The Adam & Wack Show Ep 110 w/ Adam's Dad

33:45And I know that one of the things that I hear, Wack, from people I meet up, young people I meet up with, if I've got, as Adam says, a jumper T-shirt or hat on or something, is that they credit him with giving voice for using his platform to give over the years. Definitely. Emerging rappers. Definitely. I mean, more than that, we've had Hebrew Israelites here. Crackheads. Yeah, a bunch of those. You know, we got disabled, blind people. You know, he definitely, it's crazy because one voice, they'll say, and you know what success come in at me. You understand that. Oh, he's a culture vulture. He's a white dude that's taking advantage of urban culture.

34:47But then on the flip side, if the white dude didn't acknowledge or give opportunity a chance, then they'll say, oh, he's a racist. He's this, he's that. So it's kind of like you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. But listening to you talk and his upbringing and the way you are is the reason why he's so comfortable. Now I understand why he's so comfortable doing what he does. Because he will open his door to some people to where most people will be like, I don't know. He will give you the opportunity to show him who you really are and not just go off the perception of what everybody else is saying.

35:31And he's gave a lot of people opportunity, trained them to where they went on to start their own thing. So nobody, I don't believe nobody in this game. I don't think you've thought about it. I have to tell you, like, you're really the only indie guy the way you are. But nobody's in this game. If you did a head count, has nobody for a fact. you damn near would have to compete with a radio station. And even they could run with you because a lot of those, those DJs are long-term, right? They'd be there 20, 30 years. Nobody's in this podcast game has given the amount of people the opportunity that you had.

36:15There are times where I think maybe I should not have done so much of that. But for the most part, yes, I feel quite good about that. See, when it comes to that, you can't concern yourself with what they chose to do. Mm-hmm. You have to acknowledge on what you did sincerely and genuinely. And however that turns out, that turns out. Because that allows you to be able to sleep at night. Right? Because what if, I believe you done saved some lives. Right? When a person's here. Some might say I saved yours. Who? Mine? Yeah. Think so? I feel like he might still be in prison if it wasn't for this podcast.

36:53He's a damn liar. I'd already been home 24 years. I've been out of prison 26 years. I've already crossed the road, real estate, trucking. Matter of fact, I have to fly back this month. The gentleman that gave me the job that really transitioned me into become who I was and making some serious money, Mr. Wayne Wagoner out of Billings, Montana. Wagoner's trucking. They started off hauling eggs and went on later on to do auto transport. They were an independent company, but they were Fortune 500. They control all the BMWs, east to west, Porsches, Volkswagens. They built their own trailers, like literally modified them to just fit certain cars.

37:41I still I'm one of the ones that still have my truck and trailer. But Wayne just passed a couple of weeks ago. So I'm going to head on up and pay my respects. His son, David Wagner, is still alive. But Adam, I really don't think you really thought about it. You know how Vlad has that checklist of people he's interviewed that have maybe went to jail or been unalive? Okay. I think if you sat down and created a list of individuals that you gave an opportunity, like real employment that you really paid and gave opportunity and watched them go from one extreme to the next. I don't believe there's anybody in this game right now.

38:27Could I get one of those books, my dear? Oh, here we go. Yeah, we just wrote a book. She wrote a book. And where is both of us in the book? Can you bring us a couple of those books over here? Adam, for real though, have you ever thought about that? I try not to. try not to think about all the people I've impacted I'm going to give this is this my copy? I'm going to have her sign it too before you go Ego Exposed a book by R &B right there and WAC 100 one of my great regrets in life is that I did not marry a black woman so I'm living vicariously through you what are you talking about bro you got to stop you have a beautiful wife she's cool and she's like Armenian you know it's almost black it's not white it's definitely not black do you get along with your daughter-in-law she's cool I love her to death with Lena?

39:34we love Lena she's cool that's my partner she's probably the best thing that ever happened to Adam I mean, the first one whooped his ass. I can't have her know when you're saying something like that. The first one whooped his ass. Right. I never dated her. We're just friends. Well, you tried. We see what happens. You know, and I'm going to take that a little further and say that we're really, I mean, she comes from a big Armenian family in the town where I grew up. There was a small Armenian community, but nothing, nothing like the. In Nashua? Yes. I didn't even know that. You know, 10 or 15 families.

40:16Where is she from? Glendale. Oh, she's from here. Oh, yeah, that's all Persian army. Right. Yeah, that's their stronghold. Yeah. They're out there. So they've been, she and her family, or her family, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, have been extremely welcoming to us, to my wife and me. and we spend time with each other as a bigger family, a couple, three, four, five times a year, and we've learned from them. We have learned, I mean, there's an Armenian experience that goes back to 100-plus years and at the hands of Turks and the Armenian diaspora, the Armenian spread throughout the world, Armenian immigration, after a million or two million Armenians were slaughtered by the Ottoman Empire in Turkey.

