Paul Kix On The Civil Rights Movement And What It Means To Be Courageous

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2:28Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

3:22Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm glad I'm, I was about to head out of the office and then I got an email that said I needed to record an intro for today's episode. And the timing was perfect because I picked up Paul Kix's book, You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live, which is an amazing book. I'll rave about it in a second. And then a giant wasp somehow snuck into my office, probably because this is a very old, somewhat porous building, and sometimes they make their way through. And I use this book to save myself and all the Daily Stoic employees.

4:00so thank you Paul I had Paul out to the bookstore about a year ago which was cool he was on vacation in Houston and he stopped by that was fun and he told me about this new book that he was working on and I actually met Paul Kix when he was writing at ESPN where he was an editor for many many years he edited a past guest Wright Thompson among many others but Paul got introduced to stoicism partly through my work And he wrote this really cool profile of me for ESPN, which I was quite honored to be featured in. And I loved his last book, The Saboteur, which was about this resistance figure in World War II in France, this sort of fascinating war hero.

4:44And we talked about that in my previous episode with Paul, which you can listen to. But this was my first chance to have Paul do an interview in person. and it was an awesome one. We went much longer than I thought because we really got into it because this is a subject I've been reading more and more about. You've heard some of my past guests like Tom Ricks, who I talked about in his book, Waging a Good War, David Halberstam's The Children, Taylor Branch's series on Martin Luther King. I've been reading quite a bit about Gandhi, all this for the Justice book, which is core one of the Stoic virtues, as you know.

5:27But this book, you have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live. Not only is there, I think, a Stoic insight there just in terms of the memento mori, but it's about 10 weeks in Birmingham that changed America, the depths of the civil rights movement. And I mean that not just like in the middle of it, but at a low point, it seemed like the movement had stalled out. It seemed like the bad guys were winning and Martin Luther King and his team head to Birmingham, known as Bombingham at that time, one of the most violent, amazing city, but incredibly violent, incredibly racist city where civil rights had more than just stalled out.

6:07It's in the grips of the tyrannical power of Paul Conner and local officials. And the activists decide, this is where they're going going to make their stand. This is where they're going to break through. And all sorts of innovations in the civil rights movement come from this, all sorts of incredible heroism and sacrifice and suffering. And that's the subject of Paul's new book. Paul is more than just a biography, more than just a, you know, sort of a narrative history book, but it's very much rooted in Paul's own personal experience, which he talks about at the beginning of the interview. And it's just a a wonderful book.

6:47I'm so glad he wrote it. And I'm so glad it saved me from this wasp a few seconds ago. You must check it out. You have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live. Paul has written many, many places, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, GQ, and ESPN, the magazine. And Paul also has a really cool writing course that I think you should check out, the Seriously Creative Five-Week Course. You can check that out at paulkicks.com. You can follow him on Instagram at paulkicks. You can follow him on Twitter at paulkicks. You can follow him on Facebook at paulkicksauthor. And go to paulkicks.com to check out his books.

7:30The Saboteur has been optioned as a movie. And his piece in GQ, The Accidental Getaway Driver, was turned into a picture, was turned into a movie. And he knows what he's doing. He's a great writer, a great dude. And I think you're really going to like this interview.

8:03Have you read that Emerson biography yet? I'm like halfway through it. What do you think? It's so good. I've been having this weird experience where I've been reading books. Like I read this book on Pontius Pilate the other day by Anne Rowe. Oh, is it good? It's in the store. I'll give you one. It's incredible. But I had the experience of that book and with the Emerson Mind on Fire book that you recommended where I can only make it like three or four pages and I have to stop. Yeah, and it's not like, at first I was worried that it's like my social media ruined brain, like the shallows thing. which I do generally have.

8:37I think everyone does in like Quicket. But I think it's more like the density is so immense in these books and the writing is so good that you have to stop and think about, you can't whip through it the way that it is where, one, you know what they're talking about. And two, where like, if you actually want to appreciate the level, like it's what they're talking about is good. And then on this other level, the way they're talking about it, you have to appreciate just like from an artistic standpoint. And you can't do that if you're reading quickly. No. And I forget the name of the author, but he is so good at finding almost epigrammatic ways to channel somebody who is himself a very compact writer.

9:22And it's just like there are passages where I'm just like, whoa. I'm so glad I'm reading that. I read that book. Excuse me. I split my time now, like honestly, like almost 60, 40 between audio books. just because I can get through them faster. I don't do any audiobooks. I know. And I envy you because there's so many good books. I'm like, shit, I'm reading this the wrong way. Yeah. So I take a shitload of notes, but it's still not necessarily the same thing. I also just read this book. I read this book, Freak Kingdom, A Kingdom of Freaks. What is that? It's about, it's by this creative writing professor, but it's about the political activism slash writings of Hunter S.

10:01Thompson. Oh. And there were - It was one of those books where I'm reading and I'm like, the level, it's published by like public affairs, so not like a huge press or anything. And I was like, the writing is too good in this book. Like, he was so good at it. I was like, I actually have to like slow down and appreciate this the way that it's been written. And that's, I think, not your problem 90 % of the time you're reading a book. But when you do get it, you have to like sort of soak it in. Yeah. but you had recommended that comanche's book oh yeah that's another one that writing is fucking incredible did you read that no i haven't i haven't read it yet but i know that i knew of that guy and i'm like oh yeah i'm like uh uh because he was like from san antonio wasn't he um yeah he wrote uh this book lone star which is a history of texas which is incredible and then he also wrote this book about the korean war which he fought in called this kind of war that's also fucking incredible.

11:01Yeah. The thing about Ferenbeck, and I talked to, do you know S.C. Gwynn? Yeah, I love it. Well, see, so his book, The Empire of the Summer Moon, was the one I was like, oh, I love this book. So Empire of the Summer Moon is basically just a cut out, condensed chunk of Comanches. Oh, so you're saying something like that in your newsletter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's a, what? How is it? But there's like no history of this, of the Comanches, is there? Well, that book is a huge history of the Comanches, which I think had never been written. But the story of Empire of the Summer Moon is like just one moment in Comanche history that he's spun out into its own book.

11:41But the thing about Ferenbeck is he's such a good writer, but he makes this sort of sweeping, and then he's wrong about a bunch of – he gets reconstruction totally wrong. and so so it's made it hard once you kind of once you see someone get something wrong or be very much a product of their time it's hard to then it's hard for me to then not wonder what else they're getting wrong yeah do you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah yeah lauren eisley do you know that writer you want to talk about slow read okay lauren eisley the immense journey it's a history of nothing less than the entire earth's evolution.

12:23And the writing is so fucking good. Like I'm talking like Tom Juno turned me on to that book. He's like, you've got to read this. This is some of the best writing you will ever read. He's the one that did the Mr. Rogers profile, right? He's great. Yeah, he's great. He's a huge influence on me. And in some respects in this book too, because so I, I grew up reading Esquire and Juno all the time and I came, he was very, very kind i gave him this like complete fanboy of an email when i was in college and he was kind enough to respond and then we started like an actual correspondence after that yeah and one of the one of the central questions i had for him was how is it that you do these amazing magazine stories and you know what he said he's like every story i've ever written is actually another chapter in the biography that you could write of my life.

13:16Everything that I have ever done is in some way a reflection of my curiosity or my vulnerabilities in life. And sometimes my name will never be in it, but beneath it is everything having to do with who I am. So like with this one, like, and you and I talked about this, I don't even know if you remember this, 2020, I get laid off and I called you and I was like, Hey, I just got laid off. and from ESPN, from ESPN. Yeah. And like, I'd been there for like 17 years in some capacity, you know, growing up ESPN was like the only place I'd ever wanted to work. Yeah, sure. And it was great for a while until it wasn't.

13:52But anyway, when, when that happened, you were like, well, good. Now you can finally write the book that you want to write. And it was, you were very gracious. So thank you for that. But also what I was thinking was the book that I want to write is I want to chronicle in my own way my curiosities, but more than that, in some sense, my fear about going out on my own and what it means to be courageous in life. So in a lot of ways, like this title itself, I wasn't writing toward this title, but when my editor was like, this is a quote from the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, like, she's like, what do you think of this book?

