#2353 - Shaka Senghor

Shaka Senghor served 19 years in prison for murder. Today he is a writer, entrepreneur, and resilience expert. His new book, "How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life's Hidden Prisons," will be out on September 9. www.shakasenghor.com Visit https://squarespace.com/ROGAN to save 10% off your first purchase of a website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:13Joe Rogan?

  What's up? Pleasure to meet you.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Ah, such a pleasure to be here.

• 0:16Joe Rogan?

  My, yeah, it's, um, I heard your story. Why don't you tell everybody your story? Because the story is, it's pretty wild.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, I grew up in Detroit. Working-class neighborhood. Dad was in the Air Force and worked for the state. Mom was a homemaker. So on the outside looking in, it really looked like a household where the kids should make it. But unfortunately, it was a very abusive household. And I ran away when I was about 13-years-old. And at the time, prior to that, you know, honor roll, scholarship student, dreams of being a doctor, artist. I wanted to be a doctor because I felt like that was an occupation where I felt like you can help people. And unfortunately, you know, when I ran away, I thought that I would basically just kinda

• 1:07Speaker 01

  get welcomed into the home of someone who would see this kid and be like, "Oh, you know, this kid just deserves love," or whatever. But I found myself on the east side of Detroit in an apartment with a gun to my head. And it was my introduction to the street culture. I was being robbed. And I was being robbed by this guy who later we would learn his name was Tiny, even though he was like, big, fat, probably about six-feet tall. And him and his partner Lily robbed me at gunpoint, took my drugs, took the money. And I think that was like, one of those moments where the innocence of being a kid just was shattered. You know, it's like, you know, now I'm in this world where my life is in danger.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  But I stayed in that culture. My childhood friend was murdered. I was beaten nearly to death. And despite that, I just continued to sell drugs. You know, it's, it's one of the things when I, when I think back to, you know, even that part of my life, you know, there's the glorification of like, the hustler, right? It's like, you know, we out here making money, we're doing things, but... The reality is, it's a kid navigating a very dangerous adult world at the time that crack is just penetrating the community. And one of the, one of the things that always go back to this image of the first time I made a lot of money. I just had this wad of cash, like it's like all singles, five dollar bills, ten dollars bills.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  And I went to the store on the corner and I bought all the cereal that I can think of, like all the cereal that I could not. You know, my parents, they, even though, you know, my dad made decent money, like we couldn't always get all the cereal because it was like all these kids. And then I bought like chocolate milk and strawberry milk and then I went back to the crack house.

• 2:51Joe Rogan?

  Wow. And you were like, what, thirteen?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Literally like thirteen years old. And so, you know, I stayed in that culture, um, and then when I was like seventeen years old, I was standing on March eighth, I'll never forget that day, I was standing on the corner and I got into like a minor conflict, um, and then I got shot multiple times. And that was probably the most serious turning point in my life. Um, after I got shot, they called ambulance and ambulance never came. This, at this time, I'm on the west side of Detroit and I'm just sitting on the porch bleeding and my friend, he was like, look, I'm gonna have to take you to the hospital because ambulance is just not gonna come.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  And I remember getting in the car and he's just like, you know, breathe, like you gotta take these deep breaths, you know, this is how you're gonna navigate the pain. And the reason he was able to do that, he had got shot the year prior, you know, so it was just like, he got shot, his friend got killed. So the gun violence was just, you know, it was so much a part of like the culture and, and that I grew up in, that I didn't think about what was happening inside of me after I got shot. And so I get to the hospital, they take two of the bullets out of my leg and they leave one bullet in. And basically, they patched me up and, you know, I remember my dad coming to the hospital and at this point, I was the third of my brothers to be shot.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  And I'll never forget this look on my dad's face of like...

• 4:25Speaker 01

  It was almost a look of like defeat, you know, of like, how do I, how do I save my, my boys? You know? And so when I, when I left the hospital, like, nobody, like, the doctor, the nurse, nobody just was like, hey, you're gonna have all these feelings. And so I get back and I'm in the neighborhood and, you know, I'm angry because I really wanna get revenge on this guy who shot me. Like, that's the number one priority for me. It's like, you know, I gotta get, I gotta retaliate. And then I'm standing outside, um, this is probably like day two. I had crutches, so I'm like literally in the neighborhood, crutches, patched up bullet wounds. I'm standing on the corner and I remember

• 5:10Speaker 01

  a car coming down the street and like my body almost seized up. And I was like, why do, why am I, why am I feeling this kinda like anxiety? Now it's anxiety, back then, there was no name for it. Um, but I couldn't tell my friends that I really was afraid of standing outside and being exposed. Wow. Yeah. And so that was seventeen years old. And so what happened after that was I began to tell myself this story, that if I found myself in conflict again, I would shoot first. And I began to literally carry a gun every day. It wasn't the first time I had carried a gun, but like I began to carry a gun like every day. Like, it didn't matter what I was doing.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Using the bathroom, gun is on the sink. I'm going to sleep at night, gun is up under the pillow. Probably wasn't the smartest place to, to sleep with a gun, but that was the nature of how I felt, you know, what I was dealing with. And so I started to tell myself this narrative and about sixteen months or so later, maybe fourteen months, um, I was DJing a party and, you know, I love music. I, you know, I come from Detroit. It's, it's one of the greatest music cities, um, you know, in the world. And so I'm DJing this party and shots ring out. People are running, scrambling, you know, getting away. And, you know, the people whose party I was DJing, they come to the back, they're like, somebody got shot in the front, so we gotta shut everything down.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  So we shut the party down. Um, we're on like super heightened alert. You know, we're getting, making sure everybody, we got a head count for like our crew. And, you know, it's me and my girlfriend and we're going back to my home. Um, and I remember us walking, we had walked around to the party. We were walking back and this truck pulls up. And it's, you know, it's a car full of guys and so, you know, I'm on edge. I got a pistol on me, so I'm like, you know, what's, what's happening? And he was like, oh no, we just, you know, John noted Derek was the guy who shot the guy in front of the house. So now we got at least some idea of who, what the shooting was. We get back around and when we get on our block, car's coming up the street

• 7:22Speaker 01

  and there's a guy inside the car and he's like, yo, you know, he calls me over. And I'm like, you know, what's happening? And he's like, yo, wanna make a deal, blah, blah. And he got two guys that I don't know. And I'm like, um, I'm like, no, I don't wanna do the deal right now. Like, there's a lot going on and, you know, so I'm, I'm a little amped up, you know, it's, it's, you know, a lot going on. And so we get into this verbal altercation where he's like adamant about me selling some drugs to him. I'm adamant about him like, you know, getting off the block. And so that escalates into like a full-blown argument. And one of the guys in the car with him, he joins into the argument. So we're like all back and forth, back and forth.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  And there's a moment where, you know, I turned to, um, it's a moment I turned to walk away and I like literally took what

• 8:16Speaker 01

  probably like one or two steps. And I thought, I heard one of them trying to get out of the car and I turned and fired four shots that tragically ended the man's life.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  You know, it's one, it's one of those moments that, um...

• 8:41Speaker 01

  I always think about that moment. Like, what if I'd have just took like a second step? You know, what if I would have just like? I mean, it was a series of what ifs, you know? Um, but when I tragically ended this man's life, and it wasn't the first time I had been in a gun battle. It wasn't the first time I had been in any of that, that, that lifestyle. I felt it. I felt like I did something that was like, you can't undo. Like I just, like I felt it in my spirit. Like at 19 years old, I'm like one month into being 19 and I was just like, I fucked up. Like I've, I've, I've done something that's not, you can't, you can't repair that.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  You can't, you can't come back and say, I'm sorry. You can't come back and be like, you know, I made a mistake or, um, whatever. And, and so, you know, the car screeches off. You know, people are, you know, running inside the house. Everybody's just like, you know, what, what, what is happening? Um, I made everybody leave and then I was like, I gotta go on a run or something like, I don't, you know, I don't want to get arrested. I don't want to be accountable. Um, but I was arrested probably a day or so later. I was charged with open murder and I was eventually convicted of second degree murder

• 10:05Speaker 01

  and sentenced to 17 to 40 years in prison at the age of 19.

• 10:10Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 10:15Joe Rogan?

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• 11:00Joe Rogan?

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• 12:58Joe Rogan?

  So, take me through what it's like when you got convicted. You, you know now you're going to jail. What is, what is this feeling like?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  So, when I got arrested, um, got charged, the first thing I went to the county jail. Uh, Wayne County Jail. And going into the county jail, you are introduced to just this other world. You know, I had heard about it, you know, growing up on the streets, you hear about like, you don't wanna go to the county jail. It's the worst shit ever, right? And so going into the county jail was like, you know, it's going into a war zone. You know, it's fights every day. It's like, you know, people are testing you. Can they fucking take your breakfast and lunch? So going in, I knew that that was just a reality of like, you know, anticipating like at some point I'm gonna have to prove myself. And I'm at the stand up for myself.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  And, and so I get into the county jail and I end up, the guy who I'm in the cell with, he's serving life, but he's back on appeal. Um, and so he's, you know, he's kinda telling me all the, the kinda what to expect in jail. And you know, this guy right here on the cell block, he likes to fight all the time or whatever. You know, but I also grew up like in the city, right? So I'm, you know, I, I tell people this all the time, like you can, I don't, I don't do scare straight when I talk to kids about like not going to jail. Cause to me, it's not about, it's not about being afraid. If you're from the hoods, you've probably had a fight or two, you know what I'm saying? Um, but I get in there and, you know, we get into our dust ups and, you know, eventually it's kinda like a hierarchy of like,

• 14:34Speaker 01

  you know, who's gonna stand up for themselves and, and typically guys kinda back down. But early on, I'm like, I don't, I don't wanna be in jail. I don't wanna be in prison. So I ended up trying to escape from the county jail. And what happened was there was a guy on the cell block with me. He was already sentenced. He's about to go upstate and do a lot of time. And one day he went to recreation and came back with like a long pole he had smuggled from the rooftop gym. And his idea was that he would bludgeon the officer, take the officer's uniform and then let us out the cell and take us out. And I'm like, dude, this gotta be the dumbest fucking idea. Like, we're not making it out of the cell block, right?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  But I was like, but what if we take this pole and we bust the window out and bend the beam? And so we plot over the next couple of weeks, we like would take people's like sheets. Like we would bully people out of their sheets, like you can only have one sheet, you're gonna take the other one. Um, so we took all these sheets and we probably ended up with probably about sixty or seventy sheets. And we can get out of ourselves, so we would, basically you, you, you tie the sheet up into a knot. Slide the knot under the door and pull it up into the door jamb. And if you shake it and keep rocking it while you're pulling it up, it'll pop open. And so we would just pop out, we'd be out on, on like literally in the day room, you know, this back and you could smoke cigarettes in the building.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  That's the only way we can get a light, cause the lighter was on the wall. So we would do that all the time anyway. So when it was time for us to do the escape plan, it was about five of us, we all had agreed, we're gonna go for it. And basically we popped the doors, we're like busting out the, the glass in the, in the, in the uh window. And uh, we're starting to bend the beam. What we didn't anticipate was that they actually do perimeter checks, like around the jail. You know, we're, we're dumb kids, we're not like thinking about this. And so as we're bending it, next thing you know, there's a light flashing up to the window. And you can hear like the lady on the radio like, what the fuck are y'all doing? We're like, we're trying to get out. So now we're like, we're, we're busted. So we just throw everything on the, on the tier.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Everybody goes back, you know, in their, in their, in their cells. And so it took them probably about a half hour. Before they even discovered which, which unit we were on that was trying to escape. They came up there like gangbusters, like Lily is, you know, it's twenty, thirty depths. They just came in snatching us out the cell, slamming us on the wall, you know. And where they messed up is because they did that, now everybody has glass in their shoes. And so they couldn't even differentiate between who had been out, who wasn't. Um, and so they, you know, they put us in solitary for that, uh, charged us with attempting escape. And during that time, I was actually getting sentenced.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And none of us would snitch and talk about, like, none of us would tell who it was. So they really was just kinda going on what they thought. So we served that little time in there, but I was getting sentenced. And you know, when I, when I went in front of that judge, I just remember standing there. And listening to them walk through that night, you know, the prosecutors telling what happened that night. And it was the, it was a one dimensional telling of that story. It was the, you know, it was the very factual, like, hey, this guy, you know, shot, killed this man. There was no context to none of my, my life. Um, and when the judge sentenced me, you know, he

• 18:04Speaker 01

  said fifteen to forty years for the homicide and two years for, uh, the felony firearm. At nineteen, I thought my life was over. Like, I thought that was it. Like, at nineteen, I couldn't even imagine, you know, seventeen years down the line. You know, at that age, I couldn't even imagine, like, two weeks down the line. It felt like a lifetime. So, when he sentenced me, I was like, this is it, man. Like, my life is over. And so, I started my prison sentence with the mindset that I was never getting out of prison.

• 18:48Joe Rogan?

  How much time did you wind up doing?

• 18:51Speaker 01

  I did a total of nineteen years. And out of that nineteen years, I did seven of those years in solitary confinement.

• 19:02Joe Rogan?

