Charged With Murder at 19, Sentenced to 40 years, and Came Out Freer Than Most People Will Ever Be — Shaka Senghor on Forgiveness, Shame, and Escaping the Prisons Nobody Talks About

You won’t believe the transformation behind this story. From a runaway teen escaping a traumatic home, to addiction to crack cocaine, being shot and living with PTSD, committing a murder that led to a potential 40-year prison sentence, and enduring 4.5 years in solitary confinement...this is the unbelievable life journey of Shaka Senghor. In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, the resilience expert and bestselling author of How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons shares the raw, unfiltered truth about the darkest moments of his life, and the mindset that helped him rebuild everything. What began in violence, addiction, and trauma ultimately led Shaka to become a global thought leader who now inspires executives, entrepreneurs, elite athletes, and audiences around the world. And the turning point? It happened inside a prison cell. Shaka Senghor breaks down: - Growing up in chaos & running away from home as a teenager - How drug culture & crack cocaine addiction nearly destroyed his life - The traumatic experience of being shot, and later discovering who pulled the trigger - PTSD & emotional trauma that followed - The night that changed everything: the murder that sent him to prison for up to 40 years - Support he wishes he had before prison - The desperate moment he tried to escape prison - The heartbreaking 4.5 years he spent in solitary confinement and other tragedies & injustices he witnessed behind bars - How literacy and journaling kept him sane - Wrestling with anger toward God & finding connection to a higher power through nature - How mentorship from older incarcerated men changed the trajectory of his life He also reveals the powerful mindset shift that transformed his life, including how he used the Law of Attraction to eventually get out of solitary confinement. One of the most powerful parts of this conversation is Shaka’s process of healing: - Learning to track the sources of physical & emotional trauma - Identifying emotional triggers - Releasing shame for things he wasn’t responsible for - Understanding how anger often grows from suppressed shame - Concept of “weaponizing the past” and how he learned to reconcile anger for what he did, and what was done to him We're also diving deep into forgiveness in ways you’ve likely never heard before. Shaka shares what it meant when the godmother of the man he killed forgave him, the life-changing moment when the person who shot him apologized, how that apology helped him forgive his mother for years of abuse, and why forgiveness isn’t weakness, but liberation. After finally being approved for parole, Shaka created a plan to rebuild his life from the ground up. That plan eventually led him to become a successful author and speaker, advocate for prison reform, and even develop a close friendship with Oprah Winfrey. Shaka also talks about the surreal experience of reentering society, including the technological shock of cell phones and computers, his lasting PTSD symptoms from prison, the impact incarceration has on families and loved ones (not just the inmate), and his advice for supporting someone returning home from prison. Even if you’ve never experienced incarceration, Shaka's story is more universal than you might think. He explains: - Why uncertainty is one of the hardest emotions humans face - How many of us live inside “hidden prisons” of fear, shame, & trauma - Why vulnerability, forgiveness, & resilience are the keys to breaking free - Why every human being deserves hope, love, joy, & success...no matter their past Shaka's mission is simple: Help people reclaim agency over what ails them and realize that freedom starts within. Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/break #rulapod Text BREAKDOWN to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message and data rates may apply. Shaka Senghor’s latest book, HOW TO BE FREE: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons: https://www.shakasenghor.com/how-to-be-free Check out Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam and subscribe: https://unpacked.bio/76bd0e --- Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0%E2%81%A0 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0 Learn more about your ad choices. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Check engine, ABS or maintenance light on? Take the guesswork out of your warning lights with O'Reilly Veriscan. The service is free and provides a report with solutions verified by ASE certified master technicians. And if you need help, we could recommend a shop for you. Ask for O'Reilly Veriscan today.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  I was certain that I was going to die in prison. When I was 17 years old, I got shot multiple times. I wasn't safe unless I had a gun. Found myself in conflict and I fired four shots that caused a man's death. I was sentenced to 17 to 40 years in prison.

• 0:44Mayim Bialik?

  Shaka Senghor, bestselling author and globally recognized resilience expert, shares how we can free ourselves from the invisible prisons we find ourselves in.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  When I was 13 years old, I ran away and I found myself seduced into drug culture, crack cocaine. I spent a total of seven years in solitary confinement. I fell into depression. I wouldn't have survived that without being literate. I was reading all of these philosophy books, started journaling and asking these hard questions like, how did my life end up here? I taught myself how to publish a book from prison. If I can get through the pain of the moment, I can come out on the other side of anything. I'm going to get out of here. Society has got us into a space where we're like, I can't talk about my shame. No, that's your hidden prison. You deserve to get out of that too. We're all deserving of the best of what it means to be human.

• 1:37Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

• 1:38Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 1:39Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to our breakdown. What are the prisons that we are entrapped in? You might not be thinking of a literal prison, but the prisons of anger, of shame, a lack of forgiveness, a lack of hope, a lack of joy. We're going to be speaking to someone today whose transformation from solitary confinement to the C-suite is absolutely inspirational. We're talking with Shaka Senghor, talking about his book, How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to a Escaping life's hidden prisons. And he's a globally recognized resilience expert. He's inspired leaders at global organizations.

• 2:19Mayim Bialik?

  He's written three books and we're going to be talking about How to Be Free. I don't know that I can communicate the journey that Shaka has been on, what he did to get into prison, what it was like to be there for 19 years, including seven years in solitary confinement, and what inspired him to not only free himself, but teach others and guide others on how to free ourselves from the prisons that we keep ourselves in, sometimes without even knowing it.

• 2:52Jonathan Cohen?

  This is an unbelievable conversation. And for anyone who wants to imagine a life different than they're living right now, this is an episode that you can't miss.

• 3:03Mayim Bialik?

  We are so excited to welcome in person to the Breakdown, Shaka Senghor. Shaka, welcome. Break it down.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm so excited to be here. It's truly an honor. And thank y'all for having me. It's so dope.

• 3:16Mayim Bialik?