14:32I'm like, it's perfect. And it also fit perfectly with who I was trying to be at that point in time. Cause I think we all have to move beyond like who we are. That's another way of saying kind of a reinvention of one's self or you have to be willing to risk. What's the sports thing? Is it Belichick? No, no, no. It's Arians. No risk it, no biscuit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No risk it, no biscuit. That's it. Yeah. That's it exactly. That's what the quote means at a more deeper spiritual level. Yeah. But so Fred would argue, Shelsworth would argue that there is a literal meaning to this.

15:05Like he really did have to be prepared to die before he could begin to live. But then to your point, there's a spiritual meaning behind it too. And you don't even have to necessarily interpret it in a spiritual way. It can be a secular interpretation, but it's this idea of almost every single day there is a resurrection story within yourself and you need to find a way to become the person in fred's case he's like you need to become the person that god wants you to be if you don't have any sort of religious following it's like you need to become the person that we were just talking about emerson that like emerson says you need to move to your higher purpose right whatever that is move toward it at all times yeah yeah well i mean and there is kind of a resurrection story in that you basically die every night because you go to sleep and you're not conscious.

15:46And then you wake up, you, you emerge, you rise from the dead every day. Well, you're much better than like you, who's the Heraclitus? You can, you can pronounce all these Romans names. Maybe. Who's the dude who says you never step in the same river twice? That's Heraclitus. Heraclitus. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing. Yes. Well, but Seneca had this cool idea that basically you say to yourself, when you go to bed, like I've lived my whole life, like my life is done, then you go to bed. And then when you wake up, if you wake up, you go second chance. And I think there is something about that. I heard some religious person go, Jesus rose from the dead early.

16:26That's why we should wake up early. But there's something fresh about the morning and new, especially if you get up early and it's still dark, before you've checked your phone or gotten sucked into things. And that sort of freshness, I do think I think it's really important to um preserve that as long as possible I try to write early in the morning for that very reason yeah right like in any nap our kids are older now so like I have to tend to them until they get off for school but I do my absolute best to make sure that I'm not sucked into I don't schedule any meet now that I have my own schedule no meeting never comes before 1 p.m.

17:06Yeah. Ever. Sure. Because that's like the sacred time, right? Yes. So the kids will go off now between like 8.30, 8.45, and then from basically almost like 9 to 1. I just try to, you know, do as much as I can with that time. Yeah. There's like... You're a morning guy too, right? Definitely. Yeah. I would like to wake up before my kids if they wake up so early, it's not really my call. Yeah, no. And if I start things before they wake up, then it's sort of like, I kind of hope to get lucky. But I kind of feel like, like, I feel like spending time with your kids in the morning. That's not like, that's not using up the freshness energy.

17:45Oh, no. Do you know what I mean? Like, although like Toni Morrison's thing, which I love, she would, she said she had to get up and make contact with the muses while the sun rose. She like wanted to be writing as she watched the sunrise. And then she said she had to get her writing done before she heard the word mom. Ah. Which I definitely relate to and understand, but I've found that hearing that word, it doesn't deplete me in the way that a conference call depletes me or Twitter depletes me or my inbox depletes me. So, you know, the energy today of breakfast and then driving them to summer camp and then getting to the office or even I ran in between because I wasn't going to get to do it later in the afternoon.

18:30And like that, none of that started the clock. You know, the clock started when I got to the office and then got the shit done. Today I only have like 30 minutes, but that 30 minutes was enough if you're fresh for it. And you have to do it. Like we're on vacation, right? And I'm writing a couple of pieces that are, one that it sounds terrible to say I'm working on my vacation, but at the same time, it's like, no, this isn't actually work. Like this is the thing that I feel almost called to do. So I have to do it every single day. Otherwise I don't, David Sedaris once said that when the days that he doesn't write are the days that he feels absolutely miserable.

19:09And I'm the same way. Yeah, there's a compulsion element to it, which is probably both not healthy and also - Oh, completely not healthy. No, but I found the same way. Like we were just on vacation and then we're going on like this other trip in about a week or so. And like, as long as all I'm doing is like an hour or two of writing during the day, I don't count that as working during the vacation because it's not, again, it's not depleting me. It's actually recharging me. It's that I've stripped out the other bullshit that is work, but not the work. As long as that's this, I'm not taking the vacation from the thing I like doing the most in the world.

19:46I'm taking the vacation from all the bullshit that comes along with being like all the things you have to pay to get to do the thing. Oh, yeah. Completely. Did you, speaking of Morrison, did you ever see that documentary about her? I think PBS did it. I think you can find it on Netflix or something, but a lot of it is about like some of the things it's just about her work habits. Yeah. And I mean, what is shocking to me is she has that full-time job at Random House as she's writing her first three or four books as she's raising these two kids on her own. A single mom. Yeah. In the seventies. Yeah.

20:27And, and there's like, there's, there's friends of hers in this documentary were talking about like what she's doing and she's like, okay, so now we're stuck. Uh, I think she's coming from Jersey to go into Manhattan and she's stuck, um, on whatever bridge it is. She's like, okay, I got five minutes. Literally. She's like, shut up for five minutes. She'll write something here down. Right. Cause it's to, to your point, the reason I bring it up is because it's like, you're like, there's this element of it recharging you and her friends were like, this is crazy but she's like no no this is actually the moments in which i'm saying because i'm trying to get to this point where like this is the life that i can lead full time and she ultimately gets there yeah right but it's like well i love those too because people go i don't have time to write and it's like fuck you you don't have time to write like so many people who had it so much worse than you found time to write says the author of what like 15 books now what is you definitely have time to write.

21:19And like, you also don't have to blow up your life to go do it. You think you do, but you don't. And in fact, actually, if you don't blow up your life, if you have your day job or your side or whatever the thing is, it'll actually give you more runway to get better at the thing. You know what I mean? And, and like, I always say like, I would want to look at your schedule first and I would want definitive proof that the other thing that you're doing is actually taking you away from writing time. Because I think what would happen is you would quit your job and then you would still, you know, not make time to do the thing.

21:57If you're not making time to do the thing now, you're not going to make time to do it when you have unlimited time. No. You're fooling yourself. So like the first book, The Saboteur, I'm at ESPN. Yeah. My kids are – the boys were like maybe a year old, maybe 18 months when I got that deal. Great book, by the way. One of my favorites. But I'm writing it. I get up at four, between four and 4.30. I make this like early morning breakfast, coffee or tea, whatever. And then I'm writing by five. And my thing every day was I'm writing until 7 or 7.30 because that's when I have to help with the kids before I need to then get ready myself so then I can then go to ESPN.

22:42And then I was working at the time as a writer and editor, predominantly an editor at ESPN. Anyway, and then my days would be at night I would come home, spend time with the kids, do a little bit of reading. Marilynne Robinson has this great thing where she's like your days should be – or rather I mirrored what she said. She's like my days are very simple. I write in the morning I teach in the afternoon and I read at night and I'm like oh that's kind of mirrors my was my schedule right right teach edit whatever and then read late at night people would say to me how the hell did you do that yeah and it's actually became easy because every day it's like there is no fucking around I am at 5 a.m.

23:20I am sitting down I am writing I'm writing until 7 or 7 30 and that's as much time as I can have for that day and it just became it took actually to know there was a starting point and i would say this to anybody that's listening that wants to start to write more i would say start writing yes but actually know when you're going to end for the day because that way you're like oh i i whatever i'm going to do i'm going to get done in this amount of time and then i'm going to stop like hemingway i think i think you know this or you've talked about you're supposed to stop halfway through a sentence or whatever yeah i actually have found that to be the case this book was actually much easier because it was I could start around 8 30 or 9 a little bit more leisurely and I could be I mean, I don't know.

24:00I I would I like both books, but I think this is a little bit more thoughtful in some ways. Um, and and I think in some sense, it's just a reflection of the fact that like I had literally a little bit more time every day to spend with what I wanted to get done. Uh, Graham Green, I follow, I mean, we could just geek out on writers we love for like two hours, but like Like he used to say 500 fresh words every day. And so I really like that too, because it's like, if you allow me to, I'll just futz around with the stuff that I, like editing the stuff that I wrote yesterday. And that'll eat up my two and a half hours.