  Whew. What is that like?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  It is the... And I tell people it is the most barbaric thing that we do to people in this country. Um, and it's a combination of reasons of why I believe that. One, a lot of people who are in solitary confinement have pre-existing mental health challenges, meaning that they have diagnosed, you know, bipolar, schizophrenia. Um, and it's twenty-three hour lockdown. You know, twenty-three hour lockdown, five days a week, twenty-four hour lockdown, the other two days a week. And it is the most chaotic environment you can imagine.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  The guys there, you know, to wage war with each other would just like the steel footlocker, they would bang it for hours. Like these guys would just have, I mean, the endurance to do that for hours to antagonize a person next to you. They would have what, what is full on shit wars, like where the, I call them weapons of ass destruction because these guys would like concoct ways to throw feces on each other. So if they get into a beef, like the way that they would go to war is they would literally, I mean, and it's, it's, there's a, there's an ingenuity that happens in prison

• 20:27Speaker 01

  that's unlike anything that most people can comprehend. We can make weapons out of anything. We can make, you know, tools out of anything. So these guys would literally figure out how to get feces into a toothpaste tube, which mean that they would like have to like literally go in the toilet, pull this stuff out, stuff it into a thing. And then they would smuggle it out to like the cages, right? So five days we can go out to these cages. They're, it's literally like, just imagine a dog kennel, like a dog run, right? Where it's like kennel after kennel after kennel. So that's how they would take us out. And, you know, you, you're in a cell, they come and they handcuff you to, uh, these handcuffs attached to a leash. And they walk you down a tier, take you out to this dog kennel

• 21:11Speaker 01

  and they let you out. And so they have to give you at least an hour of that a day. And so these guys would come out and they would be, you know, beefing with their neighbor. And, and now it's a full on, they're just squirting shit on each other. Like it's fucking insane. And there, there was this one guy, man, I remember this one guy, he had a colostomy bag. And this was like the equivalent of having a fucking AK-47.

• 21:38Joe Rogan?

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• 22:10Speaker 01

  And he, man, we were like, cool. So he would tell me today is like, don't come out. He would like send me a note over like, don't come out the yard today. I'm about to shoot this bitch up. Like, dude, what are you talking about? So he would like go out there and whip the colostomy bag off and just literally take the yard hostage. Like, don't nobody say shit. You say something, I'm gonna throw shit everywhere, right? And so that's how they would wage war. And so that's what, that was the, the chaos of the environment. And then like, you know, we get into it with the officers, guys would like flood the cell block. So they would put sheets in the toilet and just flush, flush, flush, and now the whole tier is just flooded. And so it's definitely a biohazard issue at, at, at minimum, right? Your, your health and wellbeing is always being threatened by, you know.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I mean, you get, I think we got three showers a week. And the showers are like, they're just back to back. So you're not like, they're not cleaning them out in between showers. So you're literally handcuffed, they take you down to the shower cage. You go in there and it's fucking snot on the wall and it's fucking, you know, somebody shaving. Cause they, they will give you like the little razors to shave. And then you got the guys who, we call them cutters. So these are guys who like self-man. And they would take, I mean, anything you could think of, they would take and just kind of carve up their skin. You know, swallowed, like one guy swallowed batteries. So they stopped us from like even getting, at one point we can get like a little tape player. And a guy ended up swallowing the batteries. So they banned all batteries.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  So then we couldn't listen to music anymore. And so it was just like complete chaos and, you know, it's, it's, it's one of the darkest places, you know, in, in the world.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  And I've been in different solitary, you know, in prison. Out of nineteen years, I was transferred a total of nineteen years to eleven different prisons. And so I've done solitary in like a super old prison, more the modern prison. But the one I did the most time in, which was from nineteen ninety-nine to two thousand and four,

• 24:14Speaker 01

  was called Oaks Correctional Facility. It's more modern prisons. And so, you know, in the midst of that chaos, I decided, like, I gotta, there was a couple of things. So, one, I had read this book about what's supposed to happen to your mind when you're in that environment. And it talks about, like, how it will cause you to hallucinate. It talks about how it will cause you to not feel like you have, like, any agency over your life. It affects how you communicate. Uh, because in order to talk, you gotta lay on your floor and, like, scream under the door and try to hear a guy, or you gotta try to talk through, like, the electrical sockets. So it's all these different things that I, I kinda knew going in.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  And so, I set up for myself, because I didn't wanna, like, the only thing I feared about being in prison was losing my mind. I was never worried about my physical safety.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  And I grew up fighting. I grew up with brothers. You know, I grew up on the east side of Detroit, so I knew how to, like, take care of myself. Losing my mind was the one thing that I was like, that was, I was afraid of that, because I saw guys who were like, normal guys, and five years in, they're not the same. You know, they're not the same. And you see this, like, glossed-over look in their eyes, and it's the scariest shit ever to see somebody start to hallucinate, start to make up a life that, that, that you know is not true. And so, I set my days up like I was at university. Um, and, and I always say this, uh, uh, Joe, this is, like, super important. I was lucky.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  And I was lucky because I was literate. And, like, the average reading grade in prison is about third grade. And I wouldn't be here with you right now if I didn't know how to read. Like, I would not be the person that I am today. Um, and so because I knew how to read, I was able to really structure my days like I was at a school. You know, I would study philosophy in the morning. I would study world history, I would study African history, and then I would just like read for pleasure. But I was always like, you know, every day I'm figuring out, okay, how do I keep my mind moving forward? And if you keep your mind moving forward, you can actually survive. And it's, you know, it's no different than any other hardship you gotta go through. But it's really like, can you keep your mind taking one more step?

• 26:33Speaker 01

  And then there were some days where I was like, I don't, I don't like, yo, this shit is too much. Like I'm, I'm fill 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, sometime it would be Nelson Mandela, he had been through like twenty seven years. Um, and I would just like open it up and like, let me just start reading something. I would read the poem Invictus, like that poem always just kinda brought me back, like you to master your own fate. You know what I'm saying? You're the, you're the captain of your soul. So I would go back and read that. There's a book called As a Man Thinking by James Allen, it's about sixty something pages. I would literally, my, my, my version of that was so dog here, but I would like literally just open it up.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  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, my brain just going forward. Um, you know, I would work out, you know, do pushups and, and calisthetics and roll up. Um, 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, you know? So I would do that, take that mattress, put it on my back, I would do squats. So I would, I would run my, 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?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Um, 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, I don't want the listeners to be confused by that, cause that's a little different, right? It's 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. So I was like, I just gotta run an environment. You know, I gotta be in controlled in this environment. I gotta, you know, make all the, the moves um 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.

• 28:38Joe Rogan?

  Hmm. So when, so what, what initially sent us solitary?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  So the first time I went to solitary was for the assault on um, on a, a guy who was my neighbor. And basically, I didn't have any money on my books at the time. And I, you know, story day came around and I was like, I'm gonna go take his shit. And so I literally went to rob this guy. And he happened to be coming in a cell at the time. We got into like a fisticuffs and, and so they took me to uh solitary for that. And I did about a year for that.

• 29:15Joe Rogan?

  A year?

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then it's, cause what happened was an officer got assaulted in the process. He jumped on my back and I thought it was like his cellmate coming to help him and I kinda threw him off me and. And so that, that, that was, cost me about a year. And then the second time, um, this was some crazy shit. So I was at the Michigan Reformatory. And at the time, I'm the line foreman. So I'm like, I make sure as we're a servant 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. And we were all about efficiency, like we wanna move these guys through as fast as possible. Cause the, the, the, the child hall is where all the shit goes down. It's the stabbings go down and it's crazy, so we trying to move guys out. And this guy, man, he's, he's just holding up the line.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  And so what happened is that sometime they would send these 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. It's called the Gladiator School. And sometime they would send these guys from like the lower levels who, you know, they're getting in trouble at the lower levels and they would send them over there as punishment, you know? And usually when they come over there, they don't realize that, that this is a different, this is a different game. You know what I mean? Like the, 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 prisoners. So this guy comes over, he's holding up the line. And we're like, yo, like what's, what's the holdup? And, and so he starts to cuss our crew out, you know, like.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Basically, y'all, y'all bitches acting like this, y'all a fool, give me more potatoes. Like, so it's like he's upset, he'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, I'm like, chill out, like, what, what, what's, what's the situation here, you know? And he like, they acting like this, there, fool, blah, blah. And I'm like, what, what you want? He like, you know, y'all give me some more. So now he's being disrespectful. So I was like, alright, I got it. So I load him up, mashed potatoes, gravy. Call him to the window and I slap him with it. And I was like, yo, don't come to the window disrespectful. And so I then slapped him with this whole tray of potatoes and gravy. And, uh, and he takes off running and he's, he like runs to the officers, you know? And so my supervisor, who was cool, and he was like, go to the back and like hide, you know?

• 31:27Speaker 01

  So he's trying to hide me. I don't want his better workers, he don't wanna like lose me to, to this. And so, you know, that led to me being in solitary for a year.

• 31:35Joe Rogan?

  A year?

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Another year.

• 31:36Joe Rogan?

  For hitting the guy with mashed potatoes?

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Mashed potatoes, yeah. And so now I'm there for another year, but the last, the last incident, um, which was, it's happening in nineteen ninety-nine. Me and this officer, we got into a conflict. And the conflict escalated when he pushed me, like literally he wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. He pushed me and then I beat him up. And this was, this was another one of those moments of like,

• 32:05Speaker 01

  you know, I, I think, I think in life, man, that sometimes we don't talk enough about how lucky we are. Um, me and this guy, we get into a, we get into a confrontation, it escalates. At this time, like I'm twenty-seven, um, all I do is lift weights, work out, whatever. And I don't even realize the difference between like a twenty-seven-year-old grown man's strength and the boy that walked into prison. Um, and so when I punched 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, it escalates, so I punch him.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  And I, I, soon after I punch him, I like go for the scoop, pick him up, and his leg gets caught under my arm. So I slam him down, his radio flies over the, um, the railing, lands on the floor.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Now, when this conflict happened, they're doing what's called emergency count. So every month in prisons all across the country, emergency count, they blow us a siren. And everybody, doesn't matter what you're doing, if you're working the kids, you gotta drop what you're doing. Everybody has to go back to their cell block. And so what happens is, you know, they'll let people use the restroom, et cetera. But that siren is gone. And so when me and him are 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 was like, what, what, why is there a radio here?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Looks up and sees the confrontation happening. And so he hits his button, all the officers come over. They dive on my back, separate us, take me to solitary. So when they take me to solitary, I'm here, I'm raging, I'm, you know, I'm still in that energy, I'm, you know. And the guy next to me, he's banging on the wall, he's like, yo, look down, cause I can see down to the cell block. Now, there's ambulances 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, literally in front of the cell block. And so I was sentenced to an additional two years and then, and what ended up being four and a half years in solitary confinement.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  And the only, only reason that man did not die that day is because his radio flew over. Um, and, you know, it's one of those, it's one of those things where when I began to recalibrate my life and begin to really transform my life and think about my life differently. It was another one of those things where I realized in that moment, I just let my anger dictate my actions. And no matter whether I thought he was right or wrong, I was so angry and so enraged that I just, you know, punched this guy indiscriminately and I literally could have killed this man. And I would have literally been serving the rest of my life in prison.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  And so when that, when that happened, um, you know, I, I remember they, they transferred me that same day. They transferred me, so I was at, that happened at a prison called Muskegon Correctional Facility. They transferred me to Oaks Correctional Facility.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  And the first month, man, I was there, the officers would just come and they would like, talk so much shit, you know, like, we're gonna fuck you up and, you know, we're gonna, you know, you're gonna get yours. Um, and, you know, it was, it was, it was the most vulnerable, you know, um, I felt, because I, I knew that it happened in there, you know, I know that they can come in, they can just say, oh, he did this, and they can come in with the goon squad and, and pepper spray you and beat the shit out of you, and you're cuffed up and there's nothing you can really do. Um, you know, so it was, it was very, it was very tense, um, for about a month or so, you know, and then there were officers

• 36:09Speaker 01

  who was at the facility where it actually happened at, that transferred over, and they kinda knew me and they kinda knew that, you know, the, the, the experience with the officer wasn't just like, I woke up and had a bad day, you know, they knew it was escalation. Um, and even though, you know, when I, 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, in terms of my reaction to the anger. There were things I probably could have did differently. Um, but what they told me at that point was like, you're never gonna get out of here. You know, you're never gonna get out of here. And I remember the first

• 36:49Speaker 01

  time one of them said that to me, I was like, I was too naive to really, you know, believe it, you know, I was like, I don't know, whatever, you know, I'll do a year or two without here, they all will let me go. And then I started seeing guys around me who had been in solitary for ten years. Um, a friend of mine, he's actually out now, his name is Peter, he works, um, I think he's like a clerk back in Michigan. Um, but he was in, he was my neighbor, he was in solitary for ten years. There was a guy across from me, that was like, this guy was one of the most fascinating people I've ever met. He was a con man, like, he was masterful at manipulating officers, but he was in for twenty years, you know, he

• 37:29Joe Rogan?

  In solitary?

