Charlamagne tha God Opens Up About His Depression & Childhood Trauma!

24:49So true.

24:53There's a lot of role models emerging now on the internet. You know, you think about like the Andrew Tates of the world and all of those conversations. And at the same time, what it is to be a man has become quite unclear in many respects, like gender roles. And there's a lot of, because of, you know, we're in the post -MeToo movement where a lot of inappropriate behavior was called out. And it's funny, a guy came up to me in a gym, lifetime gym, just down the road from here and Brooklyn yesterday. Came up to me 25 year old kid wearing a Barcelona shirt, tapped me on the shoulder, said, I love your podcast.

25:19I listened to it a lot. One question. He goes, I'm 25 years old. He goes, where do I find male role models? And I remember, I was with Will in the gym and I just remember thinking, it's so interesting, because I'm getting that conversation over and over and over again. I think what he's actually saying is like, what is a man in 2020 -14? And who do I model myself on? Because there is a lot of, you know, if you go on like Twitter, there's a crowd of people that are saying, Lamborghini, 17 women, Rolex, loads of money. And I'm not necessarily sure that's a great example either. And then you look at the stats around suicideality amongst men.

26:00In the UK where I'm from, the single biggest thing that has the chance of killing you is suicide. If you're over the age of 18 and under the age of 45, it's a man. It's yourself. And I just think about put all this in context, this sort of like looking for role models, masculinity is really unclear. We've called out men, do we need to call them back in? What matters? If you got a young son, you've got some. You've got all girls. I've got four girls. Yeah, me and my wife got four daughters. I guess it just depends what you're trying to model. Like we use that term role model, but what does the term role model mean?

26:35Because, you know, you can only model yourself after what somebody shows you. You can only model, you know, yourself off what somebody presents. So if you like that person's Lamborghini, if you like that Rolex, if you like the clothes that they got on, if you like the jewelry, then you're going to say to yourself, okay, that's what I want. So that's what you're modeling. You're not necessarily modeling the man. You're modeling the man's things. You know, you might as well be a mannequin. You might as well be looking up the mannequins. You know, it's hard to like really, you know, model yourself after somebody.

27:11You know, personality after somebody's morals, after somebody's values, after somebody's beliefs, because you don't necessarily know exactly what they are. And especially on social media, you just know what people present. So you got to be very careful of that. Like I would tell people, man, you know, yeah, if you admire something about a person, cool. You know, let that be like a guide for you, so to speak. It gives you a, it's like a flare going up in the air. So you kind of know which direction you may want to go, but you don't know that individual. The only part individual that you will ever truly know is you.

27:49What kind of man do you want to be? Are you trying to be with the therapy, with the work you've done with your books, et cetera? What are you, what kind of man are you trying to be? A good man. And what does that mean? Just somebody who is who they say they are. Like that's what I always tell people. And that's what I constantly tell myself. I want to be who I say I am. I want to be who, you know, if you see me, saying something, if you see that I'm telling you that this is what I believe in. If I'm telling you, this is my truth. I want you to know that that's exactly who I am. Like you're not going to, you know, hear something in the future and be like, oh my god, this dude had a whole other life going on.

28:33And you know, he had this going on over here and not going on over here and nobody ever knew about it. No, I'm a, I'm a faithful husband, you know, I'm a learning father. And the reason I say learning is because you, there's no class on being a parent. None whatsoever. Anybody tells you that they got that figured out they are lying. I got a 15 year old, a eight year old, a five year old, and a two year old. And every single one of them, you know, challenged me and my wife in completely different ways. And there's been plenty of times when me and my wife sitting around, you know, late at night or at dinner somewhere or just sitting around talking in the bed, asking ourselves if we're getting it right.

29:15So like there's no, you know, blueprint or no manual on how to be that. But I just want to be, I want to be the adult that I feel like I needed when I was a child, you know, I want to be present. I want to be, I want to raise them out of love, which is very hard, especially being that I deal with, you know, really bad anxiety in a lot of ways. And I talk about parental paranoia a lot. And you know, you just have to, man, you have to let go and let go. I'm a faithful person because I have no choice but to be, you know, I'm an optimistic person because I have no choice but to be. Like, you know, the, the opposite of, you know, faithful is worried.

29:58The opposite of faithful is doubt. And like you can't raise kids in that way because they got, they got to live their own life. My 15 year old, if you want us to go hang out, I can't worry about what may happen, you know, at the mall. And you know, you open up a newspaper and you see all types of crazy stuff happening in the world. And you see crazy things happening in other people's kids and, you know, you just look like, you know, I don't want my, my child to ever get caught up in anything like that. But man, sadly, that's just not your call. And you just can't live life like that, man. You can't live life with fear.

30:30You got to live life with faith. With all this work you've done on your mental health to understand the anxiety and the bouts of depression and so on. Have you been able to pinpoint the causal factors of it in your early years? Oh, yeah. I mean, being, being molested at eight, yeah, was definitely, definitely part of it.

30:51Definitely the, the, the bullying, you know, early on, definitely wanting, wanting my father to raise me out of love and not fear. One of the main things that I realized when I had like one of my first breakthroughs in therapy was when I realized my dad used to discipline me for things he never taught me. Alright, so I remember one, one example I always tell is like I just got my driver's license. And so he told me to follow him somewhere and he was like follow me do what I do. Like I had driving, he's driving. And we're coming off a Gilear road in Bung's corner, South Carolina about to get on the highway highway highway 52.

31:37So we're driving and we get to the stop sign, but he doesn't stop. He just drives onto the highway. So I drove onto the highway. You know, and he pulls over to the side of road. I pulled over to the side of road. What I didn't notice was, you know, you're coming down the highway driving. He drove like maybe a split second, but like several seconds before a car was coming. And so I came right behind him. So the car had to swear about it away. I didn't even notice that. So he told me to pull over. He pulled over. So I pull over. He gets out the car. He comes in the window. Slaps the shit on me. Right.

32:14I'm like, he's like wake up. It's all he said. I'm just sitting there like, I mean, I think about that now, but there's no teaching in that. Where was the teaching in that? I didn't even realize what I did wrong. You told me to do everything that you did. You literally said, do what I do. You were in the stop sign. So I ran the stop sign. And then once you slapped the shit out of me, you don't even tell me what I did wrong. So as I said, my father used to discipline me for things that he never even taught me. So I think that's where a lot of the insecurity and anxiety and you know, and post -acendrome.