41:31Nobody wants to talk about our genocide. Well, I'm going to tell you why. I had this conversation. Actually, it was an Armenian lady yesterday in Clubhouse. And I had to kind of get on her case a little bit because we were having a discussion about, what's the gentleman that just got on the line? Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk. And I didn't follow him, but over the last, since his assassination, I've heard a lot of things he said. and some of the things he says I think he pisses people off because some of them are facts, real facts and he slaps you in the face with them and then he was pretty good at sprinkling a little of the truth some of the little truth and mixing it up and if you just didn't know the details he had you right but the lady comes in and I'm going back and forth with the people because I'm a all lives matter type of guy.

42:33I consider myself a black American. I'm of African descent, but I'm born in 1977 in California. I know the stories. You know, I've read some things. I've seen some things, but in my mind, if there's a football field and every 10 yards, it's a different ethnic group of child. I'm going to tippy toe, go to go the same way. I'm not going to get to any race. and move any more less cautious than the previous. So I'm getting blowback because I'm telling them, listen, they're talking about slavery and this feud of common. I said, listen, they're good black people, they're good white people. They're bad on both sides.

43:20I said, back in those days, without the abolitionists, without the people helping to assist the slaves on the way, they wouldn't have been able to get the freedom. It's a lot of these people that hung from trees, not as much as the black slaves did. But when they got called assistant, they hung these people. Right. So in my world. Right. I don't I don't see that. I see the person. Right. So she comes in and says, well, what about the Armenians? She started to talk about it. I said, well, we don't know about that. We're talking about America because they compare the Holocaust to slavery. Right.

44:02And I told Captain Tesariot this morning, I said, look, bro, we cannot tell them what it felt like to be hunted down and taken to concentration camps and starved and then tossed in these mass graves. Right. And they went through that in their country as we went through what we went through in our country. Both sides have felt the pain from it. Right. But they like to try to compare. It was more of or it was this and this. Well, I just like to say it was it was horrible on both sides of it. But when it comes to the Armenian thing, we really don't know because it's never a conversation in the states.

44:49Right. We know about the Holocaust because Hitler was so, you know what I mean? The Hitler thing came. You had the Aryan nation. And we know about the swastika from the Aryan nation. We know about that. We identified with Hitler. Then we had the Charlie Manson stuff. So certain things we know about that. And then the Jewish community financially took a stance. And then it says, well, they got, you know, they got paid or they got money. They got compensated for what they went through from America. So the whole thing is the black people have yet to get that right. My whole thing is, OK, pursue it.

45:31But the doors are wide open for opportunity. Right. A lot of my people feel like desegregation was a bad thing for us. They felt like I felt like, well, desegregation allowed everybody to do business and mingle with everybody. And coming from where I come from, I hate to say it. If they said, do you want to live in a all black community or do you want to live in a mixed race community? Right. Coming from where I come from, where nine out of 10 attempts on my life came from people to look like me. I think my odds are a little better with the all race community. Right. But the ideology that. There could be and will be.

46:26And if a black dominant world is still being pushed. But I don't I can't see that happening because the powers that be that are in control of Congress and the government have always been in control. And I told him if it would have been us in control, we would have fought tooth and nail to maintain control. Yes, we've had a black president. Yes, we have some black people as in the Supreme Court. And I mean, Congress as well. But in this thing, we know as America, the structure of it is what it is. And I just believe life's too short to try to focus on dominating something that's already been dominated.

47:15There you go. Do you feel like, you know, as a lifelong Democrat, do you sometimes feel like the left is too consumed with identity politics and sort of obsessing over racial differences and things like that?

47:34To the, I mean, there were reasons why lots of, we'll say, working class white voters and Spanish and other groups, other races have defected from certain parts of the Democrats' agenda. And he's an example. He voted for Trump. 20 years ago it wasn't easy to find a black guy who was voting for a Republican president but see here's the thing follow me here Trump has been part of black culture forever he was a reality TV star no kill that rap music just like Trump everything I got to know who Donald Trump was through rap music. So by the time Trump is on reality TV, I'm laughing. I'm like, oh, this dude's hilarious.

48:42So when he went to run for president, right, only thing I knew is his business was right. He was a hard-nosed dude, right? And we already socially accepted him. So I didn't think about all the other things because I expect him, his age and where he comes from, I expect that his great-great-grandfather may have potentially had some damn slaves. He can't control his upbringing. In Queens? Whatever. I mean, I'm pretty sure his whole family wasn't from Queens. I did. But you got to remember, right, there was black people, shit. Central Park was once a black community. Well, I have memories of asking him and my mom about what life was like.

49:36But he knows Trump differently. But before the civil rights movement and trying to, like, ask them about, like, were the really separate water found and stuff like that. And I always came back kind of let down. I don't know. Was that going on up north? Not as much, right? Because people went north for freedom, right? Just to go back to your comment, he didn't have a top-rated television series for quite a few years by being stupid. That he, for better or worse, that he is pretty adept at identifying what the people want. What lots of people want. So you can say anything that you want, and you can't say anything bad enough about him to satisfy me.