• 37:29Speaker 01

  In solitary for twenty years. Um, and so when I started seeing that, I was like, man, I might, I might never get out of here, you know, and the first two years, you know, I, I was like, kinda resigning myself. I remember writing my dad this letter.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  I wrote my dad this letter. And I just said, um.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  You should just go on with your life.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Cause they're never gonna let me out of here.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  And my dad wrote me back. And he said, you know.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  I can't even pretend to act like I understand the world that you're in. But I will never leave your side.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  And so. That's how resigned I was to. The idea that I was gonna die in there.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  And. It wasn't until, um. I was in about two years or so.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Maybe about a little over a year. And. Basically. I started journaling.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  And it was inspired by a letter I got from my son. And my son told me that his mother had told him while I was in prison. And 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 watches what you do.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  When I got that letter. Like, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't religious, you know? Not religious, not 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 is telling 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.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  And so I was like, you know, I gotta 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, alright, this it. You know, this the last time. Um, it was always these moments of like, I'mma do right this time. But it was never about me. It was always like, I'mma do right so my dad doesn't have to come see me in jail, or come bail me out, or 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? Cause up to that point, I didn't, I didn't think of myself as a bad person.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  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. I thought that I had just got into some situations that people provoked 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 wanna 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?

• 41:10Speaker 01

  And when was the first time this thing happened and that thing happened, and who was responsible? And what I was able to do was debate, I 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. Uh, went to job corps, got kicked out before I finished that.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Um, was gonna go to the military, never followed up to take the test. So 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.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  If you're gonna turn your life around, you have to finish one thing.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  You have to challenge yourself to finish one thing. And so I'm looking around the cells and I'm like, okay, what can I do? I've done all the push-up challenges, you know, you could do in solitary. Um, and I was like, you should write a book.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  But you gotta write the book in thirty days. If you write this book in thirty days, you can change your life. If you don't, you're gonna die in prison.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  And that was my, that was my charge to myself. And, and now I'll tell you, like, in solitary, there's no, like, you don't have a word processor typewriter. You can't even have, like, a regular ink pen, because, you know, they're scared you're gonna, 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. Um, I said to myself, like, it's no way possible you're gonna write a book in thirty days with that pen. This is not possible. And I remember saying to myself,

• 43:22Speaker 01

  this is what you always do. You always make an excuse. You always make a way to get out of being accountable. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna turn your life around? Or are you gonna bullshit the rest of your life away?

• 43:38Speaker 01

  And so I sat there for a while and I was like, what if I rolled this pa- this pen up in some paper?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  And I literally 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 thirty days. And I knew I would never go back to prison if I ever got out. But at that point, I still didn't know if I was getting out.

• 44:04Joe Rogan?

  So what did you write?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  So the first book I wrote was a novel. It was a fiction novel. I, I, I love reading, you know, I was really fortunate to, to really be able to, um, to escape through books, you know, so I was like, well, I want to try to write a book, you know, and I, I, I love these stories I was reading. I was reading like westerns, Lewis Lemoore, um, uh, my favorite, one of my favorite authors, Donald Goin, so he had these, all these street books, like Dope Fiend and, you know, uh, Black Gangster, and it was like all this kind of underbelly, uh, Iceberg Slim, Pimp, all these stories were stories I had read early on, and these guys, they were like me. Like Donald Goin served time in prison.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  And so I'm like, well, if these guys can write a book, then what if I give it a try? And so my first novel, um, was literally 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 writing that book on a notepad. And I still, I still have the original, uh, books that I wrote in, in solitary confinement on notepads and on the back of paper. Uh, I'll make, I'll send you some pictures of it, it'll, it'll blow your mind. Um, and I remember writing that book, and I got out, so I write the book, this is some wild shit.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  So after I write it, I'm like, well, a book really isn't a book until somebody reads it. And so I climbed on my floor, and I'm like, yo, like, somebody want to read, read this book I just wrote? And I remember this guy at the other end of the tier was like, don't nobody want to read that bullshit? This ain't Oprah.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  So, so here it is. I'm like, I'm trying to like, I'm trying to turn my life around. I'm like, no, I gotta shank this guy for disrespecting me, you know what I'm saying? So, but 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 on the yard, like, I'm a shot caller, I can have you done, right? And then I stepped back and I was like, no, he actually just gave me a go. Like, if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna take writing serious, I need to set a goal for what do I want to happen with my work? You know? Um, and then another guy, he agreed to, to, 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?

• 46:38Speaker 01

  So, we would make these fish lines out of our underwear, so we take all of the string out of your underwear, you, you attach that to a toothpaste tube, that you squoze and all the toothpaste out of, and stuff with paper, so you stuff it with toilet paper, wet toilet paper. Then, once that dries, it has enough weight that you can slide it up and down the tier. And so, and then sometime we would use our socks, most of the time I, I use socks, um, but you just unravel that string, and then you can slide it up under the, the, the door, and then you can, you know, attach whatever to it. And so, I attached the, the, the book to it, man, slid it under the door, and I don't hear for this guy, like, all day, so now I'm like nervous as shit, 'cause I'm like, it's my only copy, you know what I'm saying?

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Like, I didn't get a guy, my only copy, and he ain't responding. 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 like, it blew my mind for like literally about five minutes, and then I thought about it, I was like, man, he in solitary for five minutes, he over there bored as shit, it could've,

• 47:42Speaker 01

  I could've sent him anything, I could've sent him a recipe, and it'd be like, it's the best chicken soup recipe ever, right? So, but, I was like, okay, maybe if I sent it out, you know, send it out to people. And so, I started sending my writing out to like, I have a brother, he's my, he's my stepbrother, and like, out of 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's an engineer at like, one of the big three, and, and he's 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 him 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.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  And I want to help you figure out, you know, a path forward."

• 48:31Speaker 01

  And so, just getting that affirmation for somebody who, he wasn't in the streets, he wasn't in a prison cell block, that he had did it the right way. Like, just that little boost, man, was like, okay, maybe I'm onto something, you know? And so, I wrote my second book, um, like, right after that. And I gave myself the same thing, you got to finish it thirty to sixty days. And then I started a third book, man, and I, um, I went into the deepest bottle of depression that I had experienced in prison.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  And it was because, by the time I got to writing book three, I realized I had this incredible talent, and that it had 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, um, so it was the most, like, getting sentenced was like, my life is over.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Not being able to actualize a dream based on a gift I was given,

• 49:43Speaker 01

  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 into philosophy, which was like, the wildest thing is like, you know, growing up, you know, you hear philosophy, like, oh, that's super boring, you know? But I was getting into 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 gonna only produce negative outcomes. And when I went back and I read my journals, I saw the pattern, the pattern was super clear of like,

• 50:28Speaker 01

  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, then 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 gonna get out of here, I need help. Like, they're not like, the way it looks on paper, they're not just gonna let me out, you know? And so I wrote this, I wrote this letter to the warden, and it was a super philosophical letter about the truth. And what I said to the warden was like, when I walked into prison,

• 51:13Speaker 01

  my statement was that I was not gonna 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 thirty-four misconducts. And they ranged from everything, a dangerous contraband, to assault on staff, assault on inmate, you name it. And I was like, so the thing you know more than anything else is I'm a man of my word. And what I'm telling you is that if you, if you believe that that to be true in the negative, I just need you to believe it to be true in the positive. And if you give me this opportunity to get out of solitary,

• 51:58Speaker 01

  I'm gonna focus on two things. I'm gonna mentor these other young guys, and I'm gonna focus on becoming a writer. And I sent that letter to the warden, and the warden literally wrote me back. And he said, you know, Despite my hesitation here, I believe you. And I'm gonna 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 an inmate. And so it took about another two years before I got out of solitary. The assault was on an officer? Yeah, on an officer, yeah, yeah, yeah, on an officer. And so it took Lily another two years um before I finally got out.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  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? Um, and then I typed those books up and I was like, I started to send them, I was sending stuff out. I got like, I still got like copies of my query letters, man. I was just sending stuff out in the dark, like, I sent like, Jay-Z was like the president of like Def Jam at one point. I was like, oh, you should publish this book because you rap about this shit, I really live it.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  I sent it to him and I was just like. Did he respond? No.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Well, I did get a couple of responses from like some like independent publishers 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, my parents sent me and money I hustled on the yard. I still had hustles, they just weren't like illegal hustles. So I wasn't doing like drug smuggling, but I would sell, you know, the, the merchandise on, on the yard for twice what it's worth. And I just took that money, man, I saved it up and uh I published my first book from prison in two thousand eight. How did you do that? So I, I bought this book, I ordered this book called uh Self Help Guide to Self Publishing.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  And I taught myself everything I needed to learn about publishing. Like I knew how to get a copyright, ISBN number, uh 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, you know, execute this? And found a graphic artist and a printer, um and yeah, and published the first book. And then the prison sued me for the cost of my incarceration.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah, and they tallied it up to like a million dollars. Yeah. Cause 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 a hundred and fifty something a day. Lower security levels, like seventy 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 ninety percent of anything you earn off this book. They thought I had got a book deal. They didn't realize I had like self-published. And I was like,

• 55:19Speaker 01

  you know, the, the thing that, that struck me about that, when I went through the, through the, uh, through the actual hearing with the judge, was I was like, man, you know, I, 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, uh, second degree murder, felony firearm, and this assault on an officer. And I'm like, if I put that on a resume,

• 55:46Speaker 01

  nobody's gonna hire me when I get out.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  And I'm like, fair, I get it. Like, I, if I'm, if I'm in a hiring position, I saw, if I only saw that, probably not hiring that person either, so I'm giving myself a chance. You know, I'm trying to give myself a chance. Like, I don't wanna go back to the streets. I wanna, I wanna be able to contribute to society, but I know society's 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 fifteen percent of the proceeds, I mean, ten percent of the proceeds, once the company recouped its production costs.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  So they went from suing me for, for ninety percent of fifteen dollars per book, to only being able to sue me for ninety percent of a dollar fifty per book, cause I backdated this contract. I used to work in a law library, so 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.

• 57:17Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  You know, if you had a nonviolent crime, there's a chance you can get a job and you get out. And so I was realistic and I'm like, yo, nobody's gonna hire me. So I gotta figure out how to make it happen myself. And so I went through that lawsuit and it was, 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've sold drugs, 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. Like 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?

• 58:01Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  You know?

• 58:03Joe Rogan?

  This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Believe it or not, the holiday season is here again, and that means you might need to fill some seasonal roles, fast. Maybe you need extra cashiers or stalkers, or maybe something more unique, like a lead elf, or an expert gift wrapper, or a Zamboni driver. Whoever you're looking for, whatever skills you need to power through the rest of the year, ZipRecruiter is one of the best places to start your search. Because you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. And because ZipRecruiter helps sort through thousands of resumes and applications, showing you the most qualified and interesting ones first. There's even an option for candidates

• 58:47Joe Rogan?

  to explain why they want the job. Let ZipRecruiter find the right people for your roles, seasonal or otherwise. Try it for free today at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. That's ziprecruiter.com/rogan. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog. Here's a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer. On average than dogs who are overweight. Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners?

• 59:29Joe Rogan?

  Healthy alternatives exist and trust me, I know. I buy one, the farmer's dog. I use it for both my dogs. They love it. They eat it up quick. It smells good to them. It smells good to me. It's human grade food. The farmer's dog makes fresh food for dogs. And my dogs love it. Their recipes are made with real meat and fresh vegetables. That are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients. They also portion out the meals to your dog's nutritional needs. Which helps avoid overfeeding and makes weight management easier. And isn't getting more time with our four legged best friends, something every dog owner wants? The answer to that is yes, obviously. So try the farmer's dog today and get 50% off.

• 1:00:13Joe Rogan?

  Your first box of fresh, healthy food. Plus get free shipping. Just go to thefarmersdog.com/rogan. This offer is for new customers only. 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.

• 1:00:39Joe Rogan?

  God. I mean, I kind of almost can see it from their side if they hate you. You know, like fuck this dude. What can we do to derail this? Or, you know, if you're a corrections officer, you're not making a lot of money. At all. 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. Yeah. And especially if you don't have any talent, talent is like. Talent is a gift from God. It's like you either have it or you don't. You can develop some talent. But some people have talent. There's something that some people, like there was a video we played the other day of uh

• 1:01:25Joe Rogan?

  Biggie rapping on the street when he was seventeen.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:01:28Joe Rogan?

  You ever seen that video?

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:29Joe Rogan?

  I mean, you can't teach that.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Joe Rogan?

  You can't, you can't teach that kind of power.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  At all.

• 1:01:34Joe Rogan?

  At seventeen, that's a gift.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Joe Rogan?

  That's a gift. You know, some people just have a gift. And sometimes that gift comes from pain. You know, sometimes that gift comes from a life of struggle and hardship and it just, the emotional turmoil builds something inside you that comes out in your art. And people hate people with gifts.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:55Joe Rogan?

  They really do. They really do. Especially if they hate you already.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't their favorite, you know? But the crazy thing is like, it, it, that's, that's how I originally took it. And I think that was some of the impetus to them, like filing a lawsuit. But the policy itself is wild. Cause like if you, if your parent dies and you inherit their insurance money, that same law applies. Where they can take ninety percent of that to cover the cost of your incarceration.

• 1:02:27Joe Rogan?

  That's fucked up.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  But it's, it's discriminated in terms of like how they apply it and when they apply it.

• 1:02:32Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  And that's where the, the, the hate came in because how it got initiated was the person in the mailroom was like, oh, how dare this guy write a book? And then I'm gonna send this to the attorney general and they're gonna like sue you. So it was crazy, man.

• 1:02:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. What is it like the day you get out of solitary? So you did it three times?

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Joe Rogan?

  Two one years stretches and then one long one?

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Um, 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 kinda... You know, it starts to play with your mind, you know, you see these guys that got, you know, they've been here for twenty years, you know.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  But I remember like going, cause you go up to these hearings, you get, and it feels like you're about to go, and then they come back in thirty days, then like, God, they, they won't let you out, right? Cause you gotta go, so it goes like this. When you had assault on the officer, you gotta go to the warden. And then the warden goes to like a regional director, and 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 shuts it down, got it to the regional, then the head shuts it down. So it's like you're getting your hopes up, and you don't know when it's gonna end, you know, it's kinda like, you know, I remember when the pandemic hit.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  A lot of my friends, you know, I have a lot of friends in different walks of life now.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  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 a pandemic. And what I told them, I was like, the hardest thing that we're all gonna grapple with is uncertainty of not knowing when it's gonna end. And that's exactly what happened, right? It's like, alright, everybody's gonna go on a lockdown, and then on April thirtieth, we're all free and clear. There's like, nope, we're gonna stay until March. Nope, I think we should stay until June. Nope, so we just, you, you start to lose that orientation, cause you can't put your feet on solid ground. That's what it's like in solitary, you just don't know.

• 1:04:40Joe Rogan?

  But way worse.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, the extreme of that, right?

• 1:04:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  And so when it, when it finally happened, I remember telling the guys on the, on the tier, I was like, if they ever let me out of here, I'mma stroll out like George Jefferson.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  And so the, the wild thing was like that last year in solitary, so, so they have these guys come over to, to the cell block, they like clean up, they pass out the food trays. So they usually come from the protection unit. The last year, they stopped letting them guys come in, because it 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 was from general population, and these was like guys I knew, you know? So like, the last year I was there, you know, they would come through, man, they would smuggle me candy bars. I hadn't had a candy bar like three years, you know? And, uh, I remember, you know, one of my guys come over, he smuggles, he, I, I hear the broom hitting the door. And I look up, and it's like two flattened down, like, Snickers that he's like probably put in his shoes.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  I don't know where he put them, I didn't, I didn't even ask questions, I didn't want to ask questions. Um, and I remember like running them over cold water so they could solidify. So when I tell you it was like the, them, them Snickers was like the best, like, ever, like. I mean, the, the details of how I can taste that, given I had been, been gone from it, so. I told them guys, I was like, man, they let me out, it's gonna be like George Jefferson strolling out of here, you know? And so, that's literally how it was, man, they popped that door. And I took my little bag of shit and my books and through that thing, and I'm, I'm George Jefferson strolling, I'm like, I'm out. I'm like, y'all have never seen me, because I had really, you know, I, I, I, I looked at it like this, I was like, you know,

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  up to that point in my life, I had, I had let myself down so many times, you know? I had been beat down by life, the traumas, the, 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, like, I'm, 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, I was like, I'm, I'm moving on up, but I'm moving on up into like a higher purpose in my life.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  And that's when I got out, man, and, and I went to work. I'm like, literally 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. Uh, the year that I published the book, I went up for parole that same year, two thousand eight. And um, I was at a prison at this time, they had transferred me to lower security level. So you start to work your way down, which is its own craziness, you know, cause I'm, you know, I, I did, at that point, I'd only did hard time. Um, and going down a security level is like crazy. You know, cause you're now you're dealing with these guys that's coming straight off the streets, they're like, you know, you're dealing with.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  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, they're literally operating at a different like intellectual frequency. Than guys that are like doing petty theft.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  And so now you're, you're, you're in lower levels, you're dealing with a lot of guys who really are, should probably be in an addiction environment. Versus actually prison. Um, you're dealing with your, you know, failure to pay child support. DUIs, um, 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. Um, and it's an open setting, so I'm going from like being in a cell by myself to like now I'm in this like. Cubicle with, with, you know, these random, you know, guys, um.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  But I was just preparing myself, man, I was like, you know, I, I wanna get out and I wanna add value to society. And so, you know, they had transferred me, so now at this point, I'm way up, up, I'm in northern Michigan, over the, the upper peninsula. So I'm about twelve hours from, from, you know, my hometown, my dad comes up, my dad, my stepmom, my oldest son. And um, man, we go into this parole hearing, it probably lasted, you know, maybe a minute. You know, this lady, she was just like.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Why did you do what you do, it was like a very hard line, just the, the facts, you know? And I was just like, ah, I'm not getting out, you know? Like I knew it, like that, that hearing was so fast, she didn't even, you know, listen to my dad, it was just very curt. And I was like, man, I'm, I'm, I'm, no, I'm not going home yet, you know?

• 1:09:43Joe Rogan?

  And so, how many years in was this?

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  So at that point, I had seventeen years in.

• 1:09:48Joe Rogan?

  And how much time do you have to wait before you can apply for parole again?

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  So technically, it can be anywhere from twelve months to twenty-four months. They give what's called a flop or a passover. Uh, so they gave me a twelve monther. And usually, you go back within about ten months of that, um, to go back to the same process again. And sometime less when they're trying to like, deal with budget issues and kind of get guys out. So I went back probably about eight, ten months later.

• 1:10:17Joe Rogan?

  What did she say to you? When she denied you parole?

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:10:49Joe Rogan?

  She put you in a category.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, she shut it down. Like, it was almost like, me explaining to her was making an excuse, you know? That was the way that she responded. And I was like, man, it was, it probably didn't even take a full sixty days before I had a decision back, you know? That I was being denied.

• 1:11:09Joe Rogan?

  That's gotta 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.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, you know, that's the, that's the scariest part about, you know, our penal system overall.

• 1:11:36Joe Rogan?

  There's no rehabilitation.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:38Joe Rogan?

  You have to do it. Well, I mean, your story is so similar to many stories that I've heard. You know, I've done a lot of podcasts with my friend Josh Dubin.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:49Joe Rogan?

  You know Josh?

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  That's the lawyer guy, right?

• 1:11:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he's the guy who, he used to work for the Innocence Project and now he works for the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice. And it's mostly dealing with wrongfully incarcerated people.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:04Joe Rogan?

  And, you know, and some of them, um, the stories, you just, you hear it and it is,

• 1:12:13Joe Rogan?

  it just kills you. It breaks your heart. And just try to imagine what it's like to be that person.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Joe Rogan?

  Dealing with corrupt DAs, corrupt prosecutors, corrupt everything, corrupt cops. And people just get railroaded because they need to hang a conviction on somebody.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:12:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  It's one of-

• 1:12:33Joe Rogan?

  This episode is brought to you by Chime. And I know people don't usually get excited about banking, but Chime is doing something different and it's worth paying attention to. In a recent survey, they ranked the number one choice for new checking accounts in America. That means real people, millions of them, are choosing this over traditional banks. That's because banking at Chime is fee-free. No monthly fees, no overdraft fees, and thousands of fee-free ATMs. But here's the real kicker. If you get their Chime card, it gives you 5% cash back on a category you actually pick yourself. Your savings rate, crazy high. It's nine times the national average. They're calling it the most rewarding way to bank. Go to chime.com/rogan.

• 1:13:17Joe Rogan?

  Takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank, banking services and Chime card, provided by Chime's bank partners. Terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com/disclosures for more details. This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog. Here's a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra-processed kibble still the status quo?

• 1:13:54Joe Rogan?

  For most dog owners, healthy alternatives exist and trust me, I know. I buy one, the Farmer's Dog. I use it for both my dogs. They love it. They eat it up quick. It smells good to them. It smells good to me. It's human-grade food. The Farmer's Dog makes fresh food for dogs and my dogs love it. Their recipes are made with real meat and fresh vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients. They also portion out the meals to your dog's nutritional needs, which helps avoid overfeeding and makes weight management easier. And isn't getting more time with our four-legged best friend something every dog owner wants? The answer to that is yes, obviously.

• 1:14:35Joe Rogan?

  So try the Farmer's Dog today and get 50% off your first box of fresh, healthy food. Plus, get free shipping. Just go to thefarmersdog.com/rogan. This offer is for new customers only.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  The scariest parts of the system. So like one of my best friends, his 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... Man, 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. It's 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.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  And we have to decide who we, who do we want to be as a society? Like, do we want to give people a second chance to prove themselves? And like, I'm not, I'm not a...

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  I'm not a person who has a mindset of like you just throw the doors open and let everybody out. Um, 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 hard, arduous work of reimagining a life for myself. That's tough work. That, that, none of us gets out of there without our scars. You know, there's, there's things about me right now that I can directly pinpoint, oh, this is because of what I went through in solitary. Um, there are some things that I was able to take out of that environment and turn into a positive.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Like, you know, sometimes people will hear my story and they'll be like, oh, well, solitary actually worked out for you. And I'm like, I'm like, no, I'm like, there's a difference between solitary and solitude. And like solitude is something that I think that all of us should explore more broadly in our lives. Um, we all just need time to get away from even the most positive aspects of our life. It's time you need to step back because it allows you to have even deeper gratitude.

• 1:16:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  Um, but I really was just lucky, man. I was lucky to be, to be willing to go on a journey, but also to have a skill set to read and, you know, to read books of like, hey, it doesn't have to end like this. You know, you can, you, you don't have to be pinpointed to one horrible moment in your life, you know? And, and, and there's the cumulative nature of the things that led up to that moment. It doesn't excuse you. Like, I don't, I don't make excuses for the decision I made that night. I just want to be clear about that. There's like a, all these causal factors that lead to us becoming who we are in whatever capacity. Um, but that's the tough stuff. We don't, we don't like to grapple with because it's not efficient.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  You know, it's not easy to, to, to figure out. I mean, it's the, the facts of it is like, it's not easy, right? It'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, we, those stories should be lifted up. We should be talking about that.

• 1:18:11Joe Rogan?

  We probably have an appreciation of freedom that's just different for everybody else's.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Like, I, 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. Like, you can't, you can't.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Like, you can't underestimate that value of really understanding, like, as a human being, that you can contribute to the world in positive or negative. And that you can, 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.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Like, that's what, that's what, like, for me, freedom is that. You know what I'm saying? Freedom is like, you know, the, the, the, the book that I've recently written is called How to Be Free. And you know what, what really inspired me to write that book? Is I've met so many people out here in society who's never been in a prison cell, who are psychologically, emotionally, and mentally incarcerated. And 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.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  And there's a thing from their life that does not allow them to be fulfilled.

• 1:19:42Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? And so it's, it's the, it, there is that appreciation post-incarceration that, you know, you just, I mean, fifteen years later, I still revel in moments like a kid. You know, like, I'm like, I'm like a kid, man. I'm like.

• 1:19:58Joe Rogan?

  That's beautiful.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm curious about life, you know?

• 1:20:01Joe Rogan?

  We should all keep that kid.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Man, protect it too.

• 1:20:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  You know, and protect it.

• 1:20:07Joe Rogan?

  Don't get hard.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:08Joe Rogan?

  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, the childlike joy of things.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the curiosity, you know, I'm like the biggest nerd. I love it, man. It's like, I always tell my son, I'm like, I'm the coolest nerd you'll ever meet. Cause there's a thing like I, you know, I got out, like two years after I was a fellow at MRT Media Lab. You gotta imagine like how wild that was, Joe. Like I'm going from like the barbarity of prison.

• 1:20:49Joe Rogan?

  Twenty-four months.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  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. Where I got there, it was like robots were like, I mean, it was, 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, you can contribute. And I remember how that stuck with me of like, man, I can contribute, you know?

• 1:21:31Joe Rogan?

  What were you doing there?

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  So I was working on a project called the Atonement 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, you 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, in the auto industry and he was trying to get this, it's like one of those screens to kind of perform in a very

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  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 if you just move this over like a quarter of an inch, it's probably gonna work the way that you envisioned 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 and I was just like, man, that was, that was wild, because this is a smart kid. He's, you know, this kid is brilliant, right? And so I said, um, I want to do a prison hack here. And I want to 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.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  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 guitar 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? So in prison, in order to like, heat up our noodles, we had to, you know, especially if you're in old prisons, excuse me, if you're in old prisons, there's no, there's no microwaves. So you have to figure out how to heat them up. And so we would 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 got to splice them and then you put it in the water and plug it up and then it heats your water up. And so now you can make your noodles, your coffee.

• 1:23:44Joe Rogan?

  You're just putting the cord right into the water?

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, but if you do it, you got to put it in first before you plug it up. Because if you, if you like, plug it up first. Yeah. If you plug it up first, then it blows the power out of the cell block, now you got a whole nother problem. Um, and so we would, that's how we would heat up our noodles, our coffee, oatmeal, whatever. And then I had them, um, if, back, 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. And then I had them, um, make a lighter out of batteries and wire.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  And then to make a fish line out of the same material that I told you about earlier, the string out of the socks and, um, and so I gave them like three hours to complete these challenges. And we're going for three hours, they blew the power out of MIT Media Lab. It's like the best. I was like, it felt like a, it felt like an intellectual victory. I was like, yes, like these super smart kids, they just like blew the power. And so we get to the three hours. I mean, one of the kids burnt themselves. I got videos, like he burnt himself, like trying to get the lighter. And they almost got the tape player. I think if we'd had, had probably about three more hours, they'd have 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, you know?

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  And then the second part was that if they would have accomplished this with these meager little toolset, they would have been applauded. And people would have said, you know, that was brilliant and that you're a genius and that you're incredibly intelligent because you were able to take these little scrappy things and make something out of them. And the reason I wanted them to validate that is because I believe inherently that there are people in prison who possess ingenuity, innovative, you know, abilities, intelligence, all these things that we throw people away. You know, we literally throw people away. And I would have been one of those people that have been thrown away had I not had the ability to write. And so, you know, it's those, those type of things where you, you think about these other prison systems.

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  Like I've visited prisons and I've been to Germany's prisons, London, I've been to Ghana. And you, you, you see like how different it could be. You know, what we're capable of when you give people an opportunity. Um, I don't, I don't, I, 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.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  Um, but they are the extreme minority, the extreme minority. Um, most of the guys that I met, that I served time with. We're trying to hustle their way to a life.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  They come from high levels of, of, you know, parental abuse, sexual abuse, drug abuse.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  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. But people who were really like screwed up.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  It wasn't, I, I didn't meet a lot of inherently evil people. But I have met some evil people. And you know it. Like it's not even a doubt in your mind of what you're dealing with when you meet these people.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  But we're, 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 murder, you're a murderer and that's everybody. It's not everybody's story. All of us don't arrive there, you know, and, and it's, and it's, you know, I, the time that I did was the consequence of the choice I made. And I accept that. You know, I accept that, I accepted that came, what I even accept now. You know, we're talking thirty four years later. There's penalties and consequences for that one moment in my life that I live, that I'll live with forever. There's the, there's the personal reality, right? Like, like that doesn't, that never goes away.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  You know, like that, that understanding of what damage I've caused to this family is something that never goes away.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  And I think that we should be able to earn the trust of society back. You know, I think you gotta 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 the opportunity to prove yourself. You know, that you can contribute and that you wanna contribute. And I can tell you like the guys that I, I deal with, man, there's so many of these guys that can contribute if we just stop throwing people away.

• 1:29:19Joe Rogan?

  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 that other people don't have to deal with them. But they are, like you said, they are gonna get out, most of them. And they're not gonna be rehabilitated and oftentimes they're hardened and it's oftentimes even worse.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:29:37Joe Rogan?

  And there'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?

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:52Joe Rogan?

  Which is possible.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:30:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  They suffer. Like, they're not happy people.

• 1:30:10Joe Rogan?

  Oh, no.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  You know, and they're not...

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  They're not happy because their job forces them to have to have a persona of toughness. You know, the way that it was originally designed is you have to have a wall up between your humanity and the people that you're tasked with policing.

• 1:30:34Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  And that makes it tough. Because you have to come into this world for most of the time, sixty 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 sixty days out of the week. And then you gotta come in and you gotta see people, you know, at their worst more than just the moment you 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 a cycle of their worst moment.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  And the violence, the chaos, the, the smell, um, 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 fray when a guy is butchering another guy. And then you have to go home with that. You know, you have to carry that home and this, and this, 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, bludgeoned, you know, on a regular basis and then you have to deal with that, you know? Um, it's the interesting thing about how, you know, at, at one point I didn't have empathy for correctional officers. You know, they were the enemy. Like you're holding me in prison, not, not realizing I'm really the one that's responsible for me being there.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  But over time, man, I, I remember I started to get empathy in the craziest of ways, man. You know, this officer came to do a strip search and I refused the strip search. I was, you know, I was in that re- rebellious state. And I just remember like thinking to myself after that, like, man, this is his job. You gotta come and look at somebody's ass. You know, his fat asses, skinny asses, hairy asses. This is your job. How can you be a happy person?

• 1:32:30Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  You can't be happy. Like you gotta go in the visiting 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.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  And that's your, you, for forty hours a look, a week, you're looking at asses.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  That gotta suck. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:32:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  I'm like, dude, like, of course you become an asshole. Like, how, how could you not, right?

• 1:33:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Um, but, you know, I, I think that's where we got it wrong. We've, we've kind of created this kind of idea that it's us against them. And the reality is not, because they're spending a lot of time in that environment.

• 1:33:15Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, they're in prison too. They just can leave at night.

• 1:33:17Speaker 01

  All day.

• 1:33:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's a different kind of prison.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:20Joe Rogan?

  Because they're in control and they can quit.

• 1:33:26Joe Rogan?

  But a lot of them, they're probably imprisoned by their bills too, so they can't quit.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:33:31Joe Rogan?

  And, and a lot of the environments where these prisons are, are located, there's no other jobs.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  No, that's the only industry.

• 1:33:39Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  That's the only industry.

• 1:33:41Joe Rogan?

  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.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:53Joe Rogan?

  I remember that moment, the, the moment that I found that, I was like, that is evil.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:58Joe Rogan?

  You're using people as like batteries to generate money.

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 1:34:03Joe Rogan?

  And private prisons are, they want more people in there because that's how they make money.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:10Joe Rogan?

  It's like if you're a chicken farmer, you want more chickens.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  You want chickens, right, right.

• 1:34:14Joe Rogan?

  If you're a people farmer, I mean, you're essentially a people farmer.

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:18Joe Rogan?

  Which is evil.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And you think about like the, the cost of phone calls. Like before, before I got out of prison, we had finally fought to get the phone calls down. I mean, they were charging fifteen dollars.

• 1:34:33Joe Rogan?

  And how much do you make in prison?

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  Like my, the, the, the best paying job I had in prison was,

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  I think when I worked in the law library, I made about fifty-four dollars a month.

• 1:34:47Joe Rogan?

  And every phone call is fifteen dollars?

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Fifteen dollars.

• 1:34:50Joe Rogan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  And so most people in there make, you know, I worked in a kitchen, I, I started off at seventeen cent an hour.

• 1:34:56Joe Rogan?

  You gotta work a week to make a phone call.

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:00Joe Rogan?

  That's insane.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  But that's if you got a, a, what's considered a good job, right?

• 1:35:04Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  But the average job, you're making seventeen cent an hour in a kitchen.

• 1:35:09Joe Rogan?

  Oh my god. And a phone call is fifteen dollars?

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  Fifteen dollars, right. So you make, you know,

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  and so you can't talk to your family, you know, and then we finally got it down to like about three dollars a, a, a, a, fifteen minutes.

• 1:35:23Joe Rogan?

  Still, if you're making seventeen cents an hour.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. It'd take you forever to make a phone call.

• 1:35:27Joe Rogan?

  That's insane.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  And like even now, like I, I keep money on my phone for my friends who are incarcerated to call me, you know? And 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 a hundred and fifty dollars left. And it's just like, geez, like man, you know, and I'm, a lot of instances, I'm their only connection to their family and their kids.

• 1:35:56Joe Rogan?

  Do you know the freeway Ricky Ross story?

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:36:00Joe Rogan?

  Do you know Ricky?

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we've met, I wouldn't say that we're like good friends, but we're cordial anytime we've seen each other. But we've met, I want to say at least four or five times. But yeah, wild story.

• 1:36:12Joe Rogan?

  I love that dude.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14Joe Rogan?

  I've had him on a few times.

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:16Joe Rogan?

  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.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:24Joe Rogan?

  And that's how he got out.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, that happens so much to people, though.

• 1:36:28Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Like, they all, they, they overcharge you. That's one of the things that I would love to see changed is like, there is no accountability for prosecutors when they overcharge people or wrongfully charge.

• 1:36:42Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  It's up to you who's being charged to figure it out into, which is crazy, right? Like, the onus shouldn't be on a person.

• 1:36:50Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's a crime.

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:51Joe Rogan?

  It should be a crime.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, because that's like crazy to think that you can wrongfully charge a person or overcharge them.

• 1:36:59Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's the thing is like, they don't think of you as a person anymore.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:03Joe Rogan?

  Once you're a convict, you're not a person anymore and they can do things to you that should be illegal. It should be a crime, but they could get away with doing it.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it impacts like, everybody. Like, right now in this country, there's probably about a hundred and fifty 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 selling 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.

• 1:37:43Joe Rogan?

  Which is insane.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  Which is wild, right?

• 1:37:46Joe Rogan?

  Wild to think about.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  In a short amount of time.

• 1:37:47Joe Rogan?

  Tiny amount of time. How old are you?

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  I am fifty, I'm fifty-three.

• 1:37:51Joe Rogan?

  Okay, I'm a little older than you, but I remember when all that happened.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:55Joe Rogan?

  I remember like, all of a sudden, crack was on the street and it was like.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:59Joe Rogan?

  What, how did this happen?

• 1:38:00Speaker 01

  How did this happen? Literally overnight.

• 1:38:02Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. And we find out through freeway Ricky how it happened.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:05Joe Rogan?

  It was our own government.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:38:07Joe Rogan?

  Fucking insane.

• 1:38:08Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 1:38:09Joe Rogan?

  Not our own government for real, for real, but people in our government that are cowboys and renegades and people who are criminals.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:38:19Joe Rogan?

  Who realize they can get away with this.

• 1:38:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Yeah. And in Ricky's case, they were using it to fund a war. Yeah. The country versus, yeah. Crazy, right? Crazy. I remember hearing about that shit in the news. Yeah. 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, and they were, this was when Reagan was old and so he's like, I can't recall. Like, he just said he didn't remember. Right, right, right. Yeah. Convenient, yeah. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Scams have gotten smarter because criminals use AI to flood

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• 1:39:49Joe Rogan?

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• 1:40:32Joe Rogan?

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• 1:41:14Joe Rogan?

  It's horrible to think, because you, 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 there, it's because they're bad.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  They're bad. Yeah. And so 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 and on my neighborhood block, there was, you know, this woman, she used to be a police officer and 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, I wrote this story a while ago called, "The Trees No Longer Get Fruit." And it was about my neighborhood. And what I was writing about is that I grew up on a, on a block where every backyard,

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  there was some type of fruit tree, pear tree, peach tree, apple tree. And then crack came and it killed my neighborhood. And these manicured lawns and these houses where there were two families, I mean, two parent families and, you know, professionals 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, the, what did they call them? Super predators. Uh, that was the narrative back then.

• 1:42:44Joe Rogan?

  That was Biden.

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:45Joe Rogan?

  Biden said that on TV.

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, Clinton, Hillary Clinton, she was like super predators, right?

• 1:42:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  And I was in prison when they, when they, when that crime bill took college out. I was averaging a four point oh, and they said that it took rehabilitation out of prison. You know, that night, I think it was ninety four 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. Now, thirty years later, that's changed. It's changed with opioids. It's changed with fentanyl. It's changed with like poverty in these rural areas.

• 1:43:35Speaker 01

  And now the prison population looks vastly different. Like there's more, I was just in juvenile lockup, uh, last week, I was in Rhode Island. And like this room of these kids, like ten kids in two different rooms. And I mean, it looked like the United Nations of diversity.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Literally like three white kids over here, a couple of Latin over here, black over here. And I was like, shit, you know, and they're, and these are babies, right?

• 1:44:01Joe Rogan?

  And isn't that crazy that that's also drugs?

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:44:04Joe Rogan?

  And it's also corporations.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:06Joe Rogan?

  See, the thing about Detroit, most people don't know that Detroit, um, up until they started moving jobs overseas, Detroit was the third wealthiest city in the world.

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:44:18Joe Rogan?

  In the world.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:44:20Joe Rogan?

  In the world.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  The world, yeah.

• 1:44:22Joe Rogan?

  Which is crazy.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:23Joe Rogan?

  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.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:34Joe Rogan?

  It's crazy.

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:35Joe Rogan?

  And just because they wanted to make some more money.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:39Joe Rogan?

  They didn't want to pay the union wages. They didn't want these factory workers making a great living. They wanted all the money.

• 1:44:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. They completely like almost destroyed us there.

• 1:44:50Joe Rogan?

  Like a bomb, just like crack.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Fortunately, it's a resilient city and.

• 1:44:55Joe Rogan?

  It's bouncing back.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's bouncing back.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:58Joe Rogan?

  It's nice to know.

• 1:44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:00Joe Rogan?

  But fuck, the fact that that can happen.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, it was unbelievable like to to think that it would happen on our watch.

• 1:45:09Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  I remember when I when I came home, I was so optimistic coming coming out of prison. I mean, you got to imagine like, you know, walking out, everything is just like, oh, it's gonna 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, you know, these were, these were beautiful blocks and these beautiful homes. And I would go through some of the neighborhoods and there's one house left on the block. And it's like the other house that are still in different, you know, states of disrepair were falling apart. And 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.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  And then this was the other thing that was mind blowing is I went into the schools and I'm like, it's in worse condition than the prison all that's left. And like that talks about where people are investing to your point of like, we start investing into like, keeping people in prison or putting people in prison versus like, education facilities to keep people out of prison.

• 1:46:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:46:10Joe Rogan?

  But also, how do we have these same communities decade after decade after decade that are deeply impoverished and filled with crime?

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:19Joe Rogan?

  And no, no, no course correction, nothing being done on a on a federal level to try to correct that. Uh, 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. You have four years, you have four year terms. But because of that, they just think about getting elected. And then once they're in, then then they think about getting reelected. And the last thing you want to do is do anything controversial that might take fifteen, twenty 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.

• 1:47:04Joe Rogan?

  I know 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. We've 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, man.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:33Joe Rogan?

  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. They 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. We're all the same exact fucking thing.

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:47:58Joe Rogan?

  We vary genetically, we vary biologically, but not that much.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  Not that much, no.

• 1:48:05Joe Rogan?

  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. That's, we're supposed to be the most advanced society that's ever existed. But yet we still, which is crazy, right? With, with, the United States of America is supposed to be the most prosperous, advanced society on earth. And we have the highest level of prisoners.

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:40Joe Rogan?

  We have more people in prison in the United States than any other country by a long shot.

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  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 the one space where in the last, I would say the last fifteen, twenty years, where there has been some common ground. And there's been a little bit more courage than than I've ever seen in my lifetime.

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  For years, people would not touch incarceration, other than saying, let's be tough on crime.

• 1:49:23Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:49:24Speaker 01

  It took, it took, 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, and I think that the facts of it is just, 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. Like, in my family, in my 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.

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  We don't talk about gun violence in an inner city, in the cycle of it, because of the lack of treatment for 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 seventeen 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 to protect myself when both of my brothers had already been shot, and many of my friends had been murdered through gun violence. So, so those choices as a kid, while they were illegal, they weren't necessarily irrational.

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  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 and party, and they're fine, to go back to the suburbs, it was easy to just be like, oh, well, those black kids over there are selling cocaine and, you know, they should be arrested. When you started 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 able to see their own kids and their grandkids. And now that you're seeing that, I guess, over thirty percent of the prison population

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  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, sometime I do these talks all over, and I'm speaking at corporations, 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. I wish I can tell people what I'm going through in my family right now.

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  I wish I can talk about why my husband has not been in the household because of his addiction. The shame attached to it. Yeah. You know, the shame, if it doesn't fit the narrative that you've been handed, the shame attached to it. Yeah. You know? And even, you know, being a black male in America who comes from the hood, there is, there is, uh, there's value to that narrative, right, to leaning into that. Like, if I'm, you know, you think about the black comedians, right? We always talk about our trauma and our pain because that narrative has cultural value. You know, we lean into, as much as we can lean into like

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  the elements of us that's from the hood in a smart way, in a funny way, et cetera. We'll always get that laugh. We'll always get that, you know, that sense of like, oh yeah, y'all do have a different reality, right? Um, because that's the narrative and that narrative has endured from generation to generation. And I think now we're just getting to a space where, and I mean, and there's tons of work to do. Like to undo all the damage that's happened in the system is going to take us another fifty years. You know, we, we, we'll be lucky 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?

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  I'll tell you, there's two things that I was struck by when I was there. At one point, I was with, I was with this guy named Scott Budnik. I think you may know Scott. He produced The Hangover. Uh, so Scott does incredible work in criminal justice. He's one of, I always, I always tell him he should get a Nobel Peace Prize. Um, 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 was 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 were, we were talking to the guys who were serving time. They're showing us their cells. They don't even know I had been in prison, but they're, you know, they're excited to have visitors. So they're like, you know.

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  And I went into this one cell and I remember just standing there and I was by myself and the, the warden came, this woman. And she was like, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, I was just like caught in the, caught in the thought. Like I spent a lot of time in prison back in the States and I spent four and a half years in a cell that's probably about half this size. And I was like, you know, I'm in 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. It made me realize that in America, when you are convicted,

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  your identity as a citizen is taken away. Right. If you even had it. You can't vote? You can't vote. You know, you can't travel freely to other places. Um, you know, there's still restrictions that I have, you know, and this is fifteen 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, and the TSA agent will be like, oh ma'am, you can go in that line. You got TSA pre-check.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  And it's always like, we always instantly look at each other and 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? Right. And I have to think about as a taxpaying citizen that I, I pretty much pay more taxes than probably ninety-nine percent of the country. And that I don't have access to all the things that comes with being a taxpaying citizen. And that I can actually use Clear and move through effortlessly. You can use Clear? I can use Clear. But you can't use TSA Free? What the fuck is that? It's crazy, right?

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  Things like insurance, like home insurance. I bought a house in LA in two thousand nineteen. 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 having a felony from thirty years ago have to do with my ability to pay insurance on a house I already bought?

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  You know, and so it's like.

• 1:57:02Joe Rogan?

  Insurance is such an evil scam.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially in California, it's brutal.

• 1:57:07Joe Rogan?

  Oh, it's so evil. It's so crazy. They, I 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.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Oh, jeez, I didn't even know that, yeah.

• 1:57:19Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I mean, you can't get fire insurance.

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23Joe Rogan?

  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?

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, what do I do? Yeah.

• 1:57:29Joe Rogan?

  And they can't get out. They don't have enough money to get out. And then it's hard to sell your house now. If you're in 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. And Laurel Canyon burns.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:41Joe Rogan?

  And nobody wants to buy a house there.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:43Joe Rogan?

  It's like, what the fuck?

• 1:57:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:45Joe Rogan?

  Here it is. Thirteen-year-old boy arrested for brush fire that led to evacuations. Fireworks. Um, did they put it out? I think so.

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  So what are they gonna do to him, though?

• 1:57:56Joe Rogan?

  Ah, he's a kid.

• 1:57:57Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying, like.

• 1:57:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he's a fucking kid. I started a fire when I was a kid.

• 1:58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 1:58:02Joe Rogan?

  I started a big, big-ass fire for doing fireworks.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  Oh, fireworks?

• 1:58:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I think I was, so I was living in Jamaica Plain, which is, uh, uh, at the time, it was a bad neighborhood outside of Boston. I think it's supposed to be gentrified now.

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:58:19Joe Rogan?

  So now that was, I was, uh, thirteen, right? Yeah, I was thirteen. So that was his age. Yeah, and we, uh, we were lighting 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, um, we told the cop, the cop's like, get the fuck out of here. Like, we told them what we did. We were lighting firecrackers, sorry.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:59:02Joe Rogan?

  And, um, they wound up putting it out.

• 1:59:06Joe Rogan?

  Was said in a statement, he was not accepted to Orange County Juvenile Hall due to absence of injuries or immediate threat to buildings. Okay.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they released him.

• 1:59:16Joe Rogan?

  He's a kid. They just said, "You're a kid. You fucked up."

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:18Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's good.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:20Joe Rogan?

  I mean, um, 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 that was burnt. Luckily, no one lost their life, but it was just sheer luck.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:34Joe Rogan?

  You know, it could have totally been next to someone's house. Totally.

• 1:59:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Propane tank, anything.

• 1:59:39Joe Rogan?

  Anything. Yeah, anything. You never know.

• 1:59:41Speaker 01

  Or y'all could have actually got like seriously injured. It was like crazy.

• 1:59:45Joe Rogan?

  I mean, it was just luck.

• 1:59:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:46Joe Rogan?

  Dumb young kids. You leave them alone. The fact that any kid could go buy a lighter.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, some matches or anything. Yeah.

• 1:59:53Joe Rogan?

  You buy a lighter.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:55Joe Rogan?

  And you can just light things on fire. When you're a kid.

• 1:59:56Speaker 01

  That's what you're gonna do.

• 1:59:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, you wanna light things on fire.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's, uh, 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, and you just imagine like, that 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.

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:00:27Joe Rogan?

  Any of us. And leaving these communities the way they are and not doing anything to try to fix them is, to me, the, it's the biggest failure of our government. Other than, you know, interventional war, you know, interventional foreign, interventionist 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.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:57Joe Rogan?

  Is that we don't do anything about it.

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, I think it goes back to what you was talking about earlier with talent. Like, how much talent are we leaving on the table? You know, like when I was just there in Roll Light, and so I went to this juvenile program over there. And, 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 into all types of trouble to like now they're 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. Cause I've, I've dabbled in, in working with, um, I ended up doing this, this spoken word piece with Nas on, 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.

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  But the talent that is wasted in prison, you know, the, the, the ingenuity.

• 2:01:50Joe Rogan?

  The thing about, the thing about being able to make a tattoo gun out of a piano wire or guitar string and of, an engine from something else, some sort of a motor.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Tape player, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:01Joe Rogan?

  And you see some of the tattoos these guys making Jay, like Jesus Christ, these are incredible tattoos.

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  I'm inked up, all these. I got like, I actually got in trouble for getting tattooed one time. I got caught like getting, getting, 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 a tattoo, which was crazy. I was trying to get a cover up, uh, right here.

• 2:02:25Joe Rogan?

  Was that when you were already out of solitary?

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was out of solitary, yeah. I was actually working my way down to like going home. And I was just like, ah, we in lower level. Me, me, me had this guy slam this ink in, 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.

• 2:02:44Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So when you get a misconduct, they take days from, from you, you know? And, you know, you think about some of the stuff like you're taking 90 days from a person.

• 2:02:55Joe Rogan?

  For a fucking tattoo.

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Their own body.

• 2:02:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, for what?

• 2:02:58Speaker 01

  Like, why are you, why is, why is the excess of punishment?

• 2:03:01Joe Rogan?

  Well, don't like that, like how many of those guys could get out of jail and be excellent tattooists?

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  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?

• 2:03:23Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:03:35Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:03:36Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:03:44Joe Rogan?

  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. They just have some weird thing about them.

• 2:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:54Joe Rogan?

  It allows them to think differently.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:56Joe Rogan?

  They don't care you didn't get a degree. Like, hire them quick.

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, I worked in, yeah, I worked in, I worked in Silicon for three years. And I invested there, so I'm super happy about that.

• 2:04:07Speaker 01

  But yeah, I I worked, 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, and 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 learned, like, my business acumen comes from two worlds, from the streets and prison. And what I learned from the streets is marketing and promotion. Um, I was one of the best at like figuring out how to get our product into other areas. Um, there were a lot of skill sets that I, I didn't, I didn't even recognize them until I was far removed from that world.

• 2:04:49Speaker 01

  That, oh, this is just like entrepreneurial talent, you know, the ability to, to problem solve. Like, I remember one, one, one of the houses we sold at, uh, they called them trap houses now back then. We called them crack houses. We get this house, it's in the middle of a nice neighborhood.

• 2:05:05Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  We clear, we on a clear path, 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 armored raw gate, like, as soon as you walk up, so 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 conceal. More low key. Yeah, keep more low key. So it would be stuff like that that I was figuring out at like thirteen. 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 and I just walk on like a, like a little kid.

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, I got like, you know, the half a brick of cocaine. Bag going down Ohio, like I'm, I'm hustling, right? So I, I say to people, like I learned like the marketing and promotion, distribution part there. And then in, in, in prison, I learned operations. Like how does cash flow work? So I loan shark, that was part of my, my livelihood. And prison was loan sharking 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 sale blocks. Which means that I can circulate cash on the off days when this sale block gets money this week, this one doesn't. So I can loan money here, pick up the next week. And I would just circulate this cash.

• 2:06:48Speaker 01

  So I was starting to generate this cash flow. And then I began to really understand interest rates and like, and the interest rates in prison are ridiculous. Like a hundred percent markup on everything. Um, but, but I also was able to convert that cash, right? So like, say you were on a gambling table, Joe, and you're like, you're down a hundred dollars 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 or your mother to send me seventy-five to my account. Cause that's more valuable is the money I have in my account. And so that was called a money transfer. We would just transfer cash. Um, and so I, I learned these things. And then when I got out, you know, I started off hustling books out of the trunk.

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  Like a lot of people, they talk about the, the out the trunk experience is kind of like fashionable and cool. I seriously was like, Lily, I had a little Honda Civic and I would go all over Detroit. Uh, parks, uh, strip clubs, uh, you name it, bars. I would literally set up, sometime I'd set up a little booth inside the, the clubs. Um, a couple of my friends, they they manage the strip club. They'd be like, yo, come to come up to the club. I'd be like, I'd come up there with books and I'm talking to the girls and they doing lap dance. I'm selling books and. Wow. Yeah, and I I'm like, that's so that's how I really started the the journey. And I mean, my first first day out of prison, I sold my first book in the in the parole office parking lot.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  And so I I took these skill sets 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 a company that I used to speak at. And who became a client of mine. He was trying to figure out their company culture and um. How did what did how'd that work out? Like, what what was that about? Yeah, so a really good friend of mine, uh, Ben Horowitz, you you've had his partner, Mark Andreessen on. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so so Mark's partner, Ben, is a really good friend of mine. He's one of one of my my. He's he's my one of my best friends, but he's also like a great mentor and somebody who really.

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  You know, we're always having these idea exchanges, but one time he invited me to his home for dinner. With one of the founders of one of their portfolio companies and the founder and I, we hit it off. He's this tough, tough Israeli guy who's been through some stuff, so we would have. These conversations about like grit and determination and and he had this company called Trip Axons at the time. And they were going through, they were like a skyrocket. They were this was 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 their cultural values and and. The culture and he asked me to join the company, you know, and.

• 2:09:37Speaker 01

  I originally joined as the head of D E I because he really wanted to figure out. What was happening in the company, how to set people up for success. And one day I spoke at an event and the, the, 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. Uh, this company went from like zero revenue to like, you know, it's nine, nine billion dollar valuation.

• 2:10:10Joe Rogan?

  So how do you sort, how do you sort out a program like this? Like you had, you had never done this before.

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  No, but I did it in prison with figuring out how to like run and operationalize the things I was doing in prison. Right? So like.

• 2:10:22Joe Rogan?

  So how did they recognize you that this would transfer over to their corporation?

• 2:10:26Speaker 01

  I think just conversations, like conversations, things I was doing. I was doing some of this stuff in nonprofit world too. So I led a, uh, organization in LA around nonprofits, raised a ton of money, was able to really kind of build out their culture. And then Ben actually wrote this book called, What You Do Is Who You Are. And in the book, he talked about some of our conversations around culture. And it kind of gave them a framework to really understand how these lessons I learned in prison could really be applied in corporate. And you know, we hear it all the time, well, 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 probably can run a corporation.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  Not everybody who hustles in the street is freeway Ricky Ross, right?

• 2:11:12Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:11:12Speaker 01

  Um, there is some skill sets to run an actual startup that you need to have a lot more experience. People, the people part of it, like how do you really build relationships? That's one of the things I was really good with in prison is, is like really knowing how to be diplomatic, uh, knowing how to resolve conflict, you know? A lot of times in prison, when violence escalate 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

• 2:11:56Speaker 01

  you don't want people getting into dust-ups on the yard, but you're telling them because you've actually lived that life. And all that, all of that psychology from that world applies in any corporate setting. Any, any company you can imagine, all the things that people are going through, it's the same thing that's happening in prison. The only difference is, you know, your colleague might shank you with an email. Versus, like, you know what I'm saying? They might slide their emails 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, I would find guys to invest in.

• 2:12:40Speaker 01

  You know, so if it's like, you, you ride in, you from the neighborhood, your, your family's not taking care of you. I would say, okay, well, this little homie, he's on this cell block. I'm gonna give you, you know, thirty, forty dollars, and then you gotta flip that. But you also gotta be able to defend it. You know what 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 she's a good CEO. But then you gotta do the work, you know? And so, all those lessons I learned from in there, how to build community. One of the things that I, I, I would do, because I was hustling on the cell block,

• 2:13:23Speaker 01

  is I made sure that me and my crew, that we broke bread every day. Like, we always would take our little ramen noodle cook-ups 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 ten-sent noodle in. 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. You know, we, we trained together every day. You know, and when we would train, there was an accountability that we just commanded of each other. It's like, if you say you're gonna be on the yard, be on the yard. You know, you're gonna go for ten laps today, we're gonna, we're gonna push you and drag you and help you get around, you know.

• 2:14:08Speaker 01

  And it, and it built this closeness and, 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, my thing was like, when, when, when I welcome you into my world, it's based on these two things. Are you willing to do life, or are you willing to give, 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 out on the yard if the stakes are that high, right? It's the same thing in corporate where you're like, listen, we're fighting for something. In the startup, we're fighting for this outcome, you know? An acquisition, a merger, or IPO, whatever that thing is to change the world.

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  Like, we gotta 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, I come in with that mindset of just like, the honesty, the vulnerability. Um, you know, it's the, the things that I'm, even in the, 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, 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 was a great CEO, and he always got super real with us. And when he got super real, it didn't always feel good.

• 2:15:37Speaker 01

  But what it did is it allowed you to look at, okay, this is what we're, we're really dealing with. You know, and this, and this, and you gotta face that thing head on, and that's what applies in your real life, you know?

• 2:15:49Joe Rogan?

  That's the only thing that applies.

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:51Joe Rogan?

  Being super real is, it's everything.

• 2:15:53Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, it's the game changer.

• 2:15:54Joe Rogan?

  As soon as you're bullshitting.

• 2:15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:56Joe Rogan?

  Like, now, what is truth? What's reality? How do you, how do you succeed if you're not dealing in reality?

• 2:16:02Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:16:10Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:16:10Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like it's, you know, we hear it in, in sport. I'm a, I'm a crazy sports fan. I think the best stories about how you conquer life come from sports.

• 2:16:19Joe Rogan?

  I agree.

• 2:16:19Speaker 01

  And, you know, grit and resilience, the fundamental parts of that comes down to the truth. Like 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.

• 2:16:39Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:16:39Speaker 01

  You know, and so that, all that stuff applies, you know, in, in 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, 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. And 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.

• 2:17:23Speaker 01

  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? The, the challenges, the, the wins, the victories, all the things.

• 2:18:04Speaker 01

  That you can, you can live a life that is so rich and abundant in, in fulfillment. Because you're always in that spirit of gratitude and you're thankful for the moments you're in.

• 2:18:16Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:17Speaker 01

  And that, to me, when you're in a, when you're in a, 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 could just pause for a minute and be like, man, I'm thankful that I get a chance to get up and go to work.

• 2:18:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:33Speaker 01

  And I'm thankful for these challenges. 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. But when you've lost everything, you know, you're thankful for like, you know, my gratitude practices are, I 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, and the house and the things. It's these small things, you know, things that I get, I get excited about, like, I got cold orange juice today.

• 2:19:13Speaker 01

  Like, how amazing is that? You know what I mean? Like, that, that, that matters to me, you know, um. You know, I have, I have a device that I can actually communicate with the world, an idea. You know, that I have, like, in a moment that I have it. Like, that's gratitude. You know, it's like, I got toothpaste today, you know, soap. Soap is a big thing in my life, like, um, you know, there, 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, um, but I didn't have any money.

• 2:19:49Speaker 01

  And I couldn't even buy a bar of soap.

• 2:19:53Speaker 01

  And all I had was this state-issued soap, and it's a little, small bar, about this big. It's probably about a quarter of an inch thick. And it smells like pine saw.

• 2:20:04Speaker 01

  And I just remember like this moment of like, man, I can't afford a bar of soap right now. You know, and in that same stretch, I was in solitary and I didn't have these shower shoes. So in prison, you get these little, you know, shower shoes that you buy for like two dollars. Cause you're going to take a shower in this, you know, this cesspool of all this 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.

• 2:20:45Speaker 01

  And like that feeling of like shame, you know, that like, I was a drug dealer, you know? I hustled, I took care of people, I stood up for people and I don't have two dollar shower shoes. Like that is what allows me to appreciate all the things, you know? And so what I, what I 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? Cause that's, that's, to me, that's the ultimate freedom, man, is gratitude and to be thankful about, you know? Even our complex country, like we gotta, we live in a very complex country.

• 2:21:30Speaker 01

  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? Um, I think all kids should be like a part of education, they should have to travel. Um, 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.

• 2:21:58Joe Rogan?

  I think so too, because I think it's too easy to focus on negative and negative begets more negative. If you just find the things in your life that suck and dwell on those, your life's gonna suck more. It's just simple mathematics, it's, it's real. I know people that are very successful that aren't grati-, they don't have gratitude.

• 2:22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:22:15Joe Rogan?

  It's crazy.

• 2:22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's who I wrote the book for, for those people is like.

• 2:22:19Joe Rogan?

  It's crazy.

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:20Joe Rogan?

  I know so many people that are like very successful, but very unhappy.

• 2:22:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:24Joe Rogan?

  I remember one time, it's a story, um, when I was on television, I was on this TV show called News Radio and uh, 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 um, they were all sitting around, they were reading Variety and um, Variety Magazine and the Hollywood Report. I 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, we're not after Seinfeld.

• 2:23:06Joe Rogan?

  I go, last time I checked, I'm on television. We're on television. You know, few people get to be on a fucking sitcom? And we're you're, we're here pissing and moaning because we're not on the biggest sitcom? That is so crazy. Do you know how many people would trade lives with you? I mean, I used, I had a ton of terrible jobs. Doing construction, delivering newspapers, I did everything. Drove limos, I did everything. It, I'm on TV. I'm happy as fuck. Right. 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.

• 2:23:50Joe Rogan?

  It's like, no, no, no. Someone is out there being Tom Cruise. Right. How come I'm not Tom Cruise? You know, this is bullshit. Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise. I'm not Tom Cruise. Right. And that, and that's literally, and then they, they live miserable. They're multimillionaire miserable people, which is. Yeah. To, a kid like me who 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, you're in, not, 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, you actually live in a better dream. Yeah. My friend Brian said this to me once.

• 2:24:33Joe Rogan?

  My friend Brian Callen, he said, all you want is to be able to go to a restaurant and order anything you want and not worry about what the bill costs. Everything after that is bullshit. 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, and everybody has that. No, it's the ultimate wealth. It's the ultimate wealth. 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 Seinfeld.

• 2:25:16Joe Rogan?

  They tried to turn everybody into a sitcom, Roseanne. You know, so 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 twenty six? I guess I was twenty six, something like that. And you know, my whole life I'd been paycheck to paycheck, always broke. You know, and for the last five years, just hustling as a comedian, trying to get by. I was just happy that I didn't have to have a regular job. I was just a comedian, but I was always broke.

• 2:25:58Joe Rogan?

  And 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, I had 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. Absolutely. But then, everybody's worried about, like, Bob's got a twenty-two foot boat, I'm going to eighteen foot boat. Like, Jesus Christ, man. Things that don't really matter when it comes down to it.

• 2:26:42Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's like that, that, there's an, I forget who said it, comparison is the thief of joy, is that Thoreau? No, Thoreau was, most men live lives of quiet desperation, that's my other favorite one. Yeah, it's great. I think it might have been. Martin Jefferson, who said, "Comparison is thief of joy." But it is. It's like, you can miss out on gratitude when it's right in front of your face. You have so many things to be happy for.

• 2:27:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:27:08Joe Rogan?

  But every, this weird world. This is why I also tell people, stay the fuck off social media, man.

• 2:27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know how you're depressed, for sure.

• 2:27:15Joe Rogan?

  Oh, it's compared, this is, Jonathan Haidt 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, you, and then they're getting plastic surgery and changing this and changing that. And, "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. You know?

• 2:27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's, that's, that's the thing that I've, I've really been struck by. You know, when I, when I got out and, and talking to some of the, you know, the guys and women that I know who've been incarcerated. You know, I, I do think that we all operate out of that same injury of just, I mean, in, in energy of like, just deep gratitude, you know, because you, you do really begin to understand what is value.

• 2:28:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:10Speaker 01

  When you take it away, right? And like, it's, it's, it's that saying of like, you know, you can have a million problems until you get sick and then you only have one.

• 2:28:18Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:28:19Speaker 01

  And then you, and that's the thing about like, losing freedom, right?

• 2:28:22Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:28:23Speaker 01

  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. That's like being struck with that illness. Where it's like, you got all the trappings of life right here at your disposal.

• 2:28:38Joe Rogan?

  Yep.

• 2:28:39Speaker 01

  But you're trapped into this idea that, you know, and it was sometimes it's, it's not, that it's not real stuff, right? Like, trauma is real.

• 2:28:46Joe Rogan?

  Sure.

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  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 gonna grieve at some point. You know, somebody's gonna die, you're gonna lose a job, you're gonna lose an opportunity, a lover.

• 2:29:03Joe Rogan?

  It's not all highs.

• 2:29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:05Joe Rogan?

  Nobody gets all highs.

• 2:29:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:29:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:07Speaker 01

  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 kinda deal with it on our own and then it trips people up because it can get heavy at time. You know, and if you get hit with a few things back to back, it can actually be overwhelming. But if you lean into some of these things that really centers you, you know, being present. Like, I'm, I'm super present in the moments of some time. It can be annoying to the, to the people in my life because I'm just like, no, I actually changed my mind like literally this moment. And they're 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 wanna be. But it's, it's a beautiful space to be, you know, like that.

• 2:29:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I learned in, in prison. So I tell people like, I was incarcerated before I ever stepped foot in a 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.

• 2:30:15Speaker 01

  Whatever happens, my son is gonna be able to look at me and say, you know what? My dad went through all of these things, but here's who he came, became as a person. That, you can't, it's not a box that can contain it. You know, and 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, is, is, you know, I see it and it's sad because it's to all the things you say. It's like the, the competition with, with people highlight reel, right? Like, you can't compete with somebody's highlight reel. Exactly. It'll drive you crazy. It's not even a real highlight reel. It's not even real, yeah. A lot of leased cars out there.

• 2:30:55Speaker 01

  Come on, the leased cars is, is, I saw a car out here that I took a, I mean, I've had people be like, yo, can I take a picture in front of your car? Yeah, that happens a lot, yeah. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, when you get behind it, you realize like, man, what do, what do people really care about? Where's the most joy is like the friendships you develop. The people you spend time with. Yeah. Those things are invaluable, you know, and that's not to say that people shouldn't aspire to a success like I'm like, listen, leave it all on the floor, whatever your, whatever, whatever task you've been given in life, like, go out and execute it to the fullest capabilities possible, like, don't, don't undersell yourself, don't have, do it, don't quit on yourself, go for it, push yourself to the limits.

• 2:31:38Speaker 01

  But understand, you gotta be present in the moments that you're living, 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 wanna enjoy it, um, I work hard, you know, sometimes I, you know, it's probably annoying to people around me that how hard I work, but I find joy in that, you know, there's joy in the actual work, you know, otherwise I wouldn't do it, so.

• 2:32:03Joe Rogan?

  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 in prison.

• 2:32:13Joe Rogan?

  There's a thing about that, man.

• 2:32:14Speaker 01

  We should send everybody to the being, at least.

• 2:32:16Joe Rogan?

  No, 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, how to think.

• 2:32:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:32:31Joe Rogan?

  And I think it's, it's a, it's a gigantic factor in where you find yourself in life, whether you find yourself living a happy, fulfilled life, or whether you find yourself in one of those people that lives in quiet desperation.

• 2:32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:44Joe Rogan?

  Which is most people out there.

• 2:32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they've been talking about this epidemic recently with, with, with males in general, and just like how men are not satisfied with like, life, you know, and I'm like, part of it is like, I, I, I think, one, we have to be better, I think this is something women build community way better than men do, uh, because we're so competitive, and like, you, you, and, and we're not always willing to be vulnerable. But I can, I can say like, well, my, my friendships that I have with men, it starts at vulnerability. You know, it starts with like the, the, the depth of like, what does it mean to be vulnerable? What is, what are we struggling with today? Right. You know, how are you really, like, how are you really feeling today?

• 2:33:29Speaker 01

  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. But 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, either it's like extreme toxic masculinity or it's the feminization of males. Right. And the truth is like, it's neither of those things.

• 2:34:11Speaker 01

  You know, those are narratives, but they're not, the narrative doesn't necessarily mean that they're true. You know, what is true is that we have not created space for honesty and transparency and vulnerability. And we haven't identified that is actually a strength. And so what I've, what I've found that's been amazing, man, is the men that I'm, I'm in relationships with as my brothers and my friends, that vulnerability piece is like, has been the super unlock for us actually having enjoyable friendships, you know? And I think, you know, it's, it's all the things that, that, you know, these things translate into your work experience. They translate into your relationship with your children.

• 2:34:53Speaker 01

  Like, I get so inspired by, like, my friends, which I also think is important. It's like, you should be inspired by the people you spend time with, like, that, that's invaluable, you know? Um, and it doesn't mean that you don't deal with, with their heart, you know, the hard parts of their life. But if, if you're inspired by them and you're vulnerable with them. The hard parts of their life become beautiful. You know what I mean, and those are easier things to navigate because it becomes what the real meaning of honor is.

• 2:35:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:22Speaker 01

  You know?

• 2:35:23Joe Rogan?

  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, secretly wanting them to fail. You, you will never live a happy life if you're secretly wanting people to fail.

• 2:35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:39Joe Rogan?

  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 will 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 bitter and upset and negative, which does, does you no good. Or you can be inspired.

• 2:36:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:08Joe Rogan?

  So their success can be fuel that makes you work harder.

• 2:36:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:36:12Joe Rogan?

  And actually you should thank them for that.

• 2:36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:14Joe Rogan?

  You should even thank people you don't like. If you find them, their success to make you feel uncomfortable.

• 2:36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:19Joe Rogan?

  Like, oh, what, fuck that dude. No, 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, uh, figured out a way to work harder.

• 2:36:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:36:34Joe Rogan?

  He's figured out a way to work smarter.

• 2:36:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:36Joe Rogan?

  He's more, more honest with himself about stuff. He writes things down. He's got a, a chart on his wall where he figures out what he's doing wrong and how to correct it. And 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.

• 2:36:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:36:51Joe Rogan?

  Okay, but you gotta be vulnerable even with yourself.

• 2:36:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that, that's the super unlock, right? Is that, 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.

• 2:37:06Speaker 01

  My one task to myself was, you have to be brutally honest. And you have to be, and it's gonna, it's not gonna be pretty. But you gotta be brutally honest. Only sit down and journal when you're ready to be brutally honest. And that, that was a game changer for me. Like, I remember, there was a guy, he was in the cell next to me. And we got, we got into 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 my cell. So he stuck some shit in the fucking light socket, right? And I'm over here, I'm like, I'm already, cause I, I had, went to the yard that day, to the, uh, to the, uh, the cages, right? So we go out. Um, and normally I don't really go out in the, in the wintertime, you know?

• 2:37:51Speaker 01

  This is solitary, so I might go like a month, like during February, it's brutally cold in Michigan. But I'd get up and I'd 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 this 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, in my mind, already programmed for, I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna walk, I'm gonna do my walking for about fifteen, and I'm push-ups. You know, whatever, keep myself warm, et cetera. They left us out there, had to be, for hour forty-five, way beyond what we were supposed to, supposed to be, right? Just to keep you cold. Yeah, just to keep us cold.

• 2:38:35Speaker 01

  I mean, like, we're, and it's 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, and the neighbor's like, yo, can I borrow some more cigarettes? He ain't paid me back. And I'm like, I cuss him out, man, nah, you ain't getting no more cigarettes.

• 2:38:58Speaker 01

  So I'm over here steaming, bro. I'm so, I'm like, literally, I'm like, I'm enraged, but I'm like, I'm super cold and like the power is out. So, cause 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 sometime it can be days, you know? And so by the time I thaw out, I'm like, I had just started this journaling journey, you know? And I just started writing down, I catch this motherfucker. I'm gonna shank him and you know, I'm, I'm going, I'm furious, you know? And I come back a couple of days later, cause that's what I would do. I would write and then I would come back and read what I had

• 2:39:38Speaker 01

  written. And I was like, this is the mind of a madman. Like this person, like I, I would not want this to be a person that I lived next door to. Right. So you gotta get your shit together, you know? And so I, I wrote through this process and, you know, even now, you know, I, I still have all my journals. They're actually on a pad similar to that, like that notepad. I still have all my journals from prison. And I can go and flip through the pages and it's like, you know, um, one thing I didn't do enough of, I wish and I would encourage people who journal is write the dates on everything, cause I didn't write all, all the time. I didn't write the dates. But I can go back, man, and I flip through and sometime it's beautiful. You know, sometime

• 2:40:16Speaker 01

  it's, 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, the honesty there, you know, of 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, what if I become nice? Can I survive the yard now? Um, what does that mean? You know, to like, not be angry. Angry is a power in prison, you know? So it's a, 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? Uh, who am I without my anger? Yeah. Um, and so I could see this enlightenment in real time. And I'm just like, man, you were, you

• 2:41:01Speaker 01

  were really a kid, you know? It's like you're trying to figure this, this stuff out with no. You know, there's no therapist, there's no, you know, um, you know, you, 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, 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, it's, it's one of the things that I attribute to my success today. Um, all the things that I want to manifest in my life, I have written down. I've literally written them down. I mean, now we got technology, I'm constantly writing things down. Uh, with, on my phone when I don't have access to, to pen and pad.

• 2:41:46Speaker 01

  Uh, but there's something powerful about like handwriting, like just the, the meditative process of seeing one word after another, um. But it starts with that, you gotta get real with yourself, you know, and it's, it, you know, for me, it was, it was so hard because early on, I blamed everybody, you know, I blamed my dad, you know, I blamed 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? Um, what has led to that journey and led to me having powerful relationships with my parents, because it taught me how to be vulnerable.

• 2:42:27Speaker 01

  And it taught me how to talk to them without judging them, you know, and to really spend time with them and, and say, you know, you know, I remember my mother, we had this, we had this, we, we had a dust up, you know? Um, because she was upset by something I had written. And she said to me, you know, you don't, 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, Ma, how, how, how would I have had a, understood your 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 a tough thing that I had to navigate was forgiveness.

• 2:43:13Speaker 01

  And that's another thing that I found in, in, in life, man, is that people hang on to stuff. You know, they, they let it torture them, you know? Meanwhile, the other person is off living their life and they're not even thinking about that thing that you're harping over, you know? Uh, 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, I'm hurt. You know, I used to like have these moments where

• 2:43:43Speaker 01

  this is a, this is an extremely vulnerable thing to say, but it's important. Male call in prison is one of the most emotionally charged times that you will ever serve. Because it's that moment of the day where everything gets quiet. And everybody who was in the cell block is waiting to either get excited or get disappointed.

• 2:44:08Speaker 01

  And if you're lucky that someone thought about you and they've sent you a letter or they've sent you twenty dollars, you know, thirty dollars or whatever. And it is, it, it induces so much anxiety when you're waiting and you're waiting and you're waiting to hear from someone.

• 2:44:28Speaker 01

  And I just remember like writing in my journal, you know, I would go these stretches, man, and, and I wouldn't hear from my family. You know, I would write, I would write these long letters and I wouldn't get a letter back. I was going through, you know, a time where I'm, I felt extremely vulnerable because of the assault on the officer. And 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 solitary. So you can't, you can't get noodles and all the things.

• 2:45:13Speaker 01

  And so we would buy cough drops, eat, eat those like jolly ranchers, you know, that was like our little thing and, and I just would like. I just remember like writing and just being like, man, I just wanna hear from somebody. You know, because these people, like, they can do anything to me. Like, I've, I've hurt one of their colleagues, you know? And they were telling me, they would, you know, tell me, you know, we're gonna come in and fuck you up, or we're gonna, 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. Um, they have this concoction in there, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but it's called food loaf.

• 2:45:51Speaker 01

  And basically what happens is, say, say they pass out the meal and you decide, I'm not gonna give the milk carton back. Then they could put you on food loaf restriction. And so instead of getting a regular tray, they give you this loaf of everything that you would've had that day that's packed into this brick that they bake. Um, and so just imagine them just grinding all your food up, you know, your mashed potatoes and chicken patty and strained beans, and then baking it into a little brick. And then being like, okay, that's your, your meal for the day. Now, that's what the meal's supposed to be, but what actually happens is they take all the leftover food from that week. We cook that with oatmeal and jell-o, so it actually stays together, and they bake it into these bricks.

• 2:46:37Speaker 01

  And they put it into the freezer, and then when somebody's on food loaf, they'll send over to the child hall, we got one on food loaf. And they'll, they'll take that brick out, warm it up in the, in the, in the oven, and then send it over to the cell block. And, and you can't eat it. It's not, it, it smells so atrocious. It is the most gross thing, but it meets their minimum requirement of what they have to do, um, in terms of nurturing. So, 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 cough drops. And I was doing that 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 card,

• 2:47:19Speaker 01

  or he threw some food on us, and then I'm like, I'm physically conditioned to go without food. Um, 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, I didn't know I needed or was looking for. Um, but 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. Um, 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.

• 2:48:02Speaker 01

  You know, I was like, oh, this is hard. This is, you know, this, 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? But all of that came out of, out of being, you know, raw in those journals and just being like, man, mail, I didn't get any mail today. Like that hurts, you know what I mean? It's sad. I don't feel thought about, you know? Um, I went seventeen years without my mother coming to visit me. And that, that psychologically had so much impact on how I saw myself.

• 2:48:45Speaker 01

  Of like your own mother won't come see you. Like you're that bad of a person, you know? And so that journaling 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. You know, there's a lot of bad things that happen to you, but those all weren't a reflection of your self-worth. Um, and so when I got out, you know, it helped me have 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 had forgave my mother, but it came with attachments. You know, I forgive you, but you gotta be this now.

• 2:49:29Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 2:49:30Speaker 01

  You know, you gotta be, you gotta nurture me and you gotta, you know, take me in 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, you know? That wasn't forgiveness. That was like this condition.

• 2:49:44Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:49:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:49:54Joe Rogan?

  Transactual.

• 2:49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, as opposed to just saying, you know what? I forgive you and and and and that's it. It has to be nothing else. Like you don't have to change. You don't even, we don't even have to like each other. But I'm not gonna 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 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 a person have an injury and you like that person's career over. Because you know they don't have the mental toughness to like, overcome that adversity, you know, and you you'll see him quitting in a moment. And then you'll see the other ones that they'll have that injury and you know,

• 2:50:41Speaker 01

  the moment they get out of the hospital, they're like, they're working. You know, they're working, they're gonna work thems- themselves back to, you know, to whatever they need to do to to compete again, you know, and like that, that's, all of that is that vulnerability and and ability to like, accept a thing and then decide what you wanna do with it.

• 2:50:59Joe Rogan?

  Well, I think those lessons that you get from athletes is one of the reasons why we love sports so much.

• 2:51:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:51:05Joe Rogan?

  We see ourselves in these athletes and see their struggles and their triumphs and we say, oh, I I think if I work hard, I can do that too. Or I could do something similar in my own life.

• 2:51:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:51:18Joe Rogan?

  I think a lot of people are gonna get that out of this conversation too, from you. You know, what what you've gone through and who you are now is is very admirable. You know, it 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, it's a insane journey. You know, and I I really appreciate you coming on here, man.

• 2:51:43Speaker 01

  I appreciate you having me, man. It's a such a, it's a big fan and just so much respect for, you know, the way that you, you know what I really respect out of you, out of more than anything else? Is your curiosity. You know, I find that super fascinating that you can be doing anything you want to do in the world, but you remain like super curious about life. And that's like such an admirable trait and one that I truly appreciate.

• 2:52:07Joe Rogan?

  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.

• 2:52:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:18Joe Rogan?

  What did you go through? What's, how do you think?

• 2:52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:21Joe Rogan?

  How do you, how do you go through your day? Like, what is, what is your thought process?

• 2:52:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:27Joe Rogan?

  You can learn a lot from people, man. And I learned a lot from you.

• 2:52:29Speaker 01

  Likewise.

• 2:52:30Joe Rogan?

  Thank you very much, brother.

• 2:52:31Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for having me, man.

• 2:52:32Joe Rogan?

  My pleasure. My pleasure. All right. Bye, everybody.

• 2:52:50Speaker 03

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