24:35But if it's the 500 fresh words, it's like, okay, now I have to get the words down. So that was really a part of this. As I've been doing this longer, I've actually lowered the threshold. So like my thing was a certain amount of time, then it was a certain amount of pages, then it was a certain amount of words or whatever. Now I just go, I have to make a positive contribution every day. Oh, do you like that? And so it's very low. So like literally today, I fucked with like one sentence. Yeah. Because the schedule got eaten up by a bunch of stuff. I have to drive to Dallas tonight. Like my schedule today was artificially compressed because it's something else I'm doing.

25:14and so like i'm not going to let myself off the hook be like i don't have to do it today but i just so sometimes that positive contribution is i write a whole chapter sometimes that positive contribution is just editing sometimes it's i i wrote this thing on a note card and i'm just going to figure out where that goes and then i'm going to go on to the next thing so like i think people underestimate the power of small but consistent contributions yeah right so even 500 words a day. That doesn't sound like a lot, but if your manuscript has to be 75, 80, 100 ,000 words, seems like a lot, actually 500 words a day is not that many days, right?

25:56It's about 10 months if you go like five or six days a week. Yeah. And there are going to be days when you write way more than 500 words. And so knowing that if I just make a positive contribution every day, after a certain amount of days, I will have a editable manuscript, not a publishable manuscript, but I will have, at one point I had nothing and now I have this many pages. And I know that because I've been through the, I know the process of, okay, it started nothing. Now it's this many pages and then it becomes this many pages and then it becomes this. Like I know the process of refining and editing and pop, like I just, I just know how it takes the raw material thing and turns it into the publishable thing.

26:44So I've, I've just, I've gotten much more comfortable and much less hard on myself in the sense that I just, I just know I need to show up every day and do something. And that, that generally gets me where I want to go. Yeah. King, King was talking about his line of work. Uh, you may never see the entire staircase. case we just take the next step. Yeah, that's beautiful. Sure. But it completely applies to like what you and I do for a living too. Well, I was thinking about that as a writer, because the idea is like, you could die at any moment, right? You could be canceled. Your publisher could go out of business.

27:17The contract could be canceled, right? All these things that could happen that could prevent the outcome from happening, right? And so if the outcome is not in your control, does that mean the process is not worthwhile? Well, that would suck. You know what I mean? Am I only doing this because I need to get it done, get it out, get paid, get interviewed, celebrated for, awarded for? Well, that seems like a really shitty reason to do it. And, and so getting, getting more to a place where I go, did I get it to the best place that it could be as of this moment that I am stopping? Right. And that's kind of the standard that I have.

28:03So, so it's like, Hey, like, um, if, uh, if, if I died and then someone opened up my laptop and pulled out the manuscript, would they be like, Ooh, Ryan was really fucking wasting his time, he should have been further along? Or would they go, this is the best manuscript that Ryan was capable of producing up until the moment he was unexpectedly cut down. And that's kind of the standard that I judge day to day. And then that also allows me when it is finally done and comes out, I've already been celebrating success so many times every single day along the way that the day of publication is just one further day.

28:50It's not the moment everything has been leading up to. And don't you find that if you are thinking about the result, be it publication day, the reviews and the times, the bestseller lists, whatever, that film options, like if and when any of those things happen, it's sullied because you're thinking about how awesome it's going to be. I'm reading a lot right now of a lot of just wisdom literature. I had just finished reading the Bhagavad Gita. Have you ever read that? So just this recurrent idea through all of it about how it's like, basically, everything is a process. And as soon as you become results-driven, you are no longer aligned with yourself or aligned with God.

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31:45Yeah, well, now it's tied to what the Stokes say. It's tied to what other people say or do, right? As opposed to what you say or do. And so it's not in your control. It's not worthwhile. It's also, I think, just at a much more practical level, if I'm writing and then I have one eye or kind of directed over here about how I hope it's going to do, how I want it to do. That's not time that's focused. So just from a resource allocation perspective, not being focused on the moment, the thing you're supposed to be doing, but thinking about the outcome at the end of the process is taking away time, energy, resources from the process itself.

32:31And it happened for me even, so we're on vacation, right? My family's from Houston, my wife's family excuse me so the drive here today right uh there was a part of me that was like i wonder i wonder if i should say this or that yeah man i hope it goes well and suddenly i'm like dude like your your kids are in the back like you're on vacation you get to go through the suburbs and the exurbs of houston i mean like whatever it's like not great but it's also like this is this is the family time that you have and also the thing with i was like the thing with ryan today is going to be the thing with Ryan today.

33:04It's going to kind of be whatever it's going to be. Sure. Right. Yeah. And I, and so that, I don't know if it's just an age thing. I don't know if it's just the sort of books that I'm reading now. Um, but I'm just like, I just am focused so much more on just the day-to-day process of everything. Well, I think self-consciousness is the enemy of a lot of stuff, right? When you're like, what am I doing? You're stepping out. You're like, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? How's it going to go? How do I want it to go? All that is taking you out of the thing that you're supposed to be in, which is either being in the car or then later the thing you're supposed to be doing.

33:37Like, I'm doing a talk tomorrow, which I have to drive to Dallas. And there's this kind of like, there's this tension between like wanting to prepare and then being in your head about it and not just doing the thing I've done literally hundreds and hundreds of times. Yeah. Is it a talk you've given before? A talk? This is a new, it's a, I'm having to put together a new talk, which I'm kind of in the middle of doing like across the board. So also I'm just trying to go like, you have to get better at this talk you're doing. So just if this one isn't going to be as good as it ultimately is going to be, but you have to accept that this one is going to be whatever it is.

34:13So you can, the next one can be better and the next one can be better, but just, just going like, Hey, I'm pretty good at this thing. I've trained a lot for this thing let me just do this thing as opposed to being stressed up until and through the thing and then afterwards going oh that wasn't so bad you know like I know that's how I'm going to feel after so why can't I give myself the gift a little bit of that right now so our mutual friend Wright Thompson yes so I worked with Wright edited Wright for like 10 years what are the greatest he's fantastic The editor before me, this guy named Jay Wright, Jay had this thing when he was working with Wright where he's like, it's not even about this story, man.

35:00It's about the writer you'll be in five years. He's like, keep challenging yourself. Bomb this story. Get marginally better at the next. Get better still. That was the trajectory that he set him on. I was like, my God, that is brilliant. Yeah. Because again, it's about writing, but also not. It's kind of like just know along the way that this is one step, one iteration of where you ultimately want to be. And what seems like an ending is sometimes only the beginning. Sure. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I sometimes think like all the work that I'm doing, this might seem paradoxical because we're just talking about only being in the moment, but I go like, all this is leading up to a book that I haven't even conceived of yet.

35:45like, I think about Michael Lewis and the Big Short, which is one of the greatest nonfiction books of all time, but also a massive hit, sort of conscious, you know, consciousness changing book. You know, like, you don't write a book about a financial crisis that gets read by millions of people and then turned into a huge movie if you don't do something right. But I think about basically all the books that Michael Lewis wrote. And people, he's written a lot more books than people think he has, because a lot of them didn't really work or didn't, were of their time. Very much of their time. Yeah, like he wrote a book about the tech bubble.

36:20Yeah, the new, new thing. Yes. I love that book. And then he wrote another one called like Next or something that like came out like on September 11th or something. Really, it's too bad. But like everything that he went through in his life led up to the moment where she had a unique angle on the financial crisis. And then he wrote the definitive thing on that topic, right? And so you just don't know what the, like, I like what I'm doing now and I'm totally immersed and engaged in what I'm doing now. And I also go, even if it doesn't work or it's not fully what I want it to be, what I'm telling myself is it's prepping you for some moment that you don't know.

36:59Maybe it's not even a book, right? Maybe it's some medium I can't conceive, or maybe it's just a chance to apply the things that I've written about in the books. But just this idea that you're preparing for something and that all this stuff is reps or practice for something in the future. Yeah.