32:54That's where a lot of that comes from, you know, and the about the depression. I don't that's probably just some a chemical, a chemical imbalance or something. Because like that's just, I constantly have to pump myself up. And I do that through prayer. I do that through daily affirmations. You know, I do that through like just constantly telling myself, I belong. You know, and that's something I remember being young. My affirmation used to be, I loved your whole God in this son, Jesus Christ. And I would say that three times. And then I would say fuck Satan. And I would say that three times. And that is what used to get me like, okay, I'm ready.

33:29I'm ready for the day. I'm ready for whatever, you know, the day is going to live with me. So yeah, it's all of those things from my childhood contributed to those issues. At some point it appears that you reached a sort of personal rock bottom in those sort of early twenties. And you made a decision to, that enough was enough. And I find that so interesting because I sit here with so many people who reach that moment where they look at their lives and they go listen, look at what I'm doing with myself. And some of them carry on going. And they're probably not around to sit in the chair. And then some of them hit that rock bottom moment and they go, I can't carry on doing this with my life.

34:10And they make a decision to take at least one footstep in some positive direction. And that starts to compound for them. Is that accurate? Is that accurate description? Well, yeah, because I learned early that everything my father was saying was true. So my father was telling me, if you don't change your lifestyle, you went into in jail dead or broken into the tree. I actually saw that starting to happen to not just myself but people around me. So, you know, I had my stint in jail, but then I had people around me that was going to jail for like five years. Like they were going to jail for actual prison sentences.

34:40And, you know, I had people around me that were dying that were actually, you know, getting killed. And I saw like, you know, people that I used to once look up to who were older than me sitting under the tree, literally doing nothing with their lives. Like becoming that next generation of, you know, people who just sit under the tree all day and drink or do drugs or whatever it is. So I saw that happening. And I was just one of those kids that was smart enough to realize, man, whatever I'm doing today will directly impact what happens in my life tomorrow. And that's always been my mindset since I was, you know, early 20 years old.

35:16Like whatever I want to be doing five years from now, I got to start doing now. Literally, that's always been my mindset. And so, you know, when I finally got that break, defining the internship in radio, like just being in that environment, being around that in 1998 is an intern, literally made me say, okay, this is what I want to do with my future before that. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was going to speak in a male role models. Like I had, you know, Uncle Henry, he worked at UPS. I'm like, I maybe UPS is the move. I had one of my mother's cousins named Bruce. He was in the military.

35:57Okay, maybe being in the military is the move for me. Like I was just trying to figure out, you know, what I was going to do with my adult life. And, you know, I started working a bunch of odd jobs. I did, I did telemarketing. I worked at a clothing store called Demo in the mall. I worked at a warehouse called industrial acoustics. I worked at a flower garden. I worked at Taco Bell for a couple of weeks, because my sister was the manager day. I was just trying to figure things out. And at one point in my life, I worked at Demo in the mall with my now wife. I worked at the telemarketing place. And I had stumbled upon an internship probably like a year prior, which was at the radio station in 1998.

36:33And then around 1999, I actually started being on the air. And once I started being on the air, it just started to let me see what the future could potentially look like. Up until that point, did you have high hopes for yourself in your future? Yeah, because because I thought I was going to be a rapper. Because you know, most, most young black men, you know, from the hood, you know, in the late 90s, from the rural, rural area that I was from in Monks, Corners, South Carolina. You know, when you look on television or you open up these magazines, the people that you see that are successful are usually in rap, hip hop, in some way, shape of form are athletics.

37:14And so I thought rapping was going to be the way to get up off that dirt road in Monks, Corners, South Carolina. That's why, you know, I got, I got a tattoo on my arm. I got Wolverine from the X -Men tattooed on my arm, holding a microphone in his hand. I got this tattoo. And I was like, I don't even know. Like 18, 19, something like that. And I got it made by a dude named T Willis. T Willis was a tattoo artist in South Carolina. Tattoo weren't even illegal in this time. But I got, I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it on my arm in his apartment. And the reason I got Wolverine holding a microphone because I always loved Wolverine because I loved his healing powers.

37:51I loved that he was able to heal quickly from things. This is me at 18, 19 years old, not knowing anything about no therapy and not knowing anything about, you know, the future journey I would go on of healing. This is just me back then being a young comic book lover, loving the fact that Wolverine had these healing powers. And I had him holding a microphone because I thought the microphone was going to be, you know, what changed my life, which it ultimately did. I just thought it would be to do rap music. The microphone ultimately changed your life. I also didn't know that you'd spent this really long stint on the radio from sort of 20 years old doing that internship right up until the breakfast club when you're 32 years old.

38:32So that's 12 years. But it's not just 12 years of work and graft and mastering your skill. It's also 12 years of rejection, getting fired over and over and over and over again. I got five four times. I got fired from four different radio stations. I got fired from hot 98 nine in Charleston. I used to do radio. I started my career as the 93, which I'm back on now, which is the actual heritage station. So the breakfast club is broadcast on the 93. So I'm back on the 93. But I left the 93, which was the big heritage station in Charleston, the gold work for an up and coming station called hot 98 nine simply because, you know, my man George Cook, who's still a great mentor.

39:09I'm going to the day he offered me a full time radio gig. I was on Monday through Friday, Monday through Saturday, seven to midnight. I had to take that making what I don't know $19 ,000 a year or something like that. But that felt so good back then because I was able to show my mom a contract and say, look, I'm making a salary. I'm making $19 ,000 a year. Right. Like that just felt good to say that I had a job that I had to be to, you know, every day and not just a job, a job that she knew about because she would hear me on radio. What did your father think? Oh, he loved it. Like that was, I mean, even when I was on Z93, that was a big deal because Z93 was the was the heritage station.

39:50Like that was de station in Charleston. So that was a big deal for him. Was he surprised? Having shared a jail cell with you at one point, seeing your delinquency through that period of your life. Was he surprised? And you know what's interesting? I've never had those conversations with him. Even to this day, like I've never had like that conversation with him like, you know, he might tell me he's proud of me and stuff like that. But we've never had like an in -depth conversation. Like my mom, I mean, my mom, I've had like those in -depth conversations. Like my mom has told me things like, you know, you've accomplished more than, you know, anybody in the family ever thought about accomplishing accomplishing or she'll show me like the taxes.

40:39My great grandfather, her father, yeah, her father, well, they're her father. Yeah, her father, her father, my grandfather. She was showing me like the taxes that he would have to pay on their land. So like just to put things in perspective, you know, for me. Yeah, like she's like I share things with her like I share with her how much I'm making or how much I made doing something I share things like that with her. And yeah, she's she's she's she's very always supportive and you know, let's me know like she's proud of me. I mean, she she gave me the best advice a long time ago. She told me just be happy you making a living.