  We're very eager to talk to you. Obviously, How to Be Free, A Proven Guide to Escaping Life's Hidden Prisons, has so many incredible nuggets of goodness, which we will get to. You talk a bit about the framework of your story in this book, although this isn't your first book. For people who may not know who you are, I'm going to give you the opportunity to kind of lay it out for people so they understand the framework with which we're going to be talking about.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's a great, great, great question. Who is Shaka Senghor? So I grew up in the city of Detroit in a household that on the outside looking in, literally was like the model for like working class America, black, you know, middle-class America. Tree-lined streets, you know, beautiful brick bungalows and, you know, a community, a real community, you know, before things changed. But on the inside of our household, there was just like a lot of physical abuse and a lot of emotional abuse. And When I was about thirteen years old, I ran away. And I thought that, you know, someone would see this little handsome, smart little kid and like,

• 4:25Speaker 01

  take me in and just wrap me in a warmth that I believe all children are deserving of. And sadly and unfortunately, that didn't happen. And like many young kids, I found myself seduced into the drug culture. And specifically to like crack cocaine, this is when crack first like invaded the Midwest. Um, we didn't even know what, I, I, clearly I did not know, I was like a naive kid. But I don't think anybody in our community knew, you know, lay ahead of us and the devastation that would happen within that culture. But, you know, first six months in, I experienced like all the horrors of the culture. You know, I was robbed at gunpoint, I was beaten nearly to death. My childhood friend was murdered and then I became addicted to crack cocaine.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Um, and that was one of the, one of the things when I look back on my life, because I talk a lot about resilience, uh, I was able to quit that addiction just cold turkey. And largely because it was very, it was a very kid oriented decision. I was like, I need to make money because I like cool sneakers and I can't do that if I'm like smoking crack, so. Um, but I stayed in that culture and then when I was seventeen years old, I got shot multiple times. And when I get, when I got shot, you know, I'll never forget what that experience was like of like waiting on an ambulance that never came and my friend happened to take me to the hospital. And then going into the hospital and just being treated like, you know, a car in a factory.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  They extracted two bullets, left one bullet in, patched me up and like literally within a couple of days, I was like back in my neighborhood. And at that time, I didn't, I didn't understand, I didn't have language for all the things that was happening inside of me. But I remember this moment, you know, very vividly, a couple of days after I'm back in the neighborhood, I'm on crutches and still hanging out with my friends and we were just like on a corner. And when I got shot, the shooter was driving a car. And so I'm hanging out on this corner. And a car's coming up the block and I just remember my body just like shaking like and I'm like, and I can't tell my friends that like now, you know, when I see cars, I don't think of like, somebody just driving through the neighborhood like I feel all this anxiety, you know, we didn't have

• 6:36Speaker 01

  language for anxiety back then, but.

• 6:38Mayim Bialik?

  Or PTSD.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Or PTSD and you know, the worst thing that happened as a result of that is the story I started to tell myself that I wasn't safe unless I had a gun. And if I found myself in conflict, I would shoot first as opposed to risking being shot. And sixteen months later, I got into a conflict about two in the morning. This is July nineteen ninety-one and the conflict escalated. And there was a moment where I turned to walk away and I didn't. And I turned and fired, it turned out to be four shots that tragically uh caused a man's death. I was subsequently arrested. I was charged with open murder. And I was sentenced to seventeen to forty years in prison.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  I was one month into my nineteenth birthday when I got arrested and um I remember just being in a courtroom and and thinking like, my life is over. You know, like at nineteen, you can't even see two weeks down the line, let alone like two decades.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  And so in that moment, I just was like, I gotta serve time and within the serving of time, I'm just angry, I'm bitter, I'm just getting in tons of trouble. And that's literally how my journey in prison started.

• 7:53Mayim Bialik?

  When, when you were shot, was there ever a thought of this is the time to try and pivot? Or were there no options at that point for you to try and even turn away?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  That's a great question, you know, I I I talked to a lot of young men who are in environments where gun violence was like extremely high. And myself, I was the third of my mother's children to get shot. And I remember my older brother got shot, like we, we had, it it felt like a a family crisis in that moment and I think that was the last stage where I would felt like gun violence felt like a crisis. And then it became normal. Um so like so many of my friends have been shot, have been murdered and so in that moment, you know, there was a couple of things that happened when I was in the hospital, like I remember the officers coming in and being like, who shot you? And I was like, I don't know.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  I genuinely didn't know if I knew I probably, I would, I'm definitely would not have said anything. Like, I was living a very particular lifestyle. But their reaction to that, like, stuck with me. Like, this just kind of anger and this kind of blame the victim, you know? It's like, you're the reason why this has happened. I'm like, dude, I'm, I'm a kid, I got shot. You know, I was seventeen years old.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  And I, I wish there was an intervention at that time. I think if someone would have said, hey, you should talk to somebody, or here's somebody you could talk to, or here's what you're feeling and all the things, and maybe that would have been an opportunity for a pivot. But because it was just like, patch up, you're back in it, and I had already seen that playbook, you know? My older brother was shot. I was actually in a car when my second oldest brother got shot. Uh, I was in the passenger seat, he was driving, this guy shot through the car window. And he was hit, and, you know, and it was just like, he went to the hospital, patched up, and he was home a couple of days. And so, I wish there was a, a moment like that, that I can identify, but I don't, I don't see one in that story.

• 9:55Mayim Bialik?

  There's one thing you talk about, and this is something that, you know, those of us who feel very strongly that the system is completely broken, and that prison is not any system of rehabilitation, and it actually creates more pain and suffering than even was occurring when, when people are sent in. You know, one of the things you talk about is that your entire life is set in motion based on the worst decision you ever made.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 10:25Mayim Bialik?

  And I don't, you know, this is the stuff that for many people, we hear about these things in the news, or you see it in a TV movie, or a movie, and it's very easy to gloss over. But this is not just your experience, this is the experience in particular of men of color, all over this country in particular.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 10:44Mayim Bialik?