50:33But, again, I understand your point about the black. How I got to know him. I don't know him the way you know him. That he's been a figure for blacks. And I mean, he's he's he's a he's a celebrity and has been for decades in a way that traditional politicians have not been. And may now largely have to be, you know, like if you're going to be the Democrat who one day has the country and captured in any way like the way Trump has for all these years. You might need to have been in a few movies. You might need to be a beloved podcast. I'm not going to lie. I would have loved to see Hillary in office because I think Hillary helped run the country when Bill was in office.

51:25And I respected how she maintained her composure in doing Bill's little over office scandal. Like you've never seen any riffs. So when it came for her running, I wanted Hillary to win. Like out of any female president, if it could be a female president, Hillary would be my pick. Right. It's just it's just what it is. But and I think with us, Adam, it's like who gets the popularity vote? We don't pay, you know, Trump's hard. No, I mean, I see a lot of things he's doing now. I think he sometimes he's a little extreme. The ICE situation. Obama ran the same campaign. He was just a little more discreet and a little more quiet about it.

52:11So a lot of people got deported during the Obama administration. Trump, I think he's like he's a beat your chest type of guy. He wants the people to know what he's doing. And I think from that, he gains popularity from the people that have his ideology. And then he loses it from the people that he wants to fear him anyway. Well, let the record reflect that the Democrats tried to pass immigration reform before the election. and Trump actually shot it down because he wanted to be able to run on that issue. I mean, is he right or is he wrong? I'm just saying, like, both parties at that moment seemed to agree that immigration was becoming a big problem and Trump wanted to utilize it for the presidential race, which clearly was advantageous to him since that's like one of the biggest issues for the people out there.

53:03The Hispanic vote out here, it went in his favor. True. Right? You know, I think he's a little extreme. you know, surrounding the schools, doing graduations and all that. It's kind of traumatizing to the children. But I think he's looking at the numbers and he feels we have a problem. And I guess he feels he's going to do something about it. I read something. It was like 500 ,000 Haitians who have been given some type of documentation to be over here. He wants to withdraw that, pull it back. So I don't know if our crime rate has went up. I don't know if it's due to population. I really don't know.

53:45What I do know is they voted on these things, and he's exercising his authority to push the button. It's a lot of things that have been voted on, as you know, that people just, they don't address. He just chooses to address them for whatever reason. I have a question. This is an important one for people out there. I don't know if you know that there are conspiracy theories surrounding you. Have you ever been a Freemason? Have you ever been exposed to the Masons or anything along these lines? He's definitely been exposed to Masons. Well, he's a Grand Mason. No, no. He's in politics. Well, okay.

54:29I'll let him answer. I mean, people ask me this all the time, and I'm like, I don't even really know. So you've never been in politics. I mean, you know, listen, you have like we when you hear Mason, if you do your research, a lot of our high judges and people in these positions, they're Masons. Has that been your experience? Yes, I'm I'm I'm you know what I'm saying? I'm minimally aware that in some circles, Freemasonry and the 32nd Order and things like that are substantial positions for members to aspire to and achieve. That most certainly has never been anything. I mean, the origins of our name in my family, going back to the 1800s, on both sides, grandparents came from Canada.

55:33French-speaking Canada, which is to say Montreal or Quebec, as opposed to Western Canada, such as Vancouver, which is entirely—there's virtually no French identification in the Western part of the country of Canada. But in Montreal and Quebec City and areas sort of immediately north of New England, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and so on, French was traditionally spoken by new arrivals going back to at least the 1800s, if not further. And many of those immigrants, my grandparents, again, born all in the 1800s, were people who grew up in Canada, learned to speak French, and for the most part came to the northeastern states in order to work in shoe factories and textile mills.

56:46And some French names, many French names, are translatable into English. And Grand Maison, however you pronounce it, of course means big house or great house. So that's, I don't know. I mean, honestly, what he's saying is, no, he is not a Mason. No, he hasn't been directly involved in Mason politics. Is he aware that it exists? yes he's aware if I know he definitely knows right but I think they said say that because of your last name I know it's so badly sourced like I'm thinking right now like what is the evidence that I've seen people put forward to make this argument and I'm like oh right there is no argument or no evidence aside from our last name kind of sounding like Freemason or Grand Rison yeah that's it so I think that's all that is um

57:47I think your granddaughter brings you great joy. She sure does. She seems like a very, very cool kid. Yeah. She's a great little kid. You know, our daughter has two boys. Your first granddaughter? That's right. Oh, yeah. Okay. Eight and ten? And it's really heartwarming to see her grow up and to see the three of them grow up in a world that's vastly different from the one even that Adam and his sister grew up in, you know, 80s, 90s. That communique, I mean, it used to be whack. It used to, you might have a hard time believing this, but when my wife and I were in college, 60s, 70s, something could happen, something catastrophic could happen on the other side of the world.

58:45And you guys wouldn't know. And you wouldn't know about it until maybe Newsweek or Time magazine came out a week later. Maybe, you know, a major newspaper, maybe the L.A. Times or New York Times, Washington Post might cover it. Maybe the evening news, CBS, NBC, ABC would report on it in time. But now, of course, anything of that scale happens and almost instantly. It won't be a minute. Three minutes tops and it's there. It's gone. I mean, think about yesterday we saw arguably like the biggest right wing commentator die on camera in front of a crowd. And by the end of the night, you almost shouldn't even bother to put out a YouTube video about this topic.

