#2353 - Shaka Senghor

25:40And then there were some days where I was like, I don't, I don't like, you know, this shit is too much. Like I'm, I'm filled myself like physically like I can't take one more day. And in those days, I would just grab a book man of somebody who inspired me, you know. Sometimes it would be Nelson Mandela here been through like 27 years. And I would just like open it up and like, let me just start reading something. I would read the poem and victims like that. That poem always just kind of brought me back like you to master your own faith. You know what I'm saying? You're the captain of your soul.

26:12So I would go back and read that. There's a book called, as a man, Think of the bad James Islands, about 60 something pages. I would literally, my version of that was so dark here. But I would like literally just open it up. And any page was about if you master your thinking, you can master your environment. And so it was like things like that would keep my brain just going forward. You know, I would, I would work out, you know, do pushups and calisthenics and roll up. I used to roll my mattress up and you tie a sheet, one sheet around it and you put the other sheet through it. And you make your handle and now you could do your curls.

26:48You know, so I would do that, take that mattress, put on my back, I would do squats. So I would run my routine in there. And just running that routine is really what kept me like, you know, put one positive thought in front of the next. You know, and I mean, at that time, I still was like, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't like a model prisoner. You know, I don't want the listeners to be confused by that because that's a little different, right? Somebody who follows the rules and just stays out of the way and get out of trouble. Like I was, I was, I was, I was into bad shit in there. You know, I was not, I didn't ever think I was getting out.

27:27So I was like, I just got to run an environment. You know, I got to be in control in this environment. I got to, you know, make all the moves to have agency over my life in that environment. And so, initially, while I was in there, I was just, I was only focused on getting out so I can finish getting into shit. So when, so what, what initially saying to Salter? So the first time I went to Salter was for the sort on a guy who was my neighbor. And basically, I didn't have any money on my books at the time. And you know, Storter came around and I was like, I'm going to go take his shit. And so I let him went to rob this guy.

28:12And he happened to be coming in the cell at the time. We got into like a fester cuffs. And so they took me to a solitary for that. And I did about a year for that. A year. Yeah. And then it's because what happened was an officer got assaulted in a process. He jumped on my back. And I thought it was like his cell mate coming to help him and I kind of threw him off me. And so that was, that was cost me about a year. And then the second time, this was some crazy shit. So I was at the Michigan Reformatory. And at the time, I'm the lion form. So I'm like, I make sure as we're a serving child that, you know, if this thing is running out of like cutlets, I put the cutlets in the thing for them to continue serving.

28:53And we were all about efficiency. Like we want to move these guys through as fast as possible because the the the childhood is where all the shit goes down. The stabments go down and it's crazy. So we trying to move guys out. And this guy, man, he's just holding up the line. And so what happened is that sometimes they were cinnese guys over to the reformatory was like a higher security level. It's the old, you know, it's the oldest prison in Michigan at the time is called the Gladiator School. And sometimes they were cinnese guys from like the lower levels who, you know, they're getting in trouble at the lower levels.

29:25And they would send them over there as punishment, you know. And usually when they come over there, they don't realize that this is a different, this is a different game. You know what I mean? Like the reformatory is real prison. Those lower levels, it's like a fucking camp. You're not dealing with, you know, you're dealing with real prison. And so this guy comes over, he's holding up the line. And we're like, yo, like what's the whole up? And so he starts the cussed our crew out, you know, like basically, y 'all bitches act like this, y 'all fool. Give me more potatoes. Like so it's like he's upset.

29:55He's not, he don't feel like he's getting enough. And so I'm just, I'm talking to the guy and I'm like, yo, I'm like, chill out. Like what's the situation here, you know. And he like, they act like this, they're full, blah, blah. And I'm like, what you want? He like, you know, y 'all give me some more. So tonight he's being disrespectful. So I was like, all right, I got it. So I load him up on mass potatoes, gravy, call him to the window when I slap him with it. And I was like, yo, don't come to the window with this respectful. And so I then slapped him with this whole tritrae of potatoes and gravy.

30:26And he takes off running and he's like runs to the officers, you know. And so my supervisor who was cool. And he was like, go to the back and like, hi, you know, so he's trying to have me out. If I want his better work as he only like, lose me to this. And so, you know, that led to me being a solitary for a year. A year. Another year. For a year. For a year. And so now I'm there for another year. But the last, the last incident, which was happening in 1999, men as officer we got into a conflict. And the conflict escalated when he pushed me like, let me go to the bathroom. He pushed me and then I beat him up.

31:06And this was this was another one of those moments of like, you know, I think I think in life, man, that sometimes we don't talk enough about how lucky we are. Men as guy, we get into a, we get into a confrontation at escalates. At this time, like I'm 27, all I do is lift weights, workout, whatever. And I don't even realize the difference between like a 27 year old grown man strength and the boy that walked into prison. And so when I punch this guy, I don't, in my mind, I'm not even thinking about like how destructive it is for a grown man to punch another person, another human being. I'm just like, we get into the thing at escalates.

31:55So I punch him. And I, I soon like to punch him, I like go for the school, pick him up, his leg is caught under my arm. So I slam him down, his radio flies over the, the railing lands on the floor. Now, when this conflict happened, their doing was called emergency cop. So every month in prisons all across the country, emergency cop, they blow us a siren. And everybody doesn't matter what you're doing. If you're working in the kids, you got to drop what you're doing. Everybody has to go back to the cell block. And so what happens is, you know, they'll let people use the restroom, etc. But that siren is going.

32:34And so when men, him or up there fighting, the siren is going. So the officer downstairs doesn't even know that this is happening upstairs. The thing that saved his life and saved me from a life sentence was his radio flew over to the gallery and landed. And so a counselor coming in looks and sees a radio and is like, what the, what the, what is the radio here looks up and sees the confrontation happening. And so he hits his button. All officers come over. They dive on my back, separate us. Take me to solitary. So when they take me to solitary, I'm in him. I'm raging. I'm, you know, I'm still in that energy.

33:11I'm, you know, and the guy next to me is banging on the wall. He's like, yo, look down because I can see down to the cell block. Now there's an ambulance out there. And basically what happened is when I punched him, I broke his tracheal. And so they had to perform emergency surgery on him and literally in front of the cell block. And so I was sentenced to an additional two years and then ended up being four and a half years in solitary confinement. And the only reason that man did not die that day is because his radio flew over. And, you know, it's one of those, it's one of those things where when I began to recalibrate my life and began to really transform my life and think about my life differently.

33:58It was another one of those things where I realized in that moment, I just let my anger dictate my actions. And no matter what I thought he was right or wrong, I was so angry and so enraged that I just, you know, punched this guy and discriminated, I literally could have killed this man. And I would have literally been serving the rest of my life in prison. And so when that happened, you know, I, I remember they, they transferred me that same day. They transferred me so I was at that happened at a prison call, my skiing correction facility. They transferred me to Oaks correction facility. And the first month, man, I was there to officers with just come and they would like talk so much shit, you know, like we're going to fuck you up.

34:42And, you know, you're going to get yours. And, you know, it was, it was the most vulnerable, you know, I felt, because I knew that it happened in there. You know, I knew that they can come in, they can just say, oh, he did this and they can come in with the goon squad and pepper spray you and beat the shit out of you and you're cuffed up and it's nothing you can really do. You know, so it was, it was very, it was very tense for about a month or so, you know, and then there were officers who was at the facility where it actually happened that they transferred over. And they kind of knew me and they kind of knew that, you know, the experience with the officer wasn't just like I woke up and had a bad day.

35:29You know, they knew it was an escalation. And even though I, you know, when I look at it, like I'm all about personal responsibility and accountability and like I had to eat that, you know, that I was, I was wrong in terms of my reaction to the anger. There were things I probably could have did definitely. But what they told me at that point was like, you're never going to get out of here. You know, you're never going to get out of here. And I remember the first time when I'm said that to me, I was like, I was too naive to really, you know, believe it. You know, I was like, I'm whatever, you know, I'll do a year or two without hearing it all to let me go.

36:08And then I started seeing guys around me who had been in solitary for 10 years. A friend of mine, he's actually out now, his name is Peter. He works, I think he's like a clerk back in Michigan. But he was in, he was my neighbor. He was in solitary for 10 years. There was a guy across from me. That was like, this guy was one of the most fascinating people I've ever met. But he was a con man, like he was masterful at manipulating the officers, but he was in for 20 years, you know, he had solitary for 20 years. And so when I started seeing that, I was like, man, I might, I might never get out of here, you know.

36:44And the first two years, you know, I, I was like kind of resigning myself. I remember right my dad, this letter.

36:59I wrote my dad this letter. And I just said, you should just go on with your life, because they're never going to let me out of here. And my dad wrote me back. And he said, you know, I can't even pretend to act like I understand the world that you're in. But I will never leave your side. And so that's how resigned that was to the idea that I was going to die in there. And it wasn't until I was in about two years or so. Maybe about about a little over a year. And basically, I started journaling. And it was inspired by a letter I got from my son. And my son told me that his mother had told him why I was in prison.

38:03And he wrote this letter. And he's like, my mother told me that you're in prison for murder. And he said, Dad, don't kill Jesus. Watch us what you do.

38:17When I got that letter, like, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't religious, you know. I'm not, I'm not, it's not a spiritual. But there was something about that that just like struck me, like in the most heartbreaking ways. It's like I have a kid out here who I have let down and whose mother has told him stories about me without context. And I don't have a way to reach out to him and say, Hey son, here's all the shit that happened. And so I was like, you know, I got to turn my life around. And I can tell you like over the years, every time I got into some shit, I would just be like, All right, this is it.

39:02You know, this is the last time. It was always these moments of like, I'm going to do right this time. But it was never about me. It was always like, I'm going to do right. So my dad doesn't have to come see me in jail or come bail me out of my friends. Don't have to come, you know, try to get me out of trouble. It was never a real thing. And so when I started journaling, I started with this essential question of like, man, how did I end up here? Because up to that point, I didn't, I didn't think of myself as a bad person. Like I didn't think of myself as like angry. I didn't think of myself as like, I didn't even think of myself as violent.

39:42I thought that I had just gotten to some situations that people provoke me in. And so I asked this question of like, man, how did you, how did you get here? Like you're the smart kid. You know, you're the kid that want to be a doctor and an artist. And how the hell did you get here? And so I started going back and I started asking myself questions based on, when was the first time you got arrested? And what led to that? You know, and then what happened the second time? And what was the first time this thing happened and that thing happened and who was responsible? And what I was able to do was debate.

40:23I was able to go back and realize that I had all this trauma. I had all these traumatic things that happened to me as a kid. But I also had caused a lot of hurt. And I did a lot of things that really was like, no, actually you probably are a bad person. And so as I began to write and sort those things out, I realized I had never accomplished, I never finished anything. I started a bunch of things. You know, I never finished high school. I was like, probably one of the smartest kids in the class. Went to Job Corps, got kicked out before I finished that. What was going to go to the military never followed up to take the test.

41:04So I was a consummate quitter. You know, I started some stuff and would never finish. And so I said, in my journal, I said, listen, if you're going to turn your life around, you have to finish one thing. You have to challenge yourself to finish one thing. And so I'm looking around and saying, I'm like, okay, what can I do? I've done all the push -up challenges. You know, you could do it solitary. And I was like, you should write a book. But you got to write the book in 30 days. If you write this book in 30 days, you can change a life. If you don't, you're going to die in prison.

41:48And that was my, that was my turnstment myself. And now I tell you, like in solitary, there's no, like you don't have a word process or typewriter. You can't even have like a regular ink pen because you know, they're scared. You're going to like, sink somebody or stick somebody. They give you this little flimsy plastic pen. And so I remember getting the pen. I got like a little pad of paper. I said to myself, like it's no way possible. You're going to write a book in 30 days with that pen. This is not possible. And I remember standing myself, this is what you always do. You're always making the excuse.

42:33You always make a way to get out of being accountable. What are you going to do? Are you going to turn your life around or are you going to bullshit the rest of your life away? And so I sat there for a while and I was like, what if I wrote this pen up in some paper? And I let it took some paper and I started to roll the pen up. So it was firm enough. And it was like the size of a regular pen. And I wrote that first book in 30 days. And I knew I would never go back to prison if I ever got out. Because at that point, I still didn't know if I was getting out. So what did you write? So the first book I wrote was a novel.

43:16It was a fiction novel. I love reading. I was really fortunate to really be able to escape through books. So I was like, well, I want to try to write a book. And I love these stories. I was reading Westerns, Lewis Lemore. One of my favorite authors, Donald Gorn. So he had all these street books like Dopefain and Black Gangster. And it was like all this kind of underbelly iceberg slim. Pimp all these stories where stories I had read early on. And these guys, they were like me, like Donald Gorn served time in prison. And so I'm like, what if these guys can write a book? Then what if I give it a try?