  What does that mean when you are right about nineteen, and you have this possibility of being in prison for forty years? How do you conceptualize that?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I conceptualize it in the most destructive way possible is like my life is over. So why not just further destroy what's left? Like I was, I was certain that I was gonna die in prison. Like that was the thing that I had just accepted, you know, when I got that sentence. And, you know, getting that sentence, there's this moment where it's almost like, you know, you, you imagine like you had this file cabinet, like this file cabinet of life, right? And you just have all these folders. And like, that's what it felt like. It's like, okay, let me close this folder. Friends are gone, girlfriend is gone. I got a baby on the way. I won't be there for, um, parents, you know? So you should start mentally, like I started to really shut down feelings of like having attachment to anything.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's a very volatile environment. Like I, you know, I went into, in a county jail, I mean, I was, I tried to escape from the county jail. That was my first like, um, that was my first real rebellion against the system was like, all right, well, let me just try to break out first.

• 12:02Mayim Bialik?

  How'd you try and break out? Like in a laundry basket, like in the movies?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  No, so it was actually, it was a pretty, pretty daring and kind of ridiculous, um, escape attempt. But what happened was this guy, he was in the cell block with us and this is an old jail. So things are broken. He finds this is like broken pipe and he smuggles it back to the tier. And he, you know, we're in the cell talking and he pulls out this pipe and he's like, I'm gonna escape. And he's like, I'm, you know, I'm gonna hit the officer in the head and then I'm gonna take the uniform and I'm gonna let everybody out. And I'm like, dude, that is definitely not gonna work. So I was like, I have a better idea. I was like, well, what if we just start to like, collect as many sheets as we can? We'll take this pole so we can, we can pop the doors on our cell.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  And basically you just take a, a torn sheet, you tie a knot, push the knot under the door, pull it up into the door jamb and you just kind of rock it and then it eventually pops open.

• 12:56Mayim Bialik?

  You'd think it would be harder to open.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  We would be out on the cell block like in the middle of the night just because that's back then. You could smoke inside the buildings and the only way we can get a light, there's like this lighter on a thing. So we would pop the cells all the time. And we called it shaking out because you like shake the doors and eventually they pop open. And so I was like, if we gather these sheets, then we just take the pole and we break the window at the tier and we bend the beam. Now, you know, we're not the smartest at this time in terms of like engineering. And so these beams are encased in like this aluminum looking thing, but inside it's like more beams. So we break the window out. First, we start breaking the window out, the glass, and then we started to bend what we thought was bending the beam. It's really just bending the casing.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  And there's a moment when I'm like trying to see if I can fit out, but the thing is not really bending. And then there's a beam of light that just hits the window. And you can hear like, you can't really hear what this person is saying because we're so far up. But basically, we're like, they're like, you know, we're busted. And so we all scramble back to our cells. And it took them probably about a half hour to figure out which cell block we were in that was, we was trying to break out of. And they came in like gangbusters, you know, snatching everybody out, roughing us up a little bit. And yeah, that was the, that was the attempt. When I got out of prison, I went back and I looked to just see like where we were at, like how far we really were up.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Because we were on the sixth floor, but the sixth floor don't really actually start to like, because the building is, they don't count the Yep. other floors. So we probably was about 12 floors up. And I'm like, we definitely did not have enough seats.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  I was gonna fall to my death, like, it's ridiculous.

• 14:38Jonathan Cohen?

  Also, where are you going after that?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  You know, that's the thing about being young is that your plans don't kind of extend super far.

• 14:45Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Um, or have any like rational, you know, processing there of like, oh, you're definitely, once you get out, you're getting arrested. Uh, my dad didn't work far, so I, I think I had ideas like, I'll go and get the car for my dad and just be back in the neighborhood. Uh, but yeah, that didn't, that didn't happen. So, yeah.

• 15:05Mayim Bialik?

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• 17:06Mayim Bialik?

  Describe the first years of your incarceration as kind of a continuation of a lot of the turmoil and pain and suffering and all of the things that this book teaches us to be free of. Can you explain a little bit about what those years were like? And also, you spent a significant amount of time in solitary, which is something we also talk about as, you know, obviously inhumane and completely antithetical to anything that one would be trying to achieve in terms of rehabilitation. Can you talk a little bit about those years? And then I want to get to sort of this turning point where things started to shift.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the early years I went in, I was rebellious. You know, I was getting into all type of trouble. I accumulated, I think, a total of 36 misconducts, like within my first five years. And they ranged from everything, dangerous contraband, drug, uh, you know, drug trafficking, you know, assault on inmates, assault on officers. I was just like in the, the thing. I went to the first prison I went to, uh, was called the Michigan Reformatory, but it's called the Gladiator School. So every day there is a fight, every day somebody's getting stabbed. It's like, it's a very volatile environment. And just being thrown into that world of chaos was just like, all right, I gotta survive. Like it's either lion or lamb, which one you wanna be?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  And so, you know, just got into that space of conflicts and, you know, basketball courts always, fights always happening. Um, but within that first year, I had what I call like my first miracle where I met these, um, I had my security level increased to maximum security. So I turned 20 years old in maximum. I'm like one of the youngest guys at the prison. At the time, the warden is just like, you're like, you're so rebellious. You're like, we just gonna, you can't even get a job here. You're just like, you always into something. But I can go to the library. And so I would go, I was researching like how to appeal my case. And then I met these, you know, these older gentlemen.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And they're the most incredible mentors that I've ever had. And they were serving life sentences. And they would say to me like, you're gonna get an opportunity to get out one day. And I would be like, I don't know, no, yeah, what are you, what are you talking about? Like I'm 19, I'm never getting out of this place. And they just were, they were so strategic and so just like, their ability to figure out a way to reach young people was just unparalleled. And how they got to me really was through books. Um, I had met this one guy and he had wrote a book. It was like 12 pages handwritten book. It was the most fascinating story about just his neighborhood. And it was, you know, it was familiar to me.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  And he was like, you know, go to the library and look up Donald Cohen, this, this writer who writes these gritty city books. He served time, he had actually served time in Michigan and he's from Detroit. So I go over there and I get these books and mine is just blown. It's, I mean, it's, they're super graphic. They're super inner city and, but it has a lot of social commentary. It has a lot of this kinda underbelly and they, and they were like short reads, like, you know, the books might be 200 pages, you read them in a day. Um, but these men. They started to challenge how I thought about life. And they would give me books and then when I would come back, they would just like ask me a question. They was like these intense interrogations. It was a book club. Yeah, yeah, basically, basically.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  And part of it was that they didn't think I was reading all the books because I read fast. And so, you know, what I tell people is that I was super lucky to be literate in an environment where the average reading grade level was third grade. And I think there was something about that that was intriguing to these guys that I was one of the young men who could read. And we would have these intense debates about everything, culture, world, history, philosophy. But I was still rebelling against myself, you know? I had read Malcolm X's autobiography and that was like one of those moments of like there is a possibility that there can be something different. But I just wasn't ready, like I was so hurt, I was so just disappointed with my life outcomes. You know, I didn't, I didn't, I never imagined that I would be in prison.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  You know, in my conscious mind, I never thought like, oh, my life would end here. And so I just, I got into a ton of trouble and, but there was all these little moments where something was happening to push me towards something different. And I was just fighting it, you know, I was fighting it though, kicking and screaming, you know, I kind of tell people it's like the cartoons, remember you had a angel on one shoulder, a little devil on one shoulder and Malcolm X was kind of like that. The angel was like, yo, you can actually have a different life outcome. But the old me was like, nah, I'm sure I'm gonna die in this environment.