59:46It's already so inundated. There is no breaking news. Eight hours later, all the way. Everyone knows. And if it happened in Thailand, we wouldn't have known about it. All the way down to the black dude stealing the hats. To the security team carrying him to the car. Wait, the new one is a block or so over, it's a white dude walking down the street with a stiff-legged limp. So they're insinuating that he had the rifle down his leg. So now they're picking up Zoom camera footage blocks away and they're wondering, okay, why are you walking like this? Right? Well, they allegedly found a rifle. It looks like a bolt action, 30-I-6 or something with a suppressor at the end of it.

1:00:39But I really was looking at this and, like, I'm listening to the guy, and I don't know a lot about him, but. What did he do to make somebody want to assassinate him? Well, he was pretty hyperbolic, pretty divisive. I mean, for sure, I've seen a lot of people talking about him in extremely negative fashions throughout his career. And he did have a lot of opinions that were more or less just straight up normal Republican talking points. But, I mean, if you want to go through... What was he a threat to what I'm saying? See usually when they assassinate people like this Right in front of crowds of people They're trying to send a message To those followers Those students This is what happened to you right What did he do Well It hasn't been 100 % confirmed yet But there's suggestions that maybe The bullets had like pro Trans messages Engraved in them See His anti-trans rhetoric really was pretty intense.

1:01:50So if that ends up being the motive, I wouldn't be astonished. Listen, I've been watching over the last couple months. I've been watching the president. This mass shooting was by a transgender. We want to stop transgender from having the right to bear arms. We want to eliminate them from the military. All these things. So maybe did he know something about something and he's a sacrificial lamb to make it seem like it was a transgender who assassinated him so they can use that to further push their narrative on what they're going to take away from. I would say that level of planning is pretty unlikely.

1:02:35If they didn't catch him when they were supposed to catch him, whoever they put in front of me is another Lee Harvey Oswald. I'll say this. I don't believe it. I don't believe it's that person. If you were to want to kill someone who was essentially like a proxy to Donald Trump, like if you wanted to kill a political commentator who is about as close to Trump as it gets, Charlie Kirk was there every step of the way. When Trump decided to spread the lies about the election, Charlie Kirk was right there to help him. When Trump was pushing, you know, everything Trump has ever pushed, Charlie Kirk's been right there by his side.

1:03:13They've had like a fairly close relationship. Charlie Kirk is the leader of Turning Point USA, which is one of the biggest conservative youth organizations that does a lot of college recruiting and everything. So are there other right-wing commentators that some crazy school shooter type would want to kill? Sure. Charlie Kirk realistically is probably going to be top of that list. Well, I'll say this. I'm not supporting it. They tried to assassinate Trump the same way. They just missed. They got an earlobe. That being said, though, Trump, way more security around Trump, whereas Charlie Kirk, I guess, had a 10-person security team, I saw.

1:03:59Yeah, but he didn't have a perimeter. It's not the Secret Service. I think now people of his magnitude that's speaking on these controversial things, they maybe need to put themselves in something. You mean like a bulletproof vest type thing? Like a bubble. If you look at where he was at, imagine that being like plexiglassed around or, you know, Teflon up to where he's in there. You can see him. You can hear him through microphone, but I don't think they should be out in the open anymore. I think people do a lot less of that. But I mean, it's like, are we really getting to that point as Americans?

1:04:46Listen, gun control in America is is is minimal pro. They just caught a kid and kid is in what? Fourth grade to 12 years old with 32 guns, 15 of the long guns. Right. With 3D printed. He just grabbed his water. It looked like he was going for R &B for a second. 15 of the long guns were 3D printed. That would have been a good choice. Listen, the kid put the guns together. He had like 12 handguns and 20 assault rifles. And on his wall, he had pictures of all the other school mass shootings. Wow. Right? I think the kid was up in Seattle, Washington, something like that. so you know gun laws and gun control and it looked like trump's about to open it back up he i'm hearing he's gonna allow uh ex-cons to you know be able to bear arms again that would be i mean it would benefit a lot of people i care about would it be good for the country as a whole i don't know that's the tough i mean but that you know what inner city park shootings and You know, drive-bys, that's an urban problem.

1:06:09These sniper situations, that's a Caucasian problem. That's a fact. Pops, you know it. If you, listen, if they, when you seen that, you knew it was a white guy did that. He hit a dude from 200 yards away, bro. Not to say there's not no black snipers and Latino snipers, but

1:06:38that's not what we do historically you'll get that I'm sure you'll get that the DC the dudes that was running around there you go he was hanging out in the trunk he was in the trunk we had the kid in the trunk yeah that was great yeah right it's been done but usually when you see these things but I'm trying to the college the student body appeared to be all white I mean what what little I mean Utah Mormons. It's Mormons, right? It's white people. Can you bring me water, please? You can come walk over here and get on camera. We didn't know you drank water. Who? Thank you. That's lovely. Feel free to wander over here.