37:22I've been lifting weights since I was 14. And one of the things that I do now, when I think about weightlifting is I think about how you actually need to press the reps to the point where you are exhausted because that is the point at which those reps actually become efficient. And what does that mean? Efficient for your body. And what does that mean? Well, the next time you do it, now you can do perhaps a half rep more. Right. It's like the first 10 don't matter. It's the 11. And my boys and I, we run now and Muhammad Ali was great about this. Like he was like, You don't count the sit-ups until they hurt.

37:59He's like, you don't count the running until you're exhausted. And they're getting into it now. And we're like, we're going to go for an Ali run. That's what we call it now. That's so great. But I mean, I say that to you if only because just to echo what you're saying about how in more and more facets of my life, I see that the key to me just, I don't know, like living well, broadly speaking, is just applying a practice where you see everything as practice in some sense, everything as another rep. And like even the weightlifting is actually a great example because you can lift weights for three months and you won't see shit happen.

38:41But if you lift weights for three years, then it's like you have to delay that gratification for such a long time. Well, that's something you definitely experienced with books too, where it's like the first couple months, it doesn't feel like anything's happening and it hasn't come together yet. And then there's this moment where I always get really excited where I sort of call I'm on the downhill side of it, which is like, I got to the peak and now I'm just wrapping up everything. So it's like the book came together, the style came together, the message came together, and now everything, like now it's operating under its own power, you know?

39:18And, and I think that's true for a lot of good habits. Like there are habits, good habits I have now where it's easier to do the thing than not do the thing. Like I actually need like, did you have to shut it down? The discipline is to stop, do it, to, to take a rest day or to not be stressed about it. Or so, you know, take one as a mess up or whatever. Um, and that, that's when you're on the, you, you've built the thing into muscle memory now, now it's operating under its own power. That's what you want. So I love the book. I thought we'd start too with, um, not actually Birmingham. I, the, the, there's this moment in the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott that I find really interesting, which is so Rose Park, you know, sits down or refuses to stand up.

40:04And first off, I think to me, that's a just seminal moment in the civil rights movement, because like people just see her as this old lady that like just decided not to do a thing one day, right? As opposed to a lady who trained at a school for activists, right? And also was a secretary at, you know,

40:28the NCAA, right? What's it? NAACP? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I don't know why I'm forgetting. But she's in the heart of the movement, trained for the movement, and then the moment comes, she does it. and then um but it catches everyone by surprise it's not it wasn't like a conspiracy in the sense that everyone agreed that this was the stand they were taking this is when they were taking it and they um you know they're all sort of like that forces their hand right because now she's arrested and she's going to be prosecuted for it and they're sort of having to decide what they're going to do about it and as my understanding of the scenes so they all get together and they're like, well, maybe this isn't the moment.

41:10And I think it was Shuttlesworth said something like, you all have been eating these women's fried chicken for too long, you know, to not to leave them hanging here. Right. And so it's like this, this little lady forces their hand and he says something like, what are you cowards? And Martin Luther King raises his hand and says, I am not a coward. And to me, that's the beginning of the civil rights movement right there is she calls everyone's bluff and then Martin Luther King Jr. steps forward. He accepts, that's the call to adventure in the hero's journey right there. Are you a coward? And he says, no.

41:52No. And yet he feels like one, right? Because like well after that point, he feels that he should not be leading in Montgomery. Just as almost a decade later, he feels like he should not be leading in Birmingham. He doesn't feel – and there are many times where he doesn't exactly exude leadership in Birmingham. But at the same time, what I love about him is this – he's talking about like the call to action. It's like even though I have so much trepidation around this, he would later write how the only reason he felt that he was selected was because literally he had read a ton of books and he had gone to like the seminary equivalent of elocution school.

42:32Like he could speak really well, right? Like, oh, you're awesome in front of everybody else. That's why you should lead. He's like, I don't actually feel that I'm a leader. And there's so many times like people in history, it's the very people who don't think that they should lead are sometimes actually the people who should. Yeah. Did you read that book? The Captain's Class by Sam? No. What's his name? Oh, is he that Wall Street Journal guy? Yes. Yeah. Or was it the Wall Street Journal? Yeah. He wrote a piece and I think he's working on a book about it where it's called like the Eisenhower Paradox or something, which is that basically the best leaders don't want to be leaders.

43:01and that they are called to it in some way and they wrestle with whether they should do it or not. And that it's the people who want it very badly that tend to do very badly, but also are the ones you should kind of be suspicious of. And there is this kind of reluctance in Martin Luther King that is very interesting. It's only, yeah, because he basically gets called out that he goes, fine, and nobody else does. Like, that's the other thing. he basically realizes that if somebody else had said they would do it, he would have gladly allowed them to do it. But, but you know, there's that Hillel thing, like if not me, then who?

43:40Yeah. Those are the moments that I think real leaders emerge when you have to go, literally no one else is going to do this. I have to do it. Can I tell you my favorite moment from Montgomery? It gave me like so many chills. And I was like, I got to find a way to work this in the book. And then I did. So, cause mine's like very much which is about the 10 weeks in Birmingham, right? So somewhere in Montgomery, I want to say like two, three months in, they're starting to gain some traction, right? They're starting to have a little bit of success. And it's some member of the Klan and or the Montgomery establishment who calls him one night.

44:13And by that point, he had learned that he has to answer the phone otherwise, because if Coretta's answering it, she's going to freak out, right? And they had, I think, one kid then. And I think it was the oldest. I think she was still a baby. So he picks up and the guy's like in a Southern Triangle. Listen, N-word, we've had about enough of you. And it's like, if you don't leave town, you're going to really not like it before next week. Yeah. And there was something about this sort of maliciousness in the tone and the specificity before next week that just set him on edge. And so he's like, it's the middle of the night.

44:53He wakes up. and he um he goes downstairs and he makes this pot of coffee he's like i'm not gonna sleep anymore and he and he's like in the way he described it in a later later piece of writing he said i just was like i started to pray and he's like god i don't think i can lead in this moment i don't think i can even lead he's like i i want to give up like i just want you to basically tell me how I can step away from all of this. And he said that he felt this sort of rush and this spirit uplift him. And he said that that voice was telling him, this is not the end. This is not the time in which you should step down.

45:42And he said he felt so very buoyed by this that he was like the circumstances around remained exactly the same, but suddenly my perspective had shifted. And it was that shift in perspective that allowed him to continue to lead in Montgomery. And by the way, that threat was not idle. Two days later, his home in Montgomery was bombed, but he continued to lead after that. And he had this, he felt so buoyed by that until Birmingham, where he had another sort of crisis of conscious and crisis of spirit and everything else. But reading that, I was just like, whoa. Because something that I always love is those moments in anyone's life where it's like, you can choose to see any situation however you see fit.

46:35And if you are a person of faith, you'll say, well, God was telling King in this moment, here's how you can choose to see this differently. But again, I don't think it has to be necessarily religious. I think it could be a secular interpretation. I think the Stoics would have written a lot about this, right? Like every situation is completely ours to, it's our perspective that we want to impose upon it. Sure. I just love that.

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49:46Yeah. And also I think, you know, we do the civil rights movement, this great disservice when one, we act like its success was preordained. And then two, that everyone was on board with it, you know, except a few bad people. like this is obviously one of the things that I thought was so interesting in the saboteur is you just assume that like there's really not a clear, a more clear moral situation than your country is invaded and occupied by the Nazis, right? And so everyone sees this as an illegitimate invasion. Even Hitler's like not fucking like Hitler's not saying I should be able to do this.

50:29He's saying I am able to do this, right? It's not cloaked in any sort of, it's not even a pretext, like Putin's invasion of Ukraine, right? Like, it's just like a naked aggression and violence and then dominance, right? And so you would go, obviously, everyone resisted. Yeah. You know, that the French resistance was widely popular, you know, widely participated in, and it's like 5%. Oh, it's, yeah. It's somewhere, the scholars would like to put it somewhere between 5 % active. Maybe up to 20 % between active and inactive, meaning like some people might have just said, oh, let's turn this sign around or whatever.