• 21:50Mayim Bialik?

  There's so many statistics here that I think are important. Three out of five incarcerated individuals are illiterate. I mean, this like breaks my heart. Seventy percent of people in prisons read below a fourth grade level. Those who remain illiterate have a 70% chance of returning to prison. Only 6% of the people behind bars are receiving reading education. People who gain literacy in prison have a 16% Am I pronouncing this right? Recidivism rate?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:21Mayim Bialik?

  So that means the more literacy, right? You have, the less chance that you will end up back in prison.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 22:29Mayim Bialik?

  And I think most importantly, 70% of banned books are educational or self-help.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:35Mayim Bialik?

  And it's funny because my son's school this week is doing a book drive for women in prison.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 22:41Mayim Bialik?

  And I was looking at the list and I was thinking like, "These are the books I want, you know, to be able to send to empower women." But the notion also that there are so many books that they have decided should not be given.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:56Mayim Bialik?

  It's astounding. I love that not only reading, but writing was also sort of part of your transformation. Before we get there, though, tell us about some of the kind of the aspects of solitary confinement. What that sort of challenged in you and what it brought out in terms of this transformation you underwent.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it is, it is what I describe solitary confinement as most barbaric and inhumane thing that we allow to happen on our watch consciously. And largely because we've looked away from it. Whether, you know, we're aware that we're looking away from it or whether it's just been concealed from us in such a manner to where we don't even know what actually happens. And so it's one of the reasons I've written extensively about that experience. I spent a total of seven years in solitary confinement. The longest period of time was four and a half years straight from 1999 to 2000, I think it was 2004. And it was

• 24:03Speaker 01

  it was the hardest part.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Of my life to wake up in this environment and see just a level of madness and cruelty. A lot of the men in that environment had pre-existing mental health challenges. Everything from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder. And to see, you know, officers pile on, you know, to these men and to see them punished because their brains doesn't work the way that our brains work. That was part of the, that was probably the hardest thing to, you know, bear witness to. And so we rebelled a lot. We were just like, whenever the officers were being like overly cruel to somebody who we knew couldn't defend themselves, we would like flood the tear.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Or we would just beat on, you know, doors and toilets and lockers. There was always some form of like rebellion happening, some form of like, you know, chaos and the goon squad come and extract people from the cells. And the hardest thing I experienced in there was there's a guy about three or four cells over who set himself on fire. And they took him out of the cell and they brought him back like two days later. And probably within a week, like he burned himself up like really bad. And it was because he was being harassed every day. I think he was, I'm not even sure if he was homeless or sex because I didn't know him personally. But that's what they used to antagonize him, just like nonstop, just this kind of assault

• 25:36Speaker 01

  on, you know, who he was. And he just, you know, in response to that, set himself on fire. But the chaos in that environment, the way that the men waged war against each other, throwing feces and urine on each other. And, you know, you may get two guys in cells next to each other and they get, they get into a beef, which is like ridiculous when you think like, how are y'all beefing with each other? But, you know, and one just takes a brush and knocks on the toilet for like hours, you know? And so it's just always this random noise and chaos and, and, you know, it's 23 hour lockdown. So it's just for five days a week, I was locked down for 23 hours.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  You can go out to the outside cage and they're lily dog kennels. They're not like. Yeah, that's really what it is, like a dog kennel. And so when they take you out, they attach you to handcuffs. That's actually attached to a leash and they walk you out to the dog kennels, put you out there. And one of the, one of the hardest experiences I had is one morning, which I'd never, I rarely went out in the winter time. But growing up in Michigan, you know, you get used to the cold, so there's like a threshold of like, oh, if it's over eighteen degrees, I can go out and handle that. And so we go out and one of the guys got into a beef with the officers, a verbal beef that morning.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  And basically, they just left us out longer than an hour. And we were out there just, I mean, like, I, I've never been this cold in my life. And it's the one time where I felt like, it was, it was the closest I've ever come to like breaking. And it was just so cruel, cause like, when you're in solitary, you don't have like, layers like you have in general population. You have these very flimsy, thin shoes. And, I mean, it was like, a level of cruelty that was just unlike anything that I've witnessed. And so it happens in that environment, and then other two days, you're locked down twenty-four hours.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  And I was, you know, I was, I was very, you know, again, my luck was that I was literate. And, you know, I was reading all of these philosophy books and, you know, I came across, this passage from Socrates, he said, unexamined life isn't worth living. And that's when I started journaling and asking these like hard questions of like, how did my life end up here? You know, when you're, when you're at that moment of like,