1:07:19This is your daughter? Okay, let me ask you something. One second. How old do you think she is? How old? How old do you think she is? 19. 13 pops. Hey, listen. He's a schmoozer. Don't let your mom watch your segment. She doesn't seem terribly jealous. She moves like she's 19, but she'll be 46 next month on Halloween. I know. Hard to believe. Come on. 45. It's hard to believe, right? Good Jean. She's from the South. Greenville, Mississippi. Greenville, Mississippi? She's from Greenville, Mississippi. By way of Tallulah, Louisiana. Yeah, you know, so I took her back maybe about a year ago and I was able to go on a cotton field for the first time pick some cotton I had no idea I could have been shot and killed by picking those people's cotton wow the rule out there you can't go in there cotton fields and I was just like wondering what it was like to do it but she's a southern belle by way of Las Vegas She's been in Las Vegas for about 20 years.

1:08:31That's my balance. She's the one that authored the book. That book is first four chapters is her. The next four chapters is me. And then the next nine or 10 chapters after that is back and forth. Maybe I'll read this so I can give you some notes on the next episode. Oh, no. Yeah. You're going to see the softer side of me. You spelled bibliography wrong. I might have been editor. I might be Ebonics. Right. So. Okay. Were you guys looking for me to make news today? No, we're looking for you. I didn't know if the reason or one of the reasons I was asked to come on was to say or do something crazy.

1:09:10You know what? Can I ask you something? We got to clear everything up. Yeah. Because Dave, are you familiar with T.I.? With T.I.? The rapper. It's a rapper from Atlanta. Okay, so T.I., he's a rapper. Right? Whack, I'm a Stones guy. Okay, well, listen. Rolling Stones. TI did 12 months in a day. So the rumor was that you did 12 months in a day. But now you came in and said you only did nine months, which is totally doable because they have the chart. I looked at it. They have zero to six months. Yeah, you know the chart I'm talking about, right? Right. So when you said you did nine months, I said this totally excludes Pops from these allegations.

1:09:50Because when we hear 12 months in a day, they say you cooperated with the feds. But your turn was not 12 months in a day. It was nine months, right? Actually, the original sentence, prosecutors had said to my attorney, we're going to ask for 18 months. they had they never wavered from that until I think only a couple days before sentencing when they said we've changed our mind and we're going to ask for a year and a day and a judge said well that would be outside the guidelines So I'm going to sentence to 18 months, presumably your client. Presumably I would appeal that decision, citing the prosecutor's change of heart.

1:11:01And, you know, we'll see what happens on appeal. and looking back on it, I could have deferred, I could have postponed going in until the appeal had been heard. The appeal wasn't announced until, I don't know, seven or eight months later. I said, let's get this the hell over with.

1:11:29So on appeal, the sentence of 18 months was reversed, and retroactively it became a year and a day. And you get time knocked off for— Anything over a year. Right, for I think about 15%. Yeah, yeah. So that's how it got down to about nine and a half months, and then I think a four weeks and a half way out. Okay, so you're not a street dude, never really had any kind of involvement with any kind of crime or anything like that. But as I recall, as this case went along, you started to realize that the charges that they were putting on you could easily have been forgotten about if you had been willing to testify or provide information about who was at that time your boss.

1:12:25You kept it silent for your boss, Pops? I wouldn't say forgotten about. I would say that the recommended time would have been less. Okay. So they asked you to cooperate, but you didn't cooperate. And why was that? Just because you were opposed to cooperating in general, or was it because you felt your boss hadn't done anything wrong? I guess the term is an uncooperative witness. There it goes. that I did not choose to implicate another. But why was that? Was it because he hadn't done anything wrong in your view? Or was it because even if he had done something wrong, you just weren't going to talk, period?

1:13:04Number one. Okay. I don't think he felt he did anything wrong. It sounds to be like he got caught up in the middle of some technical shit. Well, we really didn't get into the details of what the case was actually about. It was mailed, so we had to do a mailed. Yeah, but if you wanted me to give you the super simple gist and you can fill in the gaps if you want, but basically he was an alderman, which meant that he was working in local government. Yeah. And then he also worked at a construction company getting jobs for the construction company. And he was alleged to have used his power as an alderman to get the construction firm jobs, building stuff for the city.

1:13:41He has, you know. So somebody hated on you. He very strongly feels that this is not, that you didn't use your powers inappropriately. That's a good summation. Okay. Somebody hated on you. There was. I forget the guy's name, but I remember you telling me all about somebody who basically threw you in the mix. Yeah, somebody hated on you. You was getting money. That's what it was. New Hampshire is not a state where, you know, in many states, in the city of L.A., and in many states,

1:14:19alleged criminal activity by public officials is pretty common. New Hampshire is not one of those places. So it was seized upon, I think, by prosecutors as a rare and kind of juicy opportunity to advance careers. Got you. Theirs, not mine. Got you.

