,” but “what did they initially give you?”
• Sheen:

  “I think it gave me just a little bit of distance, just a little bit of a barrier from...this.” (45:54)
  He notes a strong early sexual component but ultimately, “the most difficult drug...was booze.” He describes chasing the “first hour of drinking”—but realizing the damage lay in the hours following (47:37–47:56).

• On quitting drinking: The catalyst was not shame or external intervention, but a moment with his daughter Sam:

  "There was only one thing that felt worse than betraying myself. And that was failing my children. In that car, on that day...I joined Sam in those mirrors and saw a guy who was desperate to finally come home for real...Sam wasn’t my final straw. She was my first harvest." (50:03–53:57)
  [Read aloud at 50:03–53:57]

10. Audience Q&A and Reflections

• Biggest career influence? “Apocalypse—hands down.” (54:26–54:33)
• Do-over in life? “Fucking tattoos. No shit. HIV is easier to deal with than fucking tattoos. Can’t take a pill and make your fucking tattoos disappear.” (54:55–56:10)
• Good guy or bad guy?

  “I think I’m a good guy. Good guys sometimes do some bad things. But…the only way to stay a good guy is to own that shit.” (56:40–56:51)

11. Closing Thoughts (Duchovny’s Reflection, Fail Better Outro)

• Duchovny underscores Sheen’s “humble unapologetic” mode, the risks of unfulfilled creative impulse, and how Sheen’s candor maps his journey from “crack torch lighting up porn on a computer screen” to creative and personal redemption.
• Duchovny:

  “What I loved about his book and about his demeanor is he’s unapologetic. Not in a defiant sense. Can you be humbly unapologetic? I think so. I think Charlie is.” (57:35)

Notable Quotes

• Charlie Sheen:

  “On September 3, 1965 in New York City at 10:58pm I was born dead. That’s how this thing starts, you know. Welcome to the book of Sheen.” (08:03)

  "There was only one thing that felt worse than betraying myself. And that was failing my children...Sam wasn’t my final straw. She was my first harvest." (53:39)

  “Good guys sometimes do some bad things. But…the only way to stay a good guy is to own that shit.” (56:51)

• David Duchovny:

  “I think when I look at your performances and when I look at your life, I see that enthusiasm, that life force. And I think it’s very unapologetic and forceful, and I think that’s what people respond to with the kind of love that you’re feeling tonight…” (01:36)

Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• Charlie shares his infamous opening line – 08:03
• Discussion about "fukken" spelling – 22:31
• Documentary footage and Malibu roots – 32:03
• Martin Sheen’s advice to young Charlie about acting – 34:20
• Raw reading about deciding to quit drinking for his daughter – 50:03–53:57
• Humorous regret about tattoos – 54:55
• “Good guy/bad guy” answer – 56:40

Tone and Takeaways

The conversation is irreverent, intimate, and often moving. Sheen is open about regret, addiction, and new purpose, yet never seeks pity. Duchovny skillfully teases out both the gravity and comedy in Sheen’s story, resulting in a memoir about entering adulthood with “house money,” risking and nearly losing everything, and earning peace through creative honesty and fatherhood.