• 28:08Speaker 01

  coming to just the hardcore truth of where you're at, cause for years, it's like, you know, my brain was like in this denial loop, like, this is not gonna be my life. This is gonna, one day I'm gonna wake up and this is all gonna be over, this nightmare is gonna come to an end. And then there's acceptance of like, no, this is it. This is really where you're at. And they're telling you, you're gonna die in here. And, you know, you're looking around in this environment, this is a guy who's in solitary for twenty years, and a neighbor who's in there for ten years. Actually, one of the, one of the good guys that I met, who's my neighbor in there, he did ten years, name is Peter. He, now he's like doing some incredible legal work in, you know, in the University of Michigan.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  But I mean, that was the world of like, you're never getting out of here and they, they don't tell you when it, when it ends. So you don't know how long you're gonna be or when it comes to an end. And it's that instability beneath your feet where you can't even just grasp one to like, okay, if I'm working toward ninety days, I can put a plan together or if it's a year or two years. And so you're just in this, you know, limbo, you know? And um, that, that was, that, the cruelty of that and what it does to you as a human being, the inability to communicate. You know, like we would have to lay on the floor and I would lay on the floor and talk beneath the floor to like my neighbor.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  And sometime I would like pop the um, electrical socket, I could talk to the guy downstairs. And some guys would just take all the water out of their toilets and then you can talk through the toilet to different cells. So that was like our communication system and it was really one of the things that spoke to the desirous humans to actually connect. And so we would find ways, we would, we would figure out, you know, how do we talk, how do we exchange? Letters, we would make fish lines to like send letters down the hall and um, and basically you take all the string out of your underwear or your socks and then you attach it to like a toothpaste tube that you squeeze all the toothpaste out. And then you wet some toilet paper, put it inside there, smash it down, let it dry. And then you just slide it up under the door.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  And it's funny cause like you really started to get good with like geometry, cause you gotta, you know how to learn how to angle a thing and you know, it's all these different ways. But that's how we communicated, you know, we figured out how to connect, you know, as humans and, and um, I remember, so I had the last sale and there was a guy next to me named Pito. And it was, it was like, he was very smart, he was a very knowledgeable Puerto Rican guy. Knew a lot about, you know, his history and so we would like literally lay on the floor and, and you know, I would talk to him about culture and hip hop and poetry and he would try to teach me Spanish. And then I started to set my days up where I would structure my days like I was at a university.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  And so I would just like study world history in the morning. I would study philosophy. Then I would, you know, and then I would write the rest of the uh evening all the way until like, you know, late, late, late. And um, that's how I was able to navigate it. You know, it took time to get there. Uh, having a structured day, figuring out like, okay, this is my exercise period. This is my study period. This is my writing period. And I know I would not have, I wouldn't have survived that without being literate. I'm, I'm, I'm a hundred percent positive that I would have went crazy in there like anybody else. And there was one, one thing that even being literate, I don't think that's enough is being aware.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  And there's a book called Cages of Steel that was written by these two professors. And I remember reading this book and there's one section where the psychiatrist is explaining what locking someone in a cell does to them. And this is at the time, I think they were designing the maximum security prison in, in Marion, I think it's in Illinois. But he lays out this list of probably about forty or fifty behaviors that happen the longer you keep somebody in prison. Hallucinations, uh, the inability to just have a, a normal conversation because you're talking from behind a steel door. And it was just all these things that he laid out. And so when I would feel any of those things arising, I would just grab a book.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  And sometimes it was just whatever the nearest book was and I would just turn it open and start reading. So sometimes it's fiction. I'm just going into these worlds and other times it's like, you know, Nelson Mandela's, you know, uh, uh, or Maya Angelou or somebody who had been through hard things. And just a page, a paragraph, a sentence, sometime was enough to just move my mind forward. And what I, what I realized about that, it was like that process of being able to move your mind forward is the difference between committing suicide is, you know, when you have a suicidal ideation, it's almost like your brain can't move off that one part that's telling you that this is too hard to deal with.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  And so those books were able to jar me into a space of like, oh, I can get through hard things. And then I, I came up with this understanding that.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  If I can get through the pain of the moment, I can come out on the other side of anything. And then it was like figuring out what are those tools to get me through the pain of the moment? And sometime it was reading, other times it was meditation, sometime it was mindfulness, and a lot of times it was writing.

• 33:32Mayim Bialik?

  Was God any part of your journey?

• 33:35Speaker 01

  God was a part of my journey in terms of like, the place where I directed all of my anger toward. You know, I wrote in my journal some very,

• 33:49Speaker 01

  some very deep thoughts about how I felt this contradictory idea was that there was this all-seeing power that would allow lives to be trapped into these environments. And I had already always had like this very conflicted relationship with the idea of God as good. And it stemmed from my childhood, like, you know, my mother would go to church on Sunday morning and then beat us on Sunday night. And so it was just like, okay, if this is like what God is, like, I don't want any parts of that.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  But like many, you know, kids that grew up in black households, just grow up Baptist and that's the thing. And then when I was reading Malcolm X's autobiography, that interested me in like studying Islam. And then when I really started reading, the thing about Malcolm that I think gets lost is that he was really an organic intellectual. He was super curious about how the world worked. And so that led me to reading everything I could is about theology in general. So I would, I would study, I mean, every spiritual book, which I think those books are like the most amazing. The stories are like unparalleled, the wisdom, but I've read them all, Dhammapada, the Klon, the Torah, you name it, I would read and study all these books and these lessons.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And then I would write about how angry I was with the idea of like this God who just, you know, just allow all these horrible things to happen to this, to this kid.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  But where I, where I ended up landing was that, you know, I'm a, I'm a big nerd, like I'm a big nature nerd. I, I love nature. It's like the, the, one of my favorite things. And I always find myself in awe about the idea that the sky is infinite. And that there's places in the ocean we have not yet ventured. And that there's even a place on the earth that we inhabit that man has not even come in contact with. And I was like, between those three things are the greatest scripture ever. Uh, because what it shows is that as wise as we think we are, as amazing as we think we are as humans, like we don't even know a tenth of what this world exists in just on this planet alone.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Uh, which to me speaks to like a higher idea. Uh, and whatever people choose to call it, it's, it's what, what they, what they call it. But for me, it's like those reminders of going into these spaces of curiosity with nature. Uh, to me, it's just the greatest testimony of a higher being.

• 36:27Mayim Bialik?

  Um, in, in the book, you, you show us the, the letter that you wrote to the warden.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:34Mayim Bialik?