41:21I said, survival generation. But she the way she said it was basically basically saying, you know, this is how you stay humble. She was like, just be happy that you're able to make a living. And she's right. Cause you know how hard it is for some people to make a living. Like seriously, it's just it's hard for some people just to be able to afford some wings from the grocery store. Like it's hard for people can't afford daycare. Like things like I could just little small simple everyday things that you know you and I may be able to just take care of. There's a lot of people out here who can't.

41:55So you should rare you should very much be happy just to be making a living. So her telling me that you know, put a lot of things in perspective for me. And then I skipped a lot of things in perspective for me. But not me and my pops if never really never really had those conversations. 32 years old you joined the breakfast club, which is the first time that I saw you had about you was entertained by you. But before you joined the breakfast, breakfast club, something else became really sort of front of mind in your life, which is anxiety and panic attacks. And you talk about the first sort of panic attack you had.

42:40And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that.

42:51And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And you had a lot of things like that. And then you had a lot of things like that. And then the one time that came back going dramas for a couple of years, and then you used to go to Oh, my flight. I currently goes back to tears. When I was about to go live in 메이크업, and talk about the i -態o 103 two I was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back going on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life was back on my life little Duval at a comedy show.

43:29He's a comedy show in Arnberg. I forgot what school it was. And yeah, I just remember feeling that feeling that I've always felt my whole life, heartbeat and crazy fast, mouth getting dry, palms sweaty, feeling light -headed, dizzy, had to pull over, give some water, take a few deep breaths and just told myself, like, look, man, I'm gonna go to the doctor yet again. I always would check myself in your emergency room whenever I would have those kind of panic attacks because I always felt like I was having a heart attack. And so I went to the doctor and the doctor was like, nah, you got to, your heart is fine.

44:02You got to athletes heart and then he was like, he said to me, he said, you know, you deal with anxiety? I'm like anxiety. What do you mean, do I deal with anxiety? And he was like, do symptoms you're describing sound like a panic attack? He said, have you had these before? And I'm like, yeah. And he was like, are you stressed out about anything? And I'm like, hell, yeah. Like, you know? And so he was like, yeah, it sounds like, you know, that's anxiety, you know, and then he was telling me some previous exercises I could do to possibly deal with it. And then in my mind, after he said, are you stressed out about anything?

44:35The first thing I thought to myself was all I got to do is get another job and everything will be a okay. I just got to get out my mom house, get my family back in position and everything will be okay. Next gig I got was the breakfast club. And so you think you fast forward three, four years. I'm having more success and I've ever had in my life. I'm making more money than I've ever made in my life. Everything is going great, but nothing's changed. I'm still having the panic attacks, probably even more so now. Still dealing with about the depression. And I can't figure out why I just was not happy.

45:11And so that's what finally made me decide to start, you know, going to therapy. We started breakfast club in 2010. Then I started going to therapy around 2015, 2015, 2016. How about did your depression get in those other years? There's any thirties? Oh, no, they got bad. I mean, they got it got it got it. No, it definitely got bad. They got bad to the point where like I was the guy who, you know, I love the laugh. Definitely love the laugh. Love the joke. Love to have a good time. But didn't like, yeah, those suicidal thoughts just crossed your mind for no reason. Like literally for absolutely no reason.

45:53Like, you know, you, you, you, you, it was, it was now the good time to end it all. Like just literally randomly. And you definitely cross your mind a lot when you have like I had a friend who committed suicide, you know, her name was Jazz Jazz Waters, you know, and it called her Jazz Fly. And me and her used to lean on each other a lot. Like she committed suicide during COVID. And her and I used to lean on each other a lot. Like I used to call her like my, my, my wartime general. Like, you know, it was like really time to, you know, get busy and, you know, really strategize some stuff. That's where I would pick up the phone and call.

46:40And we would always have these conversations about, you know, therapy and, you know, depression and anxiety and all of that from, I mean, deep conversations. I'm talking about, we spend Sundays literally, I'll be in the backyard sometimes three, four hour phone conversations, right? Like away from everybody. My wife kids, everyone just really having conversations. So, you know, when she did it, I remember sitting in my backyard and, and I heard her voice in my head. And it was like, she literally said, am you still here? And like, you still, like, you still there on earth. And I was, I got that, that, like, kind of just shook me to my core a little bit, right?

47:24And so it's just like, I constantly do, not constantly. I got constantly is a, is a strong word. But yeah, those, those thoughts just cross your mind. I don't know if it's because it's not because I actually want to do it or because I'm thinking about doing it, but because I've had people close to me do it. And because I had those thoughts when I was younger, sometimes I don't know if it's the survivors guilt maybe or survivors, remorse of it all that just makes you think about it. Like, what am I still doing here? You know? But then I got a million reasons to still be here. So that immediately makes it, makes it go away.

48:07When, when you have a friend like that that passes in such circumstances, complex range of feelings, any like, I sat here with someone who described that exact same thing to me, their best friend who had said nothing to them was always, it was actually works on radio in the UK, both of them worked on radio, then his radio partner one day died by suicide, never said anything to anybody, appeared to be fine in the complex set of emotions that he's left with, the regret, the feelings of what if what if I'd said something that I reach out, all of those kinds of things? Is there anything that I could have done, all of those feelings?

48:42What is that complex set of emotions that you, man? Yeah, you can't do that to yourself. You, you will, but you can't do that to yourself because like I was saying earlier when I talked about, you know, modeling, and you say the word role modeling, you're modeling yourself after people, you don't know which behind all of those layers of a human. Like, we're complex creatures. Like to me, she was one of the most intelligent, brilliant, creative, strategic human beings I ever met in my life, and she was somebody that, you know, so many of us went to, and I never felt, I didn't, I didn't, you know, guilt myself with that because I know that she would come to me with stuff too, and I would always be an ear for her.

49:35Like, I was always there for her. But yeah, you know, it is just, the act like that, the narrative down to one emotion is crazy. Like, you know, you'll go through sadness, you'll go through anger, you'll go through happiness, you'll go through frustration, you'll go through thinking about those last moments that that person was here, and you'll be saying to yourself, I tried. Like, I tried. That's what I know. That's what I do know. I know for a fact I tried. Like, it's not like we didn't, you know, you didn't see things, you know, so it's not like we didn't try to get that person all the help and more that they needed, but yeah, it is, it is a very, very complex set of emotions.

50:31Something that you can't even really put in words and not even not something I'm trying to suppress either. Like, you know, it is one of those things you want to, you want to constantly confront, but it's a very complex because you wish that you could have had you, what you really wanted, you wish you could have talked to that person that day. You wish you could have had a conversation with that person that day. That's what you really wish, you know, and see what they see what they were at in that moment. And hopefully, because you all, I think everybody would probably do that. Everybody probably says the same thing.