1:14:49they used you as a piece on the chessboard I gotta tell you 30 years later it's not anything that haunts me from day to day so I mean people hear prison and they think high level maximum security prisons I went there the first time I went there was kind of like wow it sucks that my dad's been taken away from our family, but this is not like the prisons I've seen on TV. You could, you could walk your ass out there. Yeah. You could just walk out. Yeah. That's like Reggie, When he had to go turn himself in, he was at, uh, I believe he might've been at Sheraton up in Oregon. And the Reggie told me people used to actually leave the prison.

1:15:34Yeah. Right. And come back. Yeah. You know, whether they're dealing with a chick or when it got something to eat, They weren't supposed to, but they would leave and come back. I've seen instances where people get to lower levels and they transfer them. They're given the option to you can be the next president in three days by way of bus or plane or we can take you. But if you don't turn yourself in, that's cool. We'll find you, catch up with you and just give you another five years. So I've seen people in transition from Texas to Lompoc, and I know they're supposed to be in prison. And I see them happen to be standing in the front yard at their mother's house because on their way through, instead of getting on the bus, they got on the plane, brought themselves a day or so, and stopped by to visit their family.

1:16:25I mean, I'm like, well, the feds are different. Now, during COVID, lots of incarcerees, Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen, got sent home. Yeah. That he was in, it might have been Otis or Otisville or something or Danbury, Connecticut, somewhere around there. you know, a white collar camp. And, you know, for fear of every of everyone infecting everyone else and everyone dying, they just got sent home. I don't know. You know, maybe they were monitored. I mean, that's how Big Misha's brother, Southwest T, he got out like four, four years, five years early. A lot of people. A lot of people got out for medical reasons.

1:17:17you know I mean you know that's a big deal for them to deal with that people getting sick you look up Reggie got sick he got caught COVID went into a coma when he came to I don't know maybe I want to say a month or two later I could be a little off he was paralyzed from the neck down so Reggie had to learn how to use his arms and he's walking now and you know that's crazy you know what I mean So because they was putting you in this induced coma, I guess, to keep your lungs from overworking. Right. But a lot of people, when they came out of it, it wasn't their self. So I get what you said. But I believe this interview is going to clear up, especially your Mason thing.

1:18:05I think Trump's campaign manager, Manafort, was another guy who, in the middle of a pretty lengthy sentence, was also cut loose during COVID. Makes sense. Let me ask you this. You've been through— I just wanted to get that on the record. Okay. You've been through so many stages in your life. You know, you had the steady job and the family life. You raised two kids. You did 40 years in the workforce. Now you're out here in California. You don't know this, but him and my mom, some of the best Southern California tourists you could ever think of because they love to go to a random neighborhood, a different little touristy area.

1:18:54They'll drive a couple hours to a different city. They've seen so much more of Southern, Central California, et cetera, than me. having lived here for 15 years, like, you know, they're just out here living it up. But what, what are your thoughts and reflections on life in general, having lived, you know, a life that when I remember asking you when I was quite young, what was important to you when you left college? And you said, I wanted to marry your mom, and I wanted to have some kids and I wanted to buy a house and i thought i'm out here i want to ride bmx bikes and can like you know start a youtube all this shit like you know it just really like stood out to me as a young kid like you had a much more serious approach towards life than i had but you did that you got married you married right it took a lot longer and was definitely not my aim at that time you got kids you have a home you have a business.

1:19:57Yeah, I came around. Have you been to Hearst Castle? Hearst Castle. You been to Hearst Castle? No. Great place to go. I know of Hearst Castle. It's a great place to go for you and your wife to take an easy run up the coast. Great tour. I remember going for the first time. I was on a field trip with my drama teacher. Yeah, I was in drama class. Mrs. Rosenberg. That explains a lot. Mrs. Sarah Rosenberg, and I still believe she's a teacher somewhere in New York now. Mrs. Sarah Rosenberg was her name. And we were going up the coast, and we had this play we was doing called I Have a Dream. I did a Shakespeare play, As You Like It.

1:20:47Also, The Music Man. See, I was a straight-A student growing up. Okay, so I was asking him. for his reflections on life. You kind of hijacked that one. What I'm saying is I'm giving it. I was wondering. He's the king of making it about himself. I was wondering why you were answering. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad that you're on the same page with me on that. I'm giving you a few more places. I do this every week. And you can go because he's not going to tell you. He doesn't know where to go. And that is a thing because I did mention that they like to travel around and stuff, but I was kind of in the middle of asking him for his reflections on life.

1:21:19He likes to go to the ghetto. Yeah. I don't think you want to explore the ghetto, right? You don't think what? You want to explore the ghetto. Crenshaw and Slauson, Vernon Avenue. I think you'd be all right. Do you want to visit the worst, most economically devastated parts of Southern California? I thought you were going to ask, where am I satisfied with Berlin? Berlin, New Hampshire, where he used to own apartments in northern New Hampshire, and he used to take me out there every couple of years, and I would have to paint these apartment buildings, and then we would sleep together on a mattress on the floor in these apartments.