51:08Yeah, or unless somebody's doing something, I won't actively turn them in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we think with the civil rights movement that, of course, everyone was on board in the North and all the good people in the South. But it was incredibly unpopular, and it started effectively from nothing. Yeah. And this was all willed into existence by not just courage, but also immense discipline and strategy. Did you read Tom Ricks' book, Waging the Good War? Was that the one on the generals? No. He wrote a book about the generals in Iraq, and then he wrote this great book on the founding fathers called First Principles.

51:49But he wrote a history of the civil rights movement from the perspective of a military historian. Oh, I bet that's amazing. I have in the store, I'll give it to you. But he wrote about it as if they were military strategists waging a campaign, which they - Which they were. Like in this, D-Day and double D-Day very intentionally. Yeah, yeah. And so thinking about like, again, we think about it as just being morally correct and then also sort of upright and dignified, you know, walking in a protest, but that it was so much closer to a sort of both a military campaign and then this sort of spiritual warfare against both the opponent and then against yourself.

52:38Like in that King story, like the real enemy there is the fear and the despair and the crisis of confidence that would make you quit. Like, that's what the genius of the civil rights movement was that. It was the way in which it was waged and that it was continually waged. And we sort of just study it as this thing that happened that needed to happen. But it's so profoundly more than that. It's so much more than that. And so, like, by 1963, all right, they had had nothing but abject failure. You can say, okay, the Montgomery bus boycott, successful. Yes. However, people in Montgomery were riding in the back of the bus by 1963 as if it's 1943.

53:23It reverted back. It reverted back. Right. And that's because of the intransigence of the Klan. That's because of just sort of the intransigence of the Alabama government. Sure. Local or statewide. Everything that King had done from 55 to 63 was a failure. they were down the sclc southern christian leadership conference to their last 500 right other civil rights groups openly sneer at king john lewis's snick they called him a phony they called him de laud because he hadn't put his body on the line put his body on the line they thought that he was like just this middle-aged dude who was who had this pomposity and speech and the way he dressed and he was in no way related to the movement anymore and the people the young people who were really at the focus of it in the forefront of it in addition to that where they staged the campaign birmingham easily the most violent most racist place in bombing bombing ham yeah right so like so like when i go on and uh on any tour thing or anything i talk about this like one of the things i always say is like let us assume that we don't know actually what Birmingham was, even if we've seen those grainy images of fire hosed kids.

54:39Bombingham, 50 unsolved bombings in Birmingham. And that's all of them against black owned businesses, where predominant black residents lived. The Klan castrated a black man as a means to intimidate Fred Shuttlesworth and King before they came down. Police raped black women in their patrol cars. CBS's Edward R. Murrow goes down to Birmingham prior to 63, and he goes to his producer as he leaves town. I have not seen any place like this since Nazi Germany. That's Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. They choose it because they know that if they are able to go to like the very site of domestic terror and anger every terrible white person there, well, then what they can really do is this idea that sort of arises throughout the whole civil rights movement.

55:37Let us turn our bodies into vessels of suffering, right? Because if we can do that, then we can basically get to the conscience of white America. And that's where the change actually happens. Yeah. I think it was Shuttlesworth, he said something like, the sheriff is not after you, you are after the sheriff. Yeah. And so when you think about it, again, as this campaign to go at the enemy, both passively and actively, it changes how you see it. I write about Gandhi in the book that I'm doing a lot now. And it is kind of remarkable just to back way up almost 100 years, which is crazy. When we think, I don't know when I thought Gandhi was born, but I wouldn't have guessed like the 1860s.

56:22Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And I really didn't know anything about what Gandhi had done in South Africa because even like the movie, the movie starts with him like leaving South Africa, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, you know, he made all this stuff in South Africa. This is where he invented all this stuff. But just the idea of it being this kind of organized campaign to undermine illegitimate authority and to attack it on every front possible and understand that when it's attacked on every front possible, it will be overwhelmed, it will overreact, and it will reveal its own moral degradation was so profoundly brilliant, both when Gandhi came up with it and then when King sort of elevates it to its highest level, is I think just not understood enough.

57:18Like people go, oh, this thing happens, let's go march. Marching was not, marching was only happening during the civil rights movement because marching was not legal. They were not, they were legally not allowed to do that. And so by doing it, they were inviting a police reaction, which would then show the police reaction to be illegitimate, right? Like the parades where they got the permits were not the notable parades of the civil rights movements. It was marching despite a court injunction, despite barricades. It was knowing what was on the other side of the bridge waiting for them in Selma.

58:03Protesting was not the thing. The thing was the clash against illegitimate authority. And so also understanding that today, to flash forward, marching is accepted and allowed as a release valve to distract a movement from actually getting to attack. It's like they're sacrificing pawns. They don't care about, like the fact that they're allowing you to do it means it's probably not worth doing. Yeah. So a couple of things. Number one, to echo off what you're just saying, I think that 1963 is actually America's origin story and Birmingham, Alabama is actually America's origin story because it's not 1776, right?

58:47It's not 1863 either. The Emancipation Proclamation is signed, yes, but then for the next 100 years, we have Jim Crow lynching everything that is terrible about the South and frankly as it extends further north. It's still a country that is half free and half not free. The slavery doesn't exist, but it is not a democracy in a good half of the United States. No. And even in the North where the, quote, good liberals live and personified by the Kennedy brothers, right? By the early months of 1963, they want nothing to do with King. They want nothing to do with Birmingham. They have nothing to do with the Civil Rights Movement, right?

59:24All right. So for 100 years, nothing changes. And then Birmingham, Alabama happens and then everything changes, right? It's like, but so Kennedy sponsors civil rights, civil legislation says at the signing by ceremony, but for Birmingham, we wouldn't be here today. That leaves a civil rights act of 64 voting rights act of 65 King's death. Yes. I think it's the new life for his country as well. Sure. It's Shirley Chisholm's ability to run for president 72. It's the rise of the black middle and upper class in the latter half of the 20th century. it's it's obama's presidency but you know what it's really like far more personal for somebody like me because my wife sonia is black our three kids identify as black sonia and i are excuse me we're married in here in texas and former jim crow state like texas nothing like that happens our my life today does not happen if birmingham alabama did not happen 60 years ago this right Right.

1:00:25Right. Sure. Like, so like, that's why, like, that's why this thing is so personal to me. Sure. Um, and I feel that to what you were saying earlier about the sense that everything is preordained, we need to disabuse ourselves of that because that was not the case. Yes. Uh, and what the reason they succeeded in Birmingham, they very much had like Gandhi, like James Bevel had like the Gandhi lending library in Nashville and everybody was reading Gandhi. The point I wanted to make about Gandhi is, I don't know if you've come across this in your research. The ruling British in India, one of them, and I can get this quote if you need it.

1:01:07He said, what Gandhi is doing is worse than terrorism. and he said that because if we beat back Gandhi and all of his nonviolent protesters with the batons and everything at the ready, the British press here in India, the British diplomats who are seeing this happen, everybody that we are, basically we are the world power, right? Everybody's gonna say, how are you doing this, Great Britain? Like what sort of nation are you actually? Right, that's the famous line in the civil rights movement. He goes, how do you sleep at night? How do you face your children? And it's ripping the mask off of the oppressor is what Gandhi does and then they do in the civil rights movement.

1:01:51And if they were to have – okay, so like they – if they beat them back, they lose. Yeah. But if they cede to Gandhi, they lose nothing less than their authority in India. And everywhere. And everywhere. And that – everywhere is the part where you were just saying a moment ago where King elevates it, right? He's like, oh, that's how I win in the South. Because he had – he was trying to find a framework, right? He's like, how can I actually execute change, right? Oh, that's how we do it. Because he was fascinated by the fact that India becomes independent without a civil war. Yes. I mean, the tragedy of India is that the civil war happens after.