  Uh, requesting to be placed back in the general population. It's very, very powerful.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:40Mayim Bialik?

  I, I wanna, I wanna go from there to what happened once you wrote that letter? And you can tell us about the letter.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:48Mayim Bialik?

  And how did you get out?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's a great question. Uh, you know, it's, it's really interesting how that letter came to be. So I had started reading like all these philosophical books. And one of my favorite books of all time is James Allen, As a Man Think of. Basically what happened is I had this moment where I call it like my write or die moment. Where I started journaling. And I wanted to answer that essential question, how did I get here? And I went back and I started to write out all the harms that ever happened to my physical body. And it was mind blowing. Like the molestation, the attempted molestation, the physical violence, just all these things. And I started to reassign responsibility because I had internalized all these things.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Something must be wrong with me for these things to happen. And that, the power of reassigning and then accepting the things that I was responsible for was just like, you know, one of the most enlightening things I'd ever done. And when I was reading James Allen's A Man Thinking, it talked about this idea that the thought seeds that we plant will assuredly blossom into whatever they, whatever they are, right? And so, when I started to track back my life, I'm like, oh, I began to believe all these negative thought seeds that had been planted. Your life can only end with you dead in jail before 21. And I'm like, okay, if this is, this law of attraction is true in a negative, how do I prove it is true in a positive? You know, because I was still skeptical.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  I'm like, ah, this, this foo-foo stuff doesn't work. And so, the first thing was, okay, what do I want more than anything in the world right now? And at that time, I had written two and a half books because I fell into depression when I started the third one because I realized this dream I had was born in a nightmare scenario. So now I realize I got this talent, I got this gift of storytelling, and now I'm in an environment where I can't do anything with it. So what I wanted more than anything was just to get to a typewriter. If I can get to a typewriter, I can see if I can make this dream come true. And that's when I was like, okay, universe, I want to test this idea of you can attract into your life what you believe. And so I wrote to Warden.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  And I positioned it in a very philosophical argument. And the argument was, if you believe me to be a man of my word in a negative, which I told him when I came to prison, listen, I'm not following the rules. Clearly, you look at my record, I have been a man of my word. If you believe me to be a man of my word in a negative, all I'm asking you to believe me to be a man of my word in a positive, because the only thing that matters here is the truth. And that was the first time the Warden ever wrote me back. And I just asked him, I said, if you, if you let me out of solitary, I'll focus on two things. One, I will type up the books that I've written, and I'll continue to write, and I'll mentor the young men and the older men in my environment and help them learn how to read.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  And he wrote me back and he was like, despite my hesitation, your letter presents a very compelling argument and I'm gonna advocate for you to get out. And so he started to advocate, but getting out of solitary confinement requires like multiple layers. So he had to send it to his higher ups. They denied it the first time. He came back, they accepted it, they sent it to their higher ups, they denied it. And so it was, it wasn't until two and a half years later that I actually got out of solitary. Uh, but what it, what that did, that response to that letter, it gave me just enough hope to keep going.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  And it gave me just enough of an idea that somebody is advocating for me. And eventually, I'm gonna get out of here. And so what do I need to do to prepare my mind for when I'm back out there so that I can honor my word? And so I just took the rest of the time and I just kept studying. I kept writing in my journal. Um, I couldn't quite get back into writing books. That just, it was just like too much, the, the, the intense desire to have that. It was just so hard to like not have certainty. Um, but I just wrote, I journaled, you know, I mentored the young men in the cell block. Whenever they had some young man around me that was trying to figure out how to read.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  I would work with them and then I got released from solitary. And that's when it was like, alright, now it's, it's what are you gonna do with the rest of your life? And how are you gonna figure it out? And I got out. I took all those books that I had handwritten. I typed them up. I wrote, I finished the third one and then I wrote a fourth one. Um, I started writing essays and I would just send all, I would like send my work out all over the place. Um, I would like write random publishers. I would send them query letters. I was just like, go to the library and like, I remember like, Reading in the Writer's Digest, it was like, okay, you gotta write a query that I had never heard the word query. So I'm like, okay, what does that mean?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  And so I would just go and find, and most of the time, these books are like so outdated to be like, Writer's Digest from like nineteen seventy-nine. I'm like, alright, is these addresses even still real? And so I would just like type these manuscripts up and then I would take them to the guys in the sale block who like, if they worked in the school and I'd be like, yo, I got, I got five ramen noodles. Can you go and photocopy and smuggle this back over to me? And so they would like copy the books and smuggle them back over to me and then I would mail them out. I would like hustle up on stamps and take, cause I was, you know, still hustling. And I would like take all the stamps and put them like, this is so ridiculous. These envelopes would be like this thick with like eighty stamps all over it. I'm like, this is getting mailed out.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Uh, but I would send them out to all these, I mean, I sent letters to like, I would send letters to like rappers like, yo, you're talking about the stuff I'm writing about, you should publish my book. Um, I actually still got a letter that I, I wrote to like Jay-Z. Uh, I got one I wrote to Vibe Magazine and then later on, I ended up meeting, like one of my best friends, he used to be the editor in chief at Vibe and he was at my house one day. And I was go, I was actually looking for something else. And I came across this piece and I was like, yo, I sent this to like, you know, the magazine way while I was in, in prison. And I was just like, I was shooting in the dark and, and, and nobody ever responded. Like I never got, I mean, I'm sure there's probably like a, a, a envelope, somebody's like discarded somewhere.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  It'd be great. I guess somebody stumbled in like an old storage room. I'm like, oh, what is this? I've seen this name before. Um, but I was just taking my shot. And then I got, sometime I did get here back and like it would be rejection letters, like we're not publishing this type right now. And, and I had this moment where I was like, okay, maybe this doesn't work, you know, maybe it's, you know, nobody's gonna believe a guy in prison could write a book. And, and I ended up, um, sort of sorry for myself for a short period of time. And I was like, no, get it together, figure it out. And I was reading a magazine article about a self-help publishing book. And I, I ordered that book, I got it, I read that thing from like literally cover to cover like multiple times.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  And I taught myself how to publish a book from prison. And so I published my first book in two thousand eight from behind the walls.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  And then I got sued by the prison for the cost of my incarceration. No, they sued me. They thought I had got a book deal and they sued me for a million dollars.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Then what happened? So, they didn't anticipate that I actually knew more about the law than they thought when they sued me. Um, and so basically what I did is I backdated a contract. Saying that I would only accept ten percent of the proceeds of the book once it, uh, recouped its production costs. And so basically what that did is it took them from being able to sue me for ninety percent of fifteen dollars. To only being able to sue me for ninety percent of a dollar fifty. And they can only get the money if we recoup the production costs while I was in prison. And so I just made sure we only sold enough books to like not meet that threshold. Wow. And then, cause once I got out of prison, the lawsuit was gonna be nonbinding.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  And, um, I remember being on the call, cause I did, everything with the court was all on the phone. And the, the, the, uh, Attorney General, her, the prosecutor, whatever she was. I mean, this lady was like so mean spirited of just like, he shouldn't be able to publish books from prison and, you know, he shouldn't be able to do a book deal. And I was like, you know, I was talking, I was like, well, freedom of speech is fundamental to our constitution and that doesn't stop in prison. Or at least it shouldn't. And so I put together this persuasive argument that I'm, I'm literally arguing with the, you know, with this woman in front of the, the, uh, the judge and the judge's name is, uh, Daphne Curtis Means.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  And this is the wildest thing. I literally just met this judge about, actually last month. In Detroit, I was going to speak at an event. The woman who was hosting it, she introduced the woman. And she was like, this is, you know, my friend Daphne Means, she used to be a judge. And I was like, I was like, I think she oversaw my case. And she actually ended up overseeing two cases. And I told her and I was like, I was like, is it Judge, like, Daphne Curtis Means? She was like, yeah. And I was like, you navigated this case when I was in prison. I, I never forgot what she said. She was like,

• 46:28Speaker 01

  I have to rule in favor of the state on the principles and the merits of the, of the case, cause that's just what it is. If you're in prison and you make any money, they can take ninety percent.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  But I think that you should be able to do what you want to do creatively. And so we had this great profound conversation. And yeah, they ended up not getting any money.

• 46:53Jonathan Cohen?

  So what a better way to spend your time, like, right? Like, you're actually doing something, building yourself, rehabilitating yourself, and they're going to chop that down and make it as hard for you as possible.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, when I went up for parole the first year, so at that point, I had self-published a novel. I had edited and contributed to publishing a children's book. I had been published in like all type of college magazines and local newspapers. And, you know, I was just writing essays and things of that nature. And when I went, they was just like, we don't think you're prepared for society. And I'm like, OK, I got it. You know, I wasn't a model prisoner, the first, you know, the first part of my incarceration. So, you know, they're going to give me the punitive denial. Then I went back up a second time in 2009 and had a better experience.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  And they denied me again. I remember having this thought of like, only thing I'm guaranteed is this 40 years.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  They don't have to give you a parole. You know, they don't, you don't, they don't have to give you a parole. You're guaranteed the 40, but you come up, your minimum part of your sentence is when you come up for your hearing. And I just remember like saying to myself, at that point, I had 18 years in. And I was like, if I don't know how to do anything else, I know how to do time. And it was hard to watch my dad like get his hopes up to be dashed. And I'm like, I don't want to send him through that. You know, if I have to do my time, I just have to do it. And, you know, I remember that moment and kind of, you know, I definitely had a moment of feeling sorry for myself because I was so excited to like get out and, you know, pursue this dream that was like burning inside me.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  And even during that time, I remember getting like the first copy of like my book. It was like the galley and getting it inside the prison and just like. Walking through those prison corridors and just like the guys were so proud of me. Cause I was, you know, I'm, these guys in prison always talking about what they're gonna do. I'm gonna get out, I'm gonna do this and become a real estate investor and this, that and other. Very, very audacious and ambitious dreams and, and as mine was, it was just like, it was like ridiculous. Like I, I was like, I wrote down everything I wanted to happen in my career as a writer. And even when I first was, I want to take you back a little bit. So I, I wrote the first book in solitary.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  And I got on the floor and I'm like, yo, anybody wanna read this book? I just remember this guy was like, don't nobody wanna read that shit, Saint Oprah? And I was like, damn, that was crazy. Cause I'm like, at this time, I'm a big, I'm a shot caller on the yard. Like I'm, you know, I can have some things taken care of, you know? And I'm like, you can't disrespect me, like, you know, I'm, I'm, I am who I am. And, um, and it was like one of those moments, I'm in solitary. And I was like, oh, this is, this is like one of those tests. It's the universe saying, who, who are you? Are you the person you say you're becoming or are you this old person? And so I had to sit with that, that you're not going to, like, you don't just transform without the challenges,

• 50:05Speaker 01

  without the adversity, without the mirror. You know, this mirror came back and I'm like, and my ego was bruised, like, yo, you can't talk to me and blah, blah. And I remember just sitting back with that for, you know, just literally sitting on my bunk, thinking about that. Like, why would he say that, you know? And then I, it was literally just like, let me interrogate myself the way that Socrates would. It's the unexamined life, right? It's like, no, let me examine this. What is it, what's, what is that bringing up for me? And what it brought up for me was this thing that I battled, like, a lot of people that I've learned. It's one of the reasons that I wrote this book, is self doubt and negative self talk. So it triggered that thing, you know?

• 50:48Speaker 01

  How dare you, who do you think you are to write a book and think that somebody's gonna read your book, you know? And it was like, okay, well, what do I want to happen with my work? And I started right now, all these ridiculous goals. I want to be a bestselling author. I want kids who come from where I come from to read my work. I want Oprah to read one of my books. I want to write across a variety of mediums. I want to write for newspapers and magazines. And I want to review hip hop and I want to just write and write and write because I was just reading. And um, and so when I, you know, when I got that denial, like that's the volume of the dream that was there. It was like, man, it's crushing me. You know, it's like I can't get out and do the things that I want to do.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Um, but I decided to go back up the third time. And the first time there was, my interview was with an older white woman. She was just, she was, that interview probably lasted like sixty seconds. My dad drove twelve hours to come up and, and, and, and that hearing. The second time it was a younger white woman and she was super cool. She was like, I later learned that she was like a professor at like a community college. I'm like, it makes sense, right? Uh, but she was cool. We was flirting. It was like we had a whole situation going on. And uh, and she voted for me, but the second guy that she had to take it back to went against me. And so I went to a third guy and this guy sided with the guy who didn't see me. Uh, and so they denied it. And then the third time it was this older black man.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  And he was a preacher, I think a preacher pastor, bishop, one of those in a, um, city outside of Detroit. And he talked to me for probably thirty seconds. And the rest of the time he directed this conversation at my dad. And he just asked my dad, whoever you watched your son become in his last eighteen plus years. And my dad really walked him through who he had witnessed me becoming letters. I mean, my dad would write these letters, um, a lot. We were right, we were right a lot. I actually just wrote him a letter recently, just as a, um, a throwback moment to like, I got this super cool stationery that reminded me of a letter he wrote me when he was in Japan.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  And so I wrote him a letter on this stationery and, and sent it to him. And um, and that third time was the term. And, you know, I, I'll never forget the day that I learned I was getting out. I was, um, I was coming back into the unit from walking the yard and, and working out. And, you know, I got, you know, did my little phone call like I normally do. And this officer, um, this woman, she was like, she was like, yo, get off the phone, go down to the cell block. And I'm like, like, what's happening? I got, I got time. What are you talking about? She like, no, she's like, it's important. And so I go down there and I'm just like, I'm like, what's, what is happening? I'm thinking I'm about to pack up and transfer again. I had been, when you get toward the end of your sentence, they're always moving you around.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  She was like, guess what? And I was like, what? And she was like, like, you're getting out. And I was like, man, get out of here. She was like, no, she was like, seriously. She was like, I just went to talk to the counselor. Cause they were trying to find somebody with a, trying to find a bottom bunk. And because I had a knee injury, I had what's called a bottom bunk detail. And the counselor was like, oh yeah, don't worry. White, my, my legal name is White. He'll be leaving in a couple of days. And, um, and she told me that, and I was like, I just remember just sitting there on the bunk like, man, I need like concrete evidence. I need like some tangible. So I go around to the counselor office. I'm like, I'm just about to make up some reason to go in and talk to this counselor, you know? And I go and talk to her and I was like, hey, can you check my account, blah, blah?

• 54:23Speaker 01

  And she was like, oh, she was like, uh, I'm so happy you actually popped in today. She was like, uh, you've been transferred to reentry program like in a couple of days. You're, you're, you've been granted parole. And I just, man, I went back and I just sat on my bunk and I was like, when they passed out mail, they gave me the paper. I still actually had a paper at my house now. And I just like kept, like, I was just like, kept doing this to it. Like this is like really real. It's like 19 years and like now I'm going back to society. And I was so fired up to get out, um.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  I knew what I was coming to do. And like, I was just so excited to get started with it.

• 55:04Mayim Bialik?

  You were in prison for as long as you had been alive before you went to prison.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, half and half. Yeah, I actually got out of prison one day after my 38th birthday.

• 55:15Mayim Bialik?

  And you had a boy.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:18Mayim Bialik?

  Did you have any relationship with him in those years? I mean, you were essentially away for his formative years, right?

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my dad, um, my dad would bring my son to see me. Um, we wrote a lot of letters, uh, early on. And then when he got to be a teenager, and I don't, I don't know this to be factually true because we can't, you know, there's the way that our medical sense of, sense of system and our mental health system is set up. Like, you can't force a kid to get a diagnosis. But, you know, I came home. He had some very apparent, like, mental health challenges. And, you know, it's, and...

• 56:05Speaker 01

  In the inner city, a lot of times, mental health is just like diagnosed without a real diagnosis. So it's like, is it schizophrenia? Did he smoke some weed that was laced with something? So that was the story that I kind of got was that, you know, at some point, he had smoked some weed and he just was never the same after that. And so it made, um, it made our relationship very complex coming home. Uh, and, you know, we did, did a little dance early on with like, okay. And I, and, you know, part of the thing that I learned through the process was that I came home more as a mentor than a dad, you know, because I was just like, don't ruin your life the way that I ruined my life.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  You know, he actually got locked up for something he didn't do, uh, which was a whole nother challenge. Um, you know, I was lucky that I actually did have a knowledge base that I had because it helped him end up not serving a prison sentence.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  But it was tough, you know? It's, it's one of the things I talk a lot about in my work is that prison is not a singular experience. Um, when a person is incarcerated, your whole family goes with you. Uh, anybody who loves, who cares about you, thinks about you, they're a part of that experience and... You know, the consequence and the cost of it is just unbelievably harsh on families, you know, both financially, but really like mentally and emotionally, it just takes a toll on families and you lose, you pretty much lose everybody in your life, you know, and like that's tough.

• 57:45Mayim Bialik?

  We're gonna hit pause here on our conversation with Shaka Senghor. There is so much more in part two, which we cannot wait for you to hear about, including how he finally met Oprah Winfrey and how his book got into her hands. He's also gonna talk about the universality of his experience, how even though you may not be in a physical prison, or even understand what that's like, how this book and the lessons that he teaches can inspire all of us to break out of the prisons that we are in.

• 58:17Jonathan Cohen?

  Often those prisons are hidden, but he walks us through how to identify them and the steps to break out of them and to transform our lives. He also talks about receiving a letter from the family of the man whose life he took, as well as what does it mean to forgive? How does he forgive himself? And how does he forgive others?

• 58:41Mayim Bialik?

  And in a very surprising turn of events, he also describes what it was like to learn about the man who shot him when he was 17.

• 58:50Jonathan Cohen?

  The second part of the episode also touches on what it was like coming out of prison, the changes in society and technology that he had to interface with, how he reacclimated to coming back into society, the things that he loves the most now that bring his life joy, and the importance of prison reform itself.

• 59:09Mayim Bialik?

  Shaka's also going to explain how seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is something we can all hope for, but not all tunnels are created equal. We can't wait for you to hear part two of our conversation with Shaka, from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.