1:22:00Totally toughened me up a little bit. You know what? Not only that, but he was teaching you something. How to paint a tall-ass house with a rickety-ass ladder. You were painting Adam operated the 60-foot boom lift. Oh. I did, yeah. Never even thought about that. Do you still have it? Do you sell all that stuff or do you still have it? Do I want the property? Apartment buildings, no. They got sold on. You sold all this stuff? No. Gotcha. So where's been one of your premier places that you went? Hold on. Before you do that, let's go back to the question I was actually asking, which is your reflections on life, having lived such a long life and been through so many stages of life.

1:22:40I think that most, you know, the moment, the picture in 2020, A few days, you know, maybe it was a Thursday or Friday night after the Biden-Trump election when mail-in votes were only being, were finally being tabulated in different states. And in those major states, the votes were trending Biden's way. and it was probably just my wife and I, we were outside a mall in Santa Clarita and again, it was still COVID year, very much so and there was an outdoor dining area and they were kind of encircled with big TV screens and on all the screens were CNN and NBC and so on with the results being updated.

1:23:52And there might have been, and I looked at this scene for 10, 15 minutes or so, there might have been half a dozen, 10 families and couples sort of eating there. And no one ever looked up. No one looked up. None of the customers. They didn't want to see that. You know, they were concerned with their meal. They were concerned with raising their kids. They were concerned with their jobs and how they're going to pay their bills. And, you know, going back to Adam's question, I think that those priorities are what consume the average person's life, that it's your partner, it's yourself, it's your partner, It's your kids.

1:24:47It's your supervisor at work. If you work for someone else, it's being able to pay the bills when they come in every month or however often they come in. that for the most part that, you know, that what's happening with major politicians or celebrities is just noise that, you know, I think the average person recognizes that it can and does impact your life. But I think from day to day, it's your immediate family, your job, and, you know, it's your neighbors that, you know, that all these names in the news are, you know, for the most part, you know, they're rich people who have other people who handle the shit in their lives for them.

1:25:50but the average person doesn't get to have someone else handle that shit you got to deal with it yeah there it is um any uh you have any last words for the people out there any message you want to

1:26:14You know, I'm not sure that I possess any more wisdom than you have or than you have, or that she has or he has. No, you definitely do, because you were able to see, you come from different areas that we didn't live in, and you were able to see change. You have been somehow or some way involved in politics. You're bi-coastal. You went from New Hampshire to Southern California. You did a short prison stint, right? So you was able to experience a lot of different things that the so-called average person wouldn't have experienced. and still be sane, right? Yeah. Right? Yeah. You're in your 70s. Yeah.

1:27:12Right? You got all your wits. Like, you're sharp on your feet. So, no, it's definitely a lot to talk about when it comes to a guy like you. I mean, I'm 48. I hope I can. 60. If I can hit 60, that's a good 12 more. And then I'll put 70 in my crosshairs. But to be your age and. How long did your father live to be? Or is he still alive? He's in the 70s. Okay. He'd be here next week. We're getting him on here next. Yeah. Because for a man, it's almost entirely how old your old man lived to be. Your mother could have lived to have been 300. It really, in terms of projecting or anticipating how long you're going to live.

1:27:58Well, this is the crazy part. My grandfather, which is his father, he died in the 60s, right? Lived a healthy, clean life. He had a swig every now and then. But my father, and this is what I don't know, man. I don't know what the government was thinking. My father was a drug addict for probably a good 15 years. Crack. Now, if you sit back and you think about it, all the people that smoke crack in my neighborhood have outlived the regular normal people in the neighborhood. I don't know what the hell it is. Toughens you up. Right? Because my grandfather died in the sixties. My father's well off in his seventies.

1:28:45You smoke crack ever? No, no. Just want to just checking. It wasn't cracking his day. It was powder. It was cocaine. He may have been a late adopter. It was a party drug back then. You asked, do I have any final words? I'm just waiting for the college ball season to begin. Ooh! Go New Hampshire Wildcats. One of the only interviews he ever showed up for was, why am I forgetting his name? Like a dude. Lamar Odom. Lamar Odom. Lamar Odom. Okay, Lamar Odom. And we got a great photo of him looking up at him. Oh, Lamar, yeah. Yeah, sure. Were you here that day? No, I wasn't. We got to bring him out. You know, we got to take one of those 600 fights.

1:29:31Let him see 600, take a knee. I like it. I appreciate your hospitality. Appreciate you. That's a good book. You make sure you read it. I'm going to take a look at it, and then I'm going to circulate it. Yeah, we're going to read Ego Exposed, because you realize he's been married to a librarian for the past 50 years, so this might be the connect that you need in order to get the students at Northern Essex Community College, where my mother worked for many, many years. That's right. They might need to read Ego Exposed. What I need from you is when you're done reading it, I need you to give me a video, real deal your thoughts, whether we like it or not, because everybody's been giving them tools.