1:02:35But what's so incredible about Gandhi is realizing that for all of human history, if you wanted to orchestrate change or be an oppressor, you had to physically... destroy your enemy. Like how else had any movement, the American Revolution being a good example, succeeded, right? With arms. You have to beat them on the field of battle, or you have to wage some sort of guerrilla terrorist campaign until they give up and the occupier leaves. And the idea that there is this other means of doing so, and then in fact, that may be the most effective way of doing so is one of the greatest contributions to human history ever, ever created.

1:03:29And I mean, you could, you could go back and maybe go Thomas Clarkson and the sort of abolitionist movement is a version of that. That's changing something from the inside. But, but that's a singular issue. That's not a transformative change in government. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, what King does is I think, one of my favorite things is I think in 1963, he gives this talk, one of the ones in Washington, he goes, we're here to cash a check. And I love the idea also that what King does, what Gandhi does, is they both understand and believe in the religion and the psychology and the myths and the principles of the oppressor more than the oppressor does.

1:04:18And they use it against it. There's that Audre Lorde quote about how the master's tools will never be used to dissemble the master's house. That's actually fundamental. That's such a, that's so not true as to be almost the opposite of the truth. In fact, the great movements of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century are all precisely examples of that. They used the master's tools against, I mean, Martin Luther King is using the religion that was given to slaves against the descendants of the slaveholders to redefine and essentially refound America on its original principles. And the jujitsu of that is so fucking spectacular that it just sort of gives me goosebumps even to think about.

1:05:07Yeah. There's this great book. I think it's called, it's a really rough title. I think it's called like The Lynching Tree. And it's by this Harvard Divinity scholar who's black. And his argument is that true Christianity in America is actually represented by the people to whom it was given, African Americans. And he goes, the true message of leadership and how to be like Christ lives and has lived for the longest time in the black church. And how do we know that? Because of predominantly what happens on the streets. And he uses the civil rights movement and largely like the stuff that's happening in 63, 64, were the first real brushes with success as the linchpin for this whole argument across this book.

1:06:00It's a brilliant, brilliant book.

1:06:10I'm picking my kids up from school today and then doing our weekly routine, which is I take them over to Whole Foods. We get all our groceries for the week. Then we have dinner. It's one of their favorite things to do. It's one of my favorite things to do. And then my wife loves it because she doesn't have to take care of it. This holiday season, whether you're a guest or hosting the big dinner Whole Foods Market has what you need to delight everyone at your table. They even have heat and eat sides from the prepared foods department. You can make Whole Foods your one-stop shop. Everything follows Whole Foods Market's strict ingredients standards so you know it'll be delicious and good for you.

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1:08:27Yeah, the idea, I mean, that's what Gandhi gets introduced to Christianity when he's studying law in England and he hears the Sermon on the Mount. Yeah. And the crazy thing is that he fucking believes it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like he's like, oh, that's how you should live your life. These aren't just beautiful words on a page. This is a message for living. Ironically, it's a message, you know, propagated by people who like, you know, 200 ,000 Britons who are, you know, ruling over a hundred million Indians and not understanding, you know, that they are the living embodiment of the opposite of this message.

1:09:05But Gandhi, this sort of religious polyglot who loves anything that's good and noble and whatever, I mean, his biggest influence is probably Tolstoy and then Thoreau. And just the idea of like, what King did that's so brilliant is it's like, he actually took Thomas Jefferson at his word. Right. You know what I mean? He was like, that's what he meant when he said, I'm here to cash a check. He meant he's here to cash Jefferson's check and Lincoln's check. And it's like, you said this. I'm not, he wasn't trying to radically reimagine American society. He was trying to reorient it around what Americans purported to believe.

1:09:47And the brilliance of the jujitsu of those 10 weeks in Birmingham and then all the civil rights movement was basically a bunch of carefully orchestrated publicity stunts that took at immense personal risk and logistical, you know, acumen to show to Americans that you don't really believe what you say you believe, or you're not really acting on what you say you believe. And when he ripped the mask off, it was so morally repugnant and unconscionable that enough of it eventually, you know, brings about a series of changes, which are still, you know, struggling to hold up even now. Like now you could argue we're in this sort of third reconstruction.

1:10:34We're trying to cash the checks that we wrote to Martin Luther King, but that's what he pulls off. Yeah. So the logistical and psychological warfare is probably the correct word because what the SCLC is doing against Bull Connor is just trying to, in some ways, incite him to act as they know that he really wants to, right? Like he is one of the most vile human beings you will ever encounter. And he's doing his absolute best to not be vile for the duration while King is down here. And guys like Wyatt Walker and Shuttlesworth and James Bevel, and to a certain extent King, every day is another, come on, like draw yourself, draw you out, draw you out.

1:11:26And the idea is if we can just fill the jails, then we will leave Bull no choice, but to act the way that he really wants to. And that's what they ultimately do. But it's like the reason that Birmingham is so violent is because it was the first time that the SCLC said, we are going to choose a location where we don't know if we will win, but we do know that we will suffer. Yeah. Isn't it also the first time that they used children? Yeah. That's – well, the way that – yes. The way that they ultimately do. And like nobody – no adult in Birmingham wanted to protest alongside King. And some of this is just sort of provincial disputes.

1:12:07Like a lot of black Birminghamians had heard of King for the last seven years. And I'm like, we know what you're going to do. You're going to come in here. You're going to grandstand. And then you're going to leave. And we're going to be – and if we protest alongside you, we're not going to have jobs because all of our bosses – They're going to call in our mortgages, fire us from our jobs. Because we all work for white people here. Yes. Right? And nobody wants us to protest. Right. But the only – so James Bevel is like, well, the one group of people that we don't – that want to protest here. There's one constituency.

1:12:35It's children. And he tells us to King. King is like, we just mentioned the thing that Morrow said, right? Like against people that are akin to not, to fascists? That's who we're going to. We're going to put kids on the front line. We're going to set kids to be hit with fire hoses and dogs and police batons. Yeah. And he's like, yeah, we are. And there's like this, it's, again, like the stuff that happens on Double D Day is some of the really, really horrific stuff. There were war correspondents. there's like, I've never seen anything like this in my entire life. Yeah. Again, because the movement is so morally correct in retrospect, we don't credit or appreciate the pragmatism and the savvy and then the ruthlessness of it, right?

1:13:24Like that decision - Callousness. Like these are men of faith, right? These are men of faith who are saying, We are going to do something that other men of faith see as incredibly sinful. Yeah. Well, it's the equivalent of the general going, I'm sending this regiment or division over here to be decimated, basically as a distraction or a feint or as an attrition, you know, starting at some battle of attrition. But I know it will have this effect. Like that hard life and death decision is one that they end up having to make over and over again. And again, not fully appreciated because we just go, they made some signs and they got together.

1:14:13And then sometimes they got mean things were yelled at them. But no, it was, it's the third revolution in American history. and it's just as much a war as, you know, Gettysburg or Vicksburg and any of the battles in the American Revolution. Can we talk about the fire hoses actually for a second? All right. So the fire hoses are meant to dislodge mortar from bricks. Yeah. They are meant to strip bark from trees at a distance of up to 100 feet. Yeah. It strikes some kids at about 30. It disintegrates clothes. Yeah. It rips hair from hairlines, It effectively scalps kids. It cartwheels kids end over end over end.

1:14:56It leaves them screaming in agony and pain. It's like literally there's this raw footage that like even PBS won't show of these firefighters training this hose on this girl. And she's sliding down and they just keep it on her. She slides down like the sidewalk is a slide, right? She's just screaming. Then the dogs are loose. There's an eight-year-old boy who is attacked at the throat and the dog is just ripping him this way and that, right? Right. They're doing all of that because they know that, well, this is the logical extension of turn our bodies into vessels of suffering, into metaphors of the black experience itself.

1:15:32They're doing it because of the footage that you just mentioned. They're doing it because they know that this sort of footage and like this image that is in the background of this book is of a 15-year-old named Walter Gadsden. Yeah, you can barely see it, but it's the famous German shepherd. Yeah, he's feasting on Walter, right? I think the fact that that is a German shepherd, you know what I mean? Like, is important. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And like they had the most vicious German shepherd was a black one they called the N-word, like the police department, right? So like that's, they're all trained to do this.