51:10I probably say the same thing. Her mom probably says the same thing. Her father probably says the same thing. Her sister probably says the same thing. If I were to spoke to her that day, you know, I probably could have got her in a better place, but that's not the way. That's not the way the universe had it had a design. Your external life changes rapidly when, you know, your external your world, your everything around you changes when you become a star in the breakfast club. But internally, you say nothing really changes. If not, if anything, it was potentially worse. The panic attacks anxiety, the bouts of depression.

51:43A lot of people would be surprised by that. Because as a bit, as you say, people think that you get the job, you get the money, you get the fame. Well, I was losing myself because you got to think I'm still in survival mode. I'm still coming off being five four times. You got to think what my journey was from 1998 up until that moment. Up until that moment, I'm just coming out of my mom's house, living with my mom and Monks corner South Carolina. Like I'm literally, I just collected my last unemployment check. You can't chill. No, I'm scared to death. Everything that you saw was me was rooted in fear.

52:22It was rooted and I'm not going back to that. So whatever I have to do to not go back to that, I'm going to do. That's why you see the roofless, anybody can get it. You know, it's still a lot of pain, and I'm probably projecting on the other people. It's still a lot of hurt there that I'm projecting on the other people. Plus, y 'all are trying to fire me out of this business four different times. Y 'all thought it was sweet when I was down in Monks corner South Carolina, living back home with my mom. Now all of y 'all got to feel my wrath. Like literally, that's what I was on. And you know, when you're getting rewarded for that, that fuels whatever that is until you realize, like for me, it wasn't around 20, 2015.

53:08You're like, this, this ain't, this is not what I want. How did you know? How did you know? This wasn't happy. And like at this time, now I got two kids. Like my, my old, this is like seven at the time in 2015. And my newborn had just been, been born. And like, I got married in 2014. So it's like, yo, am I really about to become my pops? You know, am I really about to become, you know, this, you know, I love this man. I despised the way he, you know, ended up, you know, treating his family us, treating my mom. And I'm like, yo, am I really going to be that? Am I really going to get caught up in this radio, you know, radio star.

53:57And I'm putting star in air quotes lifestyle, you know, am I really going to get caught up in the women? Am I really going to get caught up in the drugs? Am I really going to get caught up in the alcohol? Am I really going to become a character to show myself this character that I created, you know, to protect, you know, this vulnerable young man named Leonardo, am I really going to get caught up in that and, and completely lose myself? Am I going to do that? Or am I going to, you know, get back on the path that I know I'm supposed to be on? Am I going to get back on that, that, that, that, that righteous path?

54:28Am I going to do that? So I chose to go the righteous path. Sounds simple. Sounds like it was a one, an epiphany one day, but I, I, that's a man speaking in hindsight that. And I just want to say, because there's a lot of people that are in that moment with the life going, is this really who I'm going to be? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. It's not simple because you continue, you're constantly lie to yourself. And I think that's why so many people from the street always end up in the same situation. Like there's nowhere you're going to go. And any ghetto America, USA, any rural town, USA, where an older person isn't going to tell a younger person, you keep living like that.

55:06You're going to end up in jail or dead. My dad added the other one or broke sitting, broke sitting under the tree. But everybody thinks they can beat it. Everybody thinks they can live a certain lifestyle. And if they just do this, you know, the net won't happen. Or that person was stupid. That's why they ended up like that. No, you live a certain lifestyle. You moving a certain way, all of y 'all going to meet the same fate. And there's no different, you know, even in that space, like I was absolutely about to crash. I knew it. How? Just I just saw it coming. Like a crash to me is losing your family, you know, your wife leaving you.

55:48Like I don't want that. Like who wants that? I don't envy those type of people. I don't envy people like that. I don't envy people who, and I'm not knocking them in no way, shape or form. But I don't envy people who, you know, lost lost their families because of infidelity. And now they got to visit their kids on the weekend. You know, you are unfaithful to your wife. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And she's the lover of your life. I mean, that's very for people. I saw her make 100%. You've been with her 30 plus years or 20, 20, 20, 26 this year. Absolutely. Absolutely. 26 years. Like we were kids, you know, and we literally grew up together in every sense of the word.

56:23Like literally the first time I ever filled out the application at a radio station, she drove me because my license was suspended. Like we were together since kids, like literally, like I was at her high school graduation. I was at her college graduation, you know what I mean? Like she, like I said, she first of all, I've filled that application at a radio station. She drove me. Like she went to college in Columbia, South Carolina. I got a radio job in Columbia, South Carolina. I ended up getting a radio job in New York. She ends up getting a job in New York City. Like our lives were just like that all the time.

57:02We couldn't escape each other if we tried. And to be honest with you, I would never want to because that has been the one constant in my life. That has been my muse forever. That has been the person who's constantly made me want to be the best version of myself, even when I wasn't the best version of myself, you know, because when you ask God for certain things, he's going to give him to, he or she is going to give him to you. So when you tell God, like this is what I want, I want to be with this person for the rest of my life or I'm looking for a soulmate or I'm looking for, you know, my, my hope Brady or I'm looking for my, you know, Claire Huxford boy, like he's going to give you that, but are you going to be prepared for it when you get it?

57:44Same thing with any type of success. Yeah. God, he or she may give you that, but are you prepared for it? I think that a lot of us are, you know, a lot of us get things that we're, we're really not prepared for. And when we get those things, we're not prepared for, we don't hold on to them. You nearly lost it. I feel like I did. Absolutely. I feel like I did. It wouldn't, it wouldn't been worth it. Even if I would have continued to have success professionally in radio, but meanwhile, my personal life, you know, I lose my wife. I lose my family. That's, that's not worth it. That's, there's nowhere.

58:19There's nowhere on this earth with astrophair trade for me. You start going to therapy. You get twice a week? No, I always started off going once a week. I really, when did you start going to therapy? 2016. You the late, the late 2015 or early 2016? Why therapy? Who was, who told you that that was a good idea? A lot of people. A lot of black men, a lot of black Americans period don't seek mental health care. There's a huge disparity. It's almost a hundred percent difference between white people and black people seeking mental health. A lot of people, I mean, you know, I'm a big fan of the TV show Girlfriends.