1:30:13They've been sending them back, and we've been getting great reviews. And it really is a whole other side of me. She brought that out of me. She's my balance. is like Adam, like for real. Like you're gonna be like, yo, hold on. I'm just gonna read a random part of it. Okay. Let's go. This ain't about just love anymore. It's about building an empire. The building that empire and building that empire almost cost me my voice. This is R &B talking. There was a time when I sat back, watched him do his thing and assisted. I waited in the background while he stood in the spotlight. And I watched as he screamed my name from every stage, every interview, every platform he touched.

1:30:57I was grateful, but I wasn't expressing myself. I had no outlet, no space that felt like mine. Wow, this sounds like a very sad tale of what it's like to be in a relationship with you. No, trust me. It's everything. It's ego exposed. This is abuse exposed. It's the good, the bad, and the ugly. You know how many women have a man that will never mention or utter their name to the world ever? Not you, huh? No, not me. Not I either. We got to build our women up. Right? That's right. We must elevate them. We must build them up. He'll tell you, his wife has been his balance. He'll tell you that. He's been the, you know, he's been the, but a lot of that wisdom, a lot of that guidance, It's especially once he learned to listen, because we have to learn to listen and learn to trust what they're saying, because not only do they become us, but they are who they are.

1:31:52So they have something that we don't have because we don't we don't try to become them. So I'm pretty sure your wife has been your balance and I saw you through many situations that you might have went another way on, but you trusted her advice. Yes, she has excellent judgment. She's less apt to make a hurried decision than I am. And she doesn't always explain why she is suggesting A rather than B. But she has excellent judgment. She's a mother. She's raised kids on a more full-time basis, we'll say, than I have. What is the key to staying married after all these years? What should we keep in mind if we want our relationships with our women to last?

1:32:45Knowing when to keep your mouth shut. That's a fact. That's a fact. I learned that the last, I've graduated that the last seven, eight months. Knowing you can say something, but it's wise just not to say nothing. Yeah. That goes a long way. No, that's a fact. Yeah. Someone, there's a saying, good Lord gave you two ears and one mouth, and you ought to use them in that proportion. Listen before you speak. I don't know who, whether it's Shakespeare or Mark Twain or who the author of that statement is, but it makes a lot of sense. R &B has a question. So here's my question. So most men, like listening to your story, I see a lot of stability.

1:33:38Could you just talk into his mic over here? Because he's not going to be able to hear you. His hearing has taken a little bit of a hit over the years. So listening to your story and hearing your story, I hear a lot of stability. Just how he deals with you. You've been in a marriage that long. You keeping your family together that long. Is there like an inspiration, somebody that inspired you? Is there some type of foundation that you have as far as spirituality? Like, what is your premise for the way that you move as a man? Well, my premise for what? How you move as a man. How you move as a man.

1:34:15What's your foundation? What keeps you solid? Or what has kept you solid? I think reflecting on how my parents handled different situations, handled me, handled my two brothers and me, how other family members addressed their life's responsibilities and their life's challenges. So I think a lot, having just turned 75, and now I've outlived my father by about a year and a half, I guess. and I think a lot about the neighborhood in which I grew up. French Hill. Well, almost. Oh, you grew up around the corner from there? Yeah, Crown Hill. Crown Hill, right, right, right.

1:35:26And it was a neighborhood in which everybody worked. I mean, everybody. And the temptation is to say everybody but widows and orphans. But in the area where I grew up and our kids didn't grow up far away, even widows and orphans would have worked. And people were very responsible. and so I keep coming back to the neighborhood in which I was raised. I keep coming back to the now no longer kids, but to the kids with whom I grew up. And it's important for me to reflect upon the situations, the contacts that I've had with all of those, all of that, as I head toward my later years, we'll say. Right.

1:36:44That's important because that's one of the things that keeps me solid. Always remembering where I come from and being able to still tap into that environment. So that's pretty dope. Yeah. Like it. When my brother, I had two brothers. One was very much involved in government politics all of his life. and when he died, a reporter called me and did an interview and talked about my brother. And I remember saying that, and the reporter, the Associated Press reporter included these words, I said that where we came from, you had to understand that not everyone in life gets dealt a fair hand. Right. Some people were born smarter.

1:37:49Some people less smart. Some people more industrious. Some less. Some are perfectly physically fit. Some are not. And I think that if you keep in mind that—and I think that's a really good premise, to go back to your word, to have, is that not everyone is born having been dealt a fair hand. And some people are going to need a hand up, sometimes a hand out, in order to help everybody get by. You know what that is right there? that's a good New Hampshire liberal. Everybody deserves a helping hand. Wisdom. That's what that is. I appreciate you coming on the show. My guy. My man. Big Phil. People don't know that I call you DP.

1:39:02We're going to take a photo. Dirty Phil. Dirty Phil. Not the other one. Dirty Phil. Phil Graham Mason. My guy. My pops. My man. WAC 100. R &B. Shout out to Donnie on the boards. No Jumper. The coolest podcast. in the world. Thank you very much to my pops for coming on here. He's really going to read this book and he's really going to hit you up and tell you what he thinks of it. We definitely want him to. Let's go grab a flick. Appreciate everybody. Hit the like button. Let's go.