1:16:08But it's that image the next day that runs across three columns of the New York Times. And it's that image that John F. Kennedy says makes me sick. And it's that day for the very first time in John F. Kennedy's life that he begins to reassess, am I actually correct on this issue of civil rights? And that is exactly what King wanted. He wanted all these kids to suffer so that it could get to the conscience of Jack and Bobby sitting in the White House. Yeah. He says something like, we're going to use the powers of persuasion, but we're also going to use the power of coercion. King says this. And it's both, right?

1:16:43The persuasion is coercing the political action because the image that they are shoving in the president's face and in the world's face and the North's face over and over and over again is so awful that it eventually compels some form of action, action that, you know, had been politically inconvenient for a hundred years yeah yeah and it's like okay so you extend that timeline if 19 this is why i really think it's the origin story when i've actually been attacked a little bit on a book tour like this isn't really the origin story like but yeah but think about it because like if 1963 doesn't happen do we get to where we are today perhaps but there were i mean as early as 1865 there was a there was a civil rights bill because already black people were saying, we are not fair and equal.

1:17:37We added three amendments to the constitution, right? For this very reason. And then the Supreme court decided to interpret them the exact opposite of the way they were meant to be read for a hundred fucking years. For a hundred years. So like, what's to say it wouldn't have continued? There is nothing to say that, right? So when we're talking about the brutality and the callousness that's necessary, Part of that calculation is literally like, it's been a hundred fucking years, right? Well, how long does, when does the regime in South Africa finally fall? Like it could have gone on well into the seventies and eighties.

1:18:11I mean, you know, maybe it's inevitable, but it's not like a year later it's happening. We could be, we could be just freshly dealing. I mean, communism lasts until the nineties. So like it could have lasted a lot longer. Well, even the, and I can never pronounce this word, misogynation. Yes. There are those - The black and white intermingling. Yeah, can't marry. When Sonny and I were getting married, we went to the courthouse and we'd have to fact check this, but in my recollection, it's something like there were those laws on Texas's books into the 1980s. Just being ignored. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

1:18:47Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, I feel like coming out of World War II, there's been a whole bunch of literature on like, what makes a concentration camp guard do what they do? Yeah. Right. Why did Germans go along with it? Why did they? And because America doesn't see itself as capable of something like that, I don't think we have fully explored the psychology of the person holding that firehouse, the person whose dog is on this leash. Right. Or what makes Jerry fucking Jones head on down to the day that Little Rock High School is integrated and stand and jeer in the audience? Like, that part, what is that psychology?

1:19:30Like, do you know what I mean? I feel like we just don't want to think about the level of sheer malevolence and evil. Again, it wasn't like, you drink at this drinking fountain, I drink at this drinking fountain. It was, I'll fucking murder you and your family or just anyone that looks like you. Yeah. If you even talk about going towards my drinking fountain. Do you know what I mean? Like, the level of oppression and state-sponsored violence that was carried out by individuals, individuals some of whom are still alive is i don't think fully reckoned with at all no it's not and then like faulkner in some sense his whole career is built around that idea of like this willed ignorance right of what the south is actually about but even now you can you you can and should more people should write and understand that because you hit on something that i so dislike when we think that we are above acting like anybody else.

1:20:36If the civil rights movement proves nothing else, it proves that we've already been as bad as everybody else. Well, first off, people need to understand - Well, actually, slavery proves that point even better. But everyone's complicit in this, right? But the Nazis study American Jim Crow laws as the precedent for their anti-Jewish laws. So it's not just like we could be bad. We were the original bad guys in this sense. And then even though lots of Southern people went to Nazi, went to Germany and fought and died to get rid of one of the worst regimes in human history, they came back and fitted right back into how things had been done for a long time.

1:21:18Yeah. And yeah, the psychology of that evil, I don't, I don't, like it occurred to me because I interviewed Ernest Green, who's one of the Little Rock Nine. And I realized my grandmother was from Arkansas. And so I was asking my relatives, he's like, my grandmother went to Little Rock High School before it was integrated, you know? And it like, so, and I mean - Did she ever talk about it? No, she died when I was very, very young, prematurely. But just the idea of like, like I'm, the idea that, yeah, it was a few bad apples. or that it was like, we just don't want to think about the evil that was commonplace and widely accepted.

1:22:07And evil is really like the only word for it. Like this, that was a person whose children are almost certainly still alive and grandchildren are definitely still alive. And that energy is in the American story and in the American DNA and the refusal to reckon with it, I think, is the root of a lot of the problems we have today. But just, yeah, just sitting down and going, where does that come from? You know, what is that? And it doesn't just go away because you eliminated one of the outlets in which that was publicly and legally acceptable. Yeah. So it's, in Birmingham, you've got, first off, present day, you can still see the literal, you go downtown, the literal lines of demarcation between black and white Birmingham.

1:23:01And I think in some ways, Birmingham is forced to wrestle with it, uh, because the Birmingham civil rights Institute is, is a real sort of like leading institution. When I was, it, right after the book came out, I went down to Birmingham for the 60th anniversary celebration. And there were some of the kids who are now in their seventies or eighties, some of the child protesters. And I'd had a chance to speak with some of them prior. And a lot of their oral histories had already been assembled, but I had a chance to talk with a lot of them. And I was asking a version of this question, which is, okay, do you feel that your life was worth it?

1:23:47I tried to phrase this as diplomatically as I could, but it was like, did you succeed right is it better and sometimes the answer was no it's not right like sometimes it's like we have a certain level of equality now absolutely and i'm so very proud of that but there were a couple of activists who were like in some ways it's just like it's the same old city that it's always been. And she said to me, I think it's because despite what we do here at the Civil Rights Institute, the message is not as widely spread as it should be. The history is not. And just as a follow-up to that, later that day, it was amazing.

1:24:38I got invited to be a part of this 60th anniversary celebration at 16th Street Baptist Church. And all these school kids are bused in to take part in it. Not a single white kid in the entire church. Right. All black students. And it was supposed to be open to all Birmingham public schools. Now, I don't want to call out Birmingham. I mean, actually, I do want to call out Birmingham like that. Right? Yeah. Just to echo the broader point that we're talking about. Right? Like there's still, and not even in the South, this idea that we don't need to worry about this. We don't need to discuss this. We don't need to wrestle with this in some way.

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1:28:10Well, this is probably one of the flaws of nonviolent movements. So, right, we fight, we wage a war against Nazi Germany. the conditions are you know unconditional surrender we're overwhelming it's an overwhelming military alliance that eventually you know sort of conquers comes in hitler kills himself and then there's this period of denazification that is done at the point of a gun like not germany and japan are occupied by the by the uh victorious allied forces right and so they're able to enact a whole series of changes. The problem with the nonviolent movement is they're able to morally bring about, morally seize the high ground, bring about change, the passage of laws, but they don't have the ability, this is the same problem that happens after the Civil War because Reconstruction ends, to compel at the point of a gun or with the power of the state to compel the acceptance of said laws and hold the criminals, which had illegally seized and held power for 100 years, hold them accountable, right?

1:29:39That's one of the remarkable, like the Christian nature of the civil rights movement, keep your eyes on the prize. John Lewis famously, you know, 50 years later meets one of the people who beats him nearly to death and says, I forgive you, blah, blah, blah. But there are no trials after the civil rights movement where the Bull Connors of the world are, you know, there's no number of trial after the civil rights movement. Nobody hangs for it. Nobody goes to jail for it. but everything they did, yes, there was some, everything they did was fundamentally illegal, right? Like I think, I think I've tried to make this point about the Confederate monument that's down the street here.

1:30:18People go, oh, they put it up a long time. No, they did not do it. A group of people who had illegally seized power did this, right? Like people who at the point of a gun prevented other people from voting while at the same point of a gun demanded those people pay taxes, right? And then would politically intimidate them for any form of democratic expression of any way, circumscribing their life to a small section of town with a small, you know, series of opportunities available to them. They put up a statue using the public funds and the public land and said, this is our statue, right? Do you know what I mean?