58:57Girl watching Girlfriends. That's one of my white favorite shows. So when I go to her, her house, when she was in college, she would have that on. And we'd be watching Girlfriends. And like, if you watch Girlfriends, a lot of them were going to therapy. That's the first time I even heard of it, right? But then as I got older, talking to different people and they were all, you know, ranging from, from men, women, like, I remember having conversations with, you know, Neil Brennan, who's a comedian and he was in the end of you talking about the benefits of therapy. My, my, my young homie Pete Davidson, you know, he was talking about it, you know, my, my home girl Debbie Brown, like, she was really into it, like, not just therapy, but just all different facets of healing.

59:37Like, if you know Debbie Brown now, like, you, you'd understand why she was on that back then. Like, she's one of the leaders in the mindfulness, you know, mental health space right now. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform.

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1:00:42That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett. What's helped you to heal? What's if you look at the like toolkit you've used? My girlfriend's alternative healing breathwork practitioner, super spirit Chorsese helped me a lot with all of my all of that stuff. All of it, brother. I didn't therapy, meditation, breathing exercises. I didn't did rakey. I got crystals at home. I do plant based medicine. I like all of it. Are you asking to decide then? I've done it. I've done it. I was asking journey. That's what I was talking about earlier when I said I went on a spiritual retreat. I really did. Yeah. Early this year.

1:01:19That was. South America was it or somewhere else? No, no. I did it. I did it here in the States. It was a beautiful, beautiful ceremony. It was, man, it was very, very, very life changing. That's where I got the revelation. The revelation was stop lying to yourself and stop volunteering those lies to other people. It's like whatever you're at in your life, for me, it's just like I want to show up and be my authentic self at all times. Like me, that's what I want to do all the time. I don't matter where I'm at in my life, I want to present that. And being on that journey, it literally ripped away every single ounce of falsehood that existed.

1:02:11It just shattered it. I got to go. I got watched it in my mind, like go up in flames, like literally. What's the cost if we live with those falsehoods in those lies? Depression. You know, probably constant anxiety, you know, a whole lot of insecurities, a whole lot of imposter syndrome because, you know, I'm from the country. So I believe in simple saying is like God can't bless who you pretend to be. You know, and I think that constantly we got to we got to constantly check ourselves and make sure where always showing up is who we are and we're not pretending to be, you know, some version of ourselves.

1:02:51That's why that's why you read Get Honest of Dialogue. I talk so much about social media in the book because I'm watching so many people lose themselves to social media. Like I'm talking about intelligent, well educated, well read academics are literally losing their selves to social media. You can have conversations with them and you realize like all of their talking points are coming from social media. Like they're, their thought process is being dictated by social media. These people care more about their relationships online than they do. They're actual relationships offline. Like I know people who are personalities who have like, you know, podcasts or who may have YouTube shows, you know, and these people will literally be on Twitter all day, be on Reddit all day.

1:03:47Listen to what listening to what people are saying about them, reading what people are saying about them and crafting their thoughts just to talk to them in that crowd to just please them. I'm like, my God, how narrow minded is that? That's why for me, man, if you're, if you claim to be an academic or you claim to be a well educated person, you came, you claim to be an intelligent book smart person. I don't think you're that smart if you're emotional IQ is that low. If you're emotional IQ is so low that people on social media can dictate how you move, how you think, how you talk. You're not a smart person to me.

1:04:25Smart people know how to disconnect from that. And smart people know how to go, you know, do some meditation to make sure that their thoughts are absolutely positively their own. Like I got people right now today hitting my phone, trying to tell me how they feel about the new Kendrick Lamar record. You know, I love Kendrick Lamar. I think he's fantastic. I think Mr. Morale and the big step was in the future is going to be known as one of the most hip hop, more than the most important hip hop albums of all time. That one in JZ444. But people are hitting me, telling me their thoughts and telling me their opinions.

1:04:58And I'm blocking all of that because I listened to the record. I listened to it five or six times. Same. I know what I got from it. I know what I feel about it. And I'm not letting y 'all change my mind. Okay. But they're doing that because they know that tomorrow when I'm air, I'm going to be talking about it. So they're trying to curate my thoughts. And they're trying to push my thoughts in a certain direction. I don't want that. And I'm not even, I'm just using that right example because this is the freshest thing on my mind. But I don't, I'm like that with anything. I need my own clarity. I need to, I need to lean into my own discernment.

1:05:40What is my spirit telling me about this situation or this moment or this thing? That's all I care about. I don't care about any of that noise that exists on social media. That's, that's given you a real big competitive advantage in many respects because originality is so valuable. That's right. You're 100 % correct. That's why I laughed at a lot of these individuals because what also happens is, you know, they start whispering about me, right? And they start wondering, well, why is this happening for him? And why does he get to do this? And why is that like, why is that going on? Like they look at you know, because I keep growing.

1:06:26And they wonder why they wonder why I keep growing. And they don't. I tried to tell you disconnect. How you, how, how are you going to grow when you're not even watering your own garden? Because if, if you're, if you're getting on social media and you're reading what they're saying about you and you're catering all your thoughts and all your talking points to appease those people, you're not watering. You are garden. You're, you're, you're literally trying to water somebody else's. So as you're, as you're watering somebody else's, that continues to grow and that continues to get louder and louder and louder.

1:07:03But mean why are you just stagnant? It's scary though. It's scary to ignore. And then to shut up as yourself in the world where we're rewarding conformity with the likes, the claps, the, okay, you won't be canceled because you, you fit in. It's when you say, I'm going to disconnect, I'm going to be myself going to be authentic. I get Jesus Christ. That is, man, I get, I get attacked all the time for thoughts, for opinions because I don't go along with, with, with, with the mob. And I'm not I'm not a contrarian in any way, shape or form. I just know that nothing is black, nothing is white. There's always those areas of gray in the middle.

1:07:42There's nuance to everything. Like, you can be objective about everything, right? Like, there, there, there has to be a certain level of, well, let me see what this person is coming from. You got to hear both sides. To me, that's just common sense. And I feel like the only way to get the real truth about anything is if you see where both sides are coming from. I can't just dismiss you as wrong because you have a different opinion in mind. Are you feel differently than mine? I got to hear where you're coming from first. There's no political party called nuance. And then we're in an election yet.

1:08:17I know this is what I think. If I, if I wanted to go viral, I just got to do a hot take for either side because there's algorithms for that. There's a group of people that are going to pick that up and retweet it and send it. But the people in the middle, it's, there's no, and we're going into this election. You're now where there's, as I've heard you say, there's really no great choices. Yeah. But on that point, you just said about being able to see the other side. What do you think about Trump? I think that, I mean, I say this everywhere I go. I think Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. You know, I don't think that you should have anybody, especially in the United States.

1:08:53You can't have a leader of a country who says, said, said we should suspend the constitution to overthrow the results of an election. I mean, he, he led an attempted coup of this country. Like we watched it. We saw it. You know, um, yeah, I just don't think a person like that should be president of the United States of America. I think that if you're facing, you know, the type of criminal charges that he's facing, what is it? 86 counts or something like that now? 86 counts, 88 counts. I can't remember the exact number. But if I was facing 88 counts of any criminal charge, I wouldn't be able to work at Walmart nonetheless, you know, run to be president of the United States of America.

1:09:33So I just don't think that he's, you know, he's, he's not somebody that should be in that position. But I understand why he is in that position because he's good at messaging. What do you think about the people that fully Trump? Do you think that good people? Some of them, that was even that, even that is a very broad question, right? Like when you say, what do you think about the people that follow Trump? Those people aren't monolithic. Yeah, yeah. All of those, all of those people, those 70 plus million people who voted for Trump, allowed them voted for Donald Trump for a lot of different reasons.

1:10:08I have actual friends who will remain nameless, who I know voted for Donald Trump. And I know they're great people and they didn't vote, they're not, they're not black. They're also black too. And they're not like the, they're not black conservatives. They're not in any way, shape or form. They are black like, or black individuals. And like, that's what I mean when I say, having conversations with people because you get to see why people do, you know, different things. I know why that person told me they voted for Donald Trump back in, you know, 2016. Just like I know individuals now who tell me why they, they voted for him in 2016 or are, are 2020.

1:10:51And you can't just chalk everybody up to being a racist. You know, you can't just chalk everybody up to, you know, not caring about LGBTQ issues. Or whatever it is, people have different reasons and interests why they vote for people. It might be one thing. It might be one interest that they vote for. That's what they always tell you, right? They tell you to vote your interests. So it's the same thing with a, with a president Biden. I can look at a million things that President Biden has done that I do not like the 80, 86 mandatory minimum sinisting, the 88 crack laws, 94 crime, all of that. I got, there's a million things I can point to and say, I don't like that he, he did this.

1:11:31But if the, if the one interest is the at least protect democracy in 2004, or if you're somebody who got their student loan debt wiped away, that might be it. If you're somebody who can afford insulin now because the president might, that might be the reason you vote for him. So it's just like everybody has different reasons as the why they vote for different candidates. That's why you, I don't even think the question is fair when you say, what do you think about the people who voted for such and such? Like I'm not, I'm not the person I vote for. When we get to speak to those people, we understand their motives until then we kind of misunderstand them.

1:12:07And I think I see that crossover with you and your father because eventually you had a conversation with him. You talked about that conversation at the very beginning of this one where you finally had empathy for him and his experience in his life. That conversation with your father where you rebuilt your relationship and finally understood him. Did that help your healing Johnny? Absolutely. 100 % because like I said, I never quite had the relationship with my father that I wanted to and it's, I mean, it's not too late. He's still here, right? But yeah, it did because I realized in that moment that he was just a man who was just doing his best.

1:12:44And he didn't have the tools that I have. He didn't have the resources that I have. Even though he was going to therapy two and three times a week, even though he was on the 10, he was on 10 to 12 different medications. The state of South Carolina just started giving him a check. So we used to call out a crazy check back in the day. You just get a check for being crazy. Like I knew people who used to play crazy to get a check. I remember when I went to my mom and said, yeah, did you know that was going through all of this? And she was like, yeah, I just thought you were playing crazy to get a check.

1:13:10So it's like all of those, you know, if if I would have known when I was young, if you would have told me all of those things when I was young, then I probably would have ended up on a totally different path much earlier. I guess that's another example of like, you know, role models, right? Because I think a lot of times when we say role models, we think it has to be just about all the good a person is doing. But if a person has dealt with a lot of the things that you're going through because a lot of this stuff is genetic, right? Like if a person is dealing with their own anxiety, a person is dealing with their own, you know, about to depression.

1:13:45My father, he was already in therapy. He was already on 10 to 12 different medications. He tried to commit suicide. If he would have told me all of that when I was young, I would have known what I was dealing with. I would have been able to be like, oh, okay, I'm like, I'm dealing with that. Same way you can see it in your case. You can, when your kids are dealing with those things, you can look at them and be like, okay, I know what I know what that is because, you know, I went through that. To me, that's being that's good. Even though my dad was dealing with all those issues, but if he was just telling me when I was young, if he would have just told me when I was young, this is what he was dealing with, then that would have been a good model for me to follow because I would have known what it is I need, you know, to do much, much earlier that I did.

1:14:32My last question before we go to the book for you. This is a question that I think is central to why especially men don't really talk about their feelings or at least, it's a question that I think we often just diminish, which I wanted to ask you very simple question, which we also get to through this question every single day, which is, um, and please do give me the long answer. How are you doing? Right now I'm doing great. I am blessed black and highly favorite. I'm doing fantastic. You know, I just came, uh, I just had a fantastic weekend, man. Like we were in Atlanta, Georgia, um, because I did my second annual Black Effect podcast festival because you have a podcast network called the Black Effect and you know, we're the home of, you know, like 30 various podcasts, you know, everybody from the 85 South Show, the horrible decisions to, you know, carefully reckless with Jess hilarious, you know, all the smoke and mad bonds and Steven Jackson, like we have a bunch of different, you know, um, podcasts and we just had our second annual Black podcast festival in Atlanta and it's such a beautiful event because podcasting is such a, such a new industry and to be able to curate a space where it's like seven or eight of your favorite podcasts on stage.

1:15:52People are from 11 to seven o 'clock at night, 11 a .m. to seven o 'clock at night. We got all the food trucks. We got the vendors. We got the merchandise. Like it's so festival. So to be able to have a real live podcast festival to be doing it for the second year in a row to see this, you know, community of creatives, you know, just come together for the day. That's very fulfilling to me. And you know, another thing we do during the festival is we, um, we bring three people out from HPC use because, you know, Nissan is one of our sponsors of the sponsors of the festival. So we bring these three kids out from these HPC use because another event that we do throughout the year with the Black Effect is called the Thrill of Possibility Summit.

1:16:36And we fly 50 HPC use students to Nashville and we just have a weekend of like panels for them and we have different, you know, people who went to HPC use who've gone on to have tremendous success in the world come and just pour into them all weekend long. So we had those three individuals come speak HPC use, yeah, historically black colleges, university. So we had three people from the summit come to the Black Effect podcast festival just to talk about the summit and, you know, how fulfilling it was for them and then we're doing it again this year. And the reason that gives me such a high is because man, I'm all about service, man.

1:17:12Like that's what I'm about at this point in my life. I say all the time, if I'm building things, whatever I build nowadays, if it only benefits me, it's not big enough. And the things that I'm building now, you know, whether it's my Black Effect podcast network, whether it's, you know, the company, me and Kevin Hart got at Audible called SPH Productions, whether it's the, you know, the book imprint Black privilege publishing with Simon and Schuster, I'm able to provide so many people opportunities like we got staffs and, you know, we got presidents, you know, of our of our companies like and you know, we're able to partner with people and, you know, by book deals and podcast deals and all of these different things.

1:17:50So it's just like, that is what is fulfilling to me and then being able to take those resources and do things like the thrill of possibility summit we're pouring into these HBC, HBC used to them. So I got a nonprofit called the, you know, mental welfare alliance, you know, where our goal is to get 10 ,000 Black and Brown people free therapy over the next five years. I do a expo every year. I think I'm on my like my fourth year 50 year at that called the mental welfare expo here in New York. It's a free event. I bring something to best psychiatrists and therapists and spiritual leaders and, I've seen it.

1:18:19Yeah. I own the domain name mentalwealth .com. So if you want it for free, you can have it. I was going to do something with it. I bought it five years ago for enough, I bought it five years ago for a project. Wow. And then I saw you post on Instagram an event called mental welfare thinking, damn, I've got this domain name and he's doing something with it. So you can have it. It's just that there. I wasn't going to over tube. That would be fantastic. No, I saw what you're doing. It's incredible. I can't think of a better reason to for someone to do with that domain. So yeah, thank you. So that's all.

1:18:45So, so, yeah, I'm doing great. And the reason I'm doing great is because I realized that your true purpose in life will come through service to others. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer says that in the power of intention. I read that years ago and didn't understand what it meant. I'm talking about, I got, I read this 20 plus years ago and didn't quite understand that that would that meant your true purpose in life will come through service to others. I overstand what that means now. That's not the way culture's gone. Cultures become less religious, less community, more about yourself, your own goals, your own individual being less about others, less about a higher power.

1:19:26And it's so interesting because as I've had these conversations over the years, I was really, I was religious until I was 18 years old. My mom's religious, I was baptized, raised in a Christian household. And I lost that religion and with that, you lose the church. And then social media made me more individualistic get the, get the Lambo. I was this broke kid dropped out of university trying to get the Ranger of a sport in the mansion. I got those things, the anti -climax, something's missing going in search of more. And I've almost found myself right back at the beginning again going, I said it yesterday, I was like, damn, I wish I was still religious.

1:19:55But what I'm searching for is what you said. I'm searching for service in my life. Yeah, because those like grew up broke. So when you grow up broke, I grew up, I grew up broke, but I grew up watching my grandma, even if, you know, we didn't have much. He always knew how to whip up a lot of food. And so whoever was in the yard could come to my grandma's house and eat the same thing with my pops, my pops with the guy who like, they all like frying fish. You hear? You're going to eat, you know, hey, we got drinks, you're going to drink. So to me, that was service. That was early versions of service.

1:20:25So I've always, you know, known that you know, you got to, you got to give to receive. Like that's just how I, how I grew up. So being that I never had much, you know, growing up, I just always felt like that was the way for me to show up for people, like do something for them. And now that I got, you know, a lot of resources, that's just amplified, you know, like I really, I used to look at people that would put philanthropists in their bio and be like, what, what, what are you doing? It's given money. Like what does that even mean? But now you like, I understand. I get it when you can go to your mother's alma mater.

1:21:10South Carolina State University and say, I am starting a scholarship fund and my mother's name, the Ford family endowment scholarship. And I'm going to donate this amount of money, the large amount of money, right? And I'm, you can look it up and see how much it was. I mean, by the way, it wasn't that large because Mr. Clyburn, who's a congressman here in South Carolina, I remember the day that we did it. We were both donating money to South Carolina State University because that's where his, his, his beautiful wife Emily went. She's from my hometown. He literally said to me, you should go first.

1:21:45And I was like, no, no, no, you go first. And he was like, no, you should go first. And I was like, no, you should go first. And you're like, no, you go first. I'm like, I, someone for us, you know, they hold up my check. I'll say it was a $40 million, right? Bless. I'm happy to be able to receive that. I mean, to give that. Mr. Clyburn goes up, he's like 1 .3 million. And he was like, and I was like, you were right. And I'd see why you wanted me to go first. But my point with all that is the fact that I'm able to do things like that. Yeah, man. That means the world to me. And that's literally what I just want to do for the rest of my life.

1:22:21I want to be able to provide opportunities to people. I want to be of service. That's it. That's all we're here for. It's selfish and selfless at the same time. And both of those things, because as you said, you said by giving you get so much. Yeah. There's only so much you can get from the Lamborghini, right? I've never wanted that in my life. And you know, it's so crazy. I used to say that when I was broke. And when you say it, when you were broke, you sound like a Hater. And then you see a nice car. I'm like, I want that. Well, you can't afford it. Yeah. You know how when you know you really mean that, when you can afford it, and you still don't want it.

1:22:59I don't want it. What the hell am I doing in Lamborghini? What am I going to do it, Benley? What am I going to do with a fan? I'm like, what? Why does that need to be in my yard? I have to say, but we don't have, especially like I grew up on rap videos. I grew up on 50 cent on MTV and all that stuff. And that was modeled to me. And it's modeled to a lot of young black men as success. And it's so nice to hear people like you say, listen, you don't, that's not that's, and fact, you're doing yourself a disservice because it's a, some of those things are really bad use of your funds. Like go and invest a lot of these, a lot of other people have a bad at the table who's an investor knows to put it into a this investment fund or this investment fund.

1:23:35And I think some of our old models grown up said, okay, if you get that kind of money, you go spend it on champagne in a nightclub and something else, which is going to make it go to zero. Yeah, most of that stuff is written in two. Like when you look at those rap videos, most of that stuff wasn't even, wasn't even theirs. So yeah, I've done that. I've gone to Miami and in my partner E -Class, the LUTE class, he's the founder and CEO of the Licking restaurant in Miami. He taught me his keys to his big bins back in the day. And I drive it around Miami. I'm cool. I get my fix. I don't need to pat one of those at home.

1:24:07You know what I'm saying? I don't need it. I got that stuff absolutely positively nothing for me in any way, shape or form. We have a close in tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. And the question that's been left for you in the Darviceo is, what are you most afraid of feeling?

1:24:31Oh, shit. Grief. Grief. The grief of death. 100%. 100 % The grief of death. That's the thing that like if I was an actor or an actress, I would never be an actress. Well, I mean, I guess I could be in 2024 if I wanted to be. But if if if I was an actor, that like, you know, they tell you that you got to cry on cue. Like it's certain. It's that like that. That's the thing that I dismiss out of my mind because it's just certain things like I always say the things you want to happen in your life. You constantly think about and you speak about the things you don't want to happen in your life. You don't think about you don't speak about your thoughts creep up on you.

1:25:14But when they do you keep up on you, you just got to push them out. But for definitely for me, man, it's that feeling of that feeling of grief when somebody close to you passes. Like that is, man, I've had some like really traumatic things happen to people that I genuinely love. Like, you know, I haven't lost the parent. God bless. You know, I'm not going to have it lost the parent. I haven't lost a mate, you know, a wife, a significant I haven't that hasn't happened to me. But I've had that happen to people who are very, very, very, very close to me. I haven't lost a child. God bless. You know, so yeah, people that people that have had have been have experienced that I truly, truly, truly, truly, truly, truly feel for me.

1:26:08I know that we all will that I hope I do. I hope my kids bury me, you know, man, I hope my my wife buries me. But yeah, that's that's the feeling that I don't want to want to feel. Even though I know I probably will at some point in life, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time from now. But now you don't, you know, you don't want to feel that. Thank you. Thank you for so much. I think I can't imagine how many people's lives and relationships you've saved by making the what many people would consider the brave and vulnerable decision to speak to speak about your own struggles.

1:26:50And to, as you've said, said step into an authenticity. That's what you do in this book. But that's what you've been doing long before long before you came here. You've been doing that for years now. And it had an impact on me. Imagine that I'm thousands and thousands of miles away in my own room. I'm feeling anxiety for the first time in my life. And I see this man who I love watching. He's an entertainer. I see him of all people because he's a black man and black man. Never speak on these things. I see him speaking about it. And I go, damn, this isn't me being broken. This isn't something that I should hide.

1:27:20This isn't something that I should be ashamed of. This is something that happens to all people. And it's not evidence of my inadequacy. It's actually evidence that I'm a human being too. You human man. Like there's nothing inadequate about any of us. Like we're literally all spiritual beings living a human existence. And that human existence is going to go through a lot. But at the end of the day, like I think you said it earlier, man, we all got to return back to spirit. Like I love I love the movie. We're not the movie. The book American God became a TV show. And you know, in the book American God's one of the new gods was the internet.

1:28:03It's like internet boy, social social media. And I think that too many of us men are submitting our will to the internet literally. We're submitting our will to the internet. And if you talk to anybody who works in Silicon Valley, they'll tell you that the internet it literally drives off the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins it drives off with old. It is fueled by the seven deadly sins. So if you're submitting your will to something that is fueled by the seven deadly sins, then what are you fueled by? And you wonder why the anxiety is so crazy. You wonder why the insecurity is so crazy.

1:28:41You wonder why the imposter syndrome is so crazy. You wonder why the depression is so crazy. It's because you're worshipping that. That should be a tool. That's what that's what you should treat as a tool. You wouldn't walk around with a hammer in your pocket and you wouldn't be pulling out that hammer all day and just looking at it and staring at it. You wouldn't be pulling up that that screwdriver all day and just looking at it and staring at it. So why are we doing that with our phones? Why are we all in verbally abusive relationships with social media? We'll literally go especially when you're a public figure.

1:29:15You'll go on these these pages just to read people talk about how bad you are. These are all people that are dealing with the same things you're dealing with the hurt, the pain, anxiety, the depression, the insecurity, the imposter syndrome. They don't it brings them joy to talk like that to you and hope that it gets to you in some way shape or form. So why are we letting that in here? We can't have all these conversations about mental health and not really truly be protecting our mental. Amen. Yes, sir. Everybody needs to go get this book, get on a straw or die lying. I think it's been one of the biggest inspirations for me to really get closer to being my authentic self in every sense of the word.

1:29:58It's also made a really good case to me as to the power of that authenticity because people say I'll be authentic whatever and they say that's part of their like virtually signaling status games. But it's so clear to me that it's one of the greatest services you can do to yourself and those that matter most to you in your life. I'm going to link this book below. Everybody needs to go and buy a copy. And don't forget the why small talk sucks part. That is that is actually the most important part to me because what we just had here was a macro conversation. And I think a lot of times, you know, in this world that we live in, we're having too many small conversations.

1:30:36Like we make microbes, macros. Like literally. And once again, that's what social media does. It takes these microbes and it makes them macros. And you don't realize that they're microbes until you get out into the real world and you walk up to somebody and you're talking like, hey, did you see such and such? And that person's like, no, I didn't. And you like, what do you mean? It's trending number one on Twitter. And they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like that's literally the world that we live in. So when I say, watch small talk, sometimes I'm not just talking about like when somebody's trying to make chatter with you, you know, I hate that too.

1:31:09I can't stand it. But I'm talking about just those small conversations, those small conversations we have where we're talking too small, we're thinking too small. So this book is literally giving you some things to just simply talk big about to think, to think big about. That's why I end every chapter by saying, let's discuss because I'm not an expert at anything. Yeah. I'm not an expert at nothing. I just got some experiences and I got some thoughts and I put them in that book and you read them and next time you find yourself in a situation where you feel like the conversation is too small, I want you to say, yo, Charlemagne, Leonard, he said, we don't got to do this.

1:31:47We don't, we can, we can, we can sit here in silence. We can talk about this in this way, in this large way. And hopefully, you know, when you start doing that, you'll start having more fulfilling conversations like, this one I just had was with you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You're an honest, you're a massive inspiration to me in every sense of the word. And you're so right about the small talk. I think my relationship wouldn't exist after five years if I didn't figure out how to start having big talk uncomfortable conversations with my woman. And that's changed my life. It's made me a better, it's been me better inside my head.

1:32:22And it's, it's saved the thing that I care about most in my life at the moment, which is my relationship with her. And a lot of men, they don't have the tools, they don't have the role models. And hopefully, you know, they can look to you and this book now as as that guidance and that framework for, for how to model ourselves in such a way. I have to say, I have to shout out your podcasts as well, the brilliant ideas because one of my favorites, I was watching the other day when you guys were talking about all the Drake Kendrick stuff like that. And he was doing the little white thing and saying about the, it's just so hilarious.

1:32:50And it's the best combination of podcasts. Andrew Shultz is the best stand -up community in the business today. I think he is the best. I put his pay per view for his money to do online thing. It was incredible. Oh, the infamous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate it. Appreciate you brother. Thank you.

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