44:00And so at my first novel, it was lily about this girl who played street basketball. Her dad was like a street basketball legend. And so I wrote that book. And I remember just like I had never felt a greater sense of pride in myself than the right net book on a notepad. And I still have the original books that I wrote in solitary confinement on notepads and on a back of paper. I'll send you some pictures over there to blow your mind. And I remember writing that book. And I got out. So I write the book. This is why I was shit. So after I write them, like, well, a book really isn't a book until somebody reads it.

44:48And so I climbed on on my floor. And I'm like, yo, like somebody want to read this book. I just wrote. And I remember this guy at the end of the tear was like, don't nobody want to read that book? Is it just a opera? So, so, so here it is. I'm like, I'm trying to like, I'm trying to turn my life around. I'm like, now I got to sink this gap with this respect. And you know what I'm saying? So when it was like it ended up, it ended up when he said it, you know, my ego. You know, it's like, I'm, you know, I am one of your, like I'm a shot caught up. I can have you done, right? And then I stepped back and I was like, no, he actually just gave me a go.

45:28Like if I'm going to, if I'm going to take writing serious, I need to set a goal for what do I want to happen with my work, you know? And then another guy here agreed to read it. And now so I'm in solitary. So it's not like I can just walk out the cell and get a guy to book, right? So we would make these fish lines out of our underwear. So we take all the string out of your underwear. You attach that to a toothpaste tube that you scrolls in all the toothpaste out of and stuff with paper. So you stuff it with toilet paper with toilet paper. Then once that dries, it has enough weight that you can slide it up and down the tier.

46:04And so then sometimes we would use our socks. Most of the time I use socks, um, would you just unravel that string? And then you can slide it up under the door and then you can, you know, attach whatever to it. And so I attached the book to it, man, slid it under the door. And I don't hear for this guy like, oh, days of nom, like nervous this shit because I'm like, it's my only copy. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, I think I get a guy my only copy of him. He responded. But then he came back to the door, man. And he was like, you know, that's one of the best books I've ever read. And I was like, wow, it's like blew my mind for like literally about five minutes.

46:43And then I thought about I was like, man, he installed a tag of five and he over there bored his shit. It could have been, I could have sent him many, I could have sent him a recipe. It's the best chicken soup recipe ever, right? So, but I was like, okay, maybe if I sent it out, you know, sending it out to people. And so I started sending my writing out to like, I have a brother, he's my, he's my step brother. And like I got all my siblings, he's the one of us that's like always played better books. You know, he went to school, he went to college, he was an injured near it, like one of the big three.

47:13And he just always done it better books. And I remember sending it to him and he had never wrote me in prison. Like never wrote me in prison. I sent it to the book and I remember I still have his letter to this day. And he wrote back and he said to me, this writing is better than most of the people I went to school with. And I want to help you figure out, you know, how to path forward. And so just getting that affirmation for somebody who he wasn't in the streets, he wasn't in a prison cell block. And he did it the right way. Like just that little boost man was like, okay, maybe I'm one or something, you know.

47:51And so I wrote my second book, like right after that. And I gave myself the same thing. You got to finish it 30 to 60 days. And then I started a third book, man. And I went into the deepest bottle of depression that I had experienced in prison. And it was because by the time I got to writing book three, I realized I had this incredible talent. And that it's always been there. And that I had let all the trauma, all the violence, all the street life overtake my life. And I'm like, I'm in this environment. I can't give birth to this dream. Like, so it was the most, like getting sentenced was like my life is over.

48:43Not being able to actualize a dream based on a gift I was given. That was devastating. You know, and so I was going through this depression. And I did what I always would do, which was go back to those books. And, you know, I was getting heavy in the philosophy, which was like the wildest thing is like, you know, growing up, you know, you hear philosophy like, oh, that's super born, you know. But I was getting to all this philosophy, man. And I remember going back to James Allen book and it was really talking about this idea that you think into existence, the life that you want. And if you focus your life on negative thoughts, you're going to only produce negative outcomes.

49:28And when I went back and I read my journals, I saw the pattern, the pattern was super clear of like, I bought into this negative narrative. So me being in prison was not a shocker to me when I went back and read through my journal. And so I said to myself, if this is true and if this is absolutely true in the negative, it has to be true in the positive. And I began to just refocus my energy on getting out of solitary. And I remember saying, if I'm going to get out of here, I need help. Like, the way it looks on paper, they're not just going to let me out, you know. And so I wrote this letter to the warden and it was a super philosophical letter about the truth.

50:15And what I said to the warden was like, when I walked into prison, my statement was that I was not going to follow the rules and that I was hell bent on destroying my life. And I'm like, if you look at my record, you would know that I've honored my word. Like at that point, I had probably maybe I think about 34 misconducts. And they ranged from everything, the dangerous contraband to a sought -on staff, sought -on M8, you name it. And I was like, so the thing you know more than anything else is I'm going to man them a word. And what I'm telling you is that if you believe that that to be true in the negative, I just need you to believe it to be true in the positive.

51:02And if you give me this opportunity to get out of solitary, I want to focus on two things. I'm going to mentor these other young guys and I'm going to focus on becoming a writer. And I sent that letter to the warden and the warden and Lily wrote me back. And he said, you know, despite my hesitation here, I believe you. And I'm going to advocate for you to get out. And so he began to advocate for me to get out, but he had to go through multiple series of like his supervisors because the assault was on the M8. And so it took about another two years before I got out of solitary. The assault was on the officer.

51:41Yeah, on officer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, on officer. And so it took Lily another two years before I finally got out. But once I got out, I took those handwritten books and I typed them all up. You know, and I mentored those guys and I began to tutor the guys who they said couldn't read or wouldn't read. And I found that if I gave them books that were similar to their life, they would put in more effort. And so that's what I focused on, you know. And then I typed those books up and I was like, I started to send them all with Senate stuff out. I got like, I still got like copies of my query letters, man.

52:18I was just sending stuff out in the dark. Like I sent like, Jay, he was like the president of like deaf jam at one point. I was like, oh, you should publish this book because you wrap about this shit. And I really remember. I said it to him and I was just like, did he respond? No, you know, they've got to respond. Well, I did get a couple of response from like some like independent public service and they was like, no, we're not interested right now. But thank you. And I just kept going at it and then I was like, you know what? I'm responsible for my own dream, you know. And so I took the money that my parents sent me and money I hustled on the yard.

52:55I still had hustles. They just weren't like illegal hustles. So I wasn't doing like drugs, modeling. But I was sell, you know, the merchandise on the yard for twice what it's worth. And I just took that money, man. I saved it up and I published my first book from president in 2008. And how did you do that? So I bought this book. I ordered this book called Self Help Guide to Self Publishing. And I taught myself everything I needed to learn about publishing. Like I knew how to get a copyright, a ISBN number. I had a partner outside who believed in what I was doing. And I basically would just be like, here's the steps I need you to take to execute this and found the graphic artist and a printer.

53:42And yeah, and published the first book and then the president sued me for the cost of my incarceration. Wow. Yeah. And they tallyed it up to like a million dollars. Yeah. Because basically what they did is they literally went and said, this is how much it costs for you to be in prison at every prison you've been in per day. And so higher security levels, it was about 150 something a day, lower security levels like 70 something a day. And it was like, by the time you get out of prison, it'll be about a million dollars. And so we want 90 % of anything you earn off this book. They thought I had got a book deal.

54:21They didn't realize I had like self -published. And I was like, you know, the thing that struck me about that when I went through the through the through the actual hearing with the judge was I was like, man, you know, I wrote this powerful letter to it. And I was just like, look, I'm coming home with a conviction. I got three felonies, right? I got I'm convicted of a second degree murder felony firearm and this is sought on officer. And I'm like, if I put that on a resume, nobody's going to hire me when I get out. And I'm like, fair, I get it. But like, if I'm in a hiring position, I saw if that I only saw that probably not hiring that person either.

55:06So I'm giving myself a chance. You know, I'm trying to give myself a chance. Like I don't want to go back to the streets. I want to I want to be able to contribute to society. But I know society is not going to give me an opportunity. So I'm creating an opportunity for myself. You know, and so I went through the court case and they this is how this is how they ended up not getting any money. Right? So I backdated a contract to myself saying that I would only accept 15 % of the proceeds. I mean, 10 % of the proceeds wants the company recoup this production cost. So they went from so on me for 90 % of $15 per book.

55:46It's only been able to sue me for 90 % of $1 .50 per book because I backdated this contract. I used to work in a law like various. I was like, you know, I know contractual law is binding. And the lawsuit was only binding as long as I was incarcerated. And so I just made sure that I didn't make any money, you know, until I got out. But the letter that I wrote to the judge, like it was important to say that is that listen. At that time, you know, it's 15 years ago. I've been out 15 years now. At that time, nobody was like really talking about second chances if you have a violent crime. You know, if you had a non -violent crime, this chance you can get a job and you get out.

56:29And so I was realistic. And I'm like, yo, nobody's going to hire me. So I got to figure out how to make a happen myself. And so I went through that lawsuit and it was tough, you know, it was tough because I'm like, this is the first time I'm trying to do something legit. Like I'm, you know, I'm so drugged, I've hustled on the yard. I'm trying to move into like doing something with my life. You know, I don't want to be, I don't want to be thugging it out forever. I don't want to be, I don't want to be one of those people that go in and out of a prison system. You know, I don't want to die here.

56:57Like I want to, and I want to actually add value. Like I know some things that I think is helpful in the community. But if you take this away from me, then what do you, what do you expect me to do? Right. You know. This episode is brought to you by Visible. I want to let you in on something. Your current wireless carrier does not want you to know about visible because visible is the ultimate wireless hack. No confusing plans with surprise fees. No nonsense. Just fast speeds, great coverage without the premium cost with visible. You get one line wireless with unlimited data powered by Verizon's network for $25 a month.

57:38Taxes and fees included. Seriously, $25 a month flat. What you see is what you pay. No hidden fees on top of that. Ready to see? Join now and unlock unlimited data for just $25 a month. On the visible plan. Don't think wireless can be so transparent. So visible. Well, now you know, switch today at visible .com slash Rogan terms apply. See visible .com for planned features and network management details. So they were under the impression that you had got some crazy big book deal. Yeah. And so they were just trying to stop it and try to fuck up your dream. Yeah. Yeah.

58:20Good. I mean, I kind of almost can see it from their side if they hate you. You know, like fuck this dude. That's what can we do to derail this? Or, you know, if you're a corrections officer, you're not making a lot of money. I don't know. No. And you're in there and then you think, is this motherfucker getting rich? Right. And then there's also jealousy of talent. That's a real thing. Absolutely. When you find out a person has talent. And especially if you don't have any talent, talent is like talent is a gift from God. So if you either have it or you don't, you can develop some talent. Yeah.

59:00But some people have talent. There's something that some people like there was a video we played the other day of a bigy rapid on the street. But even 17. Yeah. You've seen the video. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can't teach that. Yeah. You can't, you can't teach that kind of power. At all. That's 17. That's the gift. Yeah. That's a gift. You know, some people just have a gift. And sometimes that gift comes from pain. Yeah. You know, sometimes that gift comes from a life of struggle and hardship. And it's just the emotional turmoil builds something inside of you that comes out in your art. And people hate people with gifts.

59:36Yeah. They really do. They really do. Especially if they hate you already. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't there. I wasn't there favor. You know. But the crazy thing is like, that's how I originally took it. And I think that was some of the impetus to them, like following the lawsuit. But the policy itself is wild. Because like, if you, if your parent dies and you inherit their insurance money, that same law applies. What they can take 90 % of that to cover the cost of your incarceration. That's fucked up. But it's discriminated in terms of like how they apply it and when they apply it. Right. And that's where the hate came in.

1:00:17Because how it got initiated was the person in the mail room was like, oh, how dare this guy write a book. Yeah. And then I'm a cynist to the attorney general. And they're going to like sue you. So it was crazy, man. Yeah. What is it like the day you get out of a solitaire? So you do it three times. Yeah. Two, one year stretches and then one more. One for yeah. So on that last one, man, I, one, I just, I didn't, I didn't believe I was getting out. You know, after a while, you started to kind of, you know, start to play, which are mine. You know, you see these guys, they got, you know, they've been in for 20 years, you know.

1:00:57But I remember like going, because you go up to these hearings, you get, it feels like you're about to go. And then they come back in 30 days. And I got a day, they won't let you out, right? Because you got to go, so it got to, it's goals like this. Well, you had a sort of officer, you got to go to the warden. And then a warden goes to like a regional director, the regional director goes to like the main director. And so each time I would make it like, oh, I got it to the warden, then the regional sets it down. So it's like you're getting your hopes up and you don't know when it's going to end.

1:01:29You know, it's kind of like, you know, when I remember in the pandemic hit, a lot of my friends, you know, I have a lot of friends in different walks of life now. A lot of my friends reached out to me and was like, you know, how do we help people navigate these tough times, right? The isolating feeling of being in the pandemic. And what I told them, I was like, the hardest thing that we're all going to grapple with is uncertainty of not knowing when it's going to end. And that's exactly what happened, right? It's like, all right, everybody's going to go in a lockdown and then on April 30th, we're all free and clear.

1:02:09There's like, no, we're going to stay until March. No, I think we should stay until June. No, we, so we just, you started to lose that orientation because you can't put your feet on solid ground. That's what it's like in solitary. You just don't know. The way it works. Yeah, the extreme of that, right? And so when it finally happened, I remember telling the guys on the tear, I was like, if they ever let me out of here, I'm going to stroll out like George Jefferson.

1:02:39So, the wild thing was like that last year in solitary. So, they have these guys come over to the cell block. They're like clean up. They pass on the food trays. So, they usually come from the protection unit. The last year they stopped letting them guys come in. They was just creating too much conflict because they was like, they got beef. Now, you over here and guys are trying to get to them. So, it was crazy. So, the guys who was coming over from general population, and these was like guys I knew. So, like the last year I was there, they would come through. They would smuggle me candy bars.

1:03:10I hadn't had a candy bar like three years. You know? And I remember, you know, one of my guys come over. He smuggles. I hear the broom hitting the door. And I look up and it's like too flattened down. Like, snickers that he's probably putting his shoes. I don't know where he put them. I didn't even ask questions. I didn't want to ask questions. And I remember running over cold water so they can solidify. So, when I tell you, it was like the snickers was like the best. Like, I'm for like, I mean the details of how I can taste that given that I've been, been gone from it. So, I told him guys I was like, man, they let me out.

1:03:45It's going to be like George Jefferson's throwlin' out of here, you know? And so, that's the lily how it was, man. They popped that door. I'm not taking my little bag of shit and my books and through that thing. And I'm, I'm George Jefferson's throwin' and I'm like, I'm out. Like, y 'all had never seen me because I had really, you know, I looked at it like this. I was like, you know, up to that point in my life, I had let myself down so many times, you know? I had been beat down by life, the traumas, the fucking, all the things. And it was the first time I felt like I was fighting for myself. I felt like I was fighting for myself.

1:04:28Like, I'm gonna get out of here. All the things I said I'm gonna do, I'm gonna get out and I'm gonna do them. And it's gonna be the first time that I'm gonna stand on something that really aligns with that little boy that I always knew was there. And I'm gonna fight for this kid. And so, I was so, I was like, I'm moving on up, but I'm moving on up until like a higher purpose in my life. And that's what I got out, man. And I went to work. I'm like, lily went to work. I took those books, you know, I typed them up, you know, I figured out, you know, how to publish a book. You know, I started preparing for parole.

1:05:05The year that I published the book, I went up for parole that same year, 2008. And I was at a prison at this time, they had transferred me to lower security levels. So you started to work your way down, which is this own craziness, you know, because I, you know, I did, at that point I only did a hard time. And going down at security level was like crazy, you know, because you're not your dealing with these guys. It's coming straight off the streets. They're like, you know, you're dealing with, there's kind of a hierarchy in the streets. You know, there's a hierarchy of mindset in the streets like, guys who are usually good at selling drugs, they're lily operating at a different intellectual frequency than guys that are like doing petty stuff.

1:05:49And so now you're, you're in lower levels, you're dealing with a lot of guys who really should probably be in an addiction environment versus actually prison. You're dealing with your, you know, failure to play child support, DUI's low level drug offenses, you know, petty theft. So you're dealing with a different mindset of guys who are really still, they're trying to heal, you know, they're just coming fresh off the streets. And it's an open setting. So I'm going from like being in the sale by myself to like, now I'm in this like cubicle with, you know, these random, you know, guys. But I was just preparing myself, man.

1:06:33I was like, you know, I want to get out and I want to add value to society. And so, you know, they had transferred me. So now at this point, I'm way up up in the northern Michigan over the upper peninsula. So about 12 hours from, you know, my home time, my dad comes up, my dad, my stepmom, my oldest son. And, um, maybe going to this parole here and it probably lasted, you know, maybe a minute. You know, this lady, she was just like, why did you do it? It was like a very hard line, just the facts, you know. And I was just like, I'm not getting out, you know, like I knew it. Like that hearing was so fast, she didn't even, you know, list to my dad.

1:07:17It was just very hurt. And I was like, man, I'm, I'm not going home yet. And so how many years in was this? So at that point, I had 17 years in. And how much time do you have to wait before you can apply for parole again? So technically, it can be anywhere from 12 months to 24 months. They give what's called a, a flop or a pass over. So they gave me a 12 monther. And usually you go back within about 10 months of that, to go back to the same process again. And sometimes less when they're trying to like deal with budget issues and kind of get guys out. So I went back probably about eight, 10 months later.

1:07:59What did she say to you? Oh, she denied you, Pearl. She didn't say, she didn't tell me she was denying me like in the, in the hearing. It was just the way that the hearing was handled where it was like, she didn't ask, you know, what are your plans when you get out? Who were you before that incident? What led up to that incident? Like it was just very, you know, basically you killed someone. And that's it. And I think when I was even trying to explain to her, I think she just kind of like shut it down. She put you in a category. Yeah. Yeah. She shut it down. Like it was almost like me explaining to her was making an excuse.

1:08:38You know, that was the way she responded. And I was like, man, it was, it probably didn't even take a full of 60 days before I had a decision back, you know, that I was being denied.

1:08:51That's going to be a horrible feeling to just be in a category where they don't take into account any of the circumstances. Don't take into account any potential growth or this direction that you're trying to move your life into. You're just in a category, you're a murderer. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's the, that's the scariest part about, you know, our penal system overall. There's no rehabilitation. Right. You have to do it. What your story is so similar to many stories that I've heard. Yeah. You know, I've done a lot of podcasts with my friend Josh Dubin. Yeah. You know, Josh. That's the lawyer guy.

1:09:33Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This guy who used to work for the innocence project and I worked for the Ike Pearl mother center for legal justice. Yeah. And it's mostly dealing with wrongfully incarcerated people. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and some of them, the stories, you just, you hear it and it is, it just kills you. It breaks your heart and just try to imagine what's like to be that person. Yeah. Yeah. dealing with corrupt DA's corrupt prosecutors corrupt everything corrupt cops. Yeah. And people just get railroaded because they need to hang a conviction on somebody. Absolutely. Yeah. It's one of the scariest parts of the system.

1:10:16So what, like one of my best friends name is Calvin. Calvin did 24 years for a crime. He didn't commit. And he's out now. And he has one of the, and he has one of the most incredibly positive spirits of anybody I've met, given what he's been through. And the hardest part about any of this, you know, is exactly what you say is like when you're labeled for the rest of your life. It hits you, you know, because it impacts your ability to contribute. And what people don't know is like 90 % of people incarcerated will get out at some point. And we have to decide who we, who do we want to be as a society?

1:11:01Like do we want to give people a second chance to prove themselves? And like, I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not a person who has a mindset of like you just throw the doors open and let everybody out. I know again that I was fortunate and I was lucky to be literate. And I was lucky to have read books that led to me really putting in the heart, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book, that I was fortunate to have read the book.

1:12:27To reason, to think that I was fortunate to have read the book. To summarize, to handle questions on them. When they tried to apply to Zen, they really applied to other events. And then, when they were doing something, like, they were doing something, like, they were doing something, like, they were just doing something hard, they were like, they were like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, they're like, their had a skill set to read.

1:12:31And you know, the read books of like, hey, it doesn't have to end like this. You know, you can, you don't have to be pinpointed to one horrible moment in your life, you know? And there's the cumulative nature of the things that led up to that moment, it doesn't excuse you. Like, I don't make excuses for the decision I made at night. I just wanna be clear about that. There's like all these causal factors that lead to us becoming who we are in whatever capacity. But that's the tough stuff we don't like to grapple with because it's not efficient, you know? It's not easy to figure out. I mean, the facts of it is not easy, right?

1:13:12It's not easy to be like, okay, this person killed somebody so we should give him a second chance. Like, but there are tons of us who have gotten out and who have done the work before we got out and that we're contributing in a way that most people who've never went in probably contribute. And like, those stories should be lifted up. We should be talking about. We probably have an appreciation of freedom. That's just different for everybody else's. Oh, absolutely. Like, I think there's the appreciation, for me it's the appreciation of freedom, but it was also falling in love with the beauty of my mind.

1:13:50Like, you can't, you can't, like you can't underestimate that value of really understanding like as a human being, that you can contribute to the world and positive and negative. And that you can live your life in such a way that it honors what it really means to be human, to be complex, to be able to discover something new about yourself every day. Like, that's what, for me, freedom is that. You know what I'm saying? Freedom is like, you know, the book that I've recently written is called How to Be Free. And you know what really inspired me to write that book is I've met so many people out here in society who's never been in the prison cell, who are psychologically, emotionally incarcerated.

1:14:44And they're incarcerated by heartbreak. They're incarcerated by shame, grief, anger. I mean, I've met people who have it all. They have the best job in the world. They have more money than they will ever be able to spend. And there's a thing from their life that does not allow them to be fulfilled. You know what I mean? And so there is that appreciation, post incarceration that you know, you just, I mean, 15 years later, I still revel in moments like a kid. You know, like I'm like, I'm like a kid, man. That's beautiful. Yeah, I'm curious about life, you know. We should all keep that kid. Man, protect it too.

1:15:30Yeah. You know, and put your head in. Don't get hard. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, life forces you to get hard in a certain way. And I'm sure your life forced you to get hard in a way that most people can't comprehend. But the fact that you can hang on to that child like joy of things. Yeah. Yeah, that's the curiosity. You know, I'm like the biggest nerd. I love it, man. It's like, I already said my son, I'm like, I'm the coolest nerds you'll ever meet. I was like, there's a thing like, you know, I got out like two years at the out, I was a fellow at MIT Media Lab. You got to imagine like how wow that was, Joe.

1:16:09Like I'm going from like the barbarity of prison. 24 months? Yeah. And now I'm at like the most technologically advanced school in the world. And I always say it was like Fred Flintstone going into an episode of the Jetsons. It's like, I was like, Robots were like, I mean, it was crazy. Like I mean, they had these cars that like parked themselves. And I was just, my mind was blown, you know? And I remember one time being there and the director was like, he can tell I felt like out of place. And he was like, don't worry about it. You can contribute. Like you can contribute. It doesn't matter where you come from.

1:16:49You can contribute. And I remember how that stuck with me of like, man, I can contribute. What were you doing there? So I was working on a project called the Tomin Project, where we were using technology and art to facilitate restorative justice conversations. It's super hard to talk about hard things, you know? When it comes to violence, and it comes to people who have been victims of violence. And I felt like art and technology provided a vehicle to kind of bridge that gap, you know? And I remember this one story. This was like super funny. So I'm there. And one time I'm in one of the labs. So they would do these demo days.

1:17:28You can go around to all the labs and like watch all this crazy technology. And there was this one kid, man, he was working on something in an auto industry. And he was trying to get this, it was like one of those screens to kind of perform in a very particular way. And I was just watching and I was like, man, he just keep bumping up against it. Like it was so obvious to me like what the problem was. Like he just moved his over like a quarter of an instance probably gonna work the way to to envision it, you know? And I remember saying that to him and just saying him like, it was almost like a light bulb just fired off in his head.

1:18:02And I was just like, man, that was, that was wild. Cause this is a smart kid. This is, you know, this kid is brilliant, right? And so I said, I wanna do a prison hack here. And I wanna challenge these students and faculty to solve some problems based on the problems we had to solve in prison. And so they said, yeah, you should do it. And so I literally told them all the things that I wanted. And I came up with five design challenges. And one of them was you got to design a tattoo gun out of a tape player motor, a good tire string and an ink pen. You have to make what we call a stinger, which is like kind of like, so you have a hot pot, right?

1:18:41So in prison in order to like heat up our noodles, we had the, you know, the, especially if you're in an old prison, excuse me, if you're in an old prison, there's no, there's no microwaves. So you have to figure out how to heat them up. And so we will make what's called a stinger, which we would take an extension cord, cut that up and then you attach like nail clippers to it. And you gotta splice them and then you put it in the water and plug it up and then it heats the water up. And so now you can make your noodles your coffee. You just put in a cord right into the water? Yeah, but if you do it, you gotta put it in first before you plug it up.

1:19:14Because if you, if you like plug it up first, yeah. If you plug it up first, then it blows the power out and sell black. Now you gotta hold another problem. And so we would, that's how we would heat up our noodles, our coffee, oatmeal, whatever. And then I had them, if back in the day, we used to get these little radios. They're not boom boxes, but they're like little G radios or something. And they, they disable, you know, you from playing, you know, your tape player to them because there's no tape player attached. So you have to figure out how to connect that to the big radio. And then it plays from your tape player through the big speaker.

1:19:50And then I had them make a lighter out of batteries and wire. And then to make a fish line out of the same material I told you about earlier, the string out of the socks. And so I gave them like three hours to complete these challenges. And we're going for three hours. They blew the power out at MIT video lab. It's like the best. It felt like an intellectual victory. I was like, yeah, it's like these super smart kids, they did like, blew the power. And so we get to the three hours. I mean, one of the kids burnt them. So I got a video is like, you burnt themself, like trying to get the lighter.

1:20:25And they almost got the tape player. I think if we did it had probably about three more hours that they figured all this stuff out. But I had two goals with that. One, the nerd in me wanted to really understand the science of like, okay, why does this scientifically work? And then the second part was that if they would have accomplished this with these meager little tools set, they would have been applauded. And people would have said, you know, that was brilliant. And that's your genius. And that's your incredibly intelligent. Because you were able to take these little scrappy things and make something out of them.

1:20:56And the reason I wanted them to validate that is because I believe inherently that there are people in prison who possess ingenuity, innovative abilities, intelligence, all these things that we throw people away. You know, we let people throw people away. And I would have been one of those people that had been thrown away had I not had the ability to write. And so, you know, it's those type of things where you think about these other prison systems. Like I've visited prisons and I've been to Germany's prisons, London, I've been to Ghana. And you see like how different it could be. You know, what we're capable of when you give people an opportunity.

1:21:38I don't, I don't, I can tell you in my time, you know, of almost 20 years in prison. I've met, I've met some bad people. I met some people who are scary people. You know, I was in prison with a couple of different serial killers, serial rapists. But they are the extreme minority, the extreme minority. Most of the guys that I met that I served time with were trying to hustle their way to a life. They come from high levels of, you know, parental abuse, sexual abuse, drug abuse. I've met a lot of people that had real psychological issues. I don't know what the politically correct term is. Nowadays, I feel like we gotta always have a correct term.

1:22:39But people who were really like screwed up, it wasn't, I didn't meet a lot of inherently evil people, but I have met some evil people. And you know it, like it is not even a doubt in your mind of what you're dealing with. When you meet these people. But we're lazy, man. You know, we're lazy because if we can just slap a title on you and just categorically say like everybody's, you know, you convicted of a murder, you were a murderer and that's everybody. It's not everybody's story. All of us don't arrive there, you know. And it's, you know, I, the time that I did was the consequence of the choice I made.

1:23:24And I accept that, you know, I accept that I accepted that came with, I even accept now, you know, we're talking 34 years later. There's penalties and consequences for that one moment in my life that I live with forever. There's the, there's the personal reality, right? Like that doesn't, that never goes away, you know, like that, that understanding of what damage off cause to this family is something that never goes away. And then there's the societal consequences that, you know, at this stage in my life, they're not the same as they was the first day I walked out. But they remind me of exactly what society thinks of me when I deal with them, you know.

1:24:14And I think that we should be able to earn the trust of society back. You know, I think you got to put the work in. You know, I don't think that anybody should just be handed a free card. But I think you should be given opportunity to prove yourself, you know, that you can contribute and that you want to contribute. And I can tell you like the guys that I deal with, man, there's so many of these guys that can contribute if we just stop throwing people away. Yeah, the system is just set up to punish. They're set up to just lock people up so they're off the streets and so other people don't have to deal with them.

1:24:51But they are, like you said, they are going to get out, most of them. And they're not going to be rehabilitated and oftentimes they're hardened and it's oftentimes even worse. Absolutely. And it's so little effort put into how to fix things, how do you make it better? What do you do that you can help these people contribute? And you can have them come out of jail actually a better person, which is possible. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think you have to look at the system holistically, right? Because it's not even just the men and women serving time to suffer. Like the officers who work there, it's a brutal job, man.

1:25:31Yeah. They suffer. Like they're not happy people. Oh, no. You know, and they're not, they're not happy because their job forces them to have to have a persona of toughness. Mm -hmm. You know, you have to, the way that it was originally designed is you have to have a wall up between your humanity and the people that's your task with policing. Mm -hmm. And that makes it tough. Because you have to come into this world for most of the time, 60 hours a week, most of those people have to make overtime in order to, you know, provide for their families. And you gotta wear a mask for 60 days out of the week.

1:26:15And then you gotta come in and you gotta see people, you know, at their worst, more than just the moment to arrest them, right? Like a police officer on the street, they're arresting a lot of times people at their worst moment, then they pass them off. Correctional officer, you walk into this environment every day, you have to deal with somebody who is in the cycle of their worst moment. And the violence, the chaos, the smell, the lack of tools and resources where you have to untangle the chaos. You have to untangle the violence. You have to jump into the free when a guy is butchering another guy.

1:26:53And then you have to go home with that. You know, you have to carry that home and it's the higher security levels. That's happening all the time. Somebody's getting stabbed on the yard all the time. You know, somebody's getting maimed and getting, you know, blundging, you know, on a regular basis. And then you have to deal with that. You know, it's the interesting thing about how, you know, at one point I didn't have empathy for correctional officers. You know, they were the enemy. Like, you're holding me in prison. And I realized, I'm really the one that's responsible for me being there. But over time, and I remember, I started to get empathy in the craziest ways, man.

1:27:30You know, this officer came to do a strip search. And I refused the strip search. I was, you know, I was in that rebellious state. And I just remember like, think it's myself after that, like, man, this is his job. You gotta come and look at somebody's ass. You know, it's fat ass, it's skinny ass, it's hairy asses. This is your job. How can you be a happy person? Right. You can't be happy. Like you, the guy going to visit in room and you see this guy out here with his kid and his family. And when he leaves there, you have to strip search this person. So you have to put this armor up between your own humanity.

1:28:12And that's so, you, for 40 hours a week, you're looking at asses. That got a suck. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, dude, like of course you become an asshole. Like how can you not, right? Yeah. But, you know, I think that's where we got it wrong. We've kind of created this kind of idea that us against them. And the reality is not because they're spending a lot of time in that environment. Yeah, they're in prison too. They just can leave at night. Oh, they. Yeah. It's a different kind of prison because they're in control and they can quit. But a lot of them, they're probably imprisoned by their bills too.

1:28:53So they can't quit. Absolutely. And a lot of the environments where these prisons are located, there's no other jobs. No, that's the only industry. Yeah. That's the only industry. The fact that prison is an industry is also insane. The fact that privatized prisons are an industry. When I found out that prison guard unions lobby to keep drug laws on the books, I remember that moment, the moment I found that, I was like, that is evil. You're using people as like batteries to generate money. Absolutely. Absolutely. Private prisons are, they want more people in there because that's how they make money.

1:29:34So like if you're a chicken farmer, you want more chickens. You want more chickens. Yeah, right. If you're a people farmer, I mean, you're essentially a people farmer, which is evil. Absolutely. And you think about like the cost of phone calls. Like before I got out of prison, we have finally fought to get the phone calls down. I mean, they were charging $15. And how much did you make in prison? Like the best paying job I had in prison was, I think when I worked in a law library, I made about $54 a month. And every phone call's $15. $15. Holy shit. And so most people in there make, I worked in a kitchen.

1:30:19I started off at 17, sending out. You've got to work a week to make a phone call. Yeah. That's insane. But that's if you got a, was considered a good job, right? Yeah. But the average job you making 17 cents in an hour in a kitchen. Oh, I know. And the phone calls $15. $15, right? So you make, you know, you can't talk to your family, you know? And then we finally got it down to like about $3, 15 minutes. Still, if you make it 17 cents an hour. Yeah. Take you forever to make a phone call. That's insane. And like even now, like I keep money on my phone for my friends who are incarcerated to call me, you know?

1:30:59And I just like, I'll put, you know, a few hundred on there. And then it's like, you know, every time you call, you can tell how much money is gone. Because they're like, oh, you got $150 left. And it's just like, geez, like man, you know? And I'm a lot of instances, I'm there only connection to their family and their kids.

1:31:20Do you know the freeway Ricky Ross story? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Do you know Ricky? Yeah, so we've met. I wouldn't say they were like good friends, but we're cordial anytime we've seen each other. But we've met up. I want to say at least four or five times. But yeah, wow story, man. I love that dude. I've had him on a few times. But he learned how to read in prison and then became a lawyer and realized that they wrongfully convicted him under the three strikes rule. Yeah. And that's how he got out. Yeah. No, that happens so much to people though. Yeah. Like they all they can imagine. They overcharge you.

1:31:56That's one of the things that I would love to see change is like, there is no accountability for prosecutors when they overcharge people or wrongfully charged. It's up to you who's being charged to figure it out into, which is crazy, right? Like the honest shouldn't be on a person. Well, it's a crime. Yeah. It should be a crime. Absolutely. Yeah. Cause that's like crazy. The thing that you can wrongfully charge a person or overcharge them. But that's the thing is like they don't think of you as a person anymore. Yeah. Once you're a convict, you're not a person anymore. And they can do things to you that should be illegal.

1:32:31Yeah. It should be a crime, but they can get away with doing it. Yeah. And it impacts like everybody. Like right now in this country, there's probably about 150 million people who have someone incarcerated or who have had someone incarcerated. Like it's no longer, you know, when I was coming up, you know, I came up during the height of the war on crime or war on drugs, right? So I come up through that era. I came up, seven drugs when crack first exploded in our communities. And you know, the prison population went from, I think, you know, the couple of hundred thousand to two million. And which is wild, right?

1:33:10Wild. In a short amount of time. How old do you? I am 53. Okay. I'm a little older than you, but I remember when all that happened. Yeah. I remember like also crack was on the street. Yeah. Yeah. How did this happen? How did this happen? Liddy overnight. Yeah. And we find out through freeway Ricky, how it happened. Yeah. It was our own government. Yeah. Absolutely. Which is fucking insane. Crazy. Not our own government for real for real, but people in our government that are cowboys and renegades and people who are criminals. Absolutely. Realize they could get away with this. Yeah. And in Ricky's case, they were using it to fund a war.

1:33:50Yeah. The contract was really crazy, right? Crazy. I remember hearing about that shit in the news when I was a kid going, what? Yeah. What happened? But I didn't at the time. I didn't know that it was being funded by selling drugs in Los Angeles. Yeah. I had no idea that was, but I remember that it was in the news and Oliver North was in the news and they were, this was when Reagan was old and he's like, I can't recall. He just said he didn't remember. Right. Yeah. Convenient. Yeah. Yeah. It was wild. Yeah. It's horrible to think because you know, as a boy, I remember thinking, well, the government's good and they're looking out for you and they're the good people and the cops are the good people and all the prisoners are, they're, because they're bad.

1:34:39They're the bad. Yeah. That's the narrative, right? And like, I grew up the same way. You know, my dad was in the Air Force. You know, I used to go to the Air Force base and, you know, all of his friends were in the Air Force and, you know, you grow up in on my neighborhood block. There was, you know, just one of us used to be a police officer in the firefighters and the doctors. And so you grow up seeing this ideal of what you think is good and bad. And then you see this, this explosion of this drugs like that same neighborhood, you know, I wrote this story a while ago called the trees no longer get fruit.

1:35:13There's about my neighborhood. And what I was writing about is that I grew up on a block where every backyard, there was some type of fruit tree, pear tree, peach tree, apple tree. And then crack came and it killed my neighborhood. And he's manicured at laws in these houses where there were two families, I mean, two parent families and, you know, profess those and, you know, and you felt like a community, this drug came in and it was literally like a bomb had been detonated. And so that early narrative of like inner city kids as the, what did they call them, super predators. That was the narrative back then.

1:35:56Now it was Biden. Yeah. Yeah. Biden said that on TV. Yeah. Yeah, he really, really clean. Super predators, right? And I was in prison when they, when that crime bill took college out, I was average in 4 .0 and they said that it took rehabilitation out of prison. You know, that night, I think it was 94 crime bill like Biden and Clinton passed. And like, I remember like we went to school and the professor came in and was like, this is the last semester they were taking it out because of this crime bill. And so when you, when you look at who was villainized back then, who filled prison back then, the face of that was black males, like that was the dominant face of, of, you know, who you would think is in prison.

1:36:38Now 30 years later, that's changed. It's changed with opioids. It's changed with fitting all this change with like poverty in these rural areas. And now the prison population looks vastly different. Like there's more. I was just in the juvenile lock up. Last week I was in Rhode Island and like this room of these kids, like 10 kids and two different rooms. And I mean, it looked like the United Nations of diversity. It was like, literally like three white kids over here, a couple of laden over here, black over here. And I was like, shit, you know, and these are babies right there. And it's been crazy that that's also drugs.

1:37:15Yeah, absolutely. And it's also corporations. Yeah. See the thing about Detroit, most people don't know that Detroit, up until they started moving jobs overseas, Detroit was the third wealthiest city in the world. Absolutely. In the world. Absolutely. In the world, yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. To think that inside of a lifetime, Detroit goes from being one of the wealthiest cities in the world to one of the poorest cities in America. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. And just because they wanted to make some more money. Yeah. They didn't want to pay the union wages. They didn't want these factory workers making a great living.

1:37:57They wanted all the money. It's completely like, I want to destroy that city. Like a bomb, just like crack. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fortunately it's a resilient city and it's bouncing back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:38:13But fuck. The fact that that can happen. Yeah. Yeah. It was unbelievable to think that it would happen on our watch. I remember when I came home, I was so optimistic coming out of prison. I mean, you got to imagine like walking out everything. It's just like, oh, it's going to be exciting. You think that life really has advanced and people have moved on. And I remember just going through some of the neighborhoods. And I was like, these were beautiful blocks in these beautiful homes. And I would go through some of the neighborhoods. And this one house left on the block. And it's like the other house that are still in different, you know, the states of this repair were falling apart.

1:38:53And it was like the most heartbreaking thing to think about. There's kids that this is the block that they go down to go to school. And then this was the other thing that was mind blown. And I went into the schools and I'm like, it's some worse conditions than the prison on this left. And like that talks about where people are investing to your point of like, you start investing into like keeping people in prison or putting people in prison versus like education facilities to keep people out of prison. So. But also, how do we have these same communities decade after decade after decade that are deeply impoverished and filled with crime?

1:39:31Yeah. And no, no, no course correction. Nothing being done on a, on a federal level to try to correct that. It's, it's just, and I think there's a problem in this country. I mean, it's, it's a good problem in some ways that you have to get reelected. If you want to be president in four years, you have four year terms. But because of that, they just think about getting elected. And then once they're in, then they think about getting reelected. And the last thing you want to do is do anything controversial that might take 15, 20 years in order to reap the rewards of it generational. You know, like if you're trying to say like, hey, we've got to do something.

1:40:16I know we're, we're investing so much money overseas. We invest so much money into these nonprofits overseas. And all these different things we're doing, regime change and untold billions of dollars. What we got to invest in these cities and try to make less prisoners. Less people incarcerated. Less people that start off in a terrible position. But that's like an unpopular thing to try to run on. Yeah. Yeah. The people that are just trying to protect their money. You know, there's so many people in this country that think about people in prison. They don't even think of them as prisoners. They want them in prison because then they're not out in the street inconveniencing their life.

1:40:57They don't want to deal with like, why? Why does someone, you think you're different? You're not different. If you lived in that environment, you would be in there, man. You were all the same exact fucking thing. Absolutely. We vary genetically. We vary biologically, but not that much. Not that much. Not that much. If you lived in a terrible environment and grew up in a terrible household and dealt with terrible pressures, you would be in there too, man. We would all be in there too. And the callousness of people to like look the other way is, you know, it's a blight on our society, that callousness.

1:41:34That's what we're supposed to be the most advanced society that's ever existed. But yet we still, which is crazy, right? With the United States of America, it's supposed to be the most prosperous, advanced society on earth. And we have the highest level of prisoners. Yeah. We have more people in prison in the United States than any other country by a long shot. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's really interesting because like, you know, I don't, I don't do a lot in the world of politics outside of criminal justice. And what I've, what I've learned about this particular space with politics, it is in one space where in the last, I would say the last 15, 20 years, where there has been some common ground.

1:42:24And there's been a little bit more courage than, did I've ever seen in my lifetime. For years, people would not touch incarceration, other than saying, let's be tough on crying. Right. It took, it took a, you know, work of a lot of incredible people, a lot of storytelling. To start, to shift it to where it's the one issue where you can get some type of bipartisan buy -in. And I think the, the facts of it is this, to your point where there are certain segments of society that we have not dealt with, like the gun violence where I come from is something that most people can't even begin to imagine.

1:43:04Like, am I family? Am I family? Like, I mean, I mean, like my, not my family of friends, but in my family. At a minimum, there's been eight or nine of us who have been shot. We don't talk about gun violence in an inner city, in the cycle of it, because the lack of treatment for a gun related trauma. I didn't know what PTSD was until I was already in prison. I didn't realize that the things that I felt at 17 years old when I got shot were actually real things. And I wasn't making an excuse for being paranoid, and that I wasn't being irrational for thinking that I had to carry a gun and protect myself when both my brothers had already been shot.

1:43:46And many of my friends have been murdered through gun violence. So those traces as a kid, why they were illegal, they weren't necessarily irrational. And so we don't, we haven't done a good job at like being just honest, right? When I started to see the shift with criminal justice was when opioids began to penetrate the suburbs. When you started to see kids who normally can come into a neighborhood, buy some cocaine, go in party, and they're fine. To go back to the suburbs, it was easy to just be like, oh, those black kids over there are selling cocaine and they should be arrested. When you start dealing with this higher level of opioid addiction that doesn't just stay in the hood, that it really carries over to the suburbs, then people started to be at a seat there own kids and their grandkids.

1:44:41And now that you're seeing that it gets over 30 % of the prison population are white. You're starting to see people say, well, wait a minute, this isn't just a criminal orientation. There's a deeper problem in society, which is one is drug addiction that we don't really deal with because there's so much shame attached to it. So I can tell you like, sometimes I do these talks all over, and I'm speaking at corporations. Now, you like you name it, I've been at these spaces. I cannot tell you how many parents that worked incredible jobs in government, in state, in corporate come up to me and pull me to the side and say, thank you for speaking your truth.

1:45:24I wish I can tell you people what I'm going through my family right now. I wish I can talk about why my husband has not been in the household because of his addiction. The same attached to it. The same if it doesn't fit the narrative that you've been handed, the same attached to it. And even being a black male in America who comes from the hood, there is value to that narrative. To lean into that, if you think about the black comedians, we always talk about our trauma and our pain because that narrative has cultural value. If we lean into, as much as we can lean into, the elements of us that's from the hood, in the smart way, in the funny way, etc.

1:46:17We'll always get that laugh. We'll always get that that sense of like, oh yeah, y 'all do have a different reality, right? Because that's the narrative and that narrative have endured from generation to generation. Nothing now, we're just getting to a space where, and I mean, in this time's a work to do, like to undo all the damage that's happening in the system is going to take us about the 50 years. You know, we, it will be luck if we catch up to Germany or Norway or one of these more forward thinking countries like in the next four or five decades. How do they handle things over there? I'll tell you, there's two things that I was struck by when I was there.

1:46:58At one point, I was with this guy named Scott Butnik. I think you may know Scott. He produced a hangover. So Scott does incredible work in criminal justice. He's always telling me to get a Nobel Peace Prize. But Scott and I, we were over there with another group of people and they were doing like a bunch of panels and both of us basically got bored. We just like, we should like go see if we can run around the prison, right? So we just kind of peeled off and, you know, we're talking to the guys who are serving time. They're showing us their sales. They don't even know I had been in prison, but they're, you know, they're excited to have visitors.

1:47:29So they're like, you know, and I went into this one sale and I remember just standing there and I was by myself and the warden came, this was woman. And she was like, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, I was just like cutting the, cutting the thought like I spent a lot of time in prison back in the states. And I spent four and a half years in the sale. That's probably about half this size. And I was like, you know, I'm in the solitary confinement. I was locked down for all this time. And this woman visibly started to weep. And she said to me, we would never do that to one of our citizens. And that struck me when she said we would never do that to one of our citizens.

1:48:09It made me realize that in America, when you are convicted, your identity as a citizen is taken away. If you even had it. You can't vote. You can't vote. You know, you can't travel freely to other places. You know, there's still restrictions that I have. You know, and this is 15 years later. And like, I can't, I can't, you know, and this is where it'll hit you, right? So my wife and I and my son will travel. And my wife, she's incredible. She's a great leader in the world. She's doing like, I mean, some of the most amazing work in the world. And we'll be traveling. And she has TSA. And there's always this moment when we're traveling together, when we get there.

1:48:52And the TSA agent will be like, oh, man, you can go in that line. You got TSA pre -check. And it's always like, we always, it's to do you look at each other. She's like, no, I'm, you know, I'm gonna go with my husband. And is it the biggest problem in the world for us to have? Absolutely not. You know, but is there a dig at my dignity, you know, as a husband, as a father, every time we have to have that look and that exchange. And I have to think about as a taxpayer citizen that I pretty much played more taxes than probably 99 % of the country. And that I don't have access to all the things that comes with being a taxpayer citizen.

1:49:32And that I can actually use clear and move through effortlessly, but you can use clear. You can use clear. You can use TSA pre -check. Look the fuck is that? It's crazy, right? Things like insurance, like home insurance. I bought a house in LA in 2019. And I didn't realize that a felony can impede you from paying house insurance. And it was after I already bought, which we know that's usually people's biggest investment, is their home. Right. What does me have in the felony from 30 years ago? Have I had to do it a bit? My ability to pay insurance on a house I already bought. You know, and so it's like the insurance is such an evil scam.

1:50:15Yeah, especially in California's brutal. Oh, it's so evil. It's so crazy. You mean California, there's a new fire. I don't know if they put it out yet. Laguna Beach. Did they put that fire out, Jim? It was raging yesterday. Oh geez. I didn't even do it. Yeah, I mean, you can't get fire insurance. Yeah. You know, I have friends who have houses now that they can't get insured for fire. And they're like, what the fuck do I do? Yeah, what do I do? And they can't get out. They don't have an area like I have a friend who's trying to sell her house, but it's in an area that's too close to Laurel Canyon in Laurel Canyon Burns.

1:50:53Yeah. Nobody wants to buy a house there. Yeah. So like, what the fuck? Yeah, there it is. 13 year old bully arrested for brush fire that led to evaluations. Fireworks. Did they put it out? So what are they going to do to him though? He's a kid. That's what I'm saying. Like, he's a fucking kid. I started a fire when I was a kid. Yeah, I started a big, big ass fire. I'm a fireworks. Oh, fireworks. Yeah. I think I was. So I was living in Jamaica, plain, which is, at the time, it was a bad neighborhood outside of Boston. I think it's supposed to be gentrified now. Oh wow. So now that was, I was 13, right?

1:51:37Yeah. I was 13. So that was his age. Yeah. And we were light and firecrackers in this field. And it started off just like this little fire. And we're stepping on the fire and then the wind blew and we're like, oh, shit. And then it just raged. It raged through this field. And we ran out into the street and just by fucking sheer luck found a cop. And then we told the cops, the cops, like, get the fuck out of here. Like we told them what we did. We were lying. We're back in the store. And they wound up putting it out. This is a set in a statement. He was not accepted to Orange County juvenile hall due to absence of injuries or immediate threat to buildings.

1:52:25Okay. He's a kid. They just said, you're a kid. You fucked up. Yeah. Well, that's good. Yeah. I mean, but we got out of there. And then we came back like the next day and we saw all the shit we burnt. It was like, oh my god. It was like this huge area. It was burnt. Luckily no one lost their lives. But it was just sheer luck. Yeah. You know, it could have totally been next to someone's house. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Propane. Thank you. Anything. Anything. Yeah. Anything you never know. Or y 'all could actually got like seriously. Yeah. We could have. Yeah. I mean, it was just luck. Yeah. The dumb young kids, you leave them alone with the fact that any kid could go by a lighter.

1:53:03Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some matches. Anyway, you buy a lighter. Yeah. And you can just light things on fire. When you're a kid, you want to light things on fire. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's there's a million times in my life I could have done something stupid and gone the wrong way. And just by sheer luck, I didn't. And you know, when I talk to people like yourself who obviously are very intelligent and have a lot to contribute, you just imagine that I could have been me, man. It could have been any of us. That's the thing that people need to really get in their head. It could be any of us. Absolutely. Any of us.

1:53:40And leaving these communities the way they are and not doing anything to try to fix them is to me, the biggest failure of our government. Other than, you know, interventional war, you know, interventional foreign, interventionalist foreign policy and starting wars that are unnecessary and costing lives, which is the worst thing we've ever done. And that's the next worst. Is it we don't do anything about it? Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I think it goes back to what you just told me earlier with talent. Like, how much talent are we leaving on the table? You know, like, when I was just there and roll light.

1:54:20And so I went to this juvenile program over there. And, you know, the reason I went is these kids, they're working in a music program. And they've like gone from like getting all types of trouble to like not are using art to like, you know, really shift how they think about life. And so I was like, well, I'm gonna come over there and spend time with them because I've dabbled in and working with, I ended up doing this spoken word piece with Nas on one of his albums. And the kids, they were just fired up about how you can use writing in these other mediums. You know, and so they wanted to work with me on it.

1:54:55But the talent that is wasted in prison, you know, the ingenuity. Just think about the thing about being able to make a tattoo gun out of a piano wire or guitar string and an engine from something else, some sort of a motor. Take a player. Yeah. Yeah. And you see some of the tattoos these guys making Jay like, Jesus Christ, these are incredible tattoos. I'm inked up all these like, I got like, I actually got in trouble for getting tattooed one time. I got caught like getting tattooed. The tattoo artist wasn't good enough for getting rid of the gun. So my life, I think it was the last thing I got in trouble for in prison was getting the tattoo, which was crazy.

1:55:35I was trying to get a cover up right here. Were that when you were already out of solitaire? Yeah. So I was out of solitaire. I was actually working my way down to like going home. And I was just like, are we in lower level? Let me, let me, let me have this guy slam this ink in and cover this up real quick. And we literally got busted because he couldn't get rid of the gun fast enough. And they, they actually took 90 days for me for that though. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So when you get a misconduct, they take days from you, you know? And you know, you think about some of the stuff like, you're taking 90 days from a person for a fucking tattoo.

1:56:08Their own body. Yeah. For what? Like, why are you, why was the excess of punishment? But it goes back to like, how many of those guys could get out of jail and be excellent tattooist? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the, that's the, that's the, that was the other part of the idea with, with MIT is like, how do we, how do we take people who don't have traditional, kind of educational backgrounds and utilize their talent so that they can add value to society? You know, it's one of the things that I appreciate about, about Silicon Valley is that talent is really more important than your educational pedigree.

1:56:47Right. And like, if you, if you're talented, they're trying to figure out how can you contribute in a way that is meaningful. It's the same thing with like art, you know? Well, it's because it's so competitive. They just want to get ahead and oftentimes people that aren't educated are some of the most incredibly talented people. Yeah. They just have some weird things about them. Yeah. So I was going to think differently. Yeah. They don't care you didn't get a degree. Like, higher I'm quick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I worked in, yeah, I worked in Silicon for three years. And I invested there. So I'm super happy about that.

1:57:18But yeah, I worked in tech and, and you know, when I was there, it was so fascinating to like, you know, being especially like a startup, you know, just that startup energy of like, let's just break a bunch of things. Let's fail. Let's fix it and let's figure it out and win. And I'm like, that's, that's the streets, right? Like, I tell people this like, I, I learn like my business acumen comes from two worlds, from the streets in prison. And what I learned from the streets is marketing and promotion. I was one of the best that like figuring out how to get our product into other areas. There were a lot of skill sets that I didn't, I didn't even recognize them until I was far removed from that world that, oh, this is just like entrepreneurial talent, you know, the ability to, the problem saw.

1:58:06Yeah. I even won one, one of the houses we saw that they call them trap houses, not back then, we called them crack houses. We get this house. It's in the middle of a nice neighborhood. And this house is, it's, it's cranking. It's making a lot of money because people over here still have money that's buying the drugs. But we pull up one time and I'm like, it is a line down the street. I'm like, we're definitely going to jail. Like, we're going to jail like very soon, right? And so I was like, I was sitting there looking at it and I was like, the reason it's a line because we got this armor, raw gate like as soon as you walk up.

1:58:43So you can't go past this gate. And I was like, well, what if we move the gate to between the kitchen and the basement and allow the traffic to snake down into the basement, then we kind of keep our, you know, we can still look more low key. So it would be stuff like that that I was figuring out at like 13 and then it's like smuggling drugs. Like I would, I would hop on a Greyhound with like a family sized bag of chips that I've ripped open, put drugs in super glue back up. I put like a, a, a slurpee in one hand. I just walk on like a, like a little kid. Meanwhile, I got like, you know, the half of Bricka Coke.

1:59:19Bag going down. I know how you hold like I'm hustling, right? So I say to people like I learned, like the marketing and promotion distribution part there. And then in prison, I learned operations. Like how does cash flow work? So I loan shark. That was part of my livelihood. And prison was loan shark and then running these underground stores. And basically I worked in the Recreation Center, which was like the hub. So I had access to both cell blocks, which means that I can circulate cash on the off days when this cell block gets money this week. This one doesn't. So I can loan money here, pick up the next week.

1:59:58And I would just circulate this cash. So I was starting to generate this cash flow. And then I began to really understand interest rates and interest rates in prison. I ridiculous like 100 % markup on everything. But, but also was able to convert that cash, right? So like say you're on a government table, Joe, and you're like, you're down $100 and you don't got it right now. And then I got it. And then I can come to you and say, okay, I'll give you a hundred. But then I need your girlfriend, your mother to send me 75 to my account because that's more valuable is the money I have in my account.

2:00:32And so that was called a money transfer. We would just transfer cash. And so I learned these things. And then when I got out, you know, I started off hustling books out of the trunk. Like a lot of people, they talk about the, the out of trunk experiences, kind of like fashionable and cool. I seriously was like, Lily, I had a little Honda Civic. And I would go all over Detroit, parks, strip clubs, you name it bars. I would Lily set up sometime I set up a little booth inside the clubs. Couple of my friends, they manage the strip club. They'd be like, yo, come up to the club. I mean, I've come up there with books and I'm talking to the girls and they doing lap dance.

2:01:10I'm selling books and wow. Yeah. And I'm like, that's so that's how I really started the journey. And I mean, my first, first day out of prison. I saw my first book in the in the parole office parking lot. And so I took these skillsets from those two worlds. And I just applied them to legitimate enterprise. And then as I began to kind of pick up, you know, notoriety through through that and the storytelling, you know, I started speaking at companies. And then I actually ended up joining the company that I used to speak at. And who became a client of mine, they was trying to figure out their company culture.

2:01:44And how did it, how did that work out? Like what was that about? Yeah. So a really good friend of mine, Ben Horlidge, you've had his partner, Mark Andreessen on. Oh, yeah. So Mark's partner, Ben is a really good friend of mine. He's one of my, one of my best friends, but he also like a great mentor and somebody who really, you know, we're always having these ideas changes. But once I mean, invited me to his home for dinner with one of the founders and one of their portfolio companies. And the founder and I, we hit it off. He's just tough, tough Israeli and guy who's been through some stuff. So we would have these conversations about like grit and determination.

2:02:23And he had this company called trip actions at the time. And they were going through, they were like a skyrocket. They was just hot. It was going through a lot of things. And then when the pandemic hit, the thing, the first thing that suffered was, was travel, you know. And so I was, I had already been helping the company like figure out like some like kind of more of the cultural values and, the culture. And he asked me to join the company, you know. And I originally joined as the head of D because he really wanted to figure out what was happening in the company, how to set people up for success.

2:02:56And one day I spoke at an event and the chief revenue officer was like, I need everybody on the sales team to be able to communicate like that effectively, you know. And so I took on my second role, which was head of sales and success culture. I got a chance to train one of the best sales teams in the world. This company went from like zero revenue to like, you know, it's nine billion dollar valuation. How do you, how do you sort out a program like this? Like you had, you had never done this before. No, but I did it in prison with figuring out how to like run and operationalize the things I was doing in prison, right?

2:03:34So like, so how do they recognize you that this would transfer over to their corporation? I think just conversations, like conversations, things I was doing. I was doing some of the stuff at nonprofit world too. So I led a organization and LA, Ron nonprofit raised a ton of money. He was able to really kind of build out that culture. And then Ben actually wrote this book called What You Do Is Who You Are.

2:04:00And in that way, they gave them a framework to really understand how these lessons I learned in prison could really be applied and corporate. And you know, we hear it all the time. And if you can run, if you can run a drug operation, you can run a corporate. And I don't think it's that simple. I think it sounds great when people say it. Like freeway Ricky Ross Friday can run a corporation. Not everybody who hustles in the street is freeway Ricky Ross, right? Right. There is some skill sets to run an actual startup that you need to have a lot more experience, peep the people part of it. Like how do you really build relationships?

2:04:36That's one of the things I was really good with in prison is like really knowing how to be diplomatic, knowing how to resolve conflict. You know, a lot of times in prison, when violence escalates is because people are fighting for respect. And if you can make sure that both parties walk away with their respect in place, you can become a real problem solver. And that's like an inherent value in that environment. Now the caveat is that you also have to have a propensity for violence. Like people have to respect. Like you're not just telling them something because you don't want people getting into dust ups on the yard, but you're telling them because you've actually lived that life.

2:05:13And all of that psychology from that world applies in any corporate setting. Any company you can imagine, all the things that people are going through is the same thing that's happening in prison. The only difference is, you know, your colleague might sank you with an email. I might slide that email to, you know, that's the only difference, but the mindset of like what people are really after. You know, that is the same thing that you're dealing with in prison, when you're talking about like the economy, right? And how do you, how do you build? So, you know, in there, I would find guys to invest in.

2:05:52You know, so if it's like you, you ride in, you from the neighborhood, your family's not taking care of you. I would say, okay, with this little homie, he's on the cell block. I'm going to give you, you know, $30, $40 into you, you got to flip that, but you also got to be able to defend it. You know, I'm saying like, I can't come and fight your battle for you. The same thing that happens in corporate, right? You're assigned a responsibility. The CEO can't bail you out of that. He can give you the opportunity. And he can ensure that you have all the things you need to succeed. If he's a good CEO or he's a good CEO, but then you got to do the work, you know?

2:06:26And so all those lessons I learned from in there, how to build community. One of the things that I would do because I was hustling on the cell block is I may sort of be in my crew that we broke bread every day. Like we always would take our little ramen noodle cookups together. And we would make sure that everybody that we said was like part of our family and crew, it didn't matter if they didn't have money. It didn't matter if they couldn't put a sense in noodle and just that ability for them to know that when we come to break bread, we're all on the same playing field. Like that was a game changer.

2:07:02You know, we trained together every day. You know, and when we were trained, there was an accountability that we just commanded of each other. It's like if you say you're going to be on the yard, be on the yard, you know, you're going to go for 10 laps today. We're going to push you and drag you and help you get around, you know, and it built this closeness. And, you know, and there was some, there was some little chaotic nature to it all, right? Because like our friendships didn't come easy in there. You know, the price of entry was probably like the craziest shit ever. Like my thing was like when I welcome you into my world, it's based on these two things.

2:07:40Are you willing to do life or are you willing to give a give or lose your life? And if you're not willing to do life or take a life, and you we can't we can't be hanging on on the yard with the stakes right at high, right? It's the same thing in corporate where you're like listen, we're fighting for something and the startup we're fighting for this outcome, you know, acquisition, the merger, or IPO, whatever that thing is to change the world. Like we got to be in the trenches together, you know, and if we break bread together, if we spend this time together, we realize we're fighting for that one thing, it's a game changer, you know, and so when I go into these companies, you know, I come in with that mindset of just like the honesty, the vulnerability, you know, is the things that I'm even in the book that I'm talking about now is like, vulnerability when you hear that a lot of people don't think that applies to being a CEO, but it's the it's one of the greatest unlocks in your company culture is when you can get super transparent and like I learned that from being around great, you know, Ariel, he's a great CEO and he always got super real with us and when he got super real, it didn't always feel good, but what it did is it allowed you to look at, okay, this is what we're really dealing with, you know, and you got to face that thing head on and that's what applies in your real life, you know, that's the only thing to apply.

2:09:02Yeah, being super real is it's everything. Oh my god, it's the game, Trance. As soon as you're bullshitting. Yeah, like now what is truth? What's reality? How do you how do you succeed if you're not dealing in reality? Yeah, and that's where real grit comes from is the truth, you know, like you can't you can't have grit without having honesty, right? You know, I mean, like I guess you know, we hear it in sport, I'm a crazy sports fan. I think the best story is about how you conquer life come from sports. I agree. And you know, grit and resilience, the fundamental parts of that comes down to the truth.

2:09:37Like you have to be, you have to, you know what's in you, right? You know if you got that thing to push for it or if you don't. And when guys quit, like it's because their truth is that they're not strong enough to keep going. Right. You know, and so that all that stuff applies, you know, and corporate and business and when I was writing about it, obviously I'm writing about it from a different perspective of like, you know, I had an experience, man, that was like what, what even sparked me to write the recent book was I dealt with something that was so high level complex that it landed me on the deepest level of gratitude.

2:10:15And it was my brother was murdered in July of 2021. And I was sitting in our family's living room. And I'm watching my family mourn. And I was struck by this profound sense of guilt because I know I made somebody else's family feel like that. And so while I should have been grieving my brother and trying to unpack that, it was navigating this complex world. And what it led to was the toughest year of my life, emotionally, of trying to reconcile my brother's murder with who I had become as a kid. And what I landed on was that gratitude is one of the greatest keys to freedom. And is that if we can lean into being thankful for all of it, right.

2:11:11The challenges, the wins, the victories, all the things that you can live a life that is so rich and abundant and fulfillment because you're always in that spirit of gratitude and you're thankful for the moments you're in. And that to me, when you're in a company setting and everything feels chaotic and you're like, you know, damn, I don't want to get up and go to work. If you can just pause for a minute and be like, man, I'm thankful that I get a chance to get up and go to work. And I'm thankful for these times. I'm thankful for the abundance and that this brings into my life and that, you know, it's hard sometimes for people to see it because they haven't lost anything.

2:11:56But when you've lost everything, you know, you're thankful for like, you know, my gratitude practices are a wake up in the morning and I try to identify three things that I'm thankful for. And they can't be the super obvious things. They can't be like, you know, my wife and my kid and the house and the things. It's these small things. You know, things that I get excited about. I got cold orange juice today. How amazing is that. You know what I mean? Like that, that matters to me. You know, I have a device that I can actually communicate with the world and idea. You know, that I have like in a moment that I have it.

2:12:41Like that's gratitude. You know, it's like I got toothpaste today. You know, soap. Soap is a big thing in my life. Like, you know, there was a time when I was in prison when, and I don't know what was happening in my family's life, you know, but I didn't have any money. And I couldn't even buy a bar of soap. And all I had was this state issue soap. And it's a little small bar about this big. It's probably about a quarter of an instant. And it smells like pine saw. And I just remember like this moment of like, man, I can't afford a bar of soap right now, you know. And then that same stretch I was in solitary and I didn't have the shower shoes.

2:13:34So in prison, you get these little, you know, shower shoes that you bathed like $2. Because you're going to take a shower and this, you know, this just cesspool of all his random body fluids or whatever. And I tried to wear my regular shoes to the shower. And officer was like, you can't, you can't wear those to the shower. I'm like, what do you want me to stand barefoot in that shower? And she was like, I don't care what you do, but you can't wear those. And like that feeling of like shame, you know, they're like, I was a drug dealer, you know, I hustle. I took care of people. I stood up for people.

2:14:10And I don't have $2. shower shoes. Like that is what allows me to appreciate all the things, you know. And so what I would say to people is like, find the things in your life to be thankful for. You know, find them like be intentional about it though, you know, because that's, that's, to me, that's the ultimate freedom man is, is gratitude and to be thankful about, you know, even our complex country, like we got it, we live in a very complex country. It's actually kind of dope though, you know. And I don't think we spend enough time, you know, talking about the things that we should be grateful for just being here, you know.

2:14:53I think all kids should be like part of education, they should have to travel, especially if you're in this country. I think you should have to travel to places that don't have all the trappings of possibilities, you know. And I just think that gratitude is a game changer. I think so too, because I think it's too easy to focus on negative. Negative gets more negative. If you just find the things in your life that suck and dwell on those, your life takes some more. It's just simple mathematics. It's, it's, it's real. I know people that are very successful that aren't gratitude. They don't have gratitude.

2:15:26Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. That's who I wrote the book for, but all those people was like, it's crazy. Yeah. I know so many people that are like very successful, but very unhappy. Yeah. I remember one time, this story, when I was on television, I was on this TV show called News Radio and we would get the ratings in, and when we get the ratings, you know, we weren't doing that well. It wasn't a very successful show. It was only successful once it got off the air, ironically, in syndication, it became, because it was a good show. Yeah. But they were all sitting around. They were reading variety and variety magazine and the Hollywood report.

2:16:04I would call them the devil's rag because like you guys are like concentrating on all this shit that is making you compare yourself to other people. And you're all getting upset that we're not after friends, but we're not after sign fell girl. Last time I checked, I'm on television. We're on television. You know, a few people get to be on a fucking sitcom and we're, you're, we're here pissing in Mohnen because we're not on the biggest sitcom. That is so crazy. Do you know if people would trade lives with you? I mean, I just, I had a ton of terrible jobs, doing construction delivered newspapers.

2:16:40I did everything, drove limos. I did everything. I'm on TV. I'm happy as fuck. But for these people, like, there was never, you know, it's just, it's just a symptom of Hollywood itself because Hollywood is all about who's number one. It's not just about like you're making a great living doing something that's really fun. It's like, no, no, no, someone is out there being Tom Cruise. I'm not Tom Cruise. You know, this is bullshit. Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise. I'm not Tom Cruise. And that's literally, and then they live miserable. There are multi -millionaire miserable people, which is, yeah, which is crazy.

2:17:20A kid like me grew up on food stamps. It's like, what is fucking wrong with you people? This is crazy. Like, you're living the dream. You're in, maybe you don't have the number one dream, but guess what? No one's paying attention to you. So you don't get scrutinized. You can go to a restaurant. You don't fucking cameras in your face. You're actually living a better dream. Yeah. My friend Brian said this to me once. My friend Brian Callan, he said, all you want is to be able to go to a restaurant and order anything you want and not worry about with the bill costs. Everything after that is bullshit.

2:17:54Yeah. Yeah. I was like, that is like some of the best wisdom ever because it doesn't matter how big your house is. It's just your fucking house, man. You get used to all that shit. Absolutely. There's some nice things that come with money. They're nice, but freedom is nicer than all those things. Everybody has that. Now it's the ultimate one. Yeah. And just not worrying about your bills is though, I remember I got a development deal which for comedians, this is back in the day when everybody, they were trying to turn everybody into Jerry's hindville. They tried to turn everybody into a sitcom to Roseanne.

2:18:31So everybody, they would come to comedians and they give you a development deal and they would give you like a hundred thousand dollars or something like that. And then they would try to write a sitcom around you and develop a pilot. This was like the game. That was the hustle. And the first time I got a development deal, I think I was 26. I guess I was 26, something like that. And you know, my whole life, I'd been paycheck to paycheck always broke. And for the last five years, just hustling as a comedian trying to get by. I was just a happy that I didn't have to have a regular job. Right. I was just a comedian, but I was always broke.

2:19:09And then all of a sudden, I got, I think I got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And it was like this enormous weight was lifted off my shoulders. It was the craziest weight. It was like physical weight. I was like, now I don't have to worry about my bills. Like I was every month, it was like, can I pay rent? Can I keep the lights on? You know, can I afford gas to get to my gigs? It was just like that. I was like barely getting no health insurance, no nothing, nothing, nothing. Just barely getting by, but that physical weight, I'll never forget that. I was like, that's the most important thing is to not worry about your bills.

2:19:45Absolutely. But then everybody's worried about what? Bob's got a 22 foot motor. I'm going to 18 foot. Like Jesus. Oh, I think it's not really matter when it comes down to that. Yeah, it's like that that there's a, I forget who said it, comparison is a thief of joy. Is that the row? No, the row is most men live lives of quiet desperation. That's my other favorite one. Yeah, it's great. They have might have been, might have been Jefferson who said, yeah, comparison the thief of joy, but it is. It's like, you can miss out on gratitude, but it's right in front of your face. You've so many things to be happy for.

2:20:19Absolutely. But this weird world, this is why I also tell people, stay the fuck off social media now. You're how you depressed for sure. Oh, it's compared. This is Jonathan Hayte wrote a book about what it's doing to young girls. It's like they're comparing themselves constantly to everybody else. And these girls are using filters and everybody's like, you get plastic surgery and changing this and changing that. Look at all my shit. Look at my bag. Look at my jewelry. Look at my car. Look at my this. Look at my that. And it's just you, everyone's constantly in this state of comparison. And no one is happy just to be alive and healthy in America in a wild time of change.

2:20:57Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's that's the thing that I've really been struck by. You know, when I got out and talking to some of the guys and women that I know who've been incarcerated, I do think that we all operate out of that same injury of just, I mean, and energy of like just deep gratitude, because you do really begin to understand what is value when you take it away, right? And like it's that sand of like, you know, you can have a million problems until you get sick and then you only have one. And then you and that's the thing about like losing freedom, right? And what I've what I've been struck by is, you know, you talk about the people who looks like they have it all and they're not happy and they're not fulfilled.

2:21:43That's like being struck with that illness. Where it's like you got all the trappings of life right here to disposal. Yeah. But you're trapped into this idea that, you know, and sometimes it's not that it's not real stuff, right? Like trauma is real. Sure. You know, shame is real. You know, grief is something none of us are getting through this life without grief. Like that's just factual. Like if you live, you know, any considerable amount of time to where you're conscious, you're going to grieve at some point. You know, somebody's going to die. You're going to lose a job. You're going to lose an opportunity.

2:22:15It's not all highs. Yeah. It's not. Nobody gets all highs. Exactly. Yeah. And I think what what happens is that one, we just haven't created space to like talk about what that really is for us. You know, we just kind of deal with it and our own and then it trips people up because it can get happy at time. You know, and if you get hit with a few things back to back, they can actually be overwhelming. But if you lean into some of these things that really centers you, you know, being present, like I'm super present in the moments of some time. It can be annoying to the people in my life because I'm just like, no, I actually changed my mind like literally this moment.

2:22:53And I'm like, what are you talking about? We planned this whole thing for like, yeah, but I changed my mind because in this moment, this is where I really want to be. But it's it's a beautiful space to be, you know, like that. Yeah, that's what I learned in prison. So I tell people like I was incarcerated before I ever stepped foot in the prison cell. I was free before I ever got out of solitary. And that that freedom of mindfulness, that freedom of really understanding that the rest of my life is on me. You know, I didn't know if I was getting out of prison. Here's what I knew. Whatever happens, my son is going to be able to look at me and say, you know what?

2:23:31My dad went through all of these things, but here's who he can't be came as a person that you can't it's not a box that can contain it. You know, it's not a it's not a gate that can keep you back from that. Like that's all the inside work. That's the inside job. And like that's how I just try to live my life is like, you know, it's it's you know, I see it and it's sad because it's all the things you say it's like the competition with with people highlight real, right? Yeah, compete with somebody's highlight real. Exactly. It's driving you crazy. Is that a real highlight real? Yeah. A lot of least cars out there.

2:24:07Come on. These cars. It's just I saw a car out here that I took. I mean, I've had people be like, you know, can I take a picture in front of your car? Yeah. Yeah. So you know, when you get behind it, you realize like, man, what are what do people really care about? Where's the most joy is like the friendships you do with the people you spend time with? Yeah. Like those things are invaluable. You know, and that's not the say that people send the spirit to a success like I'm like, listen, leave it all on the floor, whatever you're whatever whatever tasks you've been given in life. Like go on and execute it to the fullest capabilities possible.

2:24:43Like don't don't undersell yourself. Don't have do it. Don't quit on yourself. Go for it. Push yourself to the limits, but understand you got to be present in the moments that you live and otherwise it's going to be squandered time. And so that's how I just try to live my life, man. I'm like, I'm enjoying it. You know, I want to enjoy it. I work hard. You know, sometimes I, you know, I probably annoy into people around me that how hard I work, but I find joy in that. You know, it's joy in the actual work. You know, otherwise I wouldn't do it. So there's joy in most aspects of life that people miss out on because they just can't appreciate it because they haven't been present.

2:25:24So we just, we just scenario right into the being at least now. I know I don't advocate for that, but I think in your mind, I think what you were saying that you were in prison before you were ever in prison. There's a lot of people that just don't understand how to think and that's something we don't teach people at a young age and how to think. I think it's a gigantic factor in where you find yourself in life and whether you find yourself living a happy fulfilled life or whether you find yourself in one of those people that lives in quiet desperation, which is most people out there. Yeah. I mean, they've been talking about this epidemic recently with with males in general and just like how men are not satisfied with life, you know, and I'm like part of it is like I think one, we have to be better.

2:26:14I think this is something women build community way better than men do because we're so competitive and like you, you, and we're not always willing to be vulnerable. But I can say like, well, my my friendships that I have with men, it starts at vulnerability. You know, it starts with like the depth of like what does it mean to be vulnerable? What are we struggling with today? You know, how are you really, like how are you really feeling today? You know, how did that, how did you feel when that deal didn't go through or when you lost that money? And like you don't have to put the cape on and try to figure it all out in one day.

2:26:50But my responsibility to you as your friend is to ensure that you have a space that we can come and get brutally honest. You know, how are you navigating parenting? Like it's tough, right? It's it's it's relationships are tough. You know, marriage, all these things that require you know, a different muscle and like it's almost like we talk about them in these very kind of extreme ways, right? Even the either is like extreme toxic masculinity or it's the feminization of males. Right. And it's true for us like it's neither those things. You know, those are narratives, but they're not the narrative doesn't necessarily mean that they're true.

2:27:28You know, what is true is that we have not created space for honesty and transparency and vulnerability. And we haven't identified that. It's actually a strength. And so what I found that's been amazing, man, is the men that I'm in relationships with as my brothers and my friends that vulnerability piece is like has been a super unlocked for us actually having enjoyable friendships. You know, and I think, you know, it's all the things that that you know, these things translate into your work experience. They translate into your relationship with your children. Like I get so inspired by like my friends, which I also think is important.

2:28:09It's like you should be inspired by the people you spend time with like that. That's invaluable, you know. And it doesn't mean that you don't deal with with their heart, you know, the heart parts of their life. But if if you're inspired by them and you're vulnerable with them, the heart parts of their life become beautiful. You know, I mean, and those are easier things than navigate because it becomes what the real meaning of honor is. Yeah, you know, the thing about men being competitive with each other, that's a huge problem. It's a huge problem. Not enjoying your friend's success. Not not wanting them to succeed.

2:28:45Like secretly wanting them to fail. You will never live a happy life if you secretly wanting people to fail. Yeah, you will never live a happy life. If you you want to seek, if you seek joy in other people's failure, you will never you'll never live a happy life. That is not the way. The way is if someone is doing really well and you feel jealousy, what is that? What is that feeling that you're comparing yourself to them? Well, you have two choices. You can either be better and upset and negative, which does does you know good or you can be inspired. So their success can be fuel that makes you work harder.

2:29:23And actually, you should thank them for that. You should even thank people you don't like if you find them their success to make you feel uncomfortable. Like, oh, what did fuck that do? No, no, no, no, no, that's not the way. The way is what is he doing? Oh, he's working harder. He's doing this. He's figured out this. He's more objective. He's more analytical. He's figured out a way to work harder. Absolutely. He's figured out a way to work smarter. He's more honest with himself about stuff. He writes things down. He's got a chart on his wall where he figures out what he's doing wrong and how to correct it.

2:29:57And he's doing that work and he's correcting it. I'm not doing that. That's why he's getting ahead and I'm not. Okay. Okay. But you got to be vulnerable even with yourself. Absolutely. Yeah. That's the super unlock, right? That's what I got out of journaling. Like that journaling was like, you know, when I when I when I sat down and first started journaling, my one task to myself was you have to be brutally honest and you have to be in this and it's going to it's not going to be pretty, but you got to be brutally honest. Only sit down in journal when you're ready to be brutally honest and that that was a game changer for me.

2:30:35Like I remember there was a guy he was in the cell next to me and we got it we got it to this minor conflict. He owed me for some cigarettes that you know, he got on credit. He didn't pay it. And when I wouldn't give him more on credit, he blew the power out of myself. So he stuck some shit in the fucking white socket. Right? And I'm over here. I'm like, I'm already because I have I had went to the yard that day to the to the the cages, right? So we go out and normally I don't really go out in the in the wintertime, you know, this is solitary. So I might go like a month like doing February is a brother.

2:31:07He called him this guy, but I get up and I go out I hadn't been out, you know, I think most of January I probably hadn't been out. And so I go out to the cages and it's one guy he gets into it with the officers, you know, they're having a little verbal, you know, altercation and the officers take it out on all of us. So we're only supposed to be out for an hour. So that hour and my mind already programmed for I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna walk, I'm gonna do my walking for about 15 and I'm push up, you know, whatever, keep myself warm, etc. They left us out there had to be for hour 45 way beyond what we were supposed to supposed to be, right?

2:31:45Just keep cold. Yeah, just keep us cold. I mean, like, we're in this like, I mean, by the time I come in, I'm so cold, I'm past the shivering point. And so I'm I'm pissed. I'm, you know, I'm pissed. And then the neighbors like, oh, can I borrow some more cigarettes? He ain't pay me back. And I'm like, I custom up. Man, I ain't getting them on cigarettes.

2:32:13So I'm over here steaming, bro. I'm so I'm like, literally, I'm like, I'm in rage, but I'm like, I'm super cold and like the power is out. So because the power is I had like a little radio. I can like block out some of the noise so I can read and write, you know. And sometime they'll come fix it in a couple hours, but sometimes it can be days, you know. And so by the time I thought out, I'm like, I had just started this journal in journey, you know, and I just start writing down, I catch this motherfucker. I'm saying, you know, I'm going, I'm furious, you know. And I come back a couple of days later, because that's what I would do.

2:32:48I would write. And then I would come back and read what I had written. And I was like, this is the mind of a man. Like this person, like, I would not want this to be a person that I live next door to. So you got to get your shit together. You know, and so I wrote through this process. And you know, even now, you know, I still have all my journals. They actually on the path, similar to that, like that, no, Pat, I still have all my journals from prison. And I can go and flip through the pages and it's like, you know, one thing I didn't do enough of, I wish and I would encourage people who'd journal is write the dates on everything because I didn't write all the time.

2:33:22I didn't write the dates, but I can go back, man, and I flip through. And sometimes it's beautiful. You know, sometimes it's these moments where I can see myself awakening, you know, and I see this desire to be a different person. And I see just the honesty there, you know, like, listen, I'm not, I'm not there yet. You know, I feel it, you know, I'm afraid that, you know, what if I become nice, can I survive the yard now? What does that mean, you know, to like, not be angry, angry as a power in prison, you know, so it's a, nobody wants to mess with an angry person in prison or a crazy person. So these things are, they have value, you know, who am I without my anger?

2:34:07And so I can see this enlightenment in real time. And I'm just like, man, you were, you were really a kid, you know, it's like you're trying to figure this stuff out with no, you know, there's no therapist, there's no, you know, you know, you don't have anybody to interpret. You don't even have language for this. You just know you're hurting. And you know that that's the anger is really hurt, you know, it's really disappointment. It's all these things. And that, that writing it down, like I highly encourage people to like, really, it's one of the things that I attribute to my success today. All the things that I want to manifest in my life, I have written down, I've literally written them down.

2:34:49I mean, now we got technology, I'm constantly writing things down on my phone when I don't have access to pen and pet. But there's something powerful about like handwriting, like just the meditative process of seeing one word after another. But it starts with that, you got to get real with yourself, you know, and it's, you know, for me, it was, it was so hard because early on, I blamed everybody, you know, I blame my dad, you know, I blame my mom, like why would you hit me out of anger, you know, blame my dad? Why would you let her do that, you know, what is led to that journey and led to me having powerful relationships with my parents, because it taught me how to be vulnerable, and it taught me how to talk to them without judging them, you know, and to really spend time with them and say, you know, I even remember my mother, we had this, we had a dust up, you know, because she was upset by something I had written.

2:35:55And she said to me, you know, you don't know what my life was like back then. And she said it multiple times, and I just listened to her. And I said to her, I was like, my, how would I have had a understood of life when I was nine years old? And it just stopped her, you know, and it allowed us to actually talk about who she was and what she had went through. And it allowed me to forgive her, you know, because that was the tough thing that I had to navigate was forgiveness. And that's another thing that I found in life, man, is that people hang on to stuff, you know, they let it torture them, you know, me and my other person is off living their life and they're not even thinking about that thing that you're harping over, you know, but I wouldn't have been able to get there without journaling, you know, I wouldn't have been able to get there without saying, I'm actually not angry today.

2:36:48I'm hurt, you know, I used to like, how these moments where this is an extremely vulnerable thing to say, but it's important. Mail call in prison is one of the most emotionally charged times that you will ever serve, because it's that moment of a day where everything gets quiet and everybody who's in the cell block is waiting to either get excited or get disappointed. And if you're lucky that someone thought about you and they've sent you a letter, but they've sent you $20, you know, $30 or whatever. And it induces so much anxiety when you're waiting, you're waiting, you're waiting to hear from someone.

2:37:39And I just remember like writing in my journal, you know, I would go to these stretches man and I wouldn't hear from my family. You know, I would write these long letters and I wouldn't get a letter back. I was going through, you know, a time when I felt extremely vulnerable because of the assault on the officer. It was worried about like my actual well -being, you know, to the point where I started fasting like three days a month, I would like not eat anything. I would just drink water and I would just like eat cough drops that I could buy out of the the commissary. That was the only thing that you can buy that was like digestible other than medicine when you're a solitary.

2:38:21So you can't, you can't get noodles and all the things. And so we would buy cough drops and eat those like jolly wrenches. You know, that was like our little thing and I just would like, I just remember like writing and just being like, man, I just want to hear from somebody, you know, because these people like they can do anything to me like I've hurt one of their colleagues, you know, and they were telling me they would, you know, tell me, you know, we're going to come in and fuck you up or we're going to, you know, and when you're going through that, you know that there's things that they can do like they can deprive you of food.

2:38:57They have this concoction in there. I don't know if you've heard this, but it's called food loaf. And basically what happens is say, say they pass out the meal and you decide, I'm not going to give the milk carton back. Then they can put you on food loaf restriction. And so instead of getting a regular tray, they give you this loaf of everything that you would have had that day that's packed into this brick that they bake. And so just imagine them just grinding all your food up, you know, your mashed potatoes and chicken patty and string things and then baking it into a little brick. And then being like, okay, that's your meal for the day.

2:39:36Now that's what the meal supposed to be, but what actually happens is they take all the leftover food from that week. We cooked that with oatmeal and jello, so it actually stays together and they bake it into these bricks and they put it into the freezer and then when somebody's on food loaf, they'll send over to the childhood. We got one on food loaf and they'll take that brick out, warm it up in the oven and then send it over to the cell block. And you can't eat it. It's not, it smells so atrocious. It is the most gross thing, but it meets their minimum requirement of what they have to do in terms of nurture.

2:40:15So in terms of nourishment, so what I would do is like three days, I would just fast and I would just drink water and I would, you know, use my coffee drops. And I was doing it because I was preparing myself for if they just decided to make up a lie and be like, oh, he didn't give us back the car or he threw some food on us and then I'm like, I'm physically conditioned to go without food and not suffer, right? And then I realized that when I started to do it, that it actually had these spiritual and these psychological effects that were like benefits, I didn't know I needed or I was looking for.

2:40:53But one, it really was the roots of helping me understand what it means to be resilient and what it means to be capable of overcoming a thing. And then it also just helped me self -regulate and know that I can be in control of how I feel about anything. And so the first time I did it, it felt, I felt like I was suffering. You know, I was like, oh, this is hard. This is, you know, this system is forcing me to have to, you know, figure out how to be tough and all the things. But by the time I started to do it, I started to feel like, you know, gratitude and I started to feel like this honoring of myself, you know, that I'm willing to fight for myself, you know.

2:41:34But all of that came out of being, you know, raw and those journals and just being like, man, I didn't get any mail today. That hurts. You know, I mean, it's sad. I don't feel thought about, you know. I went 17 years without my mother coming to visit me. And that, that psychologically had so much impact on how I saw myself of like, your own mother won't come see you. Like, you're that bad of a person, you know. And so that journal really helped me undo a lot of that damage, you know. It helped me to start to see myself. It's like, no, you actually are lovable. Like, you are, you are worthy of good things happening to you.

2:42:17You know, there's a lot of bad things that happen to you. But those all want a reflection of your self worth. And so when I got out, you know, it helped me had these deeper conversations with my parents. And it really helped me understand like what true forgiveness is. You know, there was a time where I have for gay, my mother, but it came with attachments. You know, I forgive you, but you got to be this now. You know, you got to be, you got to nurture me and you got to, you know, take me and, and, and, you know, hug me in your bosom like any other parent would do their child. And it was all contrived in my head.

2:42:53You know, that wasn't forgiveness. That was like this condition. Right. You know, and I see that in, I see that in work. I see it in life. I see it in relationships and parenting is that we're always attaching a thing to the outcome as opposed to saying, Yeah, you know, as opposed to just saying, you know what? I forgive you and, and, and, and, and I said it has to be nothing else. Like, you don't have to change. You know, we don't even have to like each other, but I'm not going to hold myself hostage to the pain of the past. Like, you know, that's when I think about, you know, grit and I think about sports and, you know, I watch these, these athletes who compete, you know, they're putting their bodies on the line and, you know, sometimes you can see a person have an injury and you like that person's career over because you know, they don't have a mental toughness to like overcome that adversity, you know, and you, you'll see them quitting in a moment.

2:43:48And then you'll see the other ones that they'll have an injury and you know, the moment they get out of hospital, they're like, they're working, you know, they're working, they're working to work themselves back to, you know, to whatever they need to do to compete again, you know, and like that, that's all of that is that vulnerability and, and ability to like accept the thing and then decide what you want to do with it. Well, I think those lessons that you get from athletes is one of the reasons why we love sports so much. So we see ourselves in these athletes and see their struggles and their triumphs and we say, oh, I think if I work hard, I can do that too, or I could do something similar in my own life.

2:44:29Absolutely. I think a lot of people are going to get that out of this conversation too from you, you know, what you've gone through and who you are now is very admirable, you know, it really, the way you express yourself, the way you can talk about these ideas and the way you're so vulnerable to just talk about what you went through. It's a insane journey, you know, and I really appreciate you coming on here, man. I appreciate you having me, man. It's such a big fan and just so much respect for, you know, the way that you know, I really respect how do you out of more than anything goes is your curiosity.

2:45:07You know, I find that super fascinating that you can be doing anything you want to do in the world, what's your remain like super curious about life and that's like such an admirable trait and one that I truly appreciate. But I think we all have that. I think it's just not nourished, you know, I think everyone's curious. And I'm very curious about people, very curious about what makes a person who they are. What did you go through it? What's, how do you think? How do you, how do you go through your day? Like what is, what is your thought process? You can learn a lot from people, man. I learned a lot from you.

2:45:41Sure. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for having me, man. My pleasure. My pleasure. All right. Bye, everybody.