1:31:00That's a criminal, not only is that just preposterous, but that is a criminal act. All of it was a criminal act. And we don't, it's hard to go, yeah, a hundred years of American history in a good chunk of the United States and in pockets all over was fundamentally illegitimate. Like people were,

1:31:25it's not even like, hey, like a gay marriage thing where people who love each other aren't allowed to get married. Those people could still vote. Those people could still do whatever they want, do largely whatever they want. What I think I try to explain about the civil rights movement is that this was an occupation. Yeah. Right? Gangs, this is similar to Al Capone, you know, like seizing the level of power. And then because it was based on forgiveness and nonviolence, as soon as they succeed, all the energy dissipates. Yeah. And there's no accountability and there's no fundamental change on other than the laws have changed.

1:32:06And it's, then you see the generations pass. And the only thing that really matters is in some respects, like, because a lot of those people still hold on to power. A lot of the white elected officials. And then there's just, in some sense, it ties back in with, in a weird way with like, I saw a parallel here between the saboteur and this insofar as after the war, after World War II in France, there was this giant myth that everybody participates, right? and then like 40 50 years later there's basically this truth-finding reconciliation like that's bullshit almost nobody did and so suddenly you have people who because it's now accepted by the entire society you have kids who are like well what did grandpa and grandma really do during the war and they were trying to like distance themselves from it and it's this huge hugely painful point for france and in the south to a certain extent and i'll mention you know right again like his family is very much involved with like the civil rights movement in its own way um but i know that there are other people and other families where it's just like it goes back to this idea of the willed ignorance right it's like we we don't want to talk about that that's the thing that's true like it's still too painful and so it's something that's not or not even too painful anymore.

1:33:32It's like, we just don't discuss it because we know we shouldn't. Yes. Yeah. Or we don't want to teach it because it'll make our kids feel bad. Because it'll make our kids feel bad. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, we, we may be literally the descendants of people who had a certain amount of power in whatever city. You know, one of the amazing things about the Kennedy administration, when they finally got on board is they were thinking about, should we do an Arkansas and should we bring in like the army to help, you know, what is it that we're bringing in here? And they're like, if we do that in Birmingham, then the problem is we're not just doing that in Birmingham.

1:34:04We're doing that in basically every other city and state that has flouted the law for all of this time. And again, yeah, great point because it's not just a Southern thing, right? And they're like, we can't enforce our rule of law, which basically everybody else sees as in the South or where else as illegitimate. So there has to be some other means. That's really a part where Bobby Bobby's Department of Justice was like, okay, now I think we have to actually move toward King and what he wants to do because we don't have really any other choice on our side. Yeah. And then once it happens, that used up all the political capital.

1:34:43Like once they succeeded, that used all the political capital, all the sympathy, and then everyone just went back to their lives. Yeah. And we're only now reckoning, I think, with some of the ways that that energy just gets redirected, right? Well, Jack Kennedy said just before the signing ceremony, he said to his commerce secretary, I'm going to sponsor this bill and I'm going to lose the support of liberals and Democrats in the South for a generation. He was wrong. Johnson. No, this is Kennedy before he died in June of 63. He was wrong about that. He lost him for two generations. And I think Johnson said the same thing.

1:35:23I just gave the Republicans the South. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like they still lost it, right? We still deal with this 60 years later, which is like why, I mean, the parallels that you see, there's ways in which the history, the South, all the stuff that lives on today. And that's why I just wanted to write it because it's like it's still very much something that's a part of our lives. Yeah, no, and I think studying it and appreciating what it actually took and what it actually was up against. That's the whole thing. And I think, you know, when people are like, oh, critical race theory, why are you teaching my kids about this?

1:36:01What does it say about you and your kids that you think your kids, like when I - Are they intellectually weak? No, no, when I read about Birmingham, I don't go, oh, Bull Connor, that's my people. You know what I mean? Like, I don't relate to Bull Connor. I relate to John Lewis and Martin Luther King and Fred Schultz. Those are the people. And if I actually need to see myself, well, there's plenty of Jewish intellectuals that come to the set. I can relate to the college students in Freedom Summer. If I need to actually see myself in these campaigns, that's also possible. But because I'm not actually a racist, I don't have trouble seeing myself in Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, I can see myself in the heroes of the story, right?

1:36:48Because that's the good part. Like Martin Luther King talks about how there's the north of the soul and the south of the soul. Like, what do you relate to, right? And I think you have to learn the actual story, what actually happened. So one, you understand how change is actually brought about, which is it's a vicious fight that it's about finding power and weakness and bring your power against the opponent's weakness, dominating them. Resting control wholly from the other. Yes, exactly. And then also understanding what you are up against because that energy is malevolent human dark matter that exists inside every person.

1:37:32And it was in your grandparents and your parents, and it's partly in you. And it is very possible. It is very American and also very human for bad actors, demagogues, et cetera, to activate that energy in people and exploit it and use it to make good people do bad things. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have this issue right now? I think you do actually. You've had to confront the idea of like the books that like you shouldn't be promoting or whatever, right? What do you mean? Like, are you banned books in some way? Like, are you fighting? I feel like I read something about you where you're fighting against that.

1:38:15We did a thing where we gave away a bunch of banned books here. We did a drag reading here. I mean, we got like legitimate death threats from it. And you go, oh, that's that fucking energy. It's the same thing, right? That's that energy. That's it. Because like, it exists in the 60. It's still there. And it will always be there. And it's not, by the way, a white thing. It's a person thing, right? Everybody has this malvalence in them in some way. Yes. It's in what way does it end up manifesting itself? I mean, yeah, it's like we did this reading here because we're friends with some families that have trans kids here.

1:38:50And there's a great pride organization here. And there was this stupid backlash in Texas about, you know, groomers and nonsense like this. And so we said, come do a reading here at the store. We'll do it in Pride Month. And we did it. And it's like, some person came to the store multiple times, and then you pull up this person's Instagram, they're holding a fucking assault rifle, and you're like, that energy, the same call that King gets, the same, you know, that lynching energy, it's there. And this is why I think it's really important that people who have platforms and stuff not only speak out about these things, but understand that when you're – what you think is just political correctness or when you think – like you are – I just – I try to think a lot about I don't want to carry water for or encourage that kind of energy.

1:39:41Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And, and the whole, the whole point is like, there are people who are vulnerable and exploited and don't have, you know, things. And there are people who like it that way and want to use those people as scapegoats. And you got to decide sort of what side are you on? Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, so I grew up in rural Iowa, right? And I go to a reading in Des Moines. uh and this teacher comes up afterward he says loved your book guess what there's no way i can talk about this in class because if i do i can be fired yeah i said how stupid and ridiculous is that and my state like i used to take tremendous pride yeah being from the midwest that i mean like if you want to talk about the history of iowa like it's we had we were we were integrated uh before the civil war right they were teaching kids of which whatever nationality whatever race the the real labor movement before the new deal happens in wisconsin yeah iowa is the fourth state to legitimize gay marriage before the progressive movements in new york and uh california can do it right?

1:41:03And there is always this strain of like, what is morally right? That's what we'll do. And this energy, this sense of, and it's a milder form to ban a book, but it's a representation of it all the same. Yeah. But to ban a book because you think it's going to groom your kid to be gay, first off, you're inherently implying that there's a problem with your kid being gay, that being gay is a thing that happens to people as opposed to a thing that they are. And then it's also using the power of the state to deprive people of the ability to express themselves and to consume what, and other people to consume what people have expressed.

1:41:45and uh that is that you know it's like uh what's that quote uh where they burn books eventually inevitably they will burn people that energy it only builds it's never satisfied right and it's dark fucking awful energy that yeah you see in the civil rights moment the the explosion of that energy into fucking horrible stuff, right? Horrible stuff. Like people like things the way that they are, but it's not enough. You know what I mean? Like they, they, um, they'll do very bad things to keep things the way that they are. If change scares them or threatens what they have. And, uh, it takes really courageous, organized, determined, you know, even you could say reckless people to challenge that.

1:42:39And that's what your book's about. Yeah. This was awesome, man. Yeah. I loved it. Thank you. Let's do it. Yeah